The team got cracking early today, after sucessfully managing to get everybody to driver's briefing on time at 0730 (something the team has found difficult on a number of occasions…). Main order of the day was to finish preparations for the static events tomorrow, and to get to scruitineering by our prescribed time slot at 1530. As I've said previously, FBR were 60th in the queue, which was defined by the time taken to answer a rules related quiz on the FSG website. This however gave plenty of time, to finish off the car for scrutineering. Some of the time was taken finishing off the loom wiring, with the megasquirt ECU now back in. Without enough money to buy the necessary filler for a new seat, the old seat (now falling apart) had to be taped together back to life.

The firewall also needed some attention, after taking the advice from the judges at the end of FSUK. A few bends, cuts, angle grinds and welds finished the job. Also A roller bearing failure had meant that the steering column had to be dismanteled, and after some time spent with the help of Delfts turning facilities in the morning, the car was ready to take down the pit lane for welding. The set up in formula student germany, is that no teams are allowed to weld within garages, so a professional can do jobs requested. This suited us, having only a MIG (no TIG), without any gas (the connection between bottle and welder hand broken). With a new steeming hot steering column, positioned worryingly close to the driver's crotch the team wheeled the car straight to scrutineering. Unfortunately, with all of the time spent in the welding bay, too much had to be assembled in the scrutineering queue area before the time slot, and the oppertunity for scruitneering was missed. There was however, the promise of being able to scrutineer before the main scrutineering opened, by going down at 0830, straight after the drivers briefing.

In the evening the car was taken back to the pits for the final assembly to be completed. Some members of the team stayed in the in the FSG marquee (particularly enticed by the free coffee supplied), to finish off the “real case” static presentation. The challenge was to find a 20% saving in the cost of manufacturing the car, and (assuming the roll of autocross car manufacture) trippling the market sales. This meant reducing downtime, outsorcing labour, changing processes and materials, reducing waste (6 sigma etc.). The CUED operations management lecturenotes were particularily useful in this case. The night was spent back at camp, again huddled around laptops, this time finishing off the presentation for tomorrows Business event. The team decided to get a relitavely early night given the early start for driver's briefing and the presentations they had to do tomorrow. All jobs were finished by around half one.

Another damp morning meant that the car had to lie in Park Ferme (the Van) until lunch time, when it would be taken to the queue for the pits. New rules for FSG this year mean the pit lane opeartes a one in, one out policy for Vehicles (introduced to allow a greater number of teams in the pitlane, now around 90), meaining a couple of hours of queueing in the “truck stop” albeit with free coffee and the White Album CD's. The car was finally in the pitlane by around 3pm, and after setting up base it was time for the team to attend the introducturary meeting. There were a number of changes to FSG10 explained, the introduction of the night race for Formula Student Electric, changes to the scruitneering order method (order now based on time to answer a quiz, rather than on position in a queue (FBR line up 60th)) and the abandoning of the style competion.

The evening session saw some serious ECU action. Both Brunel and Birmingham had supplied ECUs that required cam position sensors, and unfortuntaely the Faser that we run did not have one, nor could concievably be fitted with one. Thoughts turned back to the dreaded megasquirt and it was dismantled to try and begin working through the circuit board to find broken components. After about an hour, burnt tracks around a varistor and zener diode lead to them being replaced. It was a logical for the over-volted ECU since a varistor is used to protect against high voltages, and the zener diode used in providing a constant voltage source. these components were quickly sourced, and soldered in. The ECU was then plugged in, and much to the surprise of much of the team, began to communicate immediately with the laptop. The numbers were sensible, although not correct (by this time, 10pm, the ambient air temp was definately not 29Deg). The battery was fitteed, and after a brief moment of surprise as the starter motor relay was shorted and immediately sprung into life, the team spent the night working on the ECU. There was some concern over the readings from the crank position sensor, but these were soon verified by oscilliscope measurement.

The business team also had a busy day, trying to complete a business plan. The idea being that, a presentation is made assuming the team are a autocross car manufacturer, looking for VC funding to expand the business. A whole back story was created around Marko (the team's founder), setting up the business after seeing a market need, and spending a year involved in Formula Student. The team decided to call it a day at around 3, but not before putting together the plenum, injectors and ignition system; ready for the possibility of scrutineering tomorrow.

The team arrived at the Hockenheim ring at 0830 this morning after a solid night's driving through western Europe. The journey was fairly uneventful, even without a map or any directions. Many thanks to Norfolk line for providing a discount for the Ferry across the channel (which was already the most competitive option available). There was pleanty to crack on with already, with some big headaches from the previous week A few days earlier, the ECU had been fried due to an overenthusiastic charger running at 16V rather than 12V (even through the battery). This was the end for the megasquirt system, which had been with the team since its inception. This caused a mixed reaction, with some (particularily from the teams engine tuner) celebrating the end of an ECU which had caused so many issues at previous competitions, but also left the team unable to start the engine with a day before the competition. After a frantic night's search, an advert was entered for any Yamaha bike-breakers who could provide the stock ECU, complete with coils for our FAZER (retuned R6) engine.

By 9am the next morning, the team had an inbox full of replies and was able to source an ECU for $600. This would have to be posted out to the event itself via DHL to arrive in time. Unfortunately the day before, the teams already meagre remaining funds had been completely been cleaned out. The team had a remaining $0 to operate in. Fortunately the department, sensing the despairation of the situation stepped in with a loan to pay for the replacement electronics. Additional to this, both Birmingham and Brunel were quick to offer replacements to borrow during the competition. Hence first job after arriving was to find the ECUs and test out their compatibility. This was done immediately, but a bit more searching was needed for the correct plugs.

By this time it was evening, and with a storm front, and a dubious marquee it was decided the best option was to delay testing unti the morning. The evening was spent sharing a few well deserved beers with Brunel and Birmingham, all huddled around laptops deciding on how much re-wiring would need to be done with the ECUs. Discussions about cable shielding, signal conditioning and counting inflection points went one into the night, all lubricated by Germany's finest and cheapest.

Apologies for the absence of a blog for the final two days, but as you can imagine, work on the car has been non-stop.

Saturday started off well, with progress being quickly completed on the suspension system, that had been completely welded by the end of the day. It wasn't long before the cooling system was plumbed in and the steering system assembled, albeit with some welding only tacked.

The Results for the static event came through during the day, with 29th for Business and 30th for the Cost report. A result the team were pleased with, given the lack of the car for cost (eliminating any chance of any deep dive points). The performance was hampered with the fact that the business team was focused on trying to get the car finished, limiting the time that the presentation and business paperwork could be finalised to out of pit lane hours (ie. between 2300 and 0700). Not bad for a first try though.

The design results were less pleasing, with a lowly 61st place. The affect of not having a completed car in this event, clearly was severe. It was still worth going thought the motions however, the team has gained a lot for Hockenheim, and next year in learning what is required to score well in this competition (ie. a car). Another criticism was the lack of supporting calculations, frustrating for a team which is often bogged down in over desig and calculation. More evidence of the work that went into design will be taken in future.

The late evening was spent trying to decipher the ignition wiring system. Unfortunately due to a shortage of wire in previous years the wiring had been hodge-podged together using different colours, meaning the wire tended to enter the shrink wrap at the injectors one colour and exit at the plug a different one. This caused much head scratching, as did the fact that nobody realised that the engine ran with all 4 injectors firing at the same time (and therefore wired to the same port on the ECU). By the time the pitlane closed, the team was ready for a well deserved BBQ and a couple of beers, before an early start the next morning (rumour had it that the pitlane was actually open before the advertised time of 0700hrs).

The FRB work early on the Sunday morning to good weather (for Silverstone), to a dead Formula student campsite. It appeared nobody on the team had overslept, and all had managed to get up before the Germans (almost unheard of). This allowed full access to the showers, and a quick start on the car, getting straight on with wiring for the now urgently required electronics. As more team members joined in the pits after driver's breifing, the track rods and drive shaft were quickly assembled, and by midday the moment finally came and the FBR10 had a rolling chassis!. There was little time for jubilation, and the car was back on the jack stands within a couple of minutes. A large positive camber on the rear wheels, and some negative camber on the front, gave for a slightly odd looking FS car, it was clear that there was some set up work to be done. The team was in high spirits with the promise of a scrutineering check, sometime before 1930. The afternoon session again focused on wiring up the electrics. The conditions were difficult, with the gusty weather tending to cool the soldering irons, making melting the solder an arduous task. By around 5, the endurance races were coming to a close, and with the garage becoming ever more empty with teams packing up, as much for scrutineering was completed as possible. The intake was plumbed in, the safety harness attached and brakes bled. By 1730, the team made the decision to take the car to scrut, at this last oppertunity and gather as much info. on what needed to be changed for hockenheim as possible. In the event, this did not turn out to be as bad as was feared, with the most time consuming change, having to be a re-weld of a steering bracket as it was too low.

That concluded the event, with the lucky ones staying for the after event BBQ, and the rest going home back to work on monday morning. Overall the competition was a success, not in the sense of the car's performance (this was the first year that the car finished the event not even being completed), but for probably the first time in FBRs history the car was truely a whole team effort, all 20, from 1st years to 4th years. It was formula student as it should have been. And that, being carried into Hockenheim, and future years, is of much more benefit for Formula Student in Cambridge than a core group of 4th years with a little help from the rest of us struggling our way to endurance on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

Today things turned completely, and in the right direction. From day break, a team full of enthusiasm and optimism began work on what, at the time was only a chassis and an engine. First up was the business event, a late night finalising the presentation made for a nervous morning, but cometh the hour, the presenting team felt they had pulled it off, being praised for their enthusiasm in the product (the FBR10). There were points to work on however, a more thorough business plan was suggested, to really get a chance for the top presentation; but there was much positive feedback for the performance in the question and answer session. Design came next, and was always going to be tricky with such little of the car actually completed. The team tried there upmost though, with good effect, talking about their components and using their ingenuity to provide evidence, bringing along jigs and prototypes. This pleased the judges, but a lack of paper trail, and calculations supporting the designs provided a point for improvement for the Hockenheim competition. The cost report immediately followed, and again a lack of complete car, immediately made it impossible to score any 'deep dive' points (wherein the team are asked about specifically about manufacturing certain parts of the car they have designed). A presentation on upright manufacture went well, the team were optimistic for this given our uprights have previously been complimented by the judges. To score more next time, extra detail into the business implications, and time management would be needed.

Even with the amount of time (about two very precious hours in total), taken out of the day with static events the team managed to forge ahead and finished the day with the car unrecognisable from what had been delivered the night before. The steering and dash were attached, the suspension rockers were added, the bodywork was tooled and attached, the entire cooling system was plumbed in, the pedal box was pieced together, the intake inside cleaned and painted (to prevent Alumide dust being sucked into the intake, cf. Hockenheim 2009), 28 bearings were turned (many thanks to the Delft team for their help with this), more bearings which had failed to be delivered were sourced, the floor was cut and attached, the data acquisition loom was wired in and the wishbone tubing was sourced cut and jigged. The transition gained congratulation from judges and friendly neighbours. By the evening, the team was flying through the work, and frustrated by the 2300 closing time for the pitlane. Fortunately some suspension metal-work could be taken back to the campsite, finishing off in the early hours of the morning.

This has been an important day for FBR, not only have the whole team demonstrated much enthusiasm and gained a lot of experience, but for one of the first times at Full Blue the car build was sped up by the pulling together of the whole team, rather than the build only being possible by the skills of a few core-team members. This bodes well for future years, since it is a demonstration that the team has depth, rather than suffering the problems of so much knowledge by the (4th year) core team leaving university after the competition.

The decision was taken in keeping the car at Cambridge until today, so that Wed Night progress would not be restricted by the 10pm curfew.

As a result, pleanty of progress was indeed made, particularily in the pedal box area with a day on the lathe, turning a brake balance bar and cable pullers. Alterations also needed to be performed on last years braking system to accomdate this years shorter pedalbox. The powertrain took the brunt of the work effort with drivetrain plates being waterjetted. A massive thanks to the workshop team back at CUED for time spent machining a pressfit for the spool bearing, also completed today. Little jobs; making circlip grooves, turning components for the gear change system and dismantling last years chain tensioner inevatively took up a more than their fair share of the time, delaying arrival of the car until 2130. Officially this gave us 30 minutes of unpacking and work time before the pits officially closed at 2200, but, erm, yeh.

Bodywork progress steamed ahead over in Newbury, with the final 3 layers of the 4 layer Carbon Fibre finish for most of the components being completed. The nose was strengthened with Nomex core, but due to time constraints it was felt that the low load bodywork areas, such as around the cockpit would surfice without. This also obviously gives us even greater weight advantage. The components are now vacuum bagged up, in the 'clave and all being well will be ready for a laquer finish, tooling and the all important stickers tomorrow.

It's raining heavily, blowing a gale and the Gazebo has collapsed under the strength of the wind. It's Silverstone again then.

An advance party has arrived and buisly been preparing the garage awaiting the arrival of the car tommorow evening. It is currently back at Cambridge HQ, with team members busily trying to finish off the car as best we can.

This morning the not so minor issue of the engine not fitting in the chassis became aparent, a result of changing engines from last years, dead, R6 to the (almost) identically sized Fazer 600. After some changes to the engine packaging, the engine now fits, and all is well.

On the downside, we've had to wait until tomorrow for the new rockers and bearings to arrive, and an unfortunate event involving the wishbones and them being reversed over by the manufacturers lorry, has left us with no way currently to attatch the wheels to the car. Looks like its going to be a classic Full Blue Racing, no sleep from now on sort of event.

Full Blue Racing has been plagued with engine troubles, putting the team out of the competition.

Following a trying day on Friday, the team was confident that Saturday would be better and set to work intent on passing noise and brake in time to compete on Sunday. With an engine that refused to start, the team performed a systematic check of the powertrain and electrical system to identify the problem.

Over time it became clear that the ignition coils were at fault and hence the engine was not receiving a big enough spark to ignite the fuel in the cylinders. The team runs an uncommon 'homebrewp' ECU due to budget constraints and requires ignition coils that are not used by many teams.

As always the team was not beaten and whilst a group searched for new coils, 2 other groups investigated opportunities for implementing alternative solutions and attempted to identify the original cause of the problems. Eventually, the problem was identified as a grounding issue in the electrical system, only becoming apparent at the high current levels drawn by the coils. This was fixed and the team were set to try noise with just 10 minutes of scrutineering time remaining.

At this point the absence of our engine tuner came back to haunt us and we were unable to get the engine to run in time to pass these tests. The rules fo FSG have changed this year, meaning that the team is no longer able to pass scrutineering on Sunday - this has unfortunately meant that the team cannot run this weekend. The team is obviously devastated by this news, but is confident that the problem now simply lies in the tuning of the engine and could easily be solved with more time and better engine testing facilities.

So the team now looks forward to next year - today will be spent soaking up the atmosphere, looking for ideas from other teams and of course lending a hand wherever possible.

The team has placed 2nd in the cost event at Hockenheim!

This event judges the team on its ability to produce a cost effective vehicle, and to document the costs of the vehicle's fabrication and construction. The team had to submit a detailed cost report, documenting materials, processes and assembly tasks for the whole car - even down to the last nut, bolt and washer!

At the competition, the team then comes under scrutiny from a panel of judges regarding this cost report and the final car, before presenting on a deep dive topic. This year's topic focussed on cutting the cost of the car by 20% - a difficult task for what is already the cheapest car in the field! The judges were impressed with the level of detail in the report, and the presentation was praised for 'covering everything'.

This will be the first time that the team has brought home silverware from a competition, and the team now looks forward to gathering more in the future by building on this success.

Today turned into the predicted long slog for Full Blue Racing, with static events and the team attempting to complete the noise and brake tests.

The static events are now completed, and the team has heard its result in the business presention - 39th, meaning the team has retained a similar position to that acheived in Silverstone. The team entered the design event with confidence, the car having passed scurinteering pre-design for the first time in the team's history. This was unfortunately overshadowed by a design judge (not involved in our judging process) exerting excessive force on the steering system and causing damage that required a trip back to scrutineering. The cost event went more smoothly, and the team is awaiting the results of design and cost tomorrow.

The 90 minutes consumed by fixing the steering and re-scrutineering further compounded the problems the team were having in the engine test area. With the normal engine tuning 'guru' still stranded in Belgium, the team has struggled to get the engine to run. Despite the team's best efforts and the generous help of numerous other teams (many thanks to Brunel and Birmingham in particular) the team is still in a stalemate at close of play and the issues are threatening once again to prevent the team running in Saturday morning's events. This problem can be linked back to a lack of any facilities for testing the engine and powertrain and hence a reliance of the team tuning the engine in 'no-load' tests in the finished car. Work is already underway to improve this situation for next year and any offers of help are welcome!

So all in all a tough day for the team - a lengthy fault finding process is underway to try and maximise our chances in the morning, having just 4 hours to get through noise and brake tests if we are to compete in the dynamic events taking place.

We are not beaten yet…