Great Forums!

Hi i am interested in this championship, but have a few questions:

1) with the suspension setups whats the min ride hight?

2) is there any grey areas in the regulations?

3) is there any solid figures for Cd (coefficient of drag) and if possible 2d pictures of front side and read of a locost

4) does anyone have any of last years times at Pembrey Circuit

Wow i can take a breath now lol

Hope you can help

Cheers

The regs and lap times are available from www.750mc.co.uk

All reg have grey areas, however the Locost regs specify what you CAN do. You can't do what's not detailed.

The Cd for Locosts should all be very similar, as the silhouette is supposed to conform to the Ron Champion book.


Generally though, power is important but handling is critical to maintain speed on the corners. Cd is irrelevant as there's never more than 2ft between cars

Hi the lap times for pembrey are 1.10 of the top of my head. As for cd you need to speak to rob palin. He is on here sometimes ihave no dought that he will know exactly what the cd willbe. alltho is completly irrelavent as all are virtualy the same and most of the time two cars are trying to use the same bit of track.
Grey areas there are some of course but i wouldent worry about them to start with

cheers matt

ps . are you thinking of racing whith us

pps . min ride hight is 3'' but running a car this low buggers up all of the front end geo

[Edited on 17/2/06 by procomp]

The grey areas in the rules are thankfully being slowly elimated. Some people enjoy having the freedom to innovate and try and gain an advantage but IMHO it just leads to more accusations of cheating.

The CD of a racing Locost is about 0.65 with a frontal area of about 1.3 square metres.

Equally startling is that the front lift coefficient, CLF, is about 0.28 and rear lift, CLR, about -0.05.

I agree that the handling is of great importance but it should also be said that there is a surprisingly huge variation between engines. Home-built ones have to be very well done to match those built by professionals. Last year i gained an average of 3 seconds per lap (4.5 at Donington!) by replacing my own engine with one built by someone who actually knew what they were doing!

Speak of the devil. are your ears burning rob.

Wow thanks for the responce, its a uni assignment, we have a Locost and have been analizing weight transfer and suspension setups, we were testing at pembery 2 weeks ago with our laptimes starting off at 1.12.69 then by the end of the afternoon with a few tweaks managed a 1.10.69 before we ran out of time down at the track.

We are looking to maybe compete in a single race as the budget is near to nothing, although it would be great to run the full season i doubt we will get the opertunity.

Not a bad time would put you about 10-15 on the grid . I think that the people testing last year could get down to 1.08 . But you would never repeat it in a 15 min practice and never in the race. Just to many other cars in the way.

Whitch uni . not swanse cheaters again i hope.

Best of luck matt

So if the minimum the car can be run is at 3" (76mm) where can i find this would it be in the regulations on the 750mc website??

If the Cd is 0.65 does that make it less aerodynamic than a 2CV (0.51) !!!

Also (Locost82: "Cd is irrelevant as there's never more than 2ft between cars" Relevent if your at the front of the pack lol

We only completed 14 laps due to track time available including changes etc.

Matt may i ask what makes you say Swansea uni are cheaters?

Clearly from your post you haven't read the regulations on the 750 MC's website. I thought students were supposed to be used to doing research? "With all due respect", please read them before asking any more questions!!!!!!!!!!

With all due respect the regs have been read im just in discution with other users on a part that i am interested it, like they say "if you have nothing good to say dont say anything"

obviously someones rubbed you up the wrong way :s

for some reason i thought this was a forum mayube im on the wrong site.

It's unusual for Rich to be so, err, direct, but he does have a point - there's a lot of useful information on the 750MC site including the regulations and last year's laptimes. You should be able to get an idea from there of what you can & can't do to the car and also some kind of laptime benchmarks at different circuits.

Generally speaking everyone in Locost is very friendly and approachable, it just helps to do a bit of background study before asking questions.


Matt - it's wierd that you posted just a minute before me. Yours hadn't registered on my screen when mine went through. I guess i'm close enough to Brum to pick up the vibes...?

quote:

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If the Cd is 0.65 does that make it less aerodynamic than a 2CV (0.51) !!!

---

Dear Pitcrew,

You will find that I am normally an extremely helpful person (check all my other posts on here), and I'm pretty sure you won't find anyone in Locosts with a bad word to say about me.

Your first question is on ride height - which is at the top of page 4 of the regulations. I therefore made the not unreasonable assumption that you hadn't read the regs!
Dickie

As I recall........ Swansea = mad european driver (I don't build the car, I don't fix the car, I drive the car......ok.....but are you going to pay for the damage you just did to my car?!!!!?) + a distinct disregard for 750MC regulations (which didn't seem to matter for some reason because it was an 'educational' project)

prove everyone wrong pitcrew :-)

Come on, dish the dirt, it's getting interesting now. Any positions going on the scrutineering side? Some golden opportunities going begging here like the new rule that all cars must run 10" wide wheels and whale tail spoilers etc.

[Edited on 19/2/06 by Peteff]

No worrys DixieB didnt mean to come across in that way.

Dish the dirt Did they cause damage to other vehicles?!

As the car can be run at 75mm (apart from exhaust and the sump that has min 50mm) will this be with full fuel and driver? and/or after race scruteneering

plus with a minimum weight of 615Kilos is the car and driver are lighter is ballast allowed to be used?

If a car is entred into the 750mc championship race the regulations will be highly respected, and also the driver will be breifed to have consideration and the highest repect for the other racers. Bad driving standards and disregard of regulatons will to be tolerated.

The 75 mm (50mm sump) is at all times. Eligibility scruitineering is generally after a race, but they can do it at any time.

Ballast is allowed. Some people have light enough cars, and are themselves light enough, so that overall the car needs ballast. Note that the weighing scales at different tracks give different readings! Mallory has always been 10 Kgs out, although they may have updated it for this year....

Like your last line! 90% plus racers agree and comply themselves!
Dickie

Cheers for the info Dixie altho I think the 10% are a regular occurrence in most championships!

(Unfotunately and at much cost to the wallet! I have some nasty picutres of one of my cars clashing with a caterham at pembrey last season complete write off!!. U2U me your email address's for a picture)

[Edited on 19/2/06 by pitcrew]

we had probs with the weigh bridge at Cadwell last season along with several other competitors, in fact that many they let us all go in the end,

Tip, try and get on the weighbridge during scrutineering at each track you visit, like Dikie says, they do differ and if your running close too the limit it could be game over....

At Mallory last year my car weighed in at 601 kg before the race, and at the end of last race at Snetterton 615kg after the race with 4lts fuel left, and no changes to car thruout the season

If thats the case and you know your car is the required weight and then they kick up a fuss saying your underweight surely you can appeal! and have correctly calabrated scales used!

Yeah you'd think so wouldn't you. I've seen one occasion though where the 750MC insisted that the weighbridge was perfectly accurate with no tolerance whatsoever.

It may be possible to get them to double check their measurements using corner weight scales, provided someone they trust has them handy (like Mike Topp).

Or my self i usually carry all the setup equitment with me. but there is no way ime gonna fit the shock dyno in and still be under the leagal towing limit.

matt

Thats a good idea to kick up a fuss but at the time I was the new boy and only weighed it on the Asda scales ( see article in febs 750 mag (plug)

Whatever happened to Swanseas ace driver Bruno Viagra (may not have been his actual name suprisingly enough lol ) btw???

He's now in Portugal trying to start up a Locost race series - I had an email from him (out of the blue) about 10 days ago.

Is there ANYTHING you can't find the answer to on here lol

Who the hell was responsable for letting you loose around locosters again. Know theres a question.
Hi dave good to see you around again

pitcrew,

That laptime at Pembrey sounds pretty good, if you are talking about the blue and white locost in swansea uni workshop then i was one of guys who built it last year, think we got down to low 1:11's so glad to see your making an improvement. Did quite alot of analysis of that car, holds some fond memories! Have you done any other work to it since? If its still running the 5 speed box, you've probably already realised that the 4 speed HD is the one to go for....

Send my regards...

Dave. R