Emlyn_Dewar said:
I did suspension.
Worked for a company that supplied at one point that I was there 6 teams in the pit lane with dampers, in some cases uprights and in a couple of cases a complete suspension package - dampers, uprights to the carbon wishbones and pushrods. Pretty much ready to be bolted to the car.
The dampers were my area though. Take a normal roadcar damper - strengthen it to take 10ton near instant loads, and shrink to 7" long. Oh..and increase the cost to around ~2.5 - 5k quid a corner.
I can say I have appeared on TV more than once...sadly virtually always covered in a full fireproof suit and crash helmet - either that or with my head stuck under the car or in the footwell.
Who says F1 is glamorous?
We also did custom systems for various teams. 1 team for a couple of years ran a shrunken version of our Rally car dampers. Did quite well - 2 world championships out of it.
We even developed a way around the Active Suspension rule. We could do it passively. Sold it to a team for a rather large amount of money *in excess of 1 million* they ran it at 1 test - 2 seconds a lap faster. Never ran it again. Apparently it was too heavy?? But they went 2 secs quicker?
We did everything from Formula Ford to F1, From GpN rallycars to Indycars to special jobs for the Royal Navy and one off car conversions for the Sultan of Brunei.
Also did vehicle dynamics and setup when at out home factory. Did some test driving of various new road cars. Some would turn blood red with embarassment or british racing green with sickness if it got out quite how much we did on their cars getting them to handle properly.
Best bit was testing the cars though. Nothing like blasting 800 miles in 1 day in a brand new car - especially if it's before the press have driven it.
Worst bit - having bits fail at ~160mph and finding a concrete wall at the point of impact..
Simon/~Flibster
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