West competitions:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytP0VkVZgEc

Carnage: 0:26, 3:00: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwRQePgEF-Y

Michigan 2014: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kY3vaA6bLSI

Cornell suspension event https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XX6NRg_hHEc

Pomona 2011 (TIG, suspension): https://youtu.be/YfdvsJoy-KU?t=2m16s

Starting line up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgk0CuaRB1I

Books
http://forums.bajasae.net/forum/offroad-suspension-design-literature_topic464.html

Wheelbase and Track Dims, %Weight F/R (depends on differential or spool)

http://forums.bajasae.net/forum/track-width-wheelbase_topic69.html

Auburn:

It is my personal opinion that if you could find a good set of variables to plot, you would find a sweet
spot of cars. I may be wrong, but I think a Michigan car would be on the small side of WB, where as a
TTU car would be on the longer side, with your ETS, Ackron, Sherbroke, AU, USF, et al, et al, in the
middle. In my mind i think of Michigan state as an outlyer, with a somewhat long wheelbase. (My mind
is getting old though, and I may have this completely wrong)

Certainly it is a function of many many variables (jumping, oversteer, CG, Spool/Drivetrain,

Swingarm/Suspension), but the engineer in me thinks that it would be neat to somehow scatter plot a
selection of variables, and I really bet you would find little groupings of designs (though not neccesarly a
predictor of car performance).

TTU:
Track- 56F 39R
WB- 62
CG- High and slightly rearward of center

USF:
Track F52" R51"
WB 65"
Cg from ground 18"
Weight bias 49% front 51% rear

The 08 OSU car was:

Track: 47F/48R
WB-60
35%F/65%R bias
drag link rear with an open diff

Weight

http://forums.bajasae.net/forum/are-lightweight-cars-overrated_topic2023.html

Rowan:
Lightweight cars end up dealing with lower forces as well. Plenty of durable cars are very
lightweight, Laval among others is a good example. This may have to do with better engineering,
better driving, better materials, or all of the above. Typically, to get a lightweight car, there is a
lot more design time going in anyway.

However, testing is the number 1 way to get a durable car. At Rowan, almost every test day the
goal was to try to break the car, and then beef it up where needed. Eventually the crap required to
break the car pushed the limits of what the drivers were willing to do.

Bottom line, heavy cars are not generically stronger. Start light, test and add weight where
needed.

An exercise we did before every event was "predict" what would fail on the car. Until everyone
thought a flat tire is the only thing that could possible go wrong. We kept tweaking.

Also, add a huge bumper with plenty of crumble

-----
I feel like a 350 lb car is a happy medium. There are cars the weigh less that may be tough, but I
don't think it could be considered bulletproof. The ultimate goal is to build a car you can drive at
100% for 4 hours. Practice is also very, very important.

-------------

There have been plenty of excellent 350lb cars. However, Laval, U of M, Cornel, and a few
others have built some very robust 300lb cars. I am sure it is easier to build a strong 350+ car,
but I think the teams listed are evidence that weight isn't required for durability and teams should
aim as low as they can and rely on Safety factors and testing, which is what I am sure the top
teams do.
The only place I think some of the 300 lb cars could gain some durability from weight is bead
locks and bumpers. Everything else has proven to be robust. I have seen Laval and Cornel put
there spindly cars through some serious abuse and come out on 4 wheels. Proper Load paths,
material properties and fasteners make a big difference. Laval's super roll at Wisconsin comes to
mind, and Cornel's super Roll at Tennessee. Both were at crazy high speed and really proved out
the designs.

Cornell:

It is very possible to build a robust 290-310 lb car like we have done for the past few years. Take a look
at the videos on youtube of our 2012 Auburn suspension winning run or the 2013 Tennessee suspension
winning run and epic rollover to see just how much abuse a "superlight" can take if done well. We have
occasionally had some minor and slightly major failures, but we still had those sometimes at 375 lbs
previously and adding a few oz on every part to buy robustness isn't worth it when it adds up to 25+ lbs
and you still don't know what might break. The lower suspension loads on a light car are a huge benefit,
and the ability to carry speed over and through obstacles is one of the reasons we have won a lot of
suspension events and overall competitions recently.

------------

the lightweight tubing last years design team chose was extremely susceptible to impact
damage. {Probably the 0.028” wall thickness or thereabouts}

Differentials

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOgoejxzF8c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIGvhvOhLHU

http://www.optimumg.com/docs/DifferentialAnalysis_BertaReport.pdf

http://forums.bajasae.net/forum/designing-for-a-differential_topic281.html
Chris Reedy TTU Alumni

The advantages of an open car being the ability to simply drive through tight corners instead of having
to throw a spool car in hard and the addition of low speed maneuverability where a spool car could not
unload enough to break traction with the inside tire. This of course comes with the downside of
possibly losing traction and becoming a "one wheel wonder". {Just spinning the inside wheel}

OSU Advisor Bob Paash:

The other consideration is that most spool car designers push their cg forward to get the car to turn, so
they're giving up some of their traction advantage by pulling weight off the rear wheels. You TTU guys
with your past high cg cars have been an exception. Like you, we really like the traction you get from
substantial rear weight bias.

I've posted this video before:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jpr3RGAZlAw&feature=related

showing the USF and OS maneuverability runs at Illinois 08. Watch the rear tire on both cars. Two very
different ways to get around a tight course.

Oregon State designs for the "west", and we've found a formula that works for that, and occasionally
works at midwest style events as well. You guys at USF go to all three events, and so you design a car
that will do well everywhere. TTU has traditionally designed a car for "east" events, and they have done
very very well at those events over the last decade.

When talking about "pushing the cg forward" I meant relative to our (OSU and TTU) cars. We run 35/65
f/r mass distribution. I believe USF is closer more like 45/55, as are most of the other "power-on-
oversteer" cars like Auburn, ETS, RIT, Sherbrooke, etc. TTU has run 35/65 in the past, and in fact from
the Alabama data, TTU had the least % weight on their front wheels of any team at that
competition. With that much weight on the rear it's hard to induce power-on oversteer. TTU has
accomplished that by a higher cg and relatively narrow rear track. We don't try for power-on oversteer,
we turn with a diff.

I have no argument with teams that design for a spool, if we ever go to all three events we might go to a
spool too. A big downside to our approach is the hit we take in the cost report for that transaxle. It also
takes a lot of development to get it right, we're now on our 8th transaxle iteration. We're also
extremely lucky to have the support of a great company, Linn Gear, 20 miles from OSU.

Chris beat me to it, as he says you increase the normal force as well, making it harder to break traction
in the rear. We have the ability to run both ways. With our locker engaged, our car turns like a pig
unless you have a very low traction surface. It is very difficult to break traction with that much weight
on the rear and the miniscule power we have. We also have trouble with the light front end, not
enough weight up there to generate a good yaw moment. {I.e., optimizing for an open diff results in a
car that is hard to turn with the spool, as expected}

Dustin Bride
University of South Florida SAE Alumni/Consultant
We have relied on our drivers to be able to handle the oversteer that the car gives us, and we have been
blessed to have had excellent drivers since 1999. I will be the first to say that relying on oversteer to get
yourself around a corner is def. not always a good solution, but we like the results that we have had in
the past with our typical amount.

(http://forums.bajasae.net/forum/track-width-wheelbase_topic69.html)
Chris Reedy, TTU:
Our effective rear track is a little more considering the 12" width of the terras. You can see in
the picture how we actually turn. The inside wheel is unloaded, and in this case about an inch
off the ground.

http://forums.bajasae.net/forum/eliminating-differential_topic1051.html

To give you an idea, this is the top ten for the Mike Schmidt Award (teams that attended all three
competitions in the US). I added what type of transmission they had (not sure on a few but people can
correct me). You can make your own conclusions from that.
1 Oregon State Univ (diff)
2 Rochester Institute of Technology (diff)
3 Univ of Maryland - Baltimore County (spool)
4 Northeastern Univ (spool)
5 Univ of Tennessee -Chattanooga (spool)
6 SUNY - Buffalo (spool)
7 Queen's Univ - Ontario Canada (spool)
8 Ecole De Technologie Superieure (diff)
9 Univ of Michigan - Ann Arbor (spool)
10 Central Michigan Univ (spool)

{3 with Diff, 7 with Spool}

Dominic Marceau Baja SAE Laval 2008 – 2012

A good example is us vs Oregon State. We have totally different cars (spool for us and OSU have a diff
and many other differences). This year we were neck to neck in about every event (take a look at
manoeuverability in Oregon!). It all depends on your goals and your setups (track, wheelbase, weight
distribution, steering geometry, etc).

Sure a well tuned diff could probably improve our cornering efficiency but we acheived the cornering
behavior we wanted and the car is very responsive and predictable for the driver. I think you can acheive
a well performing car with both a spool or a diff, but it depends a lot on the other caracteristics of your
car. Don't think choosing one or the other because other teams do well will automatically gets you a fast
car.

http://minibaja.gmc.ulaval.ca/

Danny, Cornell:

I know from our past experience that we have considered trick active diffs that would provide a dynamic
benefit but decided to run a spool since it is lighter, simpler and cheaper and we are able to tune our
suspension to get the cornering behavior we want in other ways. It is all about compromises.

Pedro, Brazil:

more one exemple of spooled IRS badass turning car.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=696930203734752

Replies:

Pedro, That car is spinning the crap out of the tires, i'd like to see how well it turns under higher
traction scenarios such as the maneuverability course at Tennessee tech 2 years ago....it was mostly
hard packed damp clay and would have been alot harder to break the rear tires loose like that.

http://forums.bajasae.net/forum/spool_topic1080.html

Oregon 2012 manoeuverability (both without penalty):

- Laval 1st (spool) - 82.25s

- OSU 2nd (open diff with cutting brakes) - 82.34s (don't know if they had their diff locked on this run
though). Still very different cars!I

Danny, Cornell:
Most of our cars have not been top 5 or even 10 in maneuverability. We designed for a lot of
independent suspension travel with a spool that meant tight cornering was always a concern. When I
was on the team we primarily designed the car toward the suspension and acceleration courses and
used driver skill / practice to make up the manuv difference.

---
There are things a driver can do to mitigage some things. In mini baja in my opinion you should always
try to design so that oversteer is the most likely bad handling outcome as its easier for a driver to correct
for it and drift(sorta) where an understeering vehicle will simply not want to turn especially at slow
speeds. The spool can be useful in drifting however alot of times it can induce an understeer situation.

The torsen is a great option, but for my needs, too large, as is every other commonly available
differential out there.

Rowan Baja:
With a typical LSD (Salisbury), with one wheel in the air, you only get preload torque to the high traction
wheel, which is better than the torsen but still not gonna cut it.

If you are set on the LSD, research the Visco-Lok I mentioned earlier. It is a speed sensing diff that will
completely lock when one wheel is off the ground, granted there is latency, but it is tunable. If you tune
it right you should get close to torque based LSD performance during maneuverability and all those
spool understeer situations, but still get up the rock crawl or suspension madness. The best part will be
pushing it around the pits, it wont leave skid marks on the ground.
http://forums.bajasae.net/forum/differential-design_topic1851_page1.html

Rowan:
With a swing arm, you can sometimes "tricycle" your way over gaps, and things. The ride is questionable
at best, but that has more to do with the unsprung weight than lack of articulation. I have yet to see a
baja course that specifically punishes cars without articulation.

If your front suspension is set up right, the car doesn't roll very much on moguls.

The weaknesses I found with the swingarm include: Weight, Ground Clearance, and getting it stiff
enough.

I think I have posted this before, but we ended up putting a sway bar of sorts onto our swingarm to
make it even stiffer than it already was. Made a huge improvement!

Also, Chain guard is a nightmare to keep light and strong enough to be the bottom of the car.

Also, for whatever reason, moguls are rare in baja, making articulation just unnecessary.

The single best thing about the swingarm.... no CVs.

Dr Paasch:
Dan, I don't consider the lockable open diff a "holy grail", and in fact for teams not consistently in the
top-10 I wouldn't recommend it, as they have other areas (project management, stress and fatigue
analysis, suspension kinematics) where they can make more gain.

But done right, it does give the car a lot of versatility, and I'm not going to let Pedro spout out a bunch of
uninformed opinion as fact without some challenge.
As for design, yes, it's the same basic layout, but every year our transaxle has gotten lighter, smaller
and/or cheaper. Getting good reliable locker and reverse actuation is also a design challenge.
Suspension design also gets more complicated as the car has to run well both open and locked.
Ground clearance
http://forums.bajasae.net/forum/engine-placement_topic1914.html
Cornell:
We have typically run ~12" of clearance with 12-13" of travel (roughly half up and half down
from static) with a cg as low as physically possible. You can compensate for lower clearance
with bigger tires and a better driver but that high clearance and low cg is the main reason we
have done so well in S&T the last 4 or 5 years.
You can design the rear suspension to unload the inside tire without requiring a lot of body roll
from a high CG, so you don't need a stacked engine.

Suspension

http://poisson.me.dal.ca/~dp_12_04/design.html

Travels:
http://forums.bajasae.net/forum/suspension-travel_topic1064.html

Dirt track stock cars (circle track, only turn left):

http://www.hotrod.com/how-to/chassis-suspension/1505-dirt-race-car-setup-prep/

http://www.hotrod.com/how-to/chassis-suspension/1506-how-we-measured-our-moment-center-on-
project-beak-built/
Front Suspension (AA arm) -- pretty high, since dirt has low grip, jacking forces are not very
large:
Our MC dynamic location was 5.902 inches high…
These changes yielded an MC location after dive and roll of 7.441 inches high…

Software:
Shark, free academic:
http://www.lotuscars.com/engineering/engineering-software

http://forums.bajasae.net/forum/suspension-analysis_topic274.html

Roll Steer:
http://forums.bajasae.net/forum/irs-3-link-trailing-arm-toe-change-over-travel_topic1933.html
IRS vs Dependent
http://forums.bajasae.net/forum/trailing-arm-suspension_topic753.html
Akron 2004:
I was personally involed with three 1st place and one 2nd place overall finish with the trailing arm
live axle design. One reason why I didn't experience four 1st place finishes is because the design
judges are all pro IRS fanatics and gave our car horrible static design scores (every year). I don't
understand why we had to defend the design choice so much. The dynamic results speak for
themselves.
I don’t really buy the argument that 2004 was such a long time ago, cars are so much better
today (sure they are!).
There are just so many IRS Baja cars that a few are bound to get lucky.
Not everyone can design a trailing arm as good as we did.

It doesn't matter what you run as long as you do it right. Teams have had success with swing-
arms, just as they have with a-arms, semi-trailing arms, trailing arms, etc...
Teams have been successful with manuals as have others with CVTs. Some have seen success
with chain reductions, others with gear reductions. Some do well with diffs, others run
spools. The list goes on and on.
As with cars, bikes, motorcycles, guns, computers, anything, there isn't usually a "best". There's
just the one that fits your needs best.

http://forums.bajasae.net/forum/steering-and-suspension_topic539_page3.html
Good discussion

Trailing Arm IRS:

http://forums.bajasae.net/forum/trailing-arm-with-spool-setup_topic1712.html
Several teams still run independent trailing arms with a spool... It is a nice setup because it directs all of
the shock and link loads into the RRH, so the rear frame can be much smaller / lighter.
----
You need to be careful to distinguish the difference between a single rear swing arm / trailing arm
where the wheels are locked together on a solid axle without CV joints and independent trailing arms
where the rear suspension is totally independent and the axles requires articulation joints.

A dependent swing arm style has roll stiffness governed by the torsional stiffness of the swing arm and is
typically very high to slide around corners. Independent trailing arms are completely decoupled and the
shocks are pointed nearly entirely in the vehicle forward direction, yielding very low roll stiffness. You
can either increase your spring rates and ruin jump and bump behavior or incorporate a sway bar to try
to separate bump and roll characteristics. Single wheel bumps will still remain a problem as it will
engage the sway bar when you would ideally prefer it didn't.

-----
Semi-Trailing arm IRS can be designed to have a roll center higher than the front suspension, thus
oversteer (however roll center changes with suspension travel such that you might transition to
understeer in a hard turn or vise versa)(anti-roll bars exist for a reason). You'll also get a camber gain
(not that off-road tires care) and take some slop out of the CV joints.
-----
Reliability can be more important than anything and people try to apply too many road racing
principals to off-road out of ignorance.
Road tires are sensitive to camber and scrub thus formula cars have IRS with camber control and
limited slip differentials.
Off-road tires are deliberately insensitive to camber due to dirt paths not being level and a
differential is more likely to get you stuck in a rut than help you around a corner (which is slick
with mud such that scrub isn't a problem in the first place).
Even if a trailing arm doesn't look like it has a camber/toe gain; it probably flexes under load
such that it does.
Semi-trailing arms have "Jacking Force" while pure trailing arms don't, a car that rolls over is
really slow.

Semi Trailing Arm pics:

http://forums.bajasae.net/forum/trailing-arm-or-semi-trailing-arm_topic1834.html

http://forums.bajasae.net/forum/placement-of-the-engine-with-swing-arm-suspension_topic1095.html
Wheels
http://forums.bajasae.net/forum/tires-and-wheels_topic1021.html
http://forums.bajasae.net/forum/tire-wheel-selection_topic585.html

Here's my opinion on wheel and tire selection based on our cars. For some background, our
cars are typically light (<400lbs.), and do well in most events involve handling/speed. They are
lowish and wide. If you plan on building a heavier crawler type car that will excel in rougher
S&Ts and rock crawl, it's possible that very little of this will apply to you.

Wheels: Rolled aluminum or HiPers are the way to go. Steel and cast aluminum are too heavy.
Douglas offers a variety of flavors that let you choose how much weight you can live
with. HiPers seem to be pretty tough, although they aren't as light as some of the aluminum
options and are considerably more expensive. Douglas Blue Labels (.125") are about as light as
you can get, but they are barely strong enough to make it through more than a race or two. Keep
a dead-blow handy. Douglas Black Labels(.160") are a good compromise between weight and
strength and what I would recommend to most teams running cars similar in philosophy to
ours. Douglas Red Labels(.190") are plenty strong for just about anything they'll see on a Baja
course. 10" wheels are nice since that's typically a sport size which means there are a ton of
sport(read:light) tire options out there.

Tires: I like something in the 21"-23" range. I like 23" since the extra size helps you roll over
obstacles, and you get a little extra wheel protection. For fronts, I like a tall center lug
section(Maxxis Razr, Razr2, BallanceRazr, ITP Holeshot GNCC...) to dig deep when throwing it
hard into corners. For rears, I want a ton of forward bite and not too much side bite. The idea
being that the lack of much side bite will allow the car to slide more readily while still having a
ton of grip for everything else. ITP Mudlite ATs, Carlisle 489s, and Kenda Bearclaw EXs are
good examples of what I mean. Despite the extra weight, I'll take a 4-ply or 6-ply tire over a 2-
ply any day. The 2-ply OEM tires and Carlisle 489s that we have played with are just too
soft. I'm not sure if I'd feel comfortable running Douglas Black Labels with them.
Shocks

http://forums.bajasae.net/forum/choosing-shock-absorbers_topic2246.html

If you want to fully tune your shocks, you will need one with adjustable rebound and
compression damping. Elka and fox both offer coilovers with these features and fox does offer
some airshocks with damping adjustments. I do not know too much about the King and Bilstein
lines so I cannot comment here. the Elka coilovers are much lighter than the fox coils, however,
they are also much more expensive.

Also take note that once you start adding the damping adjustments onto the base shock, they get
notably heavier, and more expensive. You need to decide exactly what adjustments you want to
have control over in your suspension.

Also note that the base shocks can be revalved to "pre-adjust" the damping, however you won't
be able to tune it in by hand at the testing ground.

---
Fox has a sponsorship program for Baja SAE teams where they discount them a few hundred
dollars.. Im sure other manufacturers would be willing to give a small discount if you give them
a call also.
Steering:

http://forums.bajasae.net/forum/ackermann-vs-antiackermann_topic1842.html

We were running anti this past year and found that it worked really well on the pavement and on
hard pack but as soon as there was loose dirt or mud the front end would just slide and have no
ability to go around a corner. we got 2 DNF in manoeuvrability and didn't make the first corner
on one run of rock crawl at Illinois as well I found some of the corners right after mud on the
endurance course tricky and often used the entire track to get around. I would not recommend
using it for baja if the course is going to be wet. we ran a similar geometry at Wisconsin in 2012
and on that very dry course we found it worked really well (aside from another 2 DNF's in
manoeuvrability).

http://forums.bajasae.net/forum/turning-radius_topic378.html
http://forums.bajasae.net/forum/steering-rack-and-pinion_topic278.html

we make our own. Martin Gear makes rack gear stock and boreable spur gears you can use to make a
rack and pinion set. We machine a slot in some 3/4" stainless rod and then bond in the gearstock to the
rod to make the rack and cnc machine a housing that fits our exact dimensions. Use some teflon
bushings in the housing to make the rack slide easily in a linear motion and a pair of ball bearings to
support the pinion gear and shaft. Its actually a pretty simple part to make.
Frame

Tubing

http://forums.bajasae.net/forum/frame-tube-cross-section_topic1804.html

do your bending strength and bending stiffness calculations (HINT they are explicitly explained
in the rules) and don't forget that if you bend a tube it will thin out on the outer radius so if you
use 0.065" wall (1.57mm) and bend it, you will no longer meet the rules and will have to weld on
new members at competition. A Quick Google search will find you some formulas to
APPROXIMATE the thinning effect. I would create an Excel sheet to compare bending stiffness
and bending strength between all materials available to you and compare them to the Baseline
1020 1"OD x 0.120" tubing mandated by the rulebook. If either the bending stiffness or bending
strength is lower, you cannot use that material.
{I don’t know if this is really true – need clarification from rules committee}

Drive Ratios

http://forums.bajasae.net/forum/absolute-top-speed-of-competition-ready-car_topic1037.html

33-37 mph max speed

8:1 to 20:1, probably around 10:1

Polaris P90 CVT: http://forums.bajasae.net/forum/cvt-analysis_topic581.html

The ratio starts near a 3.83:1 underdrive and will top out near a 0.76:1 overdrive.