Not the best, but at least the best design

The competition has come to an end with mixed feelings for the team. The last day didn't gave us  any further results due to some unlucky circumstances. The team worked hard all friday trying to get the HCCI engine to work but it still needs some more work and the HCCI crew never got up correct speed in the engine. We therefore changed back to the Honda.

We won the price for the best design which were something we had aimed for. Although we are not really satisfied with the results,  this award proves that we have a good design and a system that practically anyone can operate. To summarize, the car was great except for the engine.

Saturday started with a lot of phones calling, telling us that the start had been moved from 3 P.M. to . 10 A.M. This came as a big surprice for us and totally changed our plans for the day, We had planned to have the whole day to adjust the Honda engine to perform really well. Instead we only got about 20 minutes to get the car ready for the race. To accomplish that we had to connect the engine and reprogramme the software in the same time we were rolling out on the start.

Anyway, we are really happy that we actually made it across the finish line even though the planning got messed up. We wanted to have time to adjust lamda-values and change air intake to make the Honda as good as possible. As figured, with lack of time, this didn't happend and as a result todays run was just as bad as last time.

We are a bit dissapointed in the competition organisation that led to another poor performance. We are confident that the results had been better if we just had been able to stick to our original plan.

Now it's time to celebrate and we will report again when we are back in Sweden. We want to congratulate the Luleå team for their great achievement, even though they live in  "lappkåtor".

// For the last time in France, Team Spiros 2008

(the pictures are availible in full size, just click on them)

First day of competition

Yesterday was the first race day and the team was really excited to see Spiros taking off the starting line. The earlier practice run had been really good with 18 laps in just over an hour.

The first six laps were really good but then we noticed that the Honda-engine didn’t stop and never charged the super capacitor as much as it was supposed to do. Despite that, our driver managed to stay cool and passed the finish line as one of only 13 cars. The race took 53 minutes which was near perfect according to plans. After the finish the engine hood was dismounted since we suspected that the engine had been overheated in the sun. We then saw that the problem was the exhaust pipe which had fallen off.

After all, Spiros got a result of 89km per liter and placed 9:th of the day. We have been up all night changing to the HCCI engine. With just some minor things left we’re looking forward for today’s race.
 

First day on the track

Spiros performed 4 laps today at the trial runs at Nogaro. No other swedish teams succeded to the testdriving. Generally very few teams did testdrives today, the most of the teams were still assembling their cars.

There have been a lot of fuzz around Spiros today, since a lot of people showed interest in our soloutions and appearence. Media did some interviews and followed us the whole day, and they will continue to report from our stand the rest of the competition.

We're looking forward to the first day of competition tomorrow, and hope to perform a good result with the Honda-engine. We still have plans to use the HCCI-engine later on in the race.

One step closer...

Today we went to the new hotel a bit closer to the Nogaro track where we will stay for the rest of the week. It's a small and calm hotell in middle of nowhere on the French countryside.

We unpacked the car for the first time since the trip from Sweden and despite that the super capacitor had discharged a bit more than planned it worked fine. We worked all  day and long into the night with fine-tuning and some final touches.

Tomorrow we will check in on the competition area and will do our first "on-track" testing. We will also do the quality controls.

Here are som pictures from todays work on the car.

Arrival in Bordeaux

The team has just arrived in Bordeaux. We have had a nice day in the city and will take it "easy" here until tuesday. Maybe we will take Spiros out for a cruise in the city tomorrow... After all, it's an urban concept car.

We're leaving

The car started it's journey yesterday. The rest of the team will follow tomorrow by air. We will start with some nice days in Bordeaux before we go to Nogaro.

Pictures from the presentation

We had a great day with good weather and cheep beer. The car worked really good so we were able to drive it to the presentation and show it in motion. Click here to see more pictures.

If you click on them you can get them in full size (about 6MPx). These pictures can be used by media for Spiros related articles and for sponsors.

Event

New paint

This is a teaser of what the new paint looks like...

Article in Ny Teknik

In this week's Ny Teknik there is an article about Spiros HCCI-engine.

Read it here: www.nyteknik.se

HCCI Engine animation

This is a short animation which shows how the compression adjustment works on the HCCI Engine that will be used in Spiros.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLHIgucStVA

New parts and some manufacturing

Some new parts has recently arrived. We have got the gear for the steering and the brakes.

We have also started with some manufacturing.

Pontus and Maja

One of the pedals

New solution for driver interface

A tablet PC will be used for displaying information to driver and to log data to optimize the drive cycle. The software is written in C# and it will communicate with the microcontrollers through USB.

Asus R2E with 7" screen
 

Startup screen at the moment.
 

Preliminary driver information screen
 

First parts from the waterjet

We have recently visited Kimtech in Järfälla to get some parts to the steering, brakes and wheel suspension. Kimtech develops and builds waterjet machines and was happy to help us.

Kristian and the waterjet machine
 

Some of the parts...

Homepage online

The new homepage is now online.