The Formula SAE California collegiate race car engineering competition opened June 16, 2010 at the Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, CA. Student built racecars from all over the world can be seen in photos from this first day of the event. Here is a link to photos of the first day and a link to the 2010 event guide

Pictures from Day 2 can be found at the SAE SoCal facebook page.

PIctures from Day 3 are now available as the Facebook album.

The results are available at the link FSAE California results.

The UCI Energy Invitational has competitors run on a course that combines highway, autocross and metered idle sections with only $1.00 of the energy of their choice.  This year six entrants competed on May 23, 2010.   Teams from UC Irvine, UC Davis and Cal Poly Pomona formed the collegiate class, and an inventor’s electric three-wheeler, a first generation Honda Insight and a Smarte Car formed the enthusiast class.

Chris Longhurst has assembled a number of descriptive articles and illustrations about automotive engines, transmissions, steering, suspensions, brakes and tires on his site http://www.carbibles.com

Automotive information

Also information about roller coaster simulation software can be found on his personal website http://www.chris-longhurst.com/nolimits.html.

Mathias Kastens maintains a site that closely tracks student formula teams, design activities and competition details around the world. Access it at the link:
http://www.fstotal.com

The doors of the Koenigsegg CCX open using the “dihedral synchro-helix door actuation” system. You can see this movement on the video:

Here is a link to a facebook album showing the racecars and teams at the 2009 Formula SAE California intercollegiate engineering racecar competition that occurred June 17-21, 2009 at the Auto Club Raceway, Fontana CA.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=89098&id=92647534369

This is an animation of the operation of a diesel engine.  It starts with the turbo-charger, but eventually gets to the cylinder and the fuel injectors, where the four-stroke diesel engine cycle is illustrated very well.  To get the animation started you must push the frame cursor along until you see the engine, this needed on YouTube as well.

This YouTube animation shows the animated assembly of a solid model of a four-cylinder engine.  It interesting just to see the number of fasteners, but it is worth waiting for the animation of the four-stroke cycle that occurs about two-thirds through.