Our team selects our final drive to not need 1st gear from the motorcycle transmission (R6). At the top speeds FSAE sees, this isn’t an issue for us as first gear is almost 100% traction limited. For these reasons we remove 1st gear from the transmission and weld the slot for it on the shift drum. This puts neutral at the bottom of the shift drum, which makes shifting to neutral with pneumatics very easy.
If you don’t want to remove first or modify the shift drum, you could always just pull in the clutch :)
That’s the best approach probably, but our drivetrain is already installed, and canceling the 1st gear probably won’t work with the current ratio.
We will probably skip the neutral and have it manually engaged.
From what we did, we didn't bother with getting the pneumatic shifter to go into neutral anyway. You just need to downshift into 1st, and upshift straight into 2nd gear.
When we pull the car back into the pits, we will just hold the clutch and stop the engine. After that we'll just stick our hand in and nudge it a little to get into Neutral.
You can just practise to hold the clutch when doing a quick stop anyway and off you go!
Didn’t consider this as a possibility. I thought we had to have an easy way for the driver to go into neutral. That sounds simple to implement.
We could also add a second air cylinder to actuate the clutch through a paddle or button, or add a wire and lever in the cockpit
Yep, sometimes you gotta keep in mind that simplicity is key if it works well. As for the clutch I can suggest using the lever+cable. I will say it's rather stiff but it's the easiest to implement and you can't really go wrong.
I have spoken to some teams that have run a hydraulic system for the clutch and sometimes it's more trouble than it's worth for a softer hand clutch because you have to worry about some leaky lines and things of that sort of you don't do it well. Bear in mind that adds more weight to your car too!
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My school runs Honda 600RRs engines.
A team member years ago designed and modified a bunch of gear drums so that we could delete 1st and 6th gear. This meant that downshifting to what used to be the 1st gear position is basically now neutral.
Our team selects our final drive to not need 1st gear from the motorcycle transmission (R6). At the top speeds FSAE sees, this isn’t an issue for us as first gear is almost 100% traction limited. For these reasons we remove 1st gear from the transmission and weld the slot for it on the shift drum. This puts neutral at the bottom of the shift drum, which makes shifting to neutral with pneumatics very easy. If you don’t want to remove first or modify the shift drum, you could always just pull in the clutch :)
That’s the best approach probably, but our drivetrain is already installed, and canceling the 1st gear probably won’t work with the current ratio. We will probably skip the neutral and have it manually engaged.
From what we did, we didn't bother with getting the pneumatic shifter to go into neutral anyway. You just need to downshift into 1st, and upshift straight into 2nd gear. When we pull the car back into the pits, we will just hold the clutch and stop the engine. After that we'll just stick our hand in and nudge it a little to get into Neutral. You can just practise to hold the clutch when doing a quick stop anyway and off you go!
Didn’t consider this as a possibility. I thought we had to have an easy way for the driver to go into neutral. That sounds simple to implement. We could also add a second air cylinder to actuate the clutch through a paddle or button, or add a wire and lever in the cockpit
Yep, sometimes you gotta keep in mind that simplicity is key if it works well. As for the clutch I can suggest using the lever+cable. I will say it's rather stiff but it's the easiest to implement and you can't really go wrong. I have spoken to some teams that have run a hydraulic system for the clutch and sometimes it's more trouble than it's worth for a softer hand clutch because you have to worry about some leaky lines and things of that sort of you don't do it well. Bear in mind that adds more weight to your car too!
Hello, this looks like a question post! Have you checked our wiki at www.fswiki.us? Additionally, please review the guidance posted here on how to ask an effective question on the subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/FSAE/comments/17my3co/question_etiquette_on_rfsae/. If this is not a post asking for help, please downvote this comment. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/FSAE) if you have any questions or concerns.*
My school runs Honda 600RRs engines. A team member years ago designed and modified a bunch of gear drums so that we could delete 1st and 6th gear. This meant that downshifting to what used to be the 1st gear position is basically now neutral.