Location: Covilhã, Portugal (and sometimes in Évora)
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The gear box has some kind of carbon fibre support, this support is there in order to fix the gearbox to the engine. Probably they made a bigger support that envolves the gearbox in order to increase the stiffness......any ideas?
cross section is necessary for torsional stiffness.If you reduce crosssection behind the engine dramatically you´d get a dip in the torsional stiffness at that point leading to stress and fatigue and of course bending...
Of course you also need some space to work as the casing seems to have a closed outer surface ,in this picture you even can see the small rockers supporting the end of the torsion bar and the adjuster for the rideheight ,so easy adjustments from the side of the gearbox are possible.
cool picture!
This is certainly the first shot I’ve seen of the gearbox from this angle. It isn’t a carbon support but a full carbon gearbox case, judging by the closing plate on the front of the gear cluster, the gear cluster, shafts and bearings are mounted on metallic bulkheads and not carbon, what exact material is up for debate (Ti, Al or perhaps MMC) Geoff Willis wouldn’t tell me and jokingly claimed he didn’t even know that sort of technical stuff. The cross section of the front face of the case is typical for F1, where the lower mounts are as wide as the sump and the upper mounts are at the widest part of the Vee (i.e the bottom of the cam boxes). This very wide top section makes the upper wishbone seem very short which perhaps explains the choice of a spherical joint used over of a flexure. Damper and torsion bar layout seems to follow on from the 2003 car, but with more elegant rockers.
I don’t think enough credit has gone to BAR for getting this development so race reliable over the winter, McLaren are still having problems with theirs according to claims. I seem to remember hydraulics and transmission problems (albeit some control systemrelated) were a weak spot of most previous BARs.
anyone commenting on the wishbone angles visible?If I´m not totally wrong the intersecting points of upper and lower wishbones seems quite high pointing at a quite high rollcentre...and if you look at the height of the input shaft of the box (=crankshaft height) it might well be possible that the rollcentre is above the centre of gravity.
For the metallic material of the bulkheads I would exclude Ti, MMC would be my preferred option but if Willis doesn’t know why should I ?
On the same page, for an interesting comparison there’s a similar view of the C23 gearbox : http://www.f1total.com/bilder/2004/gp/03bah/do/z061.jpg
The most curious detail is that the fore point of the lower wishbone is attached to the gearbox.
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