Inside the crate was, as described in Henry's book, "Formula 1: The Turbo Era," an engine that was a "lumpy, untidy 80-degree V6 Honda engine...The package also contained two turbocharges, but little else. It was down to Williams to evolve a means of installing the engine into a chassis, to say nothing of finalising the such ancillaries as radiators and general plumbing for the turbo and exhaust systems."
Henry pointed out that despite being a title-winning team, Williams, like many teams to form out of the 1970s, was effectively running a customer Cosworth engine program with everything from radiators to clutches and gearboxes coming "off the shelf." Yes, there were differences in design, but essentially teams had a proven package from which to start with.
This left them with a monumental task of dealing with a turbo charged engine. The first task for Patrick Head and his designers and engineers was to simply sort out how to install the engine into the back of the chassis. Plumbing was doubly difficult because the team had to content with cooling the engine and power the turbo (using exhaust gases). There were a number of other issues which took the better part of the 1983 season to sort out. One of these were concerns about chassis flex from the engine.
Turbos produce copious amount of power, and the Honda delivered its power in a narrow band. Turbos had been employed for years in sportscar racing and in Indycar racing, but in F1 it was an unknown science. Chassis flex was not a great concern in sportscars because the engine was not a stressed part of the chassis; but in F1, as in Indycar, it was an integral part of the rear of the car, with everything from the gearbox to the wing to the rear axle and suspension bolted on to it. If the engine twisted in any way as the turbo's power "kicked-in," the result could be multiple failures at the back of the car.
This was an initial concern, as Keke Rosberg lamented during an early test of the FW09, the first Williams chassis to carry the V6 turbo. He bluntly told the team's Patrick Head that the chassis was flexing, an issue he would continue to raise into 1984, the turbo-powered cars first full season of competition. The culprits, it later turned out, were "insufficiently rigid cylinder blocks and engine mounts" that caused the engine to flex and sent the vibrations through the tub to the driver. Once these were corrected, the car "behaved" much better.
Keke would win with the FW09 in Dallas in 1984 before the FW10, Williams' first carbon fibre monocoque, began service in 1985. By 1986 the team was contending for championships, and Honda would achieve even greater success in the hands of McLaren by 1988.
Henry presented an interesting theory about why certain engine manufacturers achieved so much success with turbo charging while others struggled. The two most successful firms were BMW and Honda, both of which also manufactured motorcycles. Both, independently, arrived at the same conclusion early in their turbo development - that older, "broken-in" engine blocks made for the best base on which to build a turbo charged motor because any imperfections in the block would have been exposed much earlier in its lifetime. BMW would first take old blocks, some having seen nearly 100,000 miles of service, from road cars, shave them down to fit the design parameters of their engine program and build their F1 engines from them. When these blocks became scarce, they took to aging new blocks outside and exposing them to heat and various other extreme measures to break them in.
They came up with this idea because they had, for years, applied the same idea to their motorcycle engines, preferring to "age" their blocks before building the air-cooled motorcycle motors.
Honda, also familiar with motorcycle motors, had come to the same conclusion when developing its turbo motors having first built their engines with all-new, and shiny, components, with blocks that often cracked apart within a minutes on the dyno.
These motors never looked as attractive as the shined and polished engines offered by Ferrari, Renault or Ford, but they were workhorses. In fact, when Brabham experimented with its low-line chassis, which meant the BMW engine had to be canted over at 75 degrees in the chassis, it is remarkable that the engines lasted as long as they did. The engines suffered from oil scavenging which would have blown other turbo-charged motors much sooner than it affected the BMWs.
If you are in the shopping mood, then check out Alan's new book. It's titled "The Grand Prix Companion" and it's a must read for those who are in love with the sport.
Today's video of the day is not from me - it's probably one of the most memorable moments in GP racing.
And, for those really, really, really into turbo F1 cars, check this out:
1 comment:
The Honda turbo sounds so much better than any engine out there now.
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