Pikes Peak is very hard on brakes and the high altitude gives the brake fluid more propensity to boil. To top it off the car is run with regen turned off to reduce the temperature load on the batteries. This is even harder on the brakes. It is essential that the brake fluid is in top condition. Doing a complete fluid flush is actually the most time-consuming part of the race prep! We use Endless RF650 fluid.
The rear heat exchanger bay houses a huge CSF radiator and a total loss cooling CO2 sprayer. We went into more detail in last year’s article if you want to see it.
The rear bay hot exhaust is this slit above the rear diffuser. It takes cold air from a higher pressure zone on the body, through submerged ducts where the quarter windows used to be, heats it through the heat exchanger, and feeds it into the low-pressure wake zone, helping fill it and reducing drag in the process. When the CO2 chiller is running, white vapor shoots out of here and looks cool!
Improving the motor cooling made a big difference in the amount of time the car could run flat out before the software started to derate the power. A big CSF heat exchanger is used as well as a CSF AC condenser which actually does powertrain cooling. The extra cooling is V mounted on top of the OEM radiator and ducting is done from the front opening to the hood. The hood was also redone for this year with more exit area and flow diverters to increase flow through the heat exchangers and to reduce drag.
4 comments
Very cool! Congrats to Dai and the team! BEV has come a long way, and this format is perfect for the current state of battery tech. Exciting times!
Thank you!
Mike, these Pikes Peak race support stories are the best. When you talk about this car reaching the damping limits of conventional shocks, what are you options when that happens?
since we were using the stiffest commercially available springs, fortunately this was not an issue. If we had to somehow go stiffer, I would have to find another manufacturer and possibly do something like off-road shocks that have bigger pistons and more fluid flow.