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| Vents for the various transmission and differential breathers terminate in between the two rear tunnels. The vents for the fuel cell and dry sump tank have liquid discriminator valves which are the silver aluminum things at the end of the vent tubes. These prevent fluid from escaping in a rollover or burping huge amounts of fluids under pressure out. |
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| Carbon shroud houses the intercooler and directs airflow to it even though it is on the downwind side of the green house. |
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| The Aeromotion dual plane wing has an electronically controlled large upper element. Hillclimb rules allow innovations like active aero. |
What makes the system really high tech is that the rear wing uses Aeromotion’s active electronic controls making the wing true active aero. The rear element’s angle of attack is controlled by twin linear motors which can move the wing in a fraction of a second. The wing’s ECU has internal sensors for g-force and yaw plus receives speed input from the car’s ECU to adjust the wing’s angle of attack on the fly. The active control is currently not being used as the car can break traction at all of the speeds it is likely to see on the hill, although this will change with future development.
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| The upper element is moved via these control cables powered by electric actuators. The team decided to leave the wing locked in the upper position because the car could spin the wheels, even at high speeds. |
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| Proflex three way adjustable WRC spec rally dampers are coupled to the wheels via rocker arms and push rods. This reduces unsprung weight and gets more suspension parts out of the tunnels improving the air flow. The linkage can be adjusted for a rising wheel rate where the suspension gets stiffer as it progresses through the travel, important for a car that depends so heavily on downforce. |
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| This shows how the push rods and rocker arms get a lot of hardware out of the downforce creating tunnels. |
The P580’s suspension is all racecar and no-nonsense, using technology more akin to an F1 car than a street machine. The suspension uses fabricated unequal length A-arms activating inboard mounted Proflex remote reservoir WRC spec rally shocks through push rods and rising rate rockers. An adjustable torsion type front antisway bar is integrated into the linkage providing quick adjustment of the roll stiffness over a wide range. Fabricated uprights are used with the front ones being totally redesigned to reduce scrub radius as the Palmer was not originally designed for AWD and the scrub radius had to be reduced to reduce the possibility of toque steer on a slippery surface.
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| Spot the front antisway bar. It is the horizontal torsion bar attached to the rocker arms with the holes in it. It is adjusted by putting the rods from the rockers in the various holes shown. |
Carbon Carbon exotica. The brake discs and pads are made of amorphous carbon. These are the ultimate fade resistant brakes. The rotors are many times lighter than the typical iron, reducing unsprung and rotating weight. Forged monoblock brembos are stiff and light.
The brakes are also in the realm of the super exotic. Brembo forged monoblock race calipers, six piston front and 4 piston rear grip unobtainum amorphous carbon carbon rotors and pads. These are as fade free a set of brakes as man’s technology knows how to make. The carbon carbon rotors also shed many pound of rotating and unsprung weight from the car. The brake’s hydraulic system uses Brembo high temperature fluid managed by a RMR fabricated pedal assembly using Tilton master cylinders and balance bar. Both the mechanical balance and hydraulic balance can be remotely adjusted by the driver on the fly.
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| Tilton trickness. Tilton master cylinders, reservoir and balance bar are all held in the super compact RMR designed pedal box custom built due to the AWD system intruding into the driver’s space. |
The P580 sits on HRE 17×10.5 custom low offset modular wheels to accommodate the need for a minimal front scrub radius. The HRE wheels are wrapped by Toyo 275/40-17 RA1 tires which are hand grooved by RMR for additional dirt grip. The tries are also treated with traction compound before a run. One set of tires is consumed per run up the mountain.
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| Trick lightweight HRE forged modular wheels have a minimal offset to reduce the scrub radius in the front to minimize torque steer. |
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| The rear wheels have less offset and a deeper lip. |
The car in fully wet trim weights in at a feathery 1910 lbs, achieving RMR’s design goals of building a compact and light aero optimized car. The car is much smaller and lighter than the 2500 lb 1000 hp Suzuki XL7 of Nobuhiro “Monster” Tajima that owns the mountain. It is amazing to imagine that the car was built in such a short time by the small but dedicated RMR crew, especially while they were busy campaigning the Formula D circuit at the same time.
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| The onboard halon system helps put out fires. This is important when help might be a long way off if you crash and roll down a hillside. |
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