The FSAE organizers evidently didn’t like our little Mini Baja cars winning, so they explicitly excluded them from the competition in 1984.  So we built our first formula-style Formula car. F84 features a continuously variable transmission and a Honda in-line 4-cylinder air-cooled 400cc engine. In this engine, we installed a chain from the first shaft in the transmission to the output sprocket shaft to get the proper speed to run the CVT at very high speed.  This car did not have a differential and used lots of caster to make it turn. The body is aircraft fabric stretched over a steel tube space frame.  We dyno tuned the engine and had an intake resonance that required us to put on a long intake runner so that resonance was at a lower rpm.  I don’t know what we were thinking when we selected the ground clearance… perhaps to many years in Mini Baja!

Although it dominated the performance portion of competition, F84 finished third in 1984 to the astonishment of everyone there.  The reason was that points were awarded on place rather than time.  Our times on track were much faster than second place, but points were awarded on place, not how much faster you were from the next car.

F84 in 1984 team members (front row): Tom Blough, David Hunn. (Back row): Brian Beattie, Don Murray, Greg Copeland, Greg Garrison. Not pictured: Carl Lammons.