F84 in 1985

In the early days of FSAE, a school could enter two cars.  Until they changed the rule in 1993, we brought two cars to the competition, the previous year’s car and a new car.  F84 returned in 1985 with a Honda 500cc V4 to take first place.

This car continued with the CVT, but we reversed some of the gears in the transmission of the new engine to get the CVT shaft to spin at a very high speed.  We had cooling problems and installed a second radiator at the last minute.

F84 in 1985 team members: David Hunn, Greg Garrison, Tom Blough,
Ali Ghorbani, Norman McNeely.

F84 Today: Greg Garrison went on to become a medical doctor in the ER in Florida. 
He bought the car as a project with his son.

F85 in 1985

In 1985, we continued with the Honda V4 500cc engine; however, this year we used the manual transmission in the engine.  The way one needs to drive a race car to its fullest requires that you only have two pedals for your feet.  Some call this left foot braking.  Having such success with F84 that only had two pedals, UTA designed a hand-operated sequential "butterfly" shifter that combines clutching and shifting in one motion leaving the feet free for one pedal each.  The operation is to squeeze two levers together with your left hand for the clutch, and rotate the entire assembly to shift the transmission.  Once launched, the driver can upshift and downshift with a single motion that both clutches the engine and then shifts the transmission.  The car did not have a differential and continued the steel space frame with aircraft fabric.  F85 placed third in 1985.

F85 in 1985 team members: Brian Beattie, ThreasaVecera , Jimmy Vecera,
Greg Copleland, John Turon.