Supporting Leeds Formula Race Team

How Fibet’s pragmatic approach to bush and engine mount selection helped the Leeds Formula Race Team get race ready.

When it comes to learning your trade, there’s no substitute for real world experience. That’s the reason for the existence of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) Formula Student Competition, a student-only competition held at Silverstone every year, which gives engineers the chance to put their skills and ideas into practice.

Before Leeds Formula Race Team could enter the challenge they needed a way of powering their chassis design. They had an engine (from a KTM bike). They just needed a way of mounting the engine on the F18 car chassis in a way that would prevent movement and vibration from compromising performance.

The team approached Fibet for an engine mount solution and, given that this was effectively a student project, cost was a major factor.

Despite the car being anything but a standard design, we developed a solution that enabled the team to use one of our standard products. This helped keep development costs to a minimum, as well as ensuring that parts were always available within a very short lead time.

With teams entering from around the world (from Iceland to India), competition was always going to be tough, but we were delighted to see that, of 67 teams taking part, the Leeds University team came in the top 20 for design.

We’re grateful to the team for the following newsletter mention:

“Thank you to Fibet UK Limited for help with the selection and supply of bushes for the novel engine mounting system in this year’s car.”

Do you have an engineering project that requires a novel, simple or practical approach to buffers, bushes or engine mounts? Call Fibet now on 01282 878200 or email us at sales@fibet.co.uk

*Photo courtesy of University of Leeds