A recent tour of Ford Motor Company–related racing houses brought us inside places like RoushYates and Ford's own Motorsports Tech Center, and now we can add Roger Penske's joint to the list. Penske opened the gate wide for an evening show-and-tell at his Mooresville, North Carolina, monument to motorsports. What started in 2004 as a $7 million recycled air compressor factory has been painstakingly converted to the earth's most perfect place to construct and service race cars. Here are a few takeaways from our experience inside, by the numbers:
For synergy, Penske's NASCAR and IndyCar efforts peacefully coexist under the same roof.
The 105-acre, magnificently landscaped site has 240,781 square feet dedicated to NASCAR efforts and 55,483 square feet for the care and nurturing of open wheelers.
315 employees, including 40 engineers, work here. While there are a couple of dedicated janitors, it is every employee's responsibility to keep the Italian floor tiles—more than one million pounds of them—sparkling.
Eight weeks are required to construct a NASCAR racer, and about 60 are in circulation at any given time. About forty NASCAR machines and seven IndyCars are made here per year. After four races, they're sold to other teams or recycled in some manner.
Robotic welders assemble the (mostly tubular) steel space frames under CAD/CAM instructions, a four-day process.
Sheet metal is stamped by Ford Motor Company suppliers using Kirksite dies. At Penskey, wrapping the steel skin over the space frame bones takes eight days.
Three paint booths use water-based PPG paint. Along with nearly 30 other enterprises, including Ford, PPG supplies Penske with most of the goods needed to go racing.
Bodies are scanned before and after painting to ensure dimensional tolerances are held to 0.040 inch. This is to maintain compliance with strict NASCAR rules.
Walls are decorated with 1000 or so linear feet of race success graphics. Sponsor logos are also prominently displayed. A catwalk array lets gift shop visitors monitor some of the race-car construction activity their purchases support.
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The machine shop—where the motto is "speed here equals speed on track"—boasts five Mazak CNC machines. Suspension and chassis parts are made to 0.005-inch tolerances. Where weight is an issue, the dimensional tolerance can be held to 0.0001-inch.
Six employees handle the final assembly of every NASCAR racer to ensure consistency.
A seven-post shaker rig helps tune suspension variables, especially shock absorbers. Spring rates and ride heights are developed in two kinematics rigs. There are 17 surface plates for chassis setup.
Jointed hubs allow the rigid rear axles to provide adjustable wheel camber—up to 3.5 degrees negative. Up to nine degrees of negative camber is used on ovals at the right front corner. The left front wheel camber setting varies between 4 and 9 degrees positive.
Up to 3000 pounds of downforce is generated by the NASCAR racers at 200 mph by the front splitter, rear spoiler, and wind tunnel–tuned bodywork. AeroDyn and Windshear wind tunnels are located only a few miles from Penske's Racing facilities.
NASCAR racers' minimum weight is 3300 pounds—not counting the driver or fuel. Approximately 150 pounds of lead ballast is positioned inside frame rails to make legal weight. The cars' center of gravity height is 12–13 inches.
A fleet of 24 Freightliner tractor-trailers logs over a million miles per year delivering Penske race cars to the track. Pulling 80,000 pounds of trailer and load, they achieve about 6.2 mpg; that's up 1.5 mpg, thanks to an 1800-pound diet and turbo-compound engine technology.
Known for ages as the Captain, Penske runs the tightest ship in racing. With the competition to win sponsor support even more intense than the fender-to-fender track competition, Penske Racing's Mooresville performance palace must certainly be an impressive sight for potential backers. Thus, the facility not only is impressive, but it also is a shrewd investment.
from Car and Driver Blog http://ift.tt/nSHy27
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