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Put in basic terms, the fab shop makes all of the larger metallic items that are fitted to the car, including the cooling systems for the engine and gearbox, the pipework and plumbing and all the brackets that can’t be made from composite carbon for heat and tolerance reasons. As a small team of just three people, that’s a pretty tall order. Particularly when each and every part they make could be, as Neil Christie, one of Force India’s fully skilled fabricators explains, a ‘car breaker’ – scarily, a part that could end a driver’s race.
‘Percentage-wise, compared to composites, we don’t make a lot on the car but it’s crucial we get it right. If we don’t get the cooling system right for instance, it could cause the engine to overheat and then effectively stop.’
No pressure then for the three people who work in the fab shop, that’s two fully skilled and one trainee.
Each fabricated part starts it life as a CAD drawing on a designer’s computer. The designs are then released to the fab shop for manufacture – sounds like a linear structure, but actually it’s a two-way process. ‘The designers draw the part, but it’s very much in consultation with us. If there is a new design, they will come and see us to check whether we can physically make the part, whether we can get in the gap to weld, or it’s not feasible, it can’t be bent to a radius or so on,’ Neil continues. ‘If it’s not, it will be slightly remodelled until we get the finished drawings.’
Once the drawings are delivered the fab shop boys get working on a jig, a flat piece of metal with the size and shape of the part laid out – in crude terms, a template to make sure each part is the correct size and shape. They will then get the knocking blocks, the block used to beat each piece of metal to the right shape so it can be manipulated and welded to exactly the right dimensions. The smaller internal or accompanying components for each part are either manufactured by the machine shop or sourced externally as the tolerances are smaller and the output much quicker for the smaller specifications.
The team’s production department makes sure all the parts get delivered and produced on time, so each part can be manufactured and produced exactly when needed. After it has been assembled, each part is checked and any component carrying fluid is pressure tested to make sure there are no leaks or weak spots. In this process, each part is plugged and then filled with compressed air to the specified pressure, before being immersed in a large tank of water. A technician will then check if any bubbles come out. If any air escapes, it creates easy to see bubbles, meaning there’s a leak. It’s not such a scientific process, but it is the easiest and most effective way of checking if there would be a catastrophic leak that could become that fated ‘car breaker’.
At this point in the year, the fab shop is at its busiest as it tries to make the parts for the new car. With the relatively late schedule for the VJM02 a result of the November switch to a Mercedes engine and McLaren gearbox, the fab shop are busier than they normally would be. ‘We are a little bit behind this year than last year as we haven’t had all the drawings from the designers yet as they are still finalising the details now,’ Neil explains, ‘but we’re still pretty busy doing some bits for the mock-ups of the VJM02 and also helping out the wind tunnel with model components. We are also making pit equipment and the cases for the sea freight.
If that sounds like the boys have a busy start to the year and then a fairly easy ride for the remainder, think again. ‘During the season we’ll service or re-make parts according to their lifespan. Every second race we will use a new oil cooler, for example, but the ‘old’ one will come here, we will clean it externally, pressure test it again to check no leaks have developed and if it needs internal cleaning, send it to a specialist off-site.
‘If however there’s a major redesign of the car mid-season, such as the B-spec we introduced about halfway through 2007, then we’ll have to make the parts from new designs. Some of the new parts will be radically different, so it takes a lot of time to construct.’
For the three people in the fab shop, that’s a fairly relentless cycle of work, particularly when one relatively simple job such as a pipe takes anything from four to eight man hours to produce, excluding all the machining and designing time. A more complicated part such as a radiator or an oil cooler is a much bigger job: ‘You have to do each oil cooler as two different jobs as there are two internal fluid systems, one for the engine oil and one for the gearbox oil. Each has to be made and pressure tested separately and then assembled. With two days to fit and then put together, you’re looking at about four days to do the whole part.’
A huge job for the small team, particularly when the turnaround deadlines are always pretty tight. ‘That’s the way it always is, the more time you have to design the car, the better it is, so we don’t get the designs until as late as possible. That’s the biggest challenge: getting everything done in time. But we’ll always be able to get it done, we all want to score points as much as everyone else.’
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