- Engineering behind the
greatest supercar ever!
(jazzy hip hop beat)
It was a hypercar before
hypercars were even a thing.
The McLaren F1.
It was the fastest
production car in the world
for 12 straight years.
That's from kindergarten
to the end of high school.
You done graduated
and the fastest car in
the world hasn't changed.
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So today we're going to break down
the engineering masterpiece
that is the McLaren F1.
We're going to first find out
why it uses that unique
three-seater design,
and then we'll look at the first ever
carbon fiber monocoque road going chassis.
Then we'll dive into the 620 horsepower
naturally aspirated V12 that is still
one of the most powerful
naturally aspirated engines
25 years later.
Oh, and how can I forget?
You'll look at it
and it uses gold in
the engine compartment.
And it's not just for show,
it's there for a good reason
and we're going to find out why.
I want the gold.
Give me the gold.
(soothing hip hop beat)
Now looking at the
exterior of the McLaren F1
compared to today's supercar standards,
it looks, dare I say, conservative.
But pop open the dihedral
doors and look inside
and you'll see what really
separates this British boy
from any other car out there.
And that is it's got three seats.
(hip hop beat)
And the main brain behind
the F1, Gordon Murray,
he dreamed for three seater
sports cars since he was a kid
and now he had his chance to build one.
So the more important
question is why a center seat?
Well, Mr. Murray went off
and drove every supercar
he could get his hands on
during the early stages of the F1's design
and they all shared a
common engineering flaw.
Offset pedal box,
meaning the pedals were never
directly in front of the driver's hips.
They were always moved over a little bit.
And for someone who's a
perfectionist that is a problem.
And an easy way to fix that
is to put the pedal box in the middle.
And therefore the seat in the middle.
and with the driver's seat
centered between the wheel wells,
he can square his hips
to the car center line
with straight legs.
None of this turning your hips nonsense
while you're driving your
super cool sports car.
There are some other benefits
to having a centrally located seat.
One is visibility.
When you're in the center
position and you're pushed forward
you have a greater view of the road.
And for tall people, like
myself, you have more headroom.
That's really nice.
And if we're talking about performance,
we just need to look at
the greatest four-wheel
machines ever built.
Yep, that's right.
We're talking about go karts.
Heck yeah.
Okay, yes, and formula one cars.
Now there's a reason McLaren
named his car the F1.
Because a lot of the
technology in this car
comes from formula one,
The seat position being just one aspect.
Now I weigh about 180 pounds soaking wet,
that's 82 kilograms,
and the F1 weighs in about 2,500 pounds.
That means my body weight is about 7%
of the total weight of the
car and driver package.
And it's placed directly
along the center line.
And if you think about it,
unlike most cars
the weight of the driver
has a greater effect
on the weight distribution
of a car that's as light as the F1.
Your fat buns account
for more of that total car-driver combo.
So if three seats is such a good thing,
why don't more cars using them?
Well, airbag system regulations
make it much harder to design a car
that can meet those standards.
Not that it would matter
because they F1 didn't use them anyways.
I mean, this car doesn't
have a lot of things
you think a supercar would have.
There's no traction control,
there's no ABS, no power steering.
There's no electronic aids
to help you not crash one.
Now one of the greatest comedians
to ever grace this planet,
you know who I'm talking about,
you get where I'm going here,
he crashed his twice.
Talking about Mr. Bean.
Some people call him Rowan Atkinson,
but for this I'm sure
his real name's Mr. Bean.
Now another cool engineering tidbit
is that the seat is in a
permanently fixed position
as are the pedals, the shifter,
and the steering wheel.
And McLaren would measure
you and place those items
in your preferred seating position.
No power seats in the F1.
Those electronic motors
used to adjust seats,
they just add weight.
Which leads me to my next point,
and that is how did they
build a car that was so light?
(hip hop beat)
I'm going to start off with
the carbon fiber monocoque
because it's the biggest item on this list
and it's essentially one large body panel
that all your other
components attached to.
And more importantly, from
a structural standpoint,
both the tensile and compressive forces
are carried through the
skin of the monocoque.
So to show you how strong they are,
come on, let's get in the
back of the old Jerry bus
and let's take a trip to my kitchen.
Come on.
(hip hop beat)
I'm Jerry, the guy from before,
and in my hand I have a monocoque.
I have, ooh, a little egg.
And this egg is incredibly strong
given how little material
there is in the shell.
So I want you to do something.
I want you to go to your own kitchen,
ask your mom,
say "Hey, mom, I need
your eggs for science,"
come back here, I'll wait.
(timer ticking)
Okay, you got an egg, great.
I want you to take this egg,
I want you to take your hand,
and I want you to wrap it
around the egg like that.
And I want you to squeeze
as hard as you can.
You're gonna be thinking,
"Hey Jerry, why I do that?
"I'm going to break it.
"I'm gonna get egg all over the place."
I guarantee you you will not
be able to crack it, okay.
So do this and squeeze.
(groans)
(flatulence)
What's really interesting
is that just like a monocoque chassis,
this egg is extremely strong.
It can take all that compressive forces.
See, when you wrap your hand around it
all the forces are equally
distributed throughout the shell.
Sweating like a pig too.
It's hot as--
(squealing)
And just like this egg,
A monocoque chassis doesn't
need a lot of extra material
in order for it to be able to withstand
all those compressive and tensile forces.
All that pushing and all the weight
and all the stress that it's
causing when you're driving it
doesn't need a lot of
big, bulky parts for it.
It can carry it just like
this egg can carry it.
And with the F1 the entire monocoque
weighs just over 220 pounds.
It's made using 48 individual molds
with over 5,000 pieces
of prepreg carbon fiber
cut using templates so that each piece
is exactly the same as the last.
Now we talked a lot about
prepreg carbon fiber
in a previous episode of "B2B",
the SpeedKore Challenger.
Go back after this episode and watch it,
it's a good one.
But a quick reminder,
carbon fiber cloth has
a high tensile strength,
that's this, it's really
hard to pull apart,
but it's really easy to damage.
Think about it, you can
take a pair of scissors,
you'd cut right through
carbon fiber cloth.
Mow polymer resin on the other hand,
they're weak in tensile strength
but they're really tough.
So when you combine their powers,
yeah, you get Carbon Planet.
He's our hero.
He's going to bring weight
♪ Down to zero, Carbon Planet ♪
Almost seems like it's bad.
Now the end result is a material
that is twice as strong as
steel but five times lighter.
Okay, so
you got those specifically
cut pieces of carbon fiber
and they're moved over into a clean room
where they're placed in a mold.
And once they're placed in the mold
certain parts get aluminum
honeycomb core, hmm,
added between them.
And this is to increase rigidity
without adding a bunch of weight.
Now depending on what
sections of the monocoque
need more strength,
those particular sections
of the F1's chassis
are up to 17 layers thick.
Also throughout the monocoque
inserts are placed into the carbon fiber
to form edges and mount --.
Remember stuff has to bolt
up to this monocoque chassis.
So you have to have spots
that you can run bolts into.
Now the individual pieces are then bagged
and then they're vacuum sealed.
And the reason they do this
is 'cause you want to
keep the carbon fiber
pressed up against the mold.
Now this prevents voids in the layer
and small pinholes on the
surface of the carbon fiber.
You'll see in the real crappy carbon fiber
there'll be like little dots on the ends.
They didn't want that in the F1,
they were seeking perfection.
So you take these vacuum sealed
bag pieces and you put them
in an almost 10-foot
wide autoclave to cook.
And that autoclave,
it heats up to 125 degrees
C with 90 PSI pressure
where it sits there and
cooks for three hours.
And that heat and pressure
cure the epoxy resin
and turn it from a flexible plastic
into a rock hard plastic.
Now using pre-made jigs
with holes marked out
where they need to drill,
they drill specifics hole while
another or engineer worker,
they abrase the joints by hand.
And abrase, just a fancy word.
It means they just scuff it up.
And when you abrase a surface,
what you do is you're increasing
the amount of surface area
so that when they glue
those pieces together,
it forms a solid bond.
That's right.
The McLaren F1's monocoque
is glued together.
Even the pattern and
how they apply the glue
is specific to give the bond
the highest joint strength.
The monocoque is even assembled
upside down so that gravity,
it'll help push all the pieces together,
making sure that glue
makes really good contact.
And what's even more impressive
is that McLaren was doing this
with their formula one car
in the MP4-1 in 1981.
Now 10 years later they
were using that tech
to build their first ever road car.
Now one of the more unique
parts of the monocoque
is the front crash structure,
and it uses carbon fiber
and a material called dyneema or dyneema.
And it's an ultra high
molecular weight polyethylene
and this stuff is really, really cool.
Now it's a plastic and
it spun into a fiber
and then woven into a cloth
that's combined with
sheets of carbon fiber.
And when they did crash testing,
yes, they had to crash some of them,
they slammed one into a
wall at 30 miles per hour
and it didn't even break the windshield.
And remember the engine's
not in the front of the F1,
it's in the back.
So you don't have the
engine quote, unquote,
"protecting you in a front end collision".
Now, speaking of engines,
let's talk about natural aspiration.
You're not going to use that
one, I know that. (laughing)
(engine revving)
(smooth hip hop beat)
The naturally aspirated
6.1 liter V12 made by BMW
wasn't McLaren's first choice
when they were out shopping
for an engine in their F1.
They went to Honda and asked
for a 4.5 liter V10 or V12,
dealer's choice,
but Honda didn't really follow up.
Which was weird because
they were the ones supplying the engines
for the McLaren formula
one team at the time.
Now BMW at the time had a
five liter V12 in development
but it was too heavy and
it didn't rev high enough.
Also, Murray,
he had a crap ton of
specifications for the engine.
It had to have a hundred
horsepower per liter,
minimum 550 horsepower.
It couldn't be longer
than 600 millimeters,
it had to rev to 7,500 RPM,
it could wait at max
550 pounds, two Nolans,
it had to be rigid enough
to be load bearing structural member,
and had to have dry sump oil
so he could Mount the engine lower
and also avoid oil surge during cornering.
And with all that in mind,
BMW came up with quite possibly
the most beautiful engine ever made.
The S70/2.
(smooth hip hop beat)
Now the head and block
were cast aluminum. Alloy.
It had double overhead cams
with a version of BMW's
variable valve timing
called the Vanos, V-A-N-O-S.
Now it's a hydraulically
actuated phasing mechanism
that retards the inlet cam
relative to the exhaust cam at low revs.
And that reduces the valve overlap.
That's when the exhaust valve is closing
and the intake valve is
opening or vice versa.
Now this gives the car
better idle stability
and increase low speed torque.
Now in the case when the revs get higher,
that's not all that good.
So the valve overlap is actually increased
from 25 degrees to 42 degrees.
And this change in timing
increases the air flow into the cylinders
which creates better throttle
response and more power.
This car gets amazingly
good gas mileage actually.
It gets something like
22 miles per gallon.
And adding to its throttle response
is that each cylinder gets its
own individual throttle body.
12 throttle bodies,
12 butterfly valves,
12 region staging stiffies. (hooting)
Now when you push the
pedal down in an engine
with a single throttle body
that air has to travel further
to reach each cylinder,
which slows down the engines response.
Now with 12 throttle bodies
you get that air into the
cylinder much quicker.
You go into the cylinders,
the bores are coated in Nikasil and that's
an electrodeposited lipophilic
nickel matrix silicon carbide coating.
Okay, let's all say it together.
Okay, Nikasil is an
electrodeposited lipophilic
nickel matrix silicone carbide coding.
Great.
Now go look up each one of those words.
I'm not going to give y'all homework,
are you kidding me?
Go take your bicycles out and hop curves.
Throw water balloons or cars.
Don't do that, no no. (laughing)
Those are a lot of
chemistry related words,
but what you should take away from that
is that it reduces friction
on the piston rings.
It makes it slippery.
Now even the placement of the cylinders
in the V12 is impressive.
Remember this engine
couldn't be any longer
than 600 millimeters.
So the cylinders themselves
were only three millimeters
from each other.
That is super tight in,
that's super compact.
Now coming out of the chambers
is an exhaust made of inconel.
And if you've never heard of that,
good 'cause neither had I.
And why inconel?
Well under high heat,
which is the operating
state of an exhaust system,
it has a high fatigue
and tensile strength.
So why would you want an exhaust
to have those strength properties?
Well, in addition to -- --,
it has another reason for being strong
and that's because it acts
as a rear impact absorber.
Your exhaust is basically a strength piece
that prevents someone slamming into you
and damaging a whole bunch of stuff.
That's wild, man.
Now the engine created so much heat
that they had to line the engine bay
with a super efficient
heat reflecting material.
You know where I'm getting at, gold foil.
(choir harmonizing)
There's roughly 16 grams of
gold foil used in this car.
Now the most electronics
heavy bit on the McLaren F1
is it's diagnostic computer.
This car uses a 14.4K modem
which you can to hook a laptop up to
and then you can look
at all the error codes
that it records to the ECU.
Now I had a Dreamcast
once that had a 56K modem.
Now McLaren and Gordon
Murray have since separated,
they've gone their own ways,
but both of them are right now working on
their next gen three-seater supercars.
You got Gordon Murray,
he's got the T.50.
It's gonna be another analog,
naturally aspirated three seater car.
And then you got McLaren
and they got their Speedtail
which is going to be their
three seater sports car.
The McLaren F1 was the
last great analog supercar,
which sounds kind of counterintuitive.
How can a machine with
such engineering greatness
that would stand the test of
time be considered analog?
Well because the engineers
designed the mechanical pieces so well
that they didn't need a
bunch of fancy electronics.
McLaren themselves, they're wild company.
Go watch this "Up To Speed" on McLaren.
Also on behalf of the whole Donut crew,
we want to give a big birthday,
shout out to Essian --.
His 10th birthday!
It's a big one, he's a big fan of ours.
So thank you for watching, Essian.
The world is just at your fingertips, man.
Happy birthday.
