One of the first installations of our new SDM-700 7” Display & Logger was done by the well known Danish racing company CS Racing that belongs to Christian Siepmann, a seasoned racing driver and entrepreneur with a pretty solid racing track record (Danish champion, winner of Nordic Cup and more). Let’s take a closer look at their exciting new project that they realised together with Aaskov Motorsport and find out how the utilised the PLEX SDM-700.
PROJECT OVERVIEW / HIGHLIGHTS
- BMW 1 series lightweight with former F1 & Indy car V8 engine (3.5l V8, 13,000rpm)
- Individual throttle bodies
- Electronic drive by wire
- PLEX SDM-700 display & logger
- Drysump oil system
- Sadev special design gearbox
- Electric water pump
- Coil on plug ignition
- Full custom stainless stell nanifold
KEY TEAM MEMBERS
- Driver owner: Christian Siepman
- Chief engineer: Bjarne Haun
- Tyre engineer: Tim Reinholt
- Electronic engineer: Erik Blomberg Schacht
- Electronic programmer consultant: Johan Rauchfuss ( www.GAAM.dk )
PROJECT GOAL
To win the Danish Special Saloon Class in the Extreme Category.
“The project is unique because, over a period of 17 months, we built the car and PITsetup, from scratch, in-house by our own team. First BMW 1 series in Scandinavia with an F1 engine!”
PT: Plex Tuning
CS: Christian Siepman
PT: Plex Tuning
CS: Christian Siepman
PT: Christian, you were the first customer to purchase our new 7” display and have already integrated it on your project. What made you choose our product instead of other alternatives?
CS: We are known as a team who does not build race cars with compromises and so the dashboard needed to be unique and top-of-the-line as well. The huge amount of freedom and possibilities provided by the SDM-700 give us power to enhance the functionality of the rest of the electronics in the car. Another aspect that is vital in similar projects is the technical support that comes together with the product. We’ve been informed about your legacy on this domain by our partners at Aaskov Motorsport and after having seen this in action we can easily say that after working with many different companies on this project, PLEX TUNING takes the first place in terms of speed and precision of support. It is not often that you find a company who builds new features on their product and the accompanying configuration software as fast as you did on our case which was almost in real-time.
“The huge amount of freedom and possibilities provided by the SDM-700 give us power to enhance the functionality of the rest of the electronics in the car”
“…PLEX TUNING takes the first place in terms of speed and precision of support…”
PT: Can you provide us some detailed examples of how you have benefited on your BMW project from SDM-700’s features and explain us how you specifically utilised those in the given project?
CS: I will begin with the freely and easily configurable CAN, which is HUGE advantage, especially in this one-off race car. The live telemetry option that will come with the pro-version (we are planning to switch to it when this becomes available), is also one of the most appealing features and with it, there is never an option that is not possible. There are also few examples of how we solved particular problems with the use of the SDM-700. For instance, our engine management system (EFI Euro-8) did not support a FlexFuel sensor (ethanol content sensor), and this made fuel and ignition correction from ethanol content practically impossible. Following our request, you updated your display’s firmware to support GM/Continental FlexFuel sensors and so we could export them through CAN BUS to our ECU, with a total setup time of approx. 5-10min.
Another issue we had was that our EGT sensor box lacked data-logging capabilities during the dyno testing. As a solution we connected the EGT sensor box to the SDM-700 via CAN and it was then logged by the dash at user-defined speed (another plus!). Moreover, our Radio PTT (Push-to-Talk) button was sometimes released too soon by the driver and that was in a way chopping up a part of the message he was sending. To solve this we controller the PTT button via the SDM-700 adding 1sec delay on the release.
Another significant problem that we faced was the lack of quick debugging of the various CAN BUS devices fitted to the car. Normally you would need to use different different programs to view state and diagnose problems. Fortunately, the SDM-700 can also function as a CAN Gateway. It collects all error and diagnostic channels from the rest of the connected devices and can display them in a dedicated DIAGNOSTIC page, giving the driver, mechanics and technicians an overview of Input, Output, State and Condition of every sensor and actuator on the car. That’s quite a thing for our case.
“Fortunately, the SDM-700 can also function as a CAN Gateway. It collects all error and diagnostic channels from the rest of the connected devices and can display them in a dedicated DIAGNOSTIC page.”
The SDM-700 math channels were also used to implement complex control strategies to assist the power control module functionality.
PT: Designing a dash display to please everybody involved can sometimes be rather frustrating. Tell us which are the most important attributes when choosing a display from the point of view of the different parties involved? That is, the driver, the engineer, the mechanic and the electronics guys.
CS: Well, the driver needs a big and clear screen. Clear/clean text, good warning messages, pop-up lap-times AND to be in a position where the team has a dashboard that all other teams only dream about, namely the SDM-700 : ). The engineer cares most about the data overview, the quality of electronics, lap-times and how easy and flexible the data download is. Furthermore, the mechanic is mostly keen on the overview of the alarms in clear text as well as an overview of every thing which practically means an instant diagnose at a blink of the screen. Lastly, the electronics engineer is placing most importance on the vendor technical support, especially his responsiveness in last minute situations – an area where PLEX has performed exceptionally – and also about the future proofness on the product in regards to getting new features and options, in other words, in having a dash display that is always up-to-date.
“The driver needs a Big and Clear screen. Clear/clean text, good warning messages, pop-up lap-times AND to be in a position where the team has the dashboard that all other teams only dream about. Namely the SDM-700 : )”
We’d like to thank the whole CS RACING and GAAM teams for providing feedback and content on this project and wish them best luck on the races!
Visit SDM-700 Webpage
You can also follow the latest news on this project directly at CS RACING’s Facebook page.
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