Taken from this week's Pit Bits
"After the engine problems the GEICO Honda team guys had at High Point, the team went through a top-to-bottom review of products and procedures required to make sure that components from a variety of vendors aren't conflicting with each other. A few ten thousandths here and there can add up."
Makes me really consider how they are developing engine packages in-house. Any good engineer would analyze the GD&T and how stack-ups can impact the overall system before a single engine is ever assembled. This is 101 type stuff.
It sounds more like they spec components, throw it together, and then go test. Are the engine packages ever modeled and analyzed?
Seems like PC and some of the other 250 teams would operate under the same method.
I guess I just find it crazy that these teams expect so much of these motors and don't go through fundamental engineering practices that reveal many of these issues through modeling. Think of a program like JGR and their engineering staff....you just don't see those type of issues with them (or any of the Factory teams with OEM design support)
I would say this is a byproduct of guys that have just learned the engine craft through years of experience without any formal engineering training (not to discredit them, because these guys have forgotten more than most of us will ever dream to know about engine building)