Ford Racing’s tough assault on next year’s Dakar Rally
COMPETITIVE: MANUFACTURER HAS GONE ALL OUT WITH TOP DESIGN, BUILT TO HIGHEST STANDARD
Chassis is one of a kind – and a good foundation for gruelling race.
Taking on the toughest off-road race in the world is no mean feat, but Ford Racing has gone all out to produce what is sure to be one of the most competitive vehicles in the Dakar Rally 2014.
Produced by the team from Neil Woolridge Motorsport (NWM) in Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal, the Ford Racing Rangers have been designed, developed and built locally to the highest standards, using the most advanced materials and processes currently available.
At the core of the Ranger’s design and build is a sophisticated chassis jig, the only one of its kind in South Africa and among a mere handful in the world. “Considering the Ranger cross-country racing programme as a whole, the chassis jig has taken the most time, required the most technical input and cost the most,” says Neil Woolridge, head of NWM.
“But it’s like building a house,” he says. “If you don’t have the foundations right, you can’t do the rest properly, so developing the best chassis manufacturing system has been a major focal point of the project from the outset.”
Each vehicle is supplied with a comprehensive bill of materials, or BOM, which shows each aspect of the vehicle in detail, including technical drawings that reflect every component’s part number so these can be easily referenced, repaired or replaced.
“If a vehicle is damaged in an accident, or a part is bent, fatigued or cracked, we simply obtain the part number and supply the exact item for the vehicle to be fi xed in the shortest possible time.”
A total of four Ford Racing Rangers have been produced on the chassis jig so far, including the two vehicles that campaigned in the South African Cross-Country Championship since March this year. The Ranger won on its very first outing and has finished on the podium in every race so far.
The two slightly different Dakar-spec Rangers are the latest products to emerge from this advanced design and build process, and will proudly fly the Blue Oval at the start line in Rosario, Argentina, on January 5 2014.
The Ford Racing Ranger has some 4 000 parts in total – and a lot of effort also goes into all the hang-on components, the bodywork and electrical and hydraulic systems.
The crew at NWM also designed and manufactured all the suspension arms, uprights and the wide array of aluminium tanks. All the design work was produced in-house by the NWM team, with the main responsibility falling on race engineer Bernd Wellman.
“This high-tech software is also an essential part of the project that we had to teach ourselves,” Woolridge says. “Bernd has done really well figuring it out largely by himself – and designing every single one of the components on the Ford Racing Ranger.”
A key element of the Dakar vehicles is not only the two racing Rangers, but also the mountain of spares the team has to manufacture and haul along – especially considering the pu-nishment the vehicles will take over two incredibly tough weeks, covering 8 500 km over challenging and everchanging terrain through Argentina, Bolivia and Chile.
Woolridge says the focus is to build a solid pace in the first six days of the race and to conduct the essential daily repairs and maintenance on the two Rangers.
However, on the rest day on January 11 the vehicles will be completely stripped down and everything, apart from the chassis and engine, will be replaced – thus setting the crews up for the tough final seven days through to the finish in Valparaiso, Chile, on the January 18.