Honda RT1 and RT2
In 2006 JS Fraser, working closely with Martin Pople of the then Honda Formula 1 team, started the design and build of two lift up engineering trailers.
The dual lift up concept involved parking the two trailers 3M apart, once the trailers are levelled the roofs are lifted and floor support beams placed between the two vehicles, a hydraulic system then raises part of the side of the inner trailer roofs to form the pitched roof between the two trailers and the other part of the trailer roof inner sides is lowered to form the floor.
The project from design to delivery took in the region of 8 months.
Some specs of the trailers are listed below.
- RT1 (Left hand side) & RT2 (Right hand side)
- 13.6m long 2.5m wide trailers
- Once parked, the combined width including the 3m gap in the middle is 8m
- Height when raised 5.8m and 4m for travelling
- Total weight each trailer when loaded 41 tons
- Each trailer has 4 independent legs which can raise the trailers off the ground and level them
- The trailers have to be parked accurately along the full length, within a tolerance of 50mm
- It takes 7/8 people around 4 hours to set the trucks up at a race
- RT1 & RT2 each have 150Kva generators which are synchronised when the two trailers are plugged together
- Both trailers have 50Kw of air conditioning for the main areas
- Both trailers have a computer room with a separate 15kw air conditioning system making a total of 130kw
- RT1 downstairs has the rack room at the front and spares at the rear
- RT1 upstairs has the hydraulics room and 3 tables for the engineers
- RT2 downstairs has the computer room at the front and consumables area in the rear
- RT2 upstairs has a meeting room at the rear and 3 tables for engineers and controls personnel
- The upstairs centre area is one large open plan office with 2 tables for engineers and the drivers
- There is a hall way area at the top of the access stairs with access to the hydraulics room, engineers & meeting room, there is a coffee station and fridge in this area
- Total desk positions upstairs is 43 with room for another table of 4 should it be required
- The meeting room has the capacity for 9 people and there are 4 people working in the hydraulics room, this brings the total upstairs capacity of the trailers to 56
- There are 4x18m masts used for telemetry (2 per trailer)
- Each trailer has it’s own Hydrovane air compressor for air tools and machinery
- There is a rack mounted in each computer room which houses all the network cable patching AV and Intercom units
- Both trailers have a total of 8km of CAT 5 networking cable
- We used 3” 125amp cable to transport power from the generators to the control panels mounted at the rear of each trailer and to link the two generators to each other, this is called syncing and allows the two generators to act as 1 so as to reduce fuel usage and prolong the life of the generators
