The French crew of Stéphane Peterhansel and Jean-Paul Cottret won the event for the third time in four years with their Mitsubishi Pajero/Montero Evolution and beat their team mates and defending champions Luc Alphand and Gilles Picard after 15 days of bruising competition across Portugal, Morocco, Mauritania, Mali and Sénégal.

A winning synergy

A winning synergy allowed the optimization of the key components of the suspension corner, one of the critical corner for endurance and off road racing vehicles, such as Paris-Dakar Rally cars: uprights and suspension levers in 2006 and uprights in 2007 gained reliability and lightness thanks to the special CRP custom process.

“Process and production of mechanical parts through investment casting made from “17-4PH H1025” steel did allowed us first to proceed for weight saving, second to obtain a structural behavior with higher efficiency, as well as much better final quality” indicates Franco Cevolini, CRP Technology’s Chairman. The perfect synergy between the two technical offices has permitted to re-design the component, obtaining an excellent mechanical answer, respecting the foundry requirements.

As soon as the 3D model is produced, the mechanical-structural quality is checked through different sessions of structural calculation: testsare made with advanced workstations in order to check reaction at various load cases, simulating real stress from track.

After validation from Mitsubishi engineers, CRP has begun the productive cycle involving its internal Rapid Prototyping department. After full inspection, these sintered PS lost patterns have been used for the casting process.
The CNC (Continuous Numerical Control) service has completed various test on the parts, including NDT (Non Destructive Test) inspection and 3D tests (ISO 9001:2000 certified), allowing the uprights to be fully finished in short term for car building.

“The opportunity of being able to decide between different manufacturing processes inside the same company is fundamental to guarantee the best result. The flexibility of a highly selected staff assures, moreover, reliability and respect of the total timing” indicates Franco Cevolini. “This is one of the reasons why Mitsubishi has decided to renew the winning synergy with CRP Technology”.