- Location
- Huntsville, AL
The old thread got deleted/archived.
This thread brought to you by these kids.
So here is my spiel I give to potentials. (Skip if you just want da pix)
Baja SAE is a collegiate design competition where university teams design, build, fund and race off-road buggies/karts. Everything seen is completely designed and built by students for one of 3 events nationally and over 7 worldwide. Teams consist of 4-30 members, mostly consuming mechanical engineers, but also include electrical, aerospace, manufacturing engineering and various business majors. Every year, teams will build or rebuild cars to compete in a variety of static and dynamic events. Static events consist of a design and sales presentation; dynamic events can include suspension/rock-crawl, hill-climb/towing, maneuverability, and acceleration. The event is concluded with a 4 hour endurance race where teams race head-to-head on a 2~mile track designed to break your designs.
Baja SAE is a valuable program where students... blah blah blah
Anyway, here are the pics my teammate and I took. There are 140+ pictures, but I've condensed a this post to just enough to justify the topic.
Finishing touch.
One of our favorite cars/teams, École de Technologie Supérieure (ETS). They were across the lot from us and were very friendly and helpful when we needed to borrow their scratch-start TIG welder. <3 Canadian teams.
International team from India. They ship their car in pieces to the event. Also, have you ever seen a bigger advertisement for FOX Shocks?
One of our favorite cars with excellent bodywork. The tow-of-shame in the background.
Our little rascal with "hey, we need to do the body still" panels. Just prior to starting the dynamic events.
After running all 4 dynamic events twice, someone pointed out around 8pm that our CV shaft "doesn't look right."
Because we had to extend our CV shafts, the joint began to fatigue from our little (slow) torque monster. To remedy the problem, we cut out the bent section (2.5" total) and re-sleeved 90% of the entire shaft. This fix took about 3.5 hours since we had to wait to borrow ETS' (mentioned above) tiny TIG welder. No trust in the MIG we bring to do this kind of work. Ever wonder what the place looks like around 1 AM?
Sunday at 9 AM marks the dropping of the green flag for the 4 hour endurance. I have 1.5 hours of video that I've condensed to 30min of my stint that will be posted later (still putting the finishing touches on). The track was extremely muddy, which rendered 30min of my camera's footage useless and almost 100% of the front camera's.
All in all, we completed 14 laps (could have been 15 if my co-captain and I made a different executive decision; oops). We broke down a total of 4 times, but only got towed twice.
1) We had to add some tube members along the bottom side of our car. This caused an interference dealing with the driver side steering bolt that got caught on the tube and prevented me from turning right. I fixed it on the track (with the grace of an endurance official; not supposed to do work on the track) and finished the lap before coming into the pits.
2) I sheared a bolt that connected the driver side steering knuckle to the two A-arms. This event is seen in the final seconds of footage in the video to be posted later. Pardon the language. I also bend our lower A-arm, but didn't realize it til after the race. I'll have to find that picture later.
3) With driver 2 at the helm, the steering column got sheared from the tube members holding it in. The driver was able to limp it back to the pits without a tow. Imagine holding the steering wheel against the top of the steering column and trying to turn left and right without power steering. Props to him for finishing the lap.
4) After the steering fix, there was about 15 min left in the race. We decided that 1/4 of a tank was enough to do the lap or two. We were surprised when the car came back on a flat-tow dolly 10 minutes later. Somehow, we lost 1/4 a tank of gas in .5mi of a lap. It doesn't make sense since I ran 3 laps on just under half a tank earlier. Whatever, back to the pix.
Can you tell who our passenger is?
Thanks for viewing!
This thread brought to you by these kids.
So here is my spiel I give to potentials. (Skip if you just want da pix)
Baja SAE is a collegiate design competition where university teams design, build, fund and race off-road buggies/karts. Everything seen is completely designed and built by students for one of 3 events nationally and over 7 worldwide. Teams consist of 4-30 members, mostly consuming mechanical engineers, but also include electrical, aerospace, manufacturing engineering and various business majors. Every year, teams will build or rebuild cars to compete in a variety of static and dynamic events. Static events consist of a design and sales presentation; dynamic events can include suspension/rock-crawl, hill-climb/towing, maneuverability, and acceleration. The event is concluded with a 4 hour endurance race where teams race head-to-head on a 2~mile track designed to break your designs.
Baja SAE is a valuable program where students... blah blah blah
Anyway, here are the pics my teammate and I took. There are 140+ pictures, but I've condensed a this post to just enough to justify the topic.
Finishing touch.
One of our favorite cars/teams, École de Technologie Supérieure (ETS). They were across the lot from us and were very friendly and helpful when we needed to borrow their scratch-start TIG welder. <3 Canadian teams.
International team from India. They ship their car in pieces to the event. Also, have you ever seen a bigger advertisement for FOX Shocks?
One of our favorite cars with excellent bodywork. The tow-of-shame in the background.
Our little rascal with "hey, we need to do the body still" panels. Just prior to starting the dynamic events.
After running all 4 dynamic events twice, someone pointed out around 8pm that our CV shaft "doesn't look right."
Because we had to extend our CV shafts, the joint began to fatigue from our little (slow) torque monster. To remedy the problem, we cut out the bent section (2.5" total) and re-sleeved 90% of the entire shaft. This fix took about 3.5 hours since we had to wait to borrow ETS' (mentioned above) tiny TIG welder. No trust in the MIG we bring to do this kind of work. Ever wonder what the place looks like around 1 AM?
Sunday at 9 AM marks the dropping of the green flag for the 4 hour endurance. I have 1.5 hours of video that I've condensed to 30min of my stint that will be posted later (still putting the finishing touches on). The track was extremely muddy, which rendered 30min of my camera's footage useless and almost 100% of the front camera's.
All in all, we completed 14 laps (could have been 15 if my co-captain and I made a different executive decision; oops). We broke down a total of 4 times, but only got towed twice.
1) We had to add some tube members along the bottom side of our car. This caused an interference dealing with the driver side steering bolt that got caught on the tube and prevented me from turning right. I fixed it on the track (with the grace of an endurance official; not supposed to do work on the track) and finished the lap before coming into the pits.
2) I sheared a bolt that connected the driver side steering knuckle to the two A-arms. This event is seen in the final seconds of footage in the video to be posted later. Pardon the language. I also bend our lower A-arm, but didn't realize it til after the race. I'll have to find that picture later.
3) With driver 2 at the helm, the steering column got sheared from the tube members holding it in. The driver was able to limp it back to the pits without a tow. Imagine holding the steering wheel against the top of the steering column and trying to turn left and right without power steering. Props to him for finishing the lap.
4) After the steering fix, there was about 15 min left in the race. We decided that 1/4 of a tank was enough to do the lap or two. We were surprised when the car came back on a flat-tow dolly 10 minutes later. Somehow, we lost 1/4 a tank of gas in .5mi of a lap. It doesn't make sense since I ran 3 laps on just under half a tank earlier. Whatever, back to the pix.
Can you tell who our passenger is?
Thanks for viewing!
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