2008 SDSMT Baja

[82toyomud]

This is what I helped design and build over the past school year. I know its a little late to start, but I thought I'd share...


Here's the car, fully modeled before any tube was cut or pieces machined.

The start of the build....

About half the team skipped christmas break to come back to school and work in the shop...

The frame is 4130, with tube sizes ranging from 3/4x .049- 1.25x .065, and fully tig welded.

We've made huge steps in the last couple years with our jig designs and implementation...

And the first trip around shop for the new frame:haha:

 

[82toyomud]

Fast forward now to spring, where we go out to one of the local ORV parks, and set-up a 1.5-2 mile course, and beat the **** out of the cars... We try to break the drive cases, bend the suspension arms, and find out any weaknesses we have in our design...

Before we headed out we lined up 5 years worth of evolutionary design, and as you can see we've come along way... Most of the design changes were due to rule changes, but some were because we found more efficient ways to do things....

Now on to the action shots... We put the other 3 cars on the track to act as traffic so the people who are driving in the competition have practice passing, and dealing with stupid drivers:looser:

And yes, the two cars without body panels are 4-wheel steer:cheer:

 

[TheMasterbater]

Badass

I want the Hoosier racing tire banner :redneck:

 

[82toyomud]

Now on to our national competition... This last year Caterpillar hosted at their test facility in Edwards Ill, about 15 miles outside of Peoria... There were over 100 cars from all over the world...

Here are some shots of the cars while they were still clean and looking excellent from the paint job provided by Jason Paule of Twisted Customs...

Day one of the dynamic events was quite eventful... We have brake failure in one of the cars... We didn't have the bias-bar set perfect resulting in the bending and total destruction of our wilwood MC's... This problem has already been fixed for this year:awesomework: So, while we were attacking this problem, it rained a crap ton, and turned all the dirt into this sticky crap that wouldn't clean from the tires:looser:

Day two of the dynamics started off much better... Just about all the mud had dried up, which made the day much better:awesomework: The track was pretty disappointing considering who was hosting, but we expected this... They built a "motocross" style track, but these car's arn't designed for motocross jumps or whoops... They did have some pretty drops that were damn scary to take the first time, and a couple of their jumps were perfect for our cars:awesomework:

Oh, and the rock-crawl sucked:looser: It was more of a rock race:booo:

 

[82toyomud]

Here's one of those jumps that was pretty sweet....

And here's some of those drops that scared the crap outa ya...

Here's an overview of most of the track...

SAE took the top 10 cars and impounded them and did a post race tech. inspection... We got 1st place:cheer:

And here's the group photo... We were all pretty tired and had been averaging 3-4 hours of sleep for a month straight...

This next year we're supposed to be at Washougal, so Berne, if you see this we expect something sweet:awesomework:

 

[82toyomud]

Badass

I want the Hoosier racing tire banner :redneck:

The formula team stole that from their competition:haha:

 

[82toyomud]

I guess I should give some specs of the cars. Both run a 10 HP Briggs and Stratton, 6" Walker Evans 2.0 air shocks, and use a comet/polaris CVT for the primary drive, then a hybrid chain/belt drive for the final reductions. All this power is put to the ground through a set of RCV CV's and axles... we run 25x8x12 tires, and the cars weight in at a whopping 370 pounds:cheer: For the size or our cars we are by far the lightest ones out there... A Michigan school and a california school have lighter cars but their built for midgets... All the uprights, case plates, shafts, steering assembly's were machined in house on our manual and CNC mills and lathes. Most of the pieces were made on the manual...

With the frame, after being fully welded it was out of spec. by 1/16 of an inch, and on all our parts machined in house we were able to keep them all within about 5-8 thousandths... Not to bad for a bunch of engineering students who don't have much fabricating experience...

 

[Bunk1]

I guess I should give some specs of the cars. Both run a 10 HP Briggs and Stratton, 6" Walker Evans 2.0 air shocks, and use a comet/polaris CVT for the primary drive, then a hybrid chain/belt drive for the final reductions. All this power is put to the ground through a set of RCV CV's and axles... we run 25x8x12 tires, and the cars weight in at a whopping 370 pounds:cheer: For the size or our cars we are by far the lightest ones out there... A Michigan school and a california school have lighter cars but their built for midgets... All the uprights, case plates, shafts, steering assembly's were machined in house on our manual and CNC mills and lathes. Most of the pieces were made on the manual...

With the frame, after being fully welded it was out of spec. by 1/16 of an inch, and on all our parts machined in house we were able to keep them all within about 5-8 thousandths... Not to bad for a bunch of engineering students who don't have much fabricating experience...

Desire is a powerful thing. Im sure all you guys will be friends for life...Good job man..and great story

 

[Grommit327]

This next year we're supposed to be at Washougal, so Berne, if you see this we expect something sweet:awesomework:

Look forward to seeing you guys up here...except for the killer whoops Washougal is a perfect track for those cars. I want to see one launch down the uphill

 

[82toyomud]

Look forward to seeing you guys up here...except for the killer whoops Washougal is a perfect track for those cars. I want to see one launch down the uphill

The only team that does any good on the whoops is OSU, but that's because they use that track to test on, so they get to know it pretty well but most of the jumps are too big for our cars... The back side of the track was pretty sweet the last time.

 

[Turtle Bite]

Right on, awesome story. Wish my school participated in baja or formula SAE. Are you guys mechanical engineers or ?

 

[82toyomud]

Right on, awesome story. Wish my school participated in baja or formula SAE. Are you guys mechanical engineers or ?

mostly mechanicals... We try and get a MET on the team, makes for some good research topics...

 

[flip]

that looks bad ass that would be fun

 

[TB-F]

Sweeet! I've had a 550cc snowmobile engine sitting on my shelf for 2 years to put in something like that, suspension looks kickass on those :awesomework: