[slowTA]

I feel kind of funny about asking this, but I’m desperate. I’m the captain of one of my school’s SAE Mini Baja teams and it looks like I wont have my team unless we raise some money real fast. I go to the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) and raising money is like pulling teeth. Most of the larger companies only give donations to charitable causes that help out the community in some way. Unfortunately, the engineering community doesn’t count in their eyes, can’t say I blame them really.

Our faculty advisor will not let us build or even order parts unless we raise $2,000 by the end of the year. Right now we are looking pretty good for getting half of that, but we’re still scratching our heads over the other half. Once we raise the 2 grand he will give us access to another 2 grand we will get from the school. If we can’t do so, whatever money we raise, as well as the money from the school, will go to our other team. I’m under the impression he wants to support one team instead of two.

So far my team has most of the frame and suspension designed, we have 2 rock crawler guys on board this year who have a ton of ideas for their trucks that were scaled down some for our buggy. We should be ready to start crunching numbers soon, and start building over the winter break.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the competition, we have to build a buggy from scratch, use a 10hp Briggs and Stratton engine, and follow an 80 + page rule book. The frame has to be made out of 1” OD x .083” wall tubing or better, should be covered with some kind of padding to protect the driver, have a brake light and backup light if equipped… the list goes on forever. There are three competitions in the U.S. (East, Midwest, and West). NJIT participates in the Midwest since the east has a water crossing, and the west is just plain too far, but they have a rock crawling section as well. The dynamic portions consist of braking, accelerating, a sled pull, hill climb… and yes, even an autocross!! Static judging is based on overall design, presentation, craftsmanship, driver comfort, innovation, and feasibility of mass production. The Midwest competition will be held in Ohio during the second weekend of June.

We’re willing to take any kind of donation possible… parts, money, tools, guidance, a box of cookies, anything we can get money from really. If you can help out in any way please pm or e-mail me and I will send you all of the information. Your donations will be tax deductible and should be sent right to the school.

These links are to the rule book and our website for last year’s team.
http://www.sae.org/students/mbrules.pdf
http://web.njit.edu/~ejp2/baja.html


Thanks for reading and any help possible,
Chris.

FYI, I asked trackbird if it was OK to post something like this and he doesn’t seem to mind.

[slowTA]

It’s time for another update. I know it’s been a while since the last one so that should mean we were busy building and that we should be testing it now. Unfortunately that isn’t the case yet. There were some setbacks with machining time and availability of all my teammates. We got the build schedule down pretty well for now, Tuesday through Friday most of the day long. I can say that most of the time we spent in the shop recently was used to make parts that will be bolted to the frame when the sub systems are completed. A lot of time was spent staring at the frame deciding just how everything will be fitted together. You can do all the planning you want with CAD, but somethings have to be held in place while you’re sitting in the car.

The frame itself went up pretty quickly, I would say we had the majority of the main supports were built within 3 weeks during the semester. Remember we didn’t get our first load of steel until the end of January. Most teams, like the school’s other team, were building since September or October. They just brought the car out for testing last week!

After we were happy with how the frame was taking shape we moved onto making the suspension components. The front A arms were built utilizing a jig we made, tabs were machined, another jig was made to hold the arms and tabs onto the frame. Once the tabs were welded onto the frame we located the rack and pinion. The goal here was to make sure there was plenty of room for our brake and gas pedals as well as controlling bump steer. As the front end sits now the bump steer is hard to notice but the camber goes positive during compression. Not exactly a bad thing, we’ll just have to add a bunch of negative camber at ride height. Suspension travel is about 8”, this is limited by the ball joints and tie rod ends. Unfortunately the arms spread a little during welding so we have to fix that before we can finalize the suspension. The rear control arms are almost completed, hopefully by the end of the week we’ll have the rear tabs welded to the frame. The end of last week we set up the upper front shock hoop, it still needs a ton of bracing but we’re confident its in the right position.

The engine and driveline are being assembled this week as well. The motor and intermediate shaft have to be positioned within 1/32” so the belt of the CVT can do its job. This held us up some because we didn’t have all of the bearings on hand, then we didn’t have access to the shop to use the big caliper. Tomorrow the motor should be bolted down assuming there is no more bad news heading our way.

Our order of sheet metal is coming in this week to do the floor board, firewall, and motor guards. Hopefully some of the team can complete them this week as well while other get the motor and rear suspension together.

While all this is going on I made hotel reservations, rented the trailer, and talked my dad into letting the team use his Tahoe to tow the trailer. The school won’t let us use one of their passenger vans since the trip is more than 150 miles. However they do give out gas cards for all school functions. That means I now have to coordinate 2 more events. Installing the hitch and getting the brake controller installed. We can save money by installing the hitch ourselves, but we’ll save more time by having the brake controller installed by a trailer place. Imagine that, a Tahoe (with the tow/haul mode switch on the shifter) that doesn’t have a hitch installed from the factory!

Anyway, the competition is June 16th to the 19th in Troy Ohio. Since we’re leaving on the 14th that gives us exactly 2 weeks to skin the frame, finish the front and rear suspensions, mount the motor, steering wheel, electrical, mirrors, and do ‘some’ testing. Lets not forget we also have to paint the car somehow. My co-captain wants to have it powder coated, I can’t argue except for the time needed. We heard that it takes 3 days to get parts powder coated. This past summer I painted my engine compartment so I’m leaning towards painting it ourselves.

Thanks again for all of the donations. I’ll keep everyone informed of our progress and a final update after the competition.
http://www.vilipend.com/~frrax/album36