Well our project was completed to comply with the majority of SAE competition rules, this Thursday, just in time for our first "race". It was a 2 part endurance race, hosted by Michigan Technological University, that included 2 1.5 hour endurance races, where your laps are counted for each race, and the team with the most laps at the end wins, etc. Since this is our first time doing anything with this car in competition, it was semi-intimidating pulling up with our sled on a flat 2-place snowmobile trailer with a tarp covering it, when the other teams have their 20000$ race trailers, and Chrysler donated Ram 2500 pulling it. Once we got our car going it wasn’t too bad. All of the other teams seemed to be impressed with our hydraulic system, and that we actually got it to work reliably. The first race went flawlessly for us, with a very broad size range of drivers, anywhere from 140-220#. In the first half of the race, we were in 2nd place, missing first by about 12 laps with the leader having 60. For the second race, the only repair/adjustment we made was to soften up the spring preload on our "crap" viper shocks (more to come on this later). Well in the second round of the race, we seemed to be doing great with the exception of a loose bolt on a front spindle, and a tie rod that almost backed itself off of its threads completely; thankfully, both were noticed before further damage occurred. All was going smoothly, and we were almost a shoe in for second place overall, as the next closest team was about 12 laps behind us or more. Then things went bad fast, when we must have had a rear shock mount bolt come loose, and put some kind of weird force on the shock shaft, bending it to nearly 90 degrees. It was pretty ugly, and we were forced to exit the race. Well it turns out that us missing the last 15 minutes, the 3rd place team passed us up to take our 2nd place position. We ended up finishing in 3rd, which I think is really good, considering we were going up against teams with experience in this competition, working on their cars with a $20000/year budget, when our team completed a car for under ~$3500. Our car was by far the slowest car attending, and by far the heaviest car there, but reliability has proven to be the key to our success in this design project. BTW...Our 600# + rider car that tops out at ~22mph does not do well over jumps at all; actually it was pretty much horrible for it. Should be able to get some pictures linked soon.
