Carly Cady
Special to the Mustang Daily
The Society of Automotive Engineers Baja Team has been good with wrenches in competition, but not as good with words.
While the team has done well building the vehicles, it has consistently lost points in the presentation aspect of competition, mechanical engineering senior and president of the club Scott Frey said.
The team is focusing this year on the vehicle design presentation in order to improve its performance in competition, Frey said. To do well in the competition, put on by the Society of Automotive Engineers, the team must provide a written report to explain its design.
“A large part of the competition is the static event,” Frey said. “We don’t put a lot of effort into our cost or design presentation which is all about why you designed something and if you do that well you get 150 points. So if you don’t do that it’s 15 percent right off the top.”
The car itself is not tested in static events, Frey said. The events are more about explaining the technicalities behind building the car.
In addition to focusing on the presentation, the team is also redesigning the car, Frey said. The team is trying to imitate what some of the top teams in the nation have done in the past.
“The idea is to move away from our past designs which have been long, big cars and more to a smaller lighter car in an attempt to replicate what the top teams do,” Frey said.
The team is decreasing the wheelbase, or the length from the center of the front wheel to the center of the back wheel, of their vehicle by 9 inches, Frey said. This is a significant amount, granted that the car is only 68 inches to begin with, he said.
The average wheelbase for the top teams in the nation ranges from 55 to 62 inches, Frey said. Cal Poly has historically been one of the longer cars in the competition.
“This current car that we have 68-inch wheelbase and its about 417 pounds and we’re hoping to hit a wheelbase of 59 inches and weigh 375 pounds,” Frey said.
The team is making these changes, in part, because the lighter the car, the faster it will go, according to mechanical engineering senior and technical director for the team, Ian Milliken.
“We use a 10-horsepower engine, which is basically the same as a ride-on lawnmower,” Milliken said. “So, the less the vehicle weighs the faster it will be able to go.”
By switching to the new design, the team is also enhancing the car’s turning radius, Milliken said.
“One of our other issues was our turning radius, so if you wanted to do a U-turn it would take a really long distance to do that, so we are shortening the car to get a better turn radius,” Milliken said.
A good turning radius is important for the dynamic events, Frey said. The events are competitions in acceleration, rock crawl, hill climb and maneuverability.
“Acceleration is just racing in a straight line, 100 to 150 feet. In the rock crawl, you have to go over boulders and rocks in the fastest amount of time,” Frey said.
In the hill climb, teams compete in an uphill race, Frey said. In the maneuverability event, teams have to race through a course filled with obstacles in the least amount of time.
The team is working on improving is the reliability of the car during the endurance event, said Theo Graziadei, a senior general engineering major and former president of the team. In the endurance event, the team that completes the most laps after four hours wins.
“We really want to focus on our reliability, make sure that nothing’s breaking, nothing’s coming off the car, or anything like that,” Graziadei said.
Last year, the car broke down two hours into the endurance event, causing a major loss in points for the team, Frey said.
Since the endurance event is four hours, the car takes a beating and car parts break, forcing the team to come out and fix it, Frey said.
“Two years ago we broke a whole bunch of stuff and we only ended up racing for maybe an hour and a half,” Frey said. “The same thing goes for last year. So we barely got any points from that, and the event is 40 percent of your point total.”
Despite the challenges of the competition, being on the team gives the members a huge advantage in getting hired after college, Frey said.
“It definitely helps us get jobs,” Frey said. “What companies look for is if you are good at working with teams and your experience other than solving math problems; like designing and turning a design into a real world product.”
The team really embodies Cal Poly’s motto of “Learn By Doing,” that one may not actually get just from classes, Graziadei said.
“The industry loves us because we have hands-on experience. In Baja, we are actually designing something that will actually be manufactured and put on a car that will be used,” Graziadei said. “So when it comes down to actually getting a job in the industry, you will be more prepared for anything they throw at you.”