University of Memphis Mini-Baja Car!

[krash]

Sup guys, I figured you'd all like some good 'ol fabrication pictures. I go to University of Memphis and we have an SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) Baja team, we call ourselves Tiger Baja. Its an awesome program that gives engineering students some hands on experience and some exposure to real world engineering problems. It puts you in contact with machinists and all kinds of people and kind of shows you what they like to deal with. You can design an awesome part but a machinist might look at it and be like "hey you know the tolerance you have on this hole is going to shoot up the price right?" And some things might look awesome in CAD and seem perfect but when you go to build it you find out its a PITA. So a program like this kind of teaches you to not only design for performance and efficiency, but also for easy production.


The whole SAE Baja competition works like this: Pretend a company has just contracted your team to design and build a one person mini-baja car prototype to be mass produced. The engine is limited for all teams to a Briggs and Stratton 10hp engine.
There are all kinds of rules and regulations that it must meet (roll cage, safety, etc) and it must be cost efficient. We have to actually turn in a cost report that shows how much our car would cost to the retail consumer (we include EVERYTHING. Inches of weld, labor time, parts, fabrication time, material, etc) and we get points on our cost efficiency. So you cant just go out and over engineer the crap out of it and say "We built the best car." There is also a design report that we turn in that includes all of our design decisions on each part of the car.

Then finally we build the car from the ground up and take it to competition where we race it. first they critique our car (cost and design), then we do isolated events like hill climb, acceleration, braking, cornering, and rock crawl, and then there is the 4 hour endurance race. Our current goal is to finish the endurance race. A whole lot of teams break their cars before that race is over, so finishing is a good accomplishment. We're a smaller team with a budget that is smaller than some team's travelling budgets, but we make it happen and have gone out to competition every time we've tried. This is my first year being on the team, but its been pretty active for the last 5-6 years.

Anyway, its crunch time and the car is actually starting to look like a car. Here are some pics from start to present:


This is where it started, our materials arrived from EMJ metals in Eads, TN. They donated all of that to us!


Here is our "Tiger Baja" shop. This is where the magic happens.


We started by building the front "bulkhead" of the car. We got a JD squared tubing notcher that makes these notches super easy.


From left to right, Me, a member named Arjit, 2011/2012 Tiger Baja car, and a member named Christian


We eventually convinced the right people to let us put the old Baja car in the Engineering lobby. We took the front end apart and then re assembled it between those pillars. So its going to be hard for it to "disappear."


Here is the front bulkhead being tacked together. Thats Zain, our team president, running some practice welds before tacking.


Then we began the firewall. We couldn't make those bends you see with the tools we had. So we took it out to a local shop called Racing Eclipse Technologies and they did it for us. That shop is AWESOME.


Putting together the jig for the firewall


Here it is jigged and tacked


Then we connected the bulkhead to the firewall


After that was tacked, we started the roll cage.


Zain putting down more tacks


The main frame and cage complete.




It closely resembles one of my favorite helicopters




After spring break, our seat, steering, and BMC setup arrived!


We notched a bunch of tubes to start the rear end of the car


And it began.






Then on to bracing and mounts!


My stare of approval.




I went into beast mode when I was notching tubes.


Arjit checking out the car's butt.


RLCA in the making.


I'd like to think I'm getting pretty good at MIG.


Sick discoloration on a freshly welded rod-end insert.


FLCA mounted. We actually bought the FLCAs straight from polaris and then modified the shock mounts on them to fit our application. worked out well. Look at those sick control arm tabs! An awesome sheet metal shop, O.H. Hendricks. The hooked us up big time with free sheet laser cut sheet metal parts.


More laser cut mounting tabs


This is one of the sexiest pieces on the car. Its our drivetrain mount. One of our team members (Arjit) designed that lower portion. That is actually where our trans mounts, and the engine will mount on a plate on top of it. All aluminum and cut by none other than O.H. Hendricks. Its such a freaking sexy setup.


And heres the car doing a pushup.

That is it for now. Paint goes on today! I'll post up more pics as I take them (and when I have time). I've been working 12 hours or more a day on this thing with the rest of the team. We pulled an all nighter and worked 24 hours over the weekend haha. Hopefully its all worth it!

[OriginalWheelman]

Awesome. I hope I get to see this thing in action when it's done!

[Xdisaster240sX]

When the hell did you move to Memphis?

[krash]

Awesome. I hope I get to see this thing in action when it's done!

Definitely dude! After competition we're going to be showing her off!

When the hell did you move to Memphis?

I came here last fall for school! I'm going to be coming back this summer to visit you Maryland people

[WDRacing]

Fun fun fun! I was always a quad guy until I drove my brother-in-laws Razor. Now I'm a huge fan of the side-by-side. I bet your baja is gonna be wicked fun to drive. What motor are you going to use?

[AZ89two4Tsx]

Super cool man.

Here at ASU we also have an SAE team. Do you guys have any other teams? I know we have a Baja, Formula, and then long distance I believe it is? Something with an R/C airplane too. We probably compete with your school in nationals.

I was involved with them a little bit of the Fall 2012 semester, but they wanted me to handle more of the "business aspect" of SAE being that I'm not an engineering major. Super cool stuff though. A LOT more goes into everything than one might think. Almost everything is engineered by the students and it's pretty awesome to see how it all comes together.

[krash]

Super cool man.

Here at ASU we also have an SAE team. Do you guys have any other teams? I know we have a Baja, Formula, and then long distance I believe it is? Something with an R/C airplane too. We probably compete with your school in nationals.

I was involved with them a little bit of the Fall 2012 semester, but they wanted me to handle more of the "business aspect" of SAE being that I'm not an engineering major. Super cool stuff though. A LOT more goes into everything than one might think. Almost everything is engineered by the students and it's pretty awesome to see how it all comes together.

Man, I really wish we had a formula team. We dont have enough man power or resources for that. Our Baja program has been going strong for quite a while now, and recently we've been picking up some good sponsors, so things are looking up! A project like this really gives me a whole lot of respect for shops that build race cars and rollcages all day. Its some hard work. Seeing this thing through from design to production is a crazy experience.

Fun fun fun! I was always a quad guy until I drove my brother-in-laws Razor. Now I'm a huge fan of the side-by-side. I bet your baja is gonna be wicked fun to drive. What motor are you going to use?

The motor is limited by the competition, all teams have to use a briggs and stratton 10hp motor (provided). So where you have to shine is gear reduction, weight, and suspension.

The Polaris RZR is simply awesome. We've been spending a lot of time at the local polaris dealership, so we've been checking them all out. You can get up to 100mph in the RZR 900. 100mph!! Have you heard of SS ATV Plus?

We got some work done today, it was a slower paced day. We grilled burgers and stuff. We kind of needed the break! We're getting all the shock mounts dealt with today. We only have to mount the rears! We're running Fox eVOL shocks all around. These things are so awesome. They're air shocks, so no spring or anything, and that makes them weigh around 2lbs each! An awesome feature is the eVOL air reservoir. You have the main air spring that you set to a certain PSI (generally a softer setting to absorb bumps) and then the extra eVOL reservoir that you set to a higher PSI. Its pretty sick.


Heres a pic from sundown. Thats the retired 2011/2012 Baja car. We brought it down from the lobby yesterday.



*ahem*

[WDRacing]

My brother-in-laws is a 900, with nitrous It's stupid fast.

[MinisterofDOOM]

That trans mount makes my knees weak.

Looks like HUGE amounts of fun, and that's BEFORE taking a drive in it!

[krash]

The drivetrain mount is probably my favorite piece on this car. This project has been a lot of work, but it is unbelievably fun and super rewarding. I absolutely can't wait to drive this car!

Got a little update. I finished the rear control arms last night, and they're looking pretty beefy! Also bolted in our drivetrain mounts. I'm getting so excited

Heres the drivetrain mount in the car (mounted in the car to check level, came out perfect!)


This is pretty much how the engine is going to sit






RUCA! Extra beefy because the shock actually mounts to the RUCA on our design.


I'm usually not one to toot my own horn, but I'm pretty proud of this:


We originally designed for 1 inch tubing for our RUCAs, but we changed that up to 1.25". The problem with that is, we bought 1" OD rod end inserts. So we machined an insert on the lathe to convert the 1" OD to 1.25"


Arjit decided to be a wimp and went to sleep at 3am.


The car is in the paint booth right now! I'll be back soon with some updates!

And heres a cool random picture I took of Zain's S2000

[PapaSmurf2k3]

We pulled an all nighter and worked 24 hours over the weekend haha. Hopefully its all worth it!

Its worth it. More than you know. TRUST ME.
Any engineer that doesn't partake in Baja or Formula SAE during college is seriously selling themselves short IMO. It was the most worthwhile thing I did in college.

What is your budget? Ours was around $3800 including travel
The university was a dry campus, so they didn't allow us to throw parties at bars and charge a cover for "baja night", and had serious rules about us asking for money, etc. We got ~$1000 from the school and had to come up with the rest ourselves (bake sales, odd jobs, etc). A TON of our stuff was re-used from the year(s) before, and it showed. Our tires sucked. Our shocks were blown, etc. We STILL didn't do too horribly though. I think we came in 22nd place overall?

We spent so much time trying to keep costs low, we all would have been better off just working our day jobs and donating money haha. Like to cut tabs, we had to get the school's ANCIENT water-jet cutter up and running, debugged, etc.
...and you just got yours donated

[PapaSmurf2k3]

We pulled a few all nighters in a row. Painted the car one night and got bitched at by all staff because the engineering building smelled like paint. We had to do it in our tiny shop because it was raining out. By that point we were all so frazzled with our almost non-existent budget, we literally told some of the non-supportive staff to go f*** themselves while we finished the project... you know, as long as we didn't have a final with them that semester

[krash]

Holy crap I thought our budget was small. We got around $11K total from the school this season, and we spent all of last fall pimping the old car around and getting sponsors. The O.H. Hendricks sponsorship (free sheet metal work) has saved us a TON. We literally could not have built this car the way it is without them. Comp Cams is another huge sponsor for us as well, they gave us about $1000 this year I think. But they also readily give Baja members internships and they provide us with safety equipment as well. We also got a small cash sponsorship from Cummins this year, hopefully that relationship grows. We also have Delta Processes that does CNC machine work for us on the cheap.

The thing that sucks is that the school can totally support us more, they just wont because of political BS. We have a machine shop with a CNC mill and a CNC lathe and a rapid prototype machine, but we can't even think about touching them. Why? Because that is "Engineering Technology" equipment and everyone on the team is Mechanical Engineering. However, out shop is in an ET lab and they did give us access to a very good welder, and we have an okay manual mill and an okay manual lathe (its about 100 years old I'd bet). Plus, the school does sponsor an AIAA Moon-buggy team, which has yet to produce anything in the last couple of years.

Most of the staff here are pretty supportive of the program. It is actually bringing in some good publicity to the school. A couple of weeks ago some reps from HINO came to visit the Dean and they saw the old baja car in the lobby. They ate it up, they were taking pictures in it and were very excited.

And I totally agree with you, if you're an engineering student and you're not taking part in something like this, you're kind of screwing yourself over. I've learned a TON from this project that I wouldnt have learned in class, plus you make a whole bunch of contacts, networking! Plus, companies really like to see that you've participated. The team president is currently interning and Smith&Nephew, and for his interview, they pretty much just asked him about his Baja experience that he had put on his resume.

Pulling an all-nighter tonight, so expect more pics!

[PapaSmurf2k3]

Yeah, a lot of employers love to see "baja" or "formula SAE" on the resume. It shows you're not just a desk jockey.

We had the same douchebaggery at our school too. "Oh that giant CNC mill over there? Yeah you can't touch that. That huge break that could cut the sheet metal you need? Off limits". The guy that was in charge of it all put f*** pad locks and chains on everything so it couldn't be used. He had tenure at a union school and worked only about a month out of the year. He wasn't coming back until October or something, so we cut all his stupid f*** chains. f*** that hooker. By the time he realized it, we all had our diplomas in hand and he had no idea who did it.

[ZainRacer]

Hey guys I am Zain, just wanted to introduce myself here.

I have a 91 240sx that I have had for around 5 years now and I am a 240sx enthusiast like many others on this forum. It was my daily driver for almost 3 years and now it is more of a project/fun car but I still drive it regularly. I have done a good bit of autocrossing with it and a few drift events. I have also done a couple track days and I am planning to do more track days and get in to time trial stuff over the next few years. Most of the modifications I have done to the car have been geared towards creating a fun and reliable car that I can track and still enjoy on the street.

I have been involved with the Baja SAE program since my freshman year and have learned and benefited a great deal from the program. I will try to post up a build thread of my car when I have some time after our Baja competition but for now I need to get back to working on the car!

Here are a few pictures of my car!

[krash]

Well, good news, we finished the endurance race! That was out main goal this year, and we were all super excited that we finished. Funny story, one of our axles broke RIGHT before the finish line, but we're still counting it as a finish. My school has never really finished a baja endurance race since the restart of the program, so its awesome to be on the team that did it! Here are some pictures of the completed car and the competition:

The car made its way into the paint booth:


PRIMAHHH




Then started throwing on paint:




We were getting some crazy overspray in the tiny paintbooth so we took it outside.






Done!




Then parts started getting bolted on








The drivetrain started going together!






This was the night before we left, a lot of work needed to be done haha




here we are at Rochester Institute of Technology throwing stickers on the car and making sure everything was good for tech:






I was excited


This was the line for tech inspection


Finally made it inside the building and out of the rain!




Going through tech, we didn't pass the first time around, but we passed on our second try!






All of the tech inspectors and design judges are Honda engineers. The endurance race was also sponsored by Honda. It seems you can't go anywhere in motorsports without Honda being there. Wish I could say the same about another japanese automaker that I know of....

Here are the design judges looking through our car:



And finally, some racing pictures!

Here we are in the staging line:




Race time!

















The aftermath:


All in all it was an awesome experience. I absolutely can't wait until next year. Competition was so awesome. Even though everyone is competing against eachother, its like one big family. Teams are readily there to help you when you have a problem or give you tips on passing tech, etc. Its an awesome environment. Modifications for next year will mainly focus on lightening up the car and optimizing brakes (our brakes are WAY overkill). I'm also going to work with Zain to come up with a rear steer system. Its going to be fun stuff!

[PapaSmurf2k3]

Looks killer!
The race I went to in Cookville (TN Tech) was an absolute car killer. Something like 1/3 or less actually finished endurance. There were giant holes dug out with a backhoe that the cars had to drive off, and then smash into the front edge. Lap 1 took out ~1/2 the pack haha. Our shock mount tabs ripped right off of our control arms. I gusseted/re-enforced the s*** out of them with another school's welder and some scrap metal that fell off someone else's car just so we could finish.
You're definitely right about that big family atmosphere. A lot of the better funded schools (with giant trailers, multiple welders, spare EVERYTHING, etc) were SURPRISINGLY generous. I was blown away at how much some schools spend on the entire operation, and we had a measly 3-5 grand.