MiniBaja West Competition South Dakota May 2007

I figured for the first blog entry I would go back to the SAE MiniBaja competition we participated in last May.

The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) sponsors several competitions designed to give engineering students experience in automotive engineering. The MiniBaja competition involves building a single seat off-road vehicle using a 10 horse power Brigg and Station engine. SAE also supplies a rule book that states all the technical requirements to ensure safety and a fair competition.

Kevin and I along with three other students (Anthony Brook, Nathan McCray and Shaun Whitney) chose to enter into the SAE MiniBaja West completion held in Rapid City, South Dakota for our senior project. We had previously participated in the west competition in June 2006 held in Portland Oregon. After returning home from the competition we started designing the new car using the lessons we learned. By the time school started we had a good start on the design of the new car. We finished about 80% of the design and had built the majority of the frame by December. As shown in the picture below.





We finished the rest of the design and started machining the various parts for the drive train and steering about mid January. The car finally became drivable about the first of March. The following is a picture of the Haas VF2 machining one of our rear knuckle. The next picture is the assembled car with Tony driving it.




Below shows a CAD picture of the fixturing we had to design to hold the tubing and mounting tabs in place to ensure dimensional accuracy. Next is a picture of the actual fixturing, and one with the fixturing remove after welding.






The next picture shows the rear sprocket which is one of the components we used FEA on. FEA stands for Finite element analysis, which is a tool engineers use to predict stresses and strains on complex geometry. This allows us to determine whether there is enough safety factor built into a design and prevent failures. The low stress areas are shown by the light magenta and red shows the high stress areas. In this case the stress is concentrated at the bolt holes.


Once we drove it some and worked out the bugs in the design it was ready to make body panels, paint it and make it beautiful. The following pictures are the finished car.




The competition consists of scored documentation, a technical inspection along with several events. The scored documentation consists of a Design Report, Cost Report, a Design Review and a Marketing Presentation. After ensuring the safety of the vehicle by passing technical inspection the vehicle is allowed to participate in the dynamic events. These events are a Brake Test, Hill Climb, Maneuverability Course and a Rock Crawl. Finally there is a 5 hour Endurance Event which consists of all of the cars on the two mile track at the same time trying to log the most laps. The course has elements of the hill clime maneuverability and rock crawl designed into it.

The Results:

100 universities registered and participated in the South Dakota competition. We passed tech inspection with no problems and did the real well in the Design Review (9th), Hill Climb (12th), Maneuverability (15th) and the Endurance Event (30th ?). Our Cost Report and Marketing Presentation could have used some help. We also had two failures in the endurance event. Our right front wheel bearings blew out (7 other teams had the same trouble with these bearings) and we had a tie rod for the steering bust. This meant that we lost some laps but from what I observed from the top of the hill climb where I could see about 50% of the track, Shaun handled the car expertly and demonstrated the excellent capabilities of the car.

Below are some pictures us and the car at the competition.





Oh yeah we stopped by Mount Rushmore on the way home!!


I have included some links to YouTube videos of the competition.

Here is a video of CSUS trying to pass the brake test. I think they work fine.

Here is the video of our car’s second attempt of the Hill Climb. Our first time was faster because the course wasn’t so tore up from other teams attempts.

Here is a portion of our car doing the Maneuverability course.

CSUS’s car is the only car that completed the Rock Crawl. It was pretty crazy course. We were unable to attempt it because the wind picked up and large tree split and obstructed the course and almost fell on some students. Kevin and I were about 15 feet from were it landed.

On the endurance race they had us racing down the hill climb and LeTourneau ended up rolling end from end down it. The driver was fine.