Hey everyone! Sorry I’ve been behind on blogging lately. Just trying to get back into the swing of things since returning from competition. I am enjoying my summer here in Birmingham juggling school along with a summer job. So here is what has been happening since our return from Illinois.

The new 2009 Baja is in the works. The team has started design meetings every Thursday to start planning out the new Baja’s design along with working out the kinks that we found from last year’s Baja/learned from competition. We have most of our returning team members and some new ones. Our team is looking forward to starting off this year’s Baja on the right foot in hopes to dominate at competition

By taking the 2008 Baja and analyzing different aspects, our team has discussed and planned for many improvements all over the car. These improvements will range from our frame (shorten/lighten/rounded) to areas such as our drivetrain and suspension. Our team will be doing this by taking alot of the ideas we have and backing them up more with calculations, FEA, and testing. This was one area that we know if we can take more time and care in the design planning, we will run into less problems than we had last year during the building process.

One area of design that we will be dealing with this year is Flotation. We will be heading to Auburn for competition this year and instead of the rock crawl, our team will have to be designing a way to make our Baja float for the water part of the competition. Right now I, along with other team members, have been doing some material research along with finding different ways to calculate how we are going to make our Baja float. This summer we will be doing a lot of testing to determine what will work best for our team’s design.

Another way the new team members/returning team members will be improving on their skills in the machine shop is by reassembling the 2007 Baja this summer to practice on and run some testing. This will help the team when it comes to building our new Baja because members will have a better grasp on different areas of a Baja and also help with some of the designing. I will be getting some pictures up soon of what’s going on down in the machine shop and hopefully keep this more up-to-date this summer. So on that note, I have to leave because I’m about to head to Circuits (what a wonderful class )

This is an email Tina sent around to all of the Engineering people. So I decided to post it on here for everyone to see.

Please join me in congratulating the 2007-2008 Baja SAE team for finishing 56^th Overall out of 115 cars.

By the way this is the first time UAB has finished in the top half of the field. We’re getting better every year J

Event scores included:

 31^st in Sales Presentation

37^th in Cost

38^th in Acceleration

41^st in Hill Climb

50^th in Endurance

62^nd in Rock Crawl

60^th in Land Maneuverability

59^th in Design

We did really well in several of the events and were in the thirties entering Rock Crawl and Land Maneuverability. Unfortunately we broke a chain and the rain storm came in before we got back out of the pits. The 2 events were completed after the rain storm so the car was sliding around a lot in the mud so we didn’t place as well as we would have liked. During Endurance we broke a shock on the rear suspension when another car jumped and landed on our rear tire and ran into the shock. Several of the students from the top teams came by to congratulate the team on a car well built and on their driving skills during Endurance. The Endurance race was going very well before the broken shock. We started in 52^nd position based on the previous days scores and had moved up to 27^th place before it broke. The UAB students pooled all of their knowledge and resources to repair the shock and get back on the course. Unfortunately the laps lost during repair moved us down to 50^th.  Several pictures from the event are attached.

 Next year the competition is in Auburn and the students are already planning out the design.

Team members (l to r): Alex McConathy (captain) ME, David Sexton MSE, Joel Gaddis ME, Aaron Knepper ME, John-Michael (Ping) Walker CE, Aaron Short ME, Steven Williams MSE, Matt Coker ID, Scott Mayfield ME, Haley Rilling ME, Hilary Gilbert CE

so as I’m writing this I think the rest of the team is almost back from Illinois right now but instead of with them I’m taking care of some family business in south Florida. but anyway…apologies for not keeping this up-to-date more. Been so busy and rather exhausted!! but let me show you some pictures

Here are Alex and Aaron during the Design presentation. They had to present our car to different judges and explain the different features of our car.

Here is Scott completing the Hill Climb on Day 2 which was the Dynamic Event day.

This is a picture of our car after the rain about to do the Rock Crawl. Unfortunately, the mud was pretty ridiculous and not very friendly to the cars so we did not perform as well as we wanted to. To explain the course, you went up the first hill where Alex is infront of, then you come down to the dirt on the right (if you were the driver) of the rocks and then come up the rocks and then down where the stairs are.

Here’s a picture of Alex and Aaron climbing around on the trucks. We were at a caterpillar track and they decided to climb up one of the dump truck’s tires.

Endurance Day!! The beginning of the track.

Alex coming up to pass a car!

Alex coming down the rock crawl in the endurance race.

well that’s all the pictures I can upload in this blog but I’ll get some videos up later….:) Even though we didn’t do as well as we had hoped, we did learn a ton and hope to take what we learned and by being able to have returning team members we will be able to keep working with and improving our car. Next year, we will be dominating the competition so on that note, I’m out because I am exhausted!