Here’s what’s on the back of our T-shirts this year. Enjoy!

You might be on UAB’s Baja team if:

1.      You are on a first name basis with every restaurant, machine shop, and auto parts store owner within a five mile radius.

2.      You have nightmares where the machinery is chasing you

3.      You know your plans every night during spring semester and they all involve handtools

4.      You use your textbook for something other than a pillow

5.      You willingly spend 2 hours learning material from a junior level class when you are a sophomore just so you can finish that one equation

6.      You have taken a nap on the shop floor while the grinder is going

7.      You have ever asked a professor for a homework extension because you were at school all weekend

8.      You know what the standard sizes for tubing and bolts are off the top of your head

9.      You know who Father Time is

10.  You can do conversions, force, stress and moment calculations better than addition and subtraction

11.  You have accepted that 3-5 hours counts for a “good night of sleep”

12.  You see logs as minor speed bumps and mud is a regular part of your diet

13.  You look at the new campus construction site as a new practice track

14.   You begin all of your sentences with “what if we…” or “we could”

15.  You design baja parts when you get bored in class

16.  You’ve seen Tina reach the end of her graph

17.  Your drawing files consist of scraps of any material you can find

18.  You know where the secret stash of moonpies and oatmeal cream pies are

19.  You know that the third time is the charm… ok…maybe the fourth

20.  You know if at first you don’t succeed you can always fill it with weld

Forgot to say…Birmingham News came during Spring Break while we were working to write a story on us and take some pictures. Here’s a link to their website where you can view the pictures and be on the look out for the story in the News sometime soon!

http://photos.al.com/gallery/4461/Blazer%20Motorsports

So while everyone else at UAB was enjoying some time off from school….we were enjoying the lovely weather cooped up in the shop working on the car. It was nice to not have to worry about those bothersome time consuming classes for a week but that meant 9am – 10 pm work days everyday! Talk about an exhausting week! So here’s some updates on what’s been happening:

Alex has begun welding up our frame. We’re about 3/4 of the way done because we’re still waiting on some of our shafts for the drive train. We want to make sure everything is right on the rear before welding so from the firewall up, we have a nice sturdy frame (minus a few pieces here and there)

Alex welding the frame

Next on the agenda, the cost report was finished on Wednesday night at 10:30 pm (offically done then with all the converting into PDF and double checking).  The cost report was looking to be a HUGE improvment over last years. Well…….that being said, us along with many other teams submitted our excel document as .xlxs instead of .xls (the old excel format) and we were told we had to resend it in and it would be counted late. so yeah…that was not a high point of the week…

We have steering now on the car along with working on brakes and the throttle cable. The seat came in from Cain Awning and it looks great (thanks again Cain Awning!!!) We might need to re-enforce it some with another layer of fabric because of the force we’re afraid the seat might see. Father Time is going to be working on the seat belts/mounting points this weekend and so we should have that done so then the firewall can be put in! David made the front bumper and it looks great. We’re going to be putting in a cool front plate so be on the look out for those pictures soon. We should be getting in our actual tires/wheels today and so now all we’re waiting on is one of the rear shafts so then we can get our drive train together.

Here are some more pictures of our progress:

New seat (so comfortable! like the lazy boy of racing seats)

Car with the wheels on it. Looking great!

David modeling the car

So our car is looking good and progress is moving forward. There’s still plenty to be done so I will keep you updated. The team will be traveling to Auburn next Friday to attend an SAE student night and hopefully win the presentation contest to earn some more money for the team! I’ll let you know how that goes so in conclusion: 27 more days till competition!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here’s some more pictures from our weekend working in the shop. They wouldn’t all fit in the last post. Enjoy!

David working on the seat

Alex demostrating the seat in the car

Mock up of the rear of the car

Aaron and Thomas working at the welding table

Alex using the mill to machine the tensioners for the car

Aaron a little nervous about testing the seat in the car that’s only held together by tacks at the moment…but hey, it held! lol

Or in other words….our weekend! It’s amazing how much got done this weekend on the car. We are finally checking things off our schedule and it feels great! Here’s some updates on what has been completed:

Seat! Way to go David and David (or Father Time) on getting the seat completed this weekend! Actually right now they’re finishing it up but let’s just call it done Alex will be finishing the welding on it Monday and then we’ll be ready to send it off to Cain Awning who will be putting fabric on the seat for free (Thanks Cain Awning of Birmingham!!!!!!) So with the completion of the seat…maybe soon we will have a stearing wheel and pedal assembly to go along with it.

David (not Father Time David) was working some on the pedal assembly with the master cylinders and figuring out ways of putting it together while Aaron was working on the seat and also grilling some dinner for us tonight (it was delicious).

Alex has been running NONSTOP today to finish one side of the car’s suspension. We have completed and have assembled the front and rear A-arms along with the knuckles and it looks great. Alex designed both the front and rear suspension assemblies and I can’t wait to see how it will fair once we the tires on and have it rolling.

And let me just brag a little on my productivity today…..we WILL NOT be doing the cost report last minute this year. I have sat today in front of the computer for most of the day working on getting receipts in and accounted for along with entering in everything that we have fabricated on the car. Cost Report is one of the areas of the competition that we get scored on and with previous years have suffered a little on so this year we will hopefully see a huge improvment

So now that we have half the car done…this coming week should bring us…you guessed it…THE OTHER HALF! so hopefully the word of the day (Productive) will carry over in the weeks that follow. Our goal is to have the car running by the end of our Spring Break (March 8 – 15) which will put us about a month away from competition! Time is closing in! Enjoy the pictures of our progress!

Alex and Thomas working on mocking up the front suspension with Alex’s knuckle assembly

Tina and Alex working on mocking up the rear suspension and the Drivetrain

Father Time showing off his seat

Left to Right: Father Time (David) and David working at the CNC Lathe

Argh! It’s only letting me put up 4 pictures in this post so I’ll make a separte post with just pictures

So last night I was sitting in the shop starring at the “To-Do” list for our Baja….wow….it’s starting to look like so much to do and so little time to do it!!

Now don’t get me wrong, we are not being unproductive. There are just so many things on the list that we have completed half or part of such as….inserts, tabs, knuckles…etc. We have some made but not all. So sitting there looking at the list can feel overwhelming sometimes. For instance:

Due Dates….!!!!! We have I believe….17 days (March 2nd) to get our design report done! and then we have…26 days until Cost Report is due (March 11). Whoa! I’m just in shock that time is going by this quickly but I think if we keep doing what were doing, we’re going to be pushing it but we’ll ready when Competition rolls around (in less than 9 weeks…)

A lot of our parts have started coming in so that’s good news for working this weekend. I would have some pictures to put up from last weekend but I sort of forgot to charge my camera battery so….I’ll get some up after this weekend.

On that note, hopefully everyone  on the team won’t catch what Tina has/is getting over (some horrible diease that seems even a mystery to her doctor ) and we will keep right on working. Until next time…

Ok, so the frame was done last weekend and I just forgot to write about it :/ lol. School work is killing me this semester! So right now I’ve found some free time in the shop and decided to write something and let you know what’s going on.

So like I said, the frame is done! So that’s like one part down…everything else to go! Actually though we’re doing good getting bits and pieces together while we wait on our parts to arrive. Alex has been working really hard to get at least the front suspension mocked up this weekend. He’s also been working on the rear suspension and doing a great job making sure everyone’s tasks are getting completed.

Aaron’s computer crashed today with all of our Baja’s drawings on it keep your fingers crossed that we have enough of it backed up and saved elsewhere! Or better yet that the computer people can try to recover it! He’s worked so hard on those drawings and that’s sort of a crucial part to have when building the Baja…..so yeah…having those would be nice :/

David and Father Time (the other David) are working on tabs as we speak and Father Time was attempting to learn how to draw in Solidworks so that we could get our seat frame modeled up. We went to an awning place where they agreed to do the fabric on our seat for free! Free is always great considering our wonderfuly limited budget….:)

Umm…what else to write….everyone is working around me right now so I keep getting distracted looking around the shop (ADD to blame) so on that note, I’m going to go see what’s going on. Here’s some pictures of our frame and such up until now. Enjoy!

Our Frame!

Front Suspension

From Left to Right: David, Alex, Stephen, Thomas, Eric

First off, apologies for not keeping this thing more updated! Here’s a little bit of what’s been going on since well…July

Designing, Designing, Designing! Our team has been meeting weekly to discuss ideas and plan out the building of our Baja. We were informed at the end of August that the flotiation part of the competition had been thrown out because of the drought that was going on and continuing in Alabama. So a little bit of redesigning was in order but now that we have all that out of the way, we have started buidling!

So let me give you an idea of our time line……competition is April 16-19. Today is January 19. That’s 10 weeks and 3 days until competition!!! Yes…it is major crunch time but we’re starting on the right foot…even if a bit later than planned. We have been working on the frame which is being delayed a little because of some tubing that is on back order. Once we get that tubing in, we should be able to finish the frame quickly and start having everything else fall into place.

This year, we have been using a lot more bends which is making our car look a whole lot better than last years already. We were discussing the other day how this is probably one of the most complex designs that UAB’s Baja team has taken on. It’s amazing how much a year of experience makes a difference in the designing, working in the shop and how the team is working together in general. Last year was definitely a learning year and it’s showing this year just how much of that was absorbed

Here are some pictures of our progress…I’ll get some more up later. Friday and Saturday were both hard days of working and by the end of it I realized that I needed to take some pictures so I can start posting them on here…pictures are better to look at anyway than all these words. So on that note, I will be signing off and promise to write more and soon!

Hey everyone! Hope you had a wonderful 4th of July long weekend!! I’ll just briefly update ya’ll on whats going to be happening once I get back up to Birmingham (right now I’m at the house in Brewton enjoying some great family time, friend time and amazing food)!

Alex has been doing a great job with keeping us on track with our weekly meetings and getting ready for due dates. All our preliminary drawings are due in less than 2 weeks so some of us are starting to feel the pressure but this process is very crucial so all the kinks can be worked out before we start building. I can’t really say too much for the other design groups but me and Father Time (David is actually his real name and no…he is not old) and Big David (there’s too many davids!) have been working on some ideas for flotation and we hope to start testing our calculations once we are back in town from the break I’ll keep yall updated on how that goes

So on that note I’m going to go and continue enjoying my break. Over and out.