here are some pictures so you can get an idea of what went on at the competition! I did these pictures a little bit of a different way since there were so many of them! I’ll be trying to put up some video soon so check back later to see if I succeeded

I have made two different slide shows…wasn’t sure which style people preferred. Enjoy!

http://s615.photobucket.com/albums/tt235/hrilling/?action=view&current=29e20e05.pbw

http://s615.photobucket.com/albums/tt235/hrilling/?action=view&current=7cd5f87d.pbw

Sorry I did not get to post during competition this weekend. I would had but our hotel didn’t have wireless and there was so little time it felt like!! So here’s what happened at competition and I’ll get some pictures up and let you know soon what the final results are (they still have not been posted).

Thursday

We arrived a little later than expected because we were working hard making sure everything was loaded on the trailer and accounting for everything that we might need. We found arriving late wasn’t the worst thing because instead of being in the Upper Padlock like planned, we got to be in the lower which meant a little less work pushing the car around We worked on the car that night making sure it would be ready for tech first thing in the morning. We also found out that we got a 15/15 on the cost report!! So we were feeling pretty well heading into Static day on Friday.

Friday

Well Friday morning started off well. We made it through engine tech with no problems and had fun waiting in lines (which weren’t nearly as bad as last year’s) to do our Tech inspection. First problem that was discovered was that the top of our roll cage was slightly more narrow than we had originally thought. We had to add in a new members in order to protect the driver but over all, not a horrible fix. We went through our design presentation fairly well and think we have figured out ways to make it better after watching some other teams. We placed 27th overall in design (70.68/75 on the report and 72/125 on the presentation). Back in Tech, we found out we had a few more problems than planned so it was back to the trailer to fix them. We eneded up not being able to make it back through the line Friday but knew we would be ready first thing on Saturday morning.

Saturday

As planned, we made it through tech first thing in the morning and passed our brake check on the first try. Now it was on to our Dynamic events. Thomas ran our acceleration event and our times were a 6.2 and a 6.3. This put us in the 30s on the endurance day placement and was a huge improvement over last year David did the Tractor Pull over different types of terrain and we made a pretty good time of under 10 seconds (like…9 something…can’t remember). Aaron did good on his go at the manuevability and only hit 5 cones! So I believe our final time was around a minute long. Our suspension held up well on the actual suspension part of the suspension event. The only trouble came was at the very end when our rear tire found a hole someone had dug earlier. This made us DQed on the suspension event but we’re still way above where we were last yaer overall in the Dynamic events. I’ll be able to put up our official rankings in the next few days.

Sunday

Finally, the day came for the Endurance Race. After a wonderful hour early start (to beat the weather) at 8:30 am…Thomas started us off to a good start with an average lap time of 10:40 when the throttle started messing up. We got the car back into the pits and replaced the throttle and then Thomas could pull around a 8:19 lap. Then Alex got in to finish up the race and with all the water and mud, our kill switch shorted out. This caused our motor to die before we could make our next lap. Once again, back to the pits but still only a minor fix. Alex got back on the track and our last problem came when a hole was cut in our tire along with a missing valve steam :/ Alex still managed to complete another lap giving us a final total of 8. We tried to get spare tires on the car but by the time we were ready to head back, there were only 5 minutes left in the race and they wouldn’t let us back on the track. That being said, we completed the endurance race with a final ranking of 46th. This put us one spot behind Georgia Tech who also completed 8 laps but had a faster average lap time. Last year, our car didn’t even complete the endurance race because of CVT issues.

Over all, our car did excellent this year and there was improvement across the board. I’ll be able to put up the final results soon and give a side by side comparison with last year! So I’ll be putting up some pictures so you can get an idea how the competition went and check back soon for results.

www.sae.org –>go to Baja competition at the bottom of the page to see some results.

So much to do and so little time!!! When hasn’t it been that way though this year with the car?? lol. So today the car has been sent off to be painted so we’ll get it back in time to put it together and load it up on the trailer to head out. This weekend we got the car running so we could drive and try a little bit of testing. Hopefully our lack of testing won’t come back to haunt us at competition.

Right now everyone in the shop is in work mode with getting spare parts made for the car and starting to load the trailer. Hopefully we won’t forget anything when we head to Auburn on Thursday!!!

So looking at the list, there’s a few more things that need to be done such as mounting things on the car and getting our decals onto the side panels. We finish the engine cover and we should get that on the car once we get the car back. It’s just going to be a very busy 3 days ahead of us. Here are some pictures since I haven’t written in a while. Hopefully I’ll update this everyday while we’re at competition to let you know how we’re doing and put pictures up. The car’s come a long way so enjoy!

Alex getting ready to drive the car

Our awesome floor plate David made

Aaron and Alex hard at work welding the frame

Our 2009 Baja!

Here’s the article that was written about us in the Birmingham News. Check it out!

http://www.al.com/birminghamnews/stories/index.ssf?/base/news/1237796149220200.xml&coll=2

Only 22 more days until compeition!!!

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