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.

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!

Well I am riding in the car so i can’t promise that it is really great with grammar or punctuation. Well we are currently turning around from a slight GPS error. so thus far the trip has been a smooth ride.. we are in Illinois but not quite to Peoria it is just nice to know that soon we will be there and can see what a mess the trailer is in from the long drive. well we are stopping for gas now so with that i will leave with a smile..

Well as competition is just around the corner the excitement of all the hard work put into this years car is mounting. Excitement to see how well the car will perform against the other bajas in the competition. As this occurs comes a hustle and bustle to get all the little last minuter things completed as well as all the equipment needed loaded into the trailer and ready to pull out for about a 10 hour drive to Peoria,IL from Birmingham, AL. I better return to the packing and preparing to travel it is ohh so much fun.. but it will all be worth it in 3 days!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hey yall! Well I decided to finally getting around to doing a post for our Baja team Right now I’m sitting in Tina’s (our adviser) office and sort of avoiding having to load up the trailer….hehehe. I’m so lazy….so anywho… here’s what’s been happening…

Right now it’s crunch time down at the shop….we’re feeling really good about our car though so that is always good for keeping people happy This week we’ve been doing some final touches and traveled to Warrior to go run the Baja on a motocross track. Wednesday seemed like it would be the perfect day but you know how that always goes…

Probably an hour into running we broke a lower a-arm on the front. for those who aren’t so car literate (I’m still learning too!)….this really sucked! so that ended our day of testing. we came back to UAB where we rebuilt the a-arms using some higher strength steels and got ready to go back out the next day. While the boys did this, I went to Gardendale and bought some plastic that we could cover the back of our car with some to keep mud/water off the CVT.

So day two (yesterday) of testing started off a little slow. We made it out to the track around 3 and were welcomed to Warrior by some lovely rain. I really do love the rain on any other occasion but at that moment…not so much. We waited for it to lighten up a little and got ready to run by taking some plastic and covering the back. Alex got in and started driving and low and behold, the rain let up! yay! so now here comes the amazing part….we ran the Baja for over 4 hours and nothing broke!!!!!!!!!!!!! I mean, other than a couple of bolts off the firewall missing, a problem with the engine shifting forward and one roll over, it was amazing. I got to take my turn tearing up the course and it was so much fun! It was like being on a rollercoster going over the jumps but you’re in control. so much power! hahaha. Everyone made fun of me because of my little screams I did going into the jumps….oh well. It was still fun and I think I did pretty good driving it.

So now I guess I will conclude this note because I gotta get back to helping the boys pack up the trailer. I’ll leave you with some pictures and videos from at the track…enjoy! oh…tell you whos in the pics…the 1st and 3rd is our captain, Alex. The 2nd one is me love how I’m like sort of laughing in it and then the last one is matt