Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Shell Eco-Marathon

We made it to Houston and back!


Our flight left at 7:15am on April 3rd, so it was definitely
an early wake up.






Here's our car in the work area (we built the crate to ship
it in too, which isn't pictured here).



They gathered everyone together for the "really big picture."
There were about 120 cars total, and it was amazing to
see all the different designs.




Frank in the car, minus the shell.


This photo was taken by Shell, and is a really cool angle.




 Here's Frank on the track.

















And from another angle.

















Here's all of the team that went to Houston (we're missing
two members), plus Mike's cousin on the far left.


















We also saw Rowan from the plane on the way back.

Our top fuel economy was 420 mpg.  This is almost
double what we got last year, and we were really
happy about it.  We hope to do even better for
Supermileage in June.

I'd like to give a word of warning to any teams reading
this: don't buy the Ecotrons Small Engine EFI Kit.  It
worked at first, but stopped working correctly (we couldn't
get the engine started, and when we did it didn't run right).
Other teams at competition who had tried it all shared
similar frustrations.

The Eco-marathon was very well-run, and we were
impressed with just about every aspect of it.  Even
though we spent a lot of time working on the car,
we still had an awesome time.


Saturday, March 23, 2013

Shell Progress

The shell is being made!  We're using a custom built thermoformer (our teammate Frank spent a lot of time getting it to work right, which we all appreciate).

Basically, we created foam molds of all the pieces of the shell (it's split into 10 pieces).  The thermoformer heats a sheet of plastic up really hot (about 300 degrees Fahrenheit), and then this plastic is dropped over the mold and sucked down with a vacuum.

The video makes it pretty clear how it works, so check it out:




















And here's our car with many of the new shell pieces attached.

The car will be shipped Houston this Friday, so we're doing everything we can to make sure it's ready.

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

It drives!


We're pretty excited; it took a lot of effort, but it's really
cool when everything comes together.
















While this is a big milestone, there's still a lot to get done.
The shell is currently under construction, and several modifications
will be done to the car to ensure that it's both competition-ready
and gets the best fuel economy that it can.