First semester done, looking ahead

Like always, this semester went by quite quickly.

We've made a lot of progress on the car, although
it still has a ways to go before competition.

Things are definitely coming together.  The car rolls, and
will be able to steer once the front gearbox is mounted.

This is one of our front hubs, and as you can see, they
are huge! The axle diameter is 1.25 inches.  On a standard
bike wheel, this same dimension is only about 0.375 inches.

The axles are like this to allow the car to take a beating
without any components breaking.

However, we were still able to keep the weight of
our whole steering setup (including the hubs) quite
reasonable. The hubs were designed and made by us.

Here's the back of the car.  The engine is mounted along
with the EFI kit, and drives a standard centrifugal clutch.

The left-hand drive of the Odyssey hub allowed the
engine to be fairly centered, but still line up with the
rear sprocket.

The car doesn't quite drive yet, but it's really close.

We've also been working on designing the shell, and
we'll start building that next semester as well.

Frame done, and other cool things

The frame took some time, but it was worth it.

Above is a partially completed photo.

And here it is!  We're pretty excited about it.
It only weighs 19.6 pounds on the scale, and
just feels light when you pick it up.

We're thinking of going for the "brushed
aluminum" look, which should really make
it stand out (in a good way).

We also hope to have several
components mounted to it soon.

Above is our new rear hub.  It's left-hand drive (which
is very rare in bike wheels) in order to line up with the
engine output shaft.  It was recommended to us by a
team last year at Supermileage in Michigan.

We're also currently working on adding an electric starter
to the engine.  It will allow us to employ a driving strategy
that we believe will give us the best possible fuel economy.