New Semester Updates

Well folks, we have now had our first official design meeting of the semester and here’s a recap. Steering design will be spearheaded by Allen who is collaborating with Mike as we speak and will have a design for review by Feb 7^th. Andy and Mat will be researching tire/wheel/hub solutions and will have a design for the rear tire support by Feb 7^th as well.

Mike and Morgan are going to be working on propulsion over the next week to get a better idea of what kind of timeline we are looking at for a new engine head design and if it will be feasible to have this completed for Eco-Marathon or, if this should be designed for Supermilage. Some engine mods will be designed for Eco-Marathon such as better carburetion and decreased compression ratio.

Once we have completed some engine testing we’ll have some real numbers on where we have the greatest efficiency and will be able to use that data to determine at what RPM we will be running the engine at, weather we want to “burn and coast” or run at peak efficiency the whole time.

Some things that I have to do are looking into getting some travel funds from ASNAU, driver safety design, hammering out a design schedule, and checking on the braking requirements for both Eco-Marathon and Supermileage.

If anyone notices that I have left things out or have questions/concerns, let me know. Hopefully we will be able to get some more people onboard to get things done. We will be contacting all of SAE@NAU to invite them to our next design meeting, Wednesday, Jan 31 at 6:30. I will try to get a room in the engineering bldg so that we have access to white boards and CAD programs. As soon as I have a room I’ll let everyone know….

Don’t forget to be thinking about budget. We just need to get an idea for what we are really going to need as far as materials are concerned so that we can go beat down doors for sponsors if we need to.