N. Michigan students build race car from scratch

Published 4:04 pm Monday, March 30, 2009

MARQUETTE, Mich. — A group of Northern Michigan University students is building a race car from the ground up.

Professor Robert Marlor is leading a team of students in building a Mini Baja race car. Students design, build, test and race the car. The racing events have been going on for more than 20 years and are sponsored by the Society of Automotive Engineers.

“As educators, it’s a lot of fun and fun is a good motivator to learn,” Marlor said. “Plus the whole motivation you get from competition — that really motivates students to learn about design.”

Each year students build a new car, Marlor said. Aside from certain components like shocks and engine, the car is completely fabricated at the university.

The students do have certain limitations. They have to use a 10-horsepower motor, and the design of the car’s roll cage has to stay a certain way for safety reasons.

But students are free to design the front suspension, steering, framework, rear suspension and drive train.

For example, Marlor said a lot of teams use transmissions from snowmobiles. This year, the NMU team is installing a transmission off a Harley Davidson motorcycle.

“Most of the students on this team are engineering technology students, so learning how to design and then build as well is always one of the reasons we do this,” Marlor said.

Marlor said the construction of the car generates many discussions of engineering topics.

“How do we make this car perform better, make the suspension better, the frame lighter, the transmission run better? It’s all self-directed learning,” he said.

NMU student Jesse Nye, 23, was on a team of five students that built a Mini Baja race car last year. It was the first time any of them had built a car, a fact that was emphasized when they brought it to a race in Montreal.

“We started the tech inspection and realized that we missed 50 things that we needed to fix. So it was a total learning experience. We’ve learned a ton, and on our new car we’ve built it to comply with all the rules,” he said.

The team will race their new car this summer in Portland, Ore.

“The biggest thing with a Baja car is durability. These things go through a four-hour endurance race and if you can last the whole race, you’re going to finish in the top 20 percent,” he said.

Nye said building the car was one of the most important learning tools at the university.

“I’ve learned more about fabricating and real-life engineering from this Baja car — things you can’t (learn) in a classroom. For anybody in engineering or manufacturing, it’s important to get involved with this,” he said, adding that any student can help build it, regardless of his or her major.

Marlor said it usually takes one semester to design the car and one semester to build it.

“As time goes on and we get better at it, we’ll be able to get it done in eight weeks or so,” he said. “You have to consider that a lot of students are going to school full-time and they’re working 20 hours a week at a job, and this is something they can fit in maybe three or four hours a week.”

Information from: The Mining Journal, http://www.miningjournal.net