Well here is a video of what we do here at Pittsburg State University Baja team and what i'm apart of. A couple of guys asked me about my sig and i figured that this would explain it some. Basically we build baja cars in a smaller size and race them in a 3 hour race and also a couple of other events. The video should be pretty much self explanatory, C & C welcomed!
Pittsburg State Mini Baja 2006-2007
heres one or our car doing a 360 on ice when school was cancelled due to a snow storm
360
NOTE: all persons holding alcoholic beverages in the first video are of age!
Hey did you guys get registered at all for any international races? We (Wisconsin - Stout) got screwed over by their "limit" they are puttin on the registration this year. We couldn't get registered for the Illinois race, so we tried the Canadian race, and that was full. We don't want to go to the Tennessee race because its the water competition. So we don't have a major race this year which kinda sucks.
How'd you guys do last year at S.D. I recall your guys car. I think I have some pics of it somewhere. Good luck to you guys this year!
How did the crew from University of Iowa do? I'm a Chicago guy but it's where I went to college. If I would've known about this I woulda seen if I could've joined the team.
Jim Crockett wrote:How did the crew from University of Iowa do? I'm a Chicago guy but it's where I went to college. If I would've known about this I woulda seen if I could've joined the team.
IIRC they finished in the top 20, like 15th or so.
Looks great dude! I was thinking about joining the Kettering university Mini baja team, but I decided not to. I am sticking to Formula SAE. Hopefully the team is that much fun!!
Go Go OG Traction!!
I have family that lives around there...PSU that is...West Mineral!
LOL!
Know a guy here in the Air Force that graduated from there too....geez...that's a small place!
Good video though...enjoyed it.
Eh...old man with a Corvette now...it was bound to happen sooner rather than later right?
ihavenolife000 wrote:Hey did you guys get registered at all for any international races? We (Wisconsin - Stout) got screwed over by their "limit" they are puttin on the registration this year. We couldn't get registered for the Illinois race, so we tried the Canadian race, and that was full. We don't want to go to the Tennessee race because its the water competition. So we don't have a major race this year which kinda sucks.
How'd you guys do last year at S.D. I recall your guys car. I think I have some pics of it somewhere. Good luck to you guys this year!
yeah we got both of our cars registered for the Illinois race and one for the Tennessee race. Last year in S.D. our 40 car took 39th place and our 39 car did not finish because one of the guys on our team was an idiot and rolled it, ripping off our left front arms and destroying our shocks. We also tried the canada race but customs wanted out trailer with everything itemized and part numbers like four months ahead of time and our cars are only being built now. Tennessee though is a challenge because that car has to float and ours doesn't! We went to South Korea for three months and took !st place overall, and i loved it. It was probably the experience of a lifetime!
You got any pics or media of your cars? ill try and post up some of ours
Club 136! (OG Nick) wrote:Looks great dude! I was thinking about joining the Kettering university Mini baja team, but I decided not to. I am sticking to Formula SAE. Hopefully the team is that much fun!!
This of course is personal opinion. All the formula guys in my school are kinda lame and i think the reason is that the formula car requires a whole lot more precision and exact numbers and calculations. We get everything straight and precise but they have to go even further and triple check each time, all the guys are cool but it takes alot out of them. oh well, their car is fun to drive though.
I used to be on the UW Madison Mini Baja Team. We went to the Rochester competition this past year but we had some issues with our vehicle cause we made our own CVT and didn't get it done on time to really do much testing on it. Ihavenolife were you at the Stout Competition last year? I wasn't able to make it but it looked pretty crazy. All 4 of our vehicles that we took broke down cause there was soo much mud since we had like 6" of snow the night before and then it all melted the day of the competition.
Here's some pics from that competition:
More pics and vids at
UW Madison SAE Mini Baja
Club 136! (OG Nick) wrote:Looks great dude! I was thinking about joining the Kettering university Mini baja team, but I decided not to. I am sticking to Formula SAE. Hopefully the team is that much fun!!
This of course is personal opinion. All the formula guys in my school are kinda lame and i think the reason is that the formula car requires a whole lot more precision and exact numbers and calculations. We get everything straight and precise but they have to go even further and triple check each time, all the guys are cool but it takes alot out of them. oh well, their car is fun to drive though.
I agree. I haven't heard much good about our formula team. From what I have heard, they are all pretty set in thier ways and are un receptive to newcomers. But Its what I am interested in the most and my boss would really like to see me on the team. I plan on being a vehicle dynamics engineer, and could really use the experience gained in either one of the two teams.
The Mini Baja does look really fun though. I will have to look into it.
Go Go OG Traction!!
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I agree. I haven't heard much good about our formula team. From what I have heard, they are all pretty set in thier ways and are un receptive to newcomers. But Its what I am interested in the most and my boss would really like to see me on the team. I plan on being a vehicle dynamics engineer, and could really use the experience gained in either one of the two teams.
The Mini Baja does look really fun though. I will have to look into it.
well i guess it will suit you because your actually going to be an engineer, if you saw our video we are definitely not engineers by any mean. All of us are just a whole bunch of gear heads, we all are doing the 4 yr automotive program so we will be on the business side of cars but still have to learn ALL of the technical side.
Tyler Steinhardt wrote:I used to be on the UW Madison Mini Baja Team. We went to the Rochester competition this past year but we had some issues with our vehicle cause we made our own CVT and didn't get it done on time to really do much testing on it. Ihavenolife were you at the Stout Competition last year? I wasn't able to make it but it looked pretty crazy. All 4 of our vehicles that we took broke down cause there was soo much mud since we had like 6" of snow the night before and then it all melted the day of the competition.
Ahh yes that great and wonderful race. 12 or so cars started and only 3 finished. Stout's two cars and an Iowa car. It was a blast out there! This years race it was snowing the day before and we were all pissed off because we figured it was gonna be like the year before! Thankfully it the snow melted that day and the racing was a lot better and a lot more competative!
Everyone but one girl in our club is in some type of engineering field, but we are all gearheads at heart. We can just use our engineering experience to assist us in the design aspect of the process. We are starting to look for business majors here to help us with our presentations and the paperwork side of the competition.
see I'm an automotive major and a business minor along with everyone on my crew, i love it though gear heads for life! we usually draw something up on CAD and then go at it. as far as design goes, its almost non existent we just throw out ideas and start fabricating. BAJA is awesome, ill post some pics whenever i get home cuz i'm posting from class!
Woh this is awesome. I didn't know colleges did this let alone ones in Wisconsin. I'd love to come check one of those races out sometime. That's soo cool!
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1990 Pontiac Sunbird //
1995 Beretta Base
We're going to Illinois this year (first ASU Baja team in like 10 years), our car is our senior design project. We have a long way to go lol.
fortune cookie say: better a delay than a disaster
^^^^^^ are you guys funded by school or have to come up with your own money? how heavy are your wheels?
My favorite one is the red /yellow one. it has a aggresive stance and its very wide, but still have alot of clearence. I like the angled A lower A-arms to give it more clearence and the tall strut/shock tower in the front. Are those piggy back resevoirs I see in the rear for the shocks? Do you guys have specs for the above posted ATVs? Like ground clearence and articulation and things like that...top speed maybe! Also how much $ does one take to build one?
Luis Marroquin wrote:^^^^^^ are you guys funded by school or have to come up with your own money? how heavy are your wheels?
We got $300 from the school (through our "lab fees"), the rest we have to get sponsored for. Those aren't our wheels/tires, just something for temporary mock-up. The building is hard for us because our school doesn't actually do any hands-on training, we only learn engineering theory/design...we don't even have a facility EH&S will let us weld in lol.
However, yours look VERY good so far.
SEC-Z wrote:Like ground clearence and articulation and things like that...top speed maybe!
Ours will have a little over 12" ground clearance at ride height, with about 8" of compression and 4" of decompression available. Top speed is calculated to be 30mph...supposedly (I have my doubts the engine will be strong enough to pull that off).
fortune cookie say: better a delay than a disaster
Our finalized design:
I went to a few of the Formula meetings this year, but there was NO teamwork, there were a couple guys who had a couple designs and wouldn't change them for the world...I just ended up doing the website lol.
fortune cookie say: better a delay than a disaster
Our team gets a lot of sponsorships from various large companies such as Polaris. I think the actual cost of the thing would be around 12 thousand if we actually paid for everything. Top speed is around 30 mph but it varies from team to team depending on what gear box and CVT or other drive system is used. Most common though seems to be a CVT directly off of the drive shaft of the motor into a gear box. The motor being used is a Briggs 10HP engine. How ever from personal experience , I've dyno'd several of the motors that we have laying around in our shop, they really only put out about 8.5 HP or so.
SEC-Z wrote:My favorite one is the red /yellow one. it has a aggresive stance and its very wide, but still have alot of clearence. I like the angled A lower A-arms to give it more clearence and the tall strut/shock tower in the front. Are those piggy back resevoirs I see in the rear for the shocks? Do you guys have specs for the above posted ATVs? Like ground clearence and articulation and things like that...top speed maybe! Also how much $ does one take to build one?
That would be my car, yeah we have piggy back reservoirs on all of our shocks. Our ground clearance was 12 inches, and our articulation was 22" in the front and 19" in the rear. Our top speed average around 47 mph. We try and get companies to sponsor us such as caterpillar, polaris, john deere. Every year though we try and fund raise around $25,000 because we build two cars and that covers almost everything including transportation and hotels. This year though we are building three cars as you can see in the pic so a little more money is needed.
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We got $300 from the school (through our "lab fees"), the rest we have to get sponsored for. Those aren't our wheels/tires, just something for temporary mock-up. The building is hard for us because our school doesn't actually do any hands-on training, we only learn engineering theory/design...we don't even have a facility EH&S will let us weld in lol.
However, yours look VERY good so far.
man that would suck, its hard enough for us because we are just in the corner of a big shop but if we didnt have that it would be terrible!
OHV notec wrote:
We're going to Illinois this year (first ASU Baja team in like 10 years), our car is our senior design project. We have a long way to go lol.
notec, for this being the first baja team you guys are doing pretty good and if you need any pointers or help we here at PSU would be willing to share a couple of our secrets. One thing i did notice is that your car is very deep and the second support bar from the front seems like it might be in the way when you are trying to get out in less than 5 seconds. When you go through tech. they will have the whole team stand in a row and usually they pick either the biggest or tallest guy to do the inspection. Getting out of the car in less than 5 seconds is crucial because if they cant they will tell your team to pack up and head home, thats just something i noticed. PSU has had a team for like almost 20 years, so if you need any help or tips just ask.
