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Engineering

Baja SAE Competition

Baja SAE is an international, intercollegiate student design series. University teams compete in this SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) challenge by designing, fabricating, testing, and manufacturing the car from the ground up. SAE host yearly competitions where these teams come from near and far to put their car to the test.

Our team NYU Tandon Motorsports had been on a 3 year competition hiatus due to COVID-19, so we not only had the struggle of competing well at competition, but also the challenge of not having competition experience. Our team registered to go to the 2022 Rochester competition, and it was soon off to the races (well after tech inspection of course).

Day 0 (Warming Up):

The team met on campus at 7AM in Downtown Brooklyn to start the drive up. From NYU to RIT, it was roughly a 6 hour drive. By the time we were packed at actually leaving, it was closer to 9:30AM, meaning we got to our destination later than we had hoped.

After a quick nap, some coffee, and a rushed dinner, it was growing darker but we were only getting started. The team unpacked tools needed to assemble the car and promptly got to work. It had already been a long day but it was energizing to see everyone willing to pull their weight and get to work.

Due to restraints from COVID-19, the 2021-2022 car was not completed on time; this resulted in us bringing our 2020-2021 season car, lovingly referred to as the Covid Car. While it’s a well designed car, the Covid Car was not designed by the current team members. The team spent the day familiarizing themselves with the more intricate details of the car. This was also a day to make the first of many Home Depot runs, purchasing any missing tools or replacing worn down parts.

Day 1 (Engine Inspection):

The day started off relatively calm, but we were a little confused as to the process of getting our documentation in check. Given the scale of the competition, the amount of documentation is immense. From cost reports to weld samples, the amount of materials we had to prepare certainly caught us off guard. Once we got that squared away, we lined up for engine inspection.

To ensure the safety of the drivers and to act as an equalizer, all teams are required to use the same Briggs and Stratton 10hp engine supplied through Baja SAE. Since the competition has real, wheel to wheel racing, it wouldn’t be safe to let the cars drive too fast. Engine check is run by Briggs and Stratton and is just a check to make sure the engine is functional and stock. (aka not tampered with). Comparatively, this was a short day. We were making last minute adjustments to the car to make sure it was rules compliant for tech inspection and I spent some time networking with other schools parked in the paddock next to us. This would prove to be very useful in the following days.

Day 2 (Tech Inspection):

The Baja SAE rulebook is essentially the Bible of the competition. It outlines the rules that include but are not limited to: competition operating procedures, vehicle design requirements, vehicle documentation requirements, driver safety rules, tests to prove weld safety, and best practices. This 100+ page document dictates the design flow for the year and is the sole document that every car is inspected against to make sure it is rules compliant. As you’d imagine, examining each and every detail of every car takes a while.

Our car ended up being about 80% rules compliant. A handful of the changes could be made quickly with one larger violation being the issue. Issues included:

  • Spacing between front impact member and paneling was not 3 inches
  • Bolts used to secure the seat were not of the proper grade
  • Transponder was not mounted properly
  • Splash shield was partly leaking
  • Fire extinguisher was missing the safety pin
  • Headrest was not mounted properly
  • Gussets were missing for driver protection

All but the gussets were an easy fix. In their rush to pack the box truck and make it out of NYC, the manufacturing team disregarded to pack extra material for members. On a Baja car, steel, of two thicknesses, is used to construct the frame: primary member material, and secondary member material where primary member is thicker. In a stroke of dumb luck, a friend I had made the previous day at George Washington University was kind enough to give us their leftover primary member material, something that’s quite precious. If their frame broke during the endurance race on day 4 they now wouldn’t have any more primary member material to repair their car. In a stroke of even dumber luck, the tube was bent at the exact radius needed for our gussets.

Gussets are just members at the top of the frame that serve as protection for the drive in the event of a roll. If you compare the two images below, you’ll see the car with and without said gussets.

Without Gussets. If the car were to roll the driver’s head would smash into the ground.
With Gussets. Look for the unpainted steel tube at the top of the car.

We also made some friends with the University of Central Florida. If one of you UCF folk ever stumble upon my website we love you <3.

Given our long list of violations, we unfortunately did not pass tech in one go, but very very few teams actually do. We would have to make our repairs and go in for another round of tech inspection the next day.

Day 3 (Dynamic Events and Brakes Check):

With the changes made the night before, the team cleared tech inspection in the morning of Day 3 and started preparing for the dynamic events. The dynamic events are a set of challenges all cars can attempt. The car was now cleared from a design aspect, but it now had to pass brakes check to make sure the car was safe to drive. Brakes check checks the cars ability to lock all four wheels. Before passing brakes, the car must be pushed by team members between the events.

The car drives at full speed down a straight and must stop the car by locking all four wheels within the area designated by 4 orange cones. 4 Judges each monitor a wheel and give the signal that the wheel successfully locked by raising a green flag. Once the car passes brakes, it is then cleared to drive between locations. It took a bit of fiddling of the brake bias but we managed to pass within 2 tries, a record for our team as we’ve had brakes issues in previous years.

Each event has its own scoring system and is contributed to the total score at the end of the overall event. Dynamic events this year included acceleration, suspension, maneuverability, and sled pull. The unique challenge of the dynamic events is that the car needs to be set up differently for each event. Those familiar with vehicle dynamics know that running a softer or stiffer suspension setup comes with their own set of pros and cons.

The acceleration has you drive the car down a straight as fast as you car. The time you score here determines the starting order of the grid for the endurance race. This is to ensure there aren’t any slower cars in front of you that might cause a pile up. We ran a fairly neutral setup, allowing the car to feel more balanced.

Acceleration event
Acceleration event

The suspension event tests your cars ability to drive over obstacles, land jumps, and survive drops. The difficulty of the obstacles increased as you went through the course. As this was an area our car lacked testing data in, we chose to play it safe and hit the first 4-5 obstacles; this let us score some points but also not damage the car.

Maneuverability is a time attack through a twisty course outlines by orange cones. Testing the cars turning radius, this course was a challenge to some cars with a longer wheelbase. Our team had a great run, but we unfortunately hit some cones on the course which resulted in a 10 second penalty and dropped us in the standings.

Maneuverability event

The sled pull consists of hooking up cars to a sled of unknown weight and then measuring the distance the sled traveled. Cars running AWD were at an obvious advantage and the results reflected this. Our car wasn’t designed around the sled pull event, so we only were able to pull the sled a couple of inches. With the dynamic events in the bag, we packed up and prepared for the next day: the 4 hour endurance race.

Day 4 (Endurance Race):

Day 4 was when our team saw our highest highs and our lowest lows. There was a lot that went right, but also a lot that went wrong, and we walked away with a wealth of new information and a newfound passion for the competition.

The endurance race is held over 4 hours. A dirt bike track is converted by adding mud, obstacles, and turns into a track suitable for the cars to drive on. If there is a violation of the rules, a black flag will be waved signaling the car to pull off at the nearest exit point to make the necessary changes. The unique thing of endurance racing is that, even if the car is black flagged, so long as the necessary changes are made, it can race again within the allotted time. Each car is allowed up to a maximum of 3 black flags before the car is permanently removed from the race.

As we lined up for the start of the race, our brakes suddenly failed on us. We were unable to lock the back wheels and this resulted in us getting our first black flag of the session. This wasn’t a very optimistic start to the race, as the brakes were working the day before. About 40 minutes of trouble shooting later, it was discovered that the CVT was not disengaging the driven pulley properly when the driver lets off the gas. This resulted in the engine continuing to drive the axles while the brakes were applied and consequently burnt through the brake pads quite a bit. Through some miracle I was able to source the exact CVT primary pulley our team was using from the ETS team (we love you ETS) and had our car ready to go again.

We’d spent the start of the race in the pits making repairs so we were eager to get on the track, but within a few minutes we were black flagged once again, this time for electronics failure. The brake light failed to turn on when the driver applied the brakes. The circuit was grounded to the engine cover by a bolt that secured the wire in place, however, it was originally electrically connected only through the threads as there was paint on the engine cover. Once dirt got lodged inside the threads of the engine cover, it no longer conducted current properly. It was an easy fix (grinding down the paint on cover with an angle grinder) but one that still cost us time and a black flag.

After all this, however, we were able to put in a good 10-12 laps. Our driver Jeffrey was quick in the car and made some impressive overtakes. Our pace was matching those of teams in the top half of the midfield. It was my third year on the team, second year acting as captain and this was the first competition we had been to. After all the years of working without fruits of labor, I had felt burnt out and felt like I was working without a sense of direction. But when I saw our car coming around the corner and driving amongst the other schools, my heart skipped a beat. I had been working on media duty of the competition for our team, documenting the whole experience, but when I saw our car actually racing that first lap, my hands were shaking so much I couldn’t take any photos.

Our third and final black flag came when Jeffrey had an unlucky roll in a portion of the track we couldn’t see. He wasn’t sure what happened as the car felt very stable up until that point, and it was a rather unceremonious end to our teams first competition in 3 years. I don’t think any of us were too disappointed. The aura around the team was different after that day.

The trip was long, tiring, expensive, hot, invigorating, energizing, inspiring, and heartbreaking all at once. We learned a lot about how to prepare and operate at competition, grew closer together as a team, and reignited the love for Baja, something that had been lost since the old guard graduated. The seniors were the last remaining members that say Baja in its prime, and the new generation finally understood what it meant to us and why we devoted so much time to a club. When I was captain, one of my biggest challenges was getting people fully engaged, and it was a challenge I reckoned with both years I was leading the team.

On the ride back home, the phrase I heard most was “I get it, I finally get it now”. Even when everyone should have been resting and sleeping, the next generation of leaders were already at work making plans for the upcoming year and discussing new ideas to try out. It’s safe to say the team is in good hands and I have nothing but high expectations. I plan on supporting the team in the coming years as an advisor and attend next years competition as a guest so I can see everything they achieve.