2010 Michigan FSAE Competition

[Lane Gniewek]

Hey guys,

Luther did a good job explaining how today went. Tech got a little hairy with the sub strap rule (new to this year) because no one else runs our style of seat belt. The team (especially the freshmen runners) did a fantastic job of talking to other teams and locating the parts we needed to pass tech. Good work all.

Keep checking our Twitter at twitter.com/fsae

[Mike Braddock]

It sounds like everything's going well. Keep up the good work. And good luck today with business and design!

[tom_steger]

good job on dropping the weight of the car ...your performance should improve versus last year
that weight may have beaten the very first UFSAE car (1991)...
back in the stone age.. it was somewhere between 410 and 420 lbs at the competition

[Dan Domikaitis]

Nice on the weight and fantastic on design semis! Keep up the momentum!

[Marcus Shen]

+1 on Design Semis!!! Make me proud guys and gals!

[Luther Lloyd III]

Our car weighed in at a stunningly low 406 lbs today. Design semi-finals seemed to go pretty well, I know that I didn't stop talking about suspension design for the entire time we were there. We feel that out of the 14 teams there we will probably be on the edge of barely getting into the design finals if we make it. We had the knowledge but, it felt as though the judges wanted more flashy numbers and models of stuff, which we didn't do. Also, shout out to Jeff Koch, who's diff was commonly asked about and seemed to really catch everyone's attention.

[jchunt123]

I'm really blown away by the weight. That's impressive stuff.

Go get 'em today.

[Lane Gniewek]

Yesterday went extremely well. We were the first team to past all three parts of tech inspection. I think we were about an hour ahead of the next team. Good work to the entire team for working together to get through tech. Also, our new sub straps arrived at the hotel yesterday so we are fully tech-legal for dynamic events today and tomorrow.

Everyone at competition is impressed with our weight. I think the most puzzling part about it is that there are a lot of teams our weight that look really spindly and noodly, but somehow our car appears stiff, strong, rock solid. We get looks of disbelief everywhere we go when they see the weight. A few design judges went around during design semis and compiled a "specific weight" list - basically they normalize your weight based on wheel size, engine selection, etc... our car came in 3rd place out of the 14 schools in semis. All judges were impressed with the weight. Great job guys.

Kathy and I presented the business case yesterday. I definitely could have been better prepared - even a day more would have helped. I appeared nervous at the start but I soon found my rhythm. Kathy did a wonderful job. I think one area we improved on was our ability to answer questions. The judges asked several difficult questions and we responded very well.

Design judging also went very well. For the first time that I know, we got a specific drivetrain judge during the first round of design. I did a great job of talking with him and answering his questions. He was impressed with our diff, and especially impressed with the amount of work that we put into gearing selection. When he was asking about track tuning I brought out the speed spreadsheet from the Drivetrain Master Sheet, and he definitely gave me a big thumbs up for that. We need a tractive effort graph for next year - several drivetrain guys asked me for that. Luther said he felt really good after talking with the suspension guys.

I don't know how to handle Steve Fox - he knows enough about our car that he didnt even judge us (during both prelims and semis). As we were wrapping up prelims, he came over and asked if we were going to semis ("uh... Please?") He admitted after semis were over that he was just yanking our chain with that question - he knew that we were going to semis without asking our queue judges. He likes us, but more importantly, he respects us.

At design semis Luther did a great job talking suspension. We got railed by Claude again. Meh. Fred and Eddy did a great job discussing powertrain. A cooling judge told Eddy afterwards that his understanding of cooling was top tier and better than most teams. Ergo was a fairly weak point for us - we need to stiffen up our pedals, fix the slop in the steering wheel, and get better shifters/clutch. Drivetrain went extremely well. I wasn't asked a question that I didn't have a good answer to. As mentioned earlier the Kochler got a lot of love - I kept my finger on the exploded view in my design binder because EVERYONE wanted to see how it works. Brakes got zero love - I had a ton of info on everything we did in designing brakes and we didn't get a single question the entire time. Meh.

Eddy has several sheets of notes. He listened to each judge and wrote down their questions and comments. After each person was done presenting Eddy would interrogate him and write down things we need to prepare better for and things that the judges liked. We need to type that out and post it on here.

Guess I've rambled a bit. Things are going really well and I felt like sharing some specifics. Hope to have some more updates for you guys this evening. Keep checking the Twitter! It's much easier to update than email or the forums and we are posting pictures there as well.

[jchunt123]

Hi everyone,

I got a text from Lane earlier saying that they ran a 5.5 in skidpad and a 4.2 in accel. I'm sure they'll elaborate later but I figured I'd share with everyone else since I was dying to know all day.


John

[Dan Domikaitis]

Twitter says 4th in design! Awesome guys, finish strong tomorrow! Make sure to scrub in those tires before the race!