I recently moved to UCF in Orlando. One of the things that immediately caught my eye was the SAE Formula team. I went to meet the team yesterday and was very exited to see previous year's projects. I don't have much experience other than screwing up my car so I wonder if there are members that are or were part of their school's SAE team and what was their experience.

 

My older brother was on the VT team here in Virginia and I know it was very demanding and rewarding. Spent the first year as a junior learning from the seniors who do all the designing and actual car building. Then was crazy busy and dedicated to the team his senior year as they did the same. Picked/was assigned a specific part of the car to engineer in CAD and have fabbed up. Obviously things break and go wrong so you multitask and work where you're needed.

Despite all the hectic development and problem solving, I can say it was worth it to each member of the team as they saw everything come to fruition when they raced their car at Michigan International Speedway. I got to watch them, as well as teams from all over the world, compete with their baby.

 

Nice, yesterday when I went there were some members working on the desing of suspension components. Apparently all the work has been assigned already and I'll have to clean up and do little shores to get them to share some knowledge. However, there will be some workshops on welding and other machines.

 

One of my biggest regrets from college is not spending as much time as I could have with the FSAE team. DO IT!

 

If I were in engineering instead of biochem here, I would definitely be on the FSAE team. Get involved, you should end up loving it.

If for no other reason, join up for a chance to drive a purpose-built racecar with nasty handling!

 

one of my biggest regrets was quitting the FSAE team because I didn't think I had time.

you should do it but be prepared to say good bye to all your free time, including holidays.

 

The rule around here is that those that put in the work get rewarded by trying out the cart. So I may get a chance do drive it if I get involved enough

Hmmm...

 

Virgin crew thread. lol

 

My school didn't start an FSAE team until the year after I graduated, so I participated in the SAE Clean Snowmobile challenge instead. It was a bit less labor intensive since we started with a mass-produced sled, but it was a lot of fun just the same. I'm still mad they didn't have FSAE at my school though.

 

So much work. So awesome. Get used to not having a social life or sleeping. I still dont know what to do with myself anymore and I forget how to have a normal social life after 2 years of doing it.

I would say, FSAE Pornz thread, GO. But our car is ugly, and our picture quality sucks. And all the pretty pictures of the **** I machined got saved on a corrupted memory card so they all look weird as ****.

 

I was on UAH's FSAE team. We went to competition my first year in '04, and the team has been a directionless charlie foxtrot ever since.

I was actually engine team lead for a period in '05 when the team leader walked into a meeting one afternoon and told us he had scored two Buell XB12R motors and that he wanted us to take the front cylinder off and make it work. Everything went to crap after that. The fact that we had absolutely no faculty help, and our staff adviser got so fed up with our shenanigans that he started actively hindering our progress certainly didn't help.

 

Wait the staff adviser isnt supposed to actively hinder your progress?

 

Off hand, I'd say that Auburn's, UTA's and Missouri-Rolla's staff advisors likely go to bat FOR them, not against them.

Ours actually petitioned the department chair to prevent us going to competition.

 

I thought ours occasionally cutting out nuts off in the purchasing department but otherwise going out of his way to get us money and help was bad. Of course he took all the credit.

I bet UMD and Mich State also fall into the staff advisers going to bat.

 

I was involved with FSAE from 1989 -2004 at UTA (University of Texas at Arlington). UTA has been one of the most dominant schools since the beginning of the competition. Between 1981 and 1996 UTA had won more than half of the competitions. Definitely a life changing experience for me. Heck two of my close team mates ended up working in Formula 1. I guess I was an underachiever.

Bob

 

Wow we underachieved. 2/5th of the team my senior year work at honda now, 1/5th at cummins, and the other 2 of us are masters students with me doing steel mill design.