Tuesday, April 15, 2008

It's over.

The Shell Eco-Marathon has come and gone and now we are stuck at school trying to catch up on all the work we missed. Overall it was a good experience for our team especially the younger sophomore members who have never been to a competition. The Cedarville Teams ended up placing 6th with Gold Lighting 3 (the red car) with 1,151.1 mpg and 7th with Slipstream (the blue car) with 1,056.3 mpg. We were the top combustion engine run cars without fuel injection. Which means...next year we are running with some fuel injection action. Our small school was able to beat out schools such as Rose Hulman, UCLA, LSU, Louisiana Tech University, and UC Berkeley. Here are some pictures from the last day of competition.

Wes





Team Picture

Evonne Showing Her Excitement for the Shell Eco

Nate and Dustin waiting at the Airport

Saturday, April 12, 2008

Eco Day 2

Day 2 was our first day of "racing" here at the Shell Eco-Marathon. The day started early (4am) for some of us on the team due to a live TV interview with the Dayton ABC/FOX and NBC stations. After that we prepped our cars for the track and then took the group pictures with all the cars and shell volunteers. From there things kinda when downhill a bit...Right as the Gold Lightning car was about to head out we couldn't find the connector for the headset so we flipped our bay upside down trying to find it. Eventually we just resorted to using cell phones w/headsets. Once that problem was solved I drove onto the track only to have the canopy blow open on me due to the extremely high winds we had here. Fortunately there was no damage but UNfortunatly it meant back to the shop...To fix that problem we made a stronger latching system to withstand the high winds. Now, just before you think nothing else could possibly go wrong, it did. As we are rolling out to the track we blow our back tire. *sigh* Needless to say we were a bit frustrated at that point. Never the less we fixed all our problems (for the most part) and we were still able to put 3 good runs on the board and allow Mary some practice time.

Wes

Me getting in GL3 before the tire blew.

Driving (finally)

Talking to Dr. Z about race afterwards

Brandon driving Slipstream 2

Mary pulling in after her run in Gold Lightning 3

Walking back after the last run of the day

Team Photo

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Eco-Marathon Day 1

Hello from sunny Southern California!
Day one of the Eco-Marathon has come and gone and both GL III and Slipstream II have passed through inspection. There were some minor delays on getting them through but all is well now. We have an early morning tomorrow due to a live interview via satellite with the Dayton ABC and FOX news channels taking place at 8:30 eastern time which is 5:30am our time... Hopefully we can pull some sweet action runs tomorrow and saturday. Here are some pics from today.

Wes


Team working on Gold Lightning III

Team getting interviewed on cars
Slipstream (Foreground) Gold Lightning (Back)

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

LA!

Dustin, Brandon, Witry and I left Cedarville today at 2 pm and flew to LA. We just got in and are at brandon's house currently. The rest of the team should be waking up right about now to start driving to Columbus and fly out to meet us tomorrow afternoon. Tomorrow is gonna be a fun day of prepping the cars like mad.

Wes

Saturday, April 5, 2008

Flow Meter

Since the cars are on their way to Cali and we are stuck here everyone decided to catch up on all the homework we've put off this past week. Everyone but me that is...I worked on the flow meter and trying to seal of the holes in the connecting pipes. Here are some pictures I took today with my new sweet action camera.

Wes


The 50cc

Nate working on the Flow Meter



Wednesday, April 2, 2008

A long time coming...

So here we are, April 2nd and the cars are actually being shipped to Cali today. To be honest I didn't think we were gonna make it. With things failing, taking way more time than they should, and us deciding to take an extra car things were looking very bleak for the Cedarville team. Thankfully we had a ton of help and guys (and girls) who stepped up and did what it took so we had finished cars to ship today. I personally have only gotten 8 hours of sleep since I woke up Saturday morning...Gotta love oh crap week. For those of you who don't know what oh crap week is, we have defined it as the week/two weeks before a competition when you truly realize how far you are behind and what needs to get done to pass inspection. Sorry for such a long break from updating. We all have just been crazy busy. Here are some pictures in hopes that you still might love us.

Wes

Mary on the mill

Miles and Dustin working on the 70cc

Team looking around the car

Team working on the car

Witry mounting front end of GL2

Witry still mounting...

Frank wiring "The Box"

Ryan with his 50cc

Wes mounting the front end of Slipstream

Checking seatbelt mounting and new button placement

Dr. Dustin listening to the 70cc's "heartbeat"

Fixing Slipstream's frame

5-Point Harness! (total overkill I know but rules are rules...)