An Spartan Racing newsletter for Sponsors, Faculty, Professionals, and Students
Volume 4 Issue 4
Writers and Editors: Ross Fraser, Manuel Mangrobang, Dustin Decker, Robby Sampson, Natalia Locicerco,
Moy Barajas, Elise Elliott
Ok there is no racing but is it estimated
that this holiday season food banks will
see a 15-20% increase in
demand from last year. For
many San Jose families it may
be a race to their next meal.
Spartan Racing is calling on our
fellow SJSU Students and San
Jose businesses to help. Please
bring your non perishable food
donations to Engineering room
114b. We will be accepting donations until December
15th when we will donate it to our local Second Harvest
Food Bank. Thank you and Happy Holidays.
On the 18th of this month Gunn High school came to SJSU
for a tour of some the Engineering Organizations and Labs.
Spartan Racing by far was the biggest hit! President Dustin
Decker, Vice President Natallia LoCicero, and Formula
Electric Manager Manuel Mangrobang gave the students a
brief description of the team, each vehicle, and its
competition. We were pleased to see that our guests were
eager to get their hands on the vehicles as well as ask
questions. Student’s lifted the Baja vehicle and the Formula
team was asked numerous questions regarding engineering
and team organization. Last year’s Hybrid vehicle taught
them a little about battery power and how challenging it is to
“egress” or jump out of a formula vehicle in less than 5
seconds as required in competition. The most memorable
part of the visit was starting up the Formula vehicle, revving the engine and seeing their eyes light
up. We know that students like these will likely be the future of Spartan Racing and we are glad to
excite their interest early.
Upcoming Events: FINALS Winter Break
November 2011
This month several members of Spartan Racing were invited to a dinner with the
International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE). We met Dave Mason, from
INCOSE at last year’s SVEC event. Ever since we have been participating in events
with INCOSE such as the Young Minds at Work Day at Lockheed. At the annual
INCOSE dinner we enjoyed the meal and good company of engineers who have been
involved with space and systems engineering. The guest speaker of the night was Mr.
Minoru Araki, who spoke about the history of technology and where technology is
headed. After a lively discussion with Mr. Araki about the future of manufacturing in
the United States, we had the opportunity to make connections with others from the
Industry such as BAE and Lockheed Martin.
The purpose of attending this event was to help make connections between our student
chapter and the INCOSE student chapter. One of the challenges of the Spartan Racing
program is organization and management. Each season we elect new members to be
our team leads and officers and while this provides a good learning experience for all,
the learning curve can be a drag on early season progress. We hope INCOSE can help
set up a system that will allow our projects to make a smooth transition from year to
year. This will allow more time for our teams to focus on the engineering aspects of
the vehicle projects rather than worry about the structure of our team management.
After Dustin Decker and Natallia LoCicero gave a presentation at the dinner, many of
the INCOSE members were interested in helping us. The evening was quite a
success.
This month we took SR-3 to collect some data and
give team members the opportunity to feel the level of
performance our cars are capable of. We reserved the park
and ride lot and built a tight autocross track to keep the
speeds low. Even though SR-3 rolled out with a throttle
limited to 30%, last year’s builders were still quite nervous
for catastrophe. There were a few trackside repairs but
didn’t hinder our day.
The day was an amazing experience for everyone that got to
drive and we were surprised to see that many of the drivers
were fairly fast. It’s important that team members get to
drive the car to physically experience the power of our
accomplishments.
For the month of November our Baja team only met up a few times and not always to
work on the Baja. The first weekend of the month we spent in the shop bending tubes
for the frame. We were also excited to receive our locking differential in the mail and
Ricardo Delgado has been working on CADing is so we can make our gearbox to fit
it. During the second week of November some of the members of the Baja team and a
couple from last year’s used some November birthdays as an excuse to go to the hills
and drive through some mud, keeping to the true Baja spirit. We will continue working
on our gearbox design while notching and bending more tubes for our frame. The
frame will take a while and we plan on focusing more on the project after finals, during
winter break.
The Spartan Racing Formula Team has made major strides in their
designs during the last month. We are now starting the transition into
manufacturing, which is great morale booster for all involved since it
proves progress is being made.
All of our chassis tubing arrived right on time thanks to a generous
donation from Inland Metal Industries. Once we finish getting the
tubing notched and prepared, the arduous task of frame manufacturing
can finally begin.
The Powertrain Team received perhaps the
most important component of their system
this month, a 600cc Honda F4i engine, that
happens to have a brand new dry sump oil
system that we are very excited about. This
engine will be used to test and verify the
various intake and exhaust designs. Additionally, the cooling team
has been sifting through all the data collected at
the last autocross and driver day, and have
nearly finalized their designs. The Final Drive
Team has been hard at work improving last
year’s designs and better understanding the new
Honda clutch-pack differential that will be used
in this year’s car.
The Suspension Team is transitioning toward manufacturing and has
already lined up machine shops in the area to manufacture many their
parts. If everything goes smoothly they should have the majority of
them machined and ready for assembly by the end of the year.
The Composites Team is staying busy as well with improving sidepod
and nosecone designs, and various shear panel designs that will
undergo testing in the coming weeks.
The next month we expect to make major strides towards the first significant milestone of the year,
a complete rolling chassis which is officially due on January 20th.
On the12th the team’s very first outing with Nike (last year’s Hybrid Vehicle) commenced. It
was a day of both successes and failures. We learned valuable lessons on what we should do to
before, during, and after driving Nike. With us were two Spartan Daily members, Cynthia Ly
and Jasper Rubenstein, to document our first outing. Driving the cars were Manuel
Mangrobang, Huy Vu, Ross Taylor, and Sanjil Karki. Organization for the day moved quickly
and only a handful of the Electric Team members could make it on such short notice, which
was a shame.
Manuel drove first, but found out he could not actuate the shifter properly because of the small
cockpit and extra bulk of the racing suit. Sanjil went next with better results, and after a
couple minutes of putting around slowly, Huy went for a go. Huy did three quick spirited laps
around the parking before spinning out. This was when problems arose. In the midst of
excitement of finally being able to drive Nike, proper preparations were neglected. We failed
to properly charge the battery which powers the all-important fuel pump. After Huy’s spin out,
Ross tried to get the car to run again, with a short-lived run at the last moment before the car
finally died out. After a short meeting, it was decided to go back to the shop to call it a day.
See the Spartan Daily article at
http://spartandaily.com/60630/spartan-racing-electric-team-profile
Thanks you to former Team member Viet Le who got us a
meeting with Ryan Biffard, Director of Motor Technology
at Zero Motorcycle. We also spoke with, and recruited,
Eland Eggers, an intern at Zero Motorcycle. Eland is an
SJSU student who is an Electrical Engineer. He is working
with his bosses to acquire motors, motor controllers, batteries, and other electrical
components. Many of our design decisions may go on hold until we see how this pans out.
Messages from our SPARTAN RACING Alumni:
-communication -researching -problem solving -organization
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