We participate in judging as well as helping some teams out. The most recent bit of help we extended was lending the use of our autoclave to cure a tub.

Yeah, finding vCG can be tricky!!

 

You could be right. I do not know anything about FSAE except I hope my kid (future engineer) does it next year as a club mostly populated by engineers. I only talked to the poor teams or those guys had the nicest people in them who did not have all puffed out chests and were willing to talk. The RPI team did have very nice milled uprights and what appeared to be an autoclaced tub and cool shock travel sensors iirc. But there were numerous cars with home made welds you would not be very proud of and pieced together uprights implying no money for parts or skilled labor. There was even a very nice team I talked to with a very compromised design with very wonky CV joint paths because the package could only be so big and that was the free engine they got. If they had money they would have a more traditional engine/drivetrain layout. There seemed to be overall pretty weakly funded teams. I think the entry fee for the West FSAE competition was $2000 and I think some of the clubs are funded as clubs by the school and only get a few thousand per year in funding from the school. I saw nothing that would imply a 250,000 dollar team. Just about everyone had trailers for equipment and supplies. I did see one team working out of the shipping crate the FSAE cars are shipped in to these events. I'm pretty sure they had no money. Perhaps it was a sign of "this" economy.

 

Its very tough to read the budgets of some of these teams by only looking at one area of their program. Teams with shipping crates usually are from out of the country. There are up to five continents represented at each competition. The teams that make the travel are often the ones to look out for because it takes some serious dedication to have a car ready for international competition. I also know that most of the budget tends to be in the hands of the students. If you need more money you go out and find some more sponsorship money. The even better part is that you don't have to have $250k to compete and win. Teams often do so with much less. In the automotive industry everyone knows of FSAE and a large portion of the engineers have come out of the program. For those that didn't race or autox beforehand often get addicted because of it. I did.

 

Funny you mention RPI, i'm an RPI fsae alum. We've had may different uprights. We had ones with calipers built in as one piece, we had sheet metal ones (my fav), and standard billet ones. RPI's program is not as good as it used to be, lack of participation and moreso lack of funds, but they are coming back and doing a great job with what they have.

 

+1 to that!
LOL... it's still better than when I was in it, back in '93...

 

I'm wearing an RPI Engineer's T-shirt right now! Go Engineers!

 

Bring back the Bullet!

 

Haha. My friend bought the 2005 car, it needs some work still, but I think it was the best car RPI ever built. I just happened to be the main driver for that car, and ran the teams driver training. If a certain someone listened to me when i said to double check fuel level, we probably could have placed even higher, but ran out of gas on my autox run and ruined the session for me. But I think we placed 15th or better that year, 140 team.

Another benefit, from my experience anyways, of FSAE is you make some great frendships. The best friends from my college years are 99% FSAE teammates.

Go Enginerds!

 

Heh my school was similar back when I was attending ('98-'01, Northern Illinois.) A friend of mine and I got sick of all the hillbilly Formula Baja crap and got an FSAE team started. At our highest count I think we had ~10 students, most engineering, 2 from marketing. We managed to land a couple sponsors and brought in a few thousand (maybe 4-5) in cash and checks. Bought steel, worked out a chassis design... and were promptly shut down by the school. "We already have an engineering team that builds cars. If you want to build a car go join the Baja team. We want to be known as a robotics school - no more cars." And barred us from "taking up space" in the student project room. That was my introduction into real-world politics. We tried working around it - including going at it alone, or signing up via the local community college. Eventually most of the students got sick of the fight with the faculty and the team fell apart. It's one of the reasons I switched majors (OUT of the college of engineering) - I couldn't handle a staff that refused to support it's students.

A few years ago, they got another FSAE team going. The last couple years they've done well. Up until last year or so, they were using the logo I designed 3 of their key sponsors are sponsors that MY team set up!

Frustrating... but I guess the students eventually won in the end! I got in touch with the team captain a year ago, introduced myself, offered up any services I could help with (driving coaching, marketing help, internet advertising, etc.) they basically told me, in a very curt, "Thanks but no thanks." Guess maybe they're turning into one of those "puffed chest" teams.