uOttawa Supermileage

Super Mileage in Montreal

evierich — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 14:17:36 +0000

We just got back from an engineering conference in Montreal, this was a great way to show off the car and the work that we’ve done.

Disassembly

evierich — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 16:01:52 +0000

Now that plans have been made for improving the design of the car and parts have been designed, it was time to take the car down to the bare carbon fibre. This however proved to be more difficult than previously anticipated and led to many surprises along the way. Here are some of the things we encountered as we took everything apart.

The exhaust pipe could not take the heat of the engine and melted the braising holding it together, leading to a major failure.
The engine put out much more heat than expected, which melted many of the wires.
Removal of the wide-ban O2 sensor showed significant carbon build up, indicating the engine was running very rich.
When removing the oil system we noticed a very black oil and a large amount of engine sludge, the cause of this is still unknown however a broken piston ring is suspected.

Now that the car has been disassembled the next step is to analyze the results that we found and begin the necessary body modifications to achieve a tighter turning radius and to improve aerodynamics.

Winter Schedule

evierich — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 21:37:04 +0000

FunFest

evierich — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 15:02:19 +0000

We spent the day on booth street at the National Science and Technology FunFest, showing off our car to the public. It was a big hit and drew large crowds the whole day. Despite the high winds which almost took the cover off the car we managed to keep it together in one piece and got a chance to show everyone how we made our car. We also got a chance to explain what we think the future has in store for the modern automobile, as well as talk to some very interesting people and hear there views on the matter. Here are a few photos from the day:

Track Test

Lihang — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 02:42:49 +0000

We were able to get the vehicle onto the track last week at Capital City Speedway and tuned.

Here are some media files from the testing courtesy of David from the Gazette:

Pat almost getting run over:

Driver’s Hatch Fabrication

Lihang — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 21:03:03 +0000

Here are some pictures from fabricating the driver’s hatch

Start by sanding male mold

Imperfections highlighted. Nip/tuck?

Body Filler…

Painted black to show imperfections

More sanding…

Painting with high fill primer

After fiberglass female mold is completed. There appears to be some stickage

Waxing female mold

Cutting carbon fabric

Wetting out carbon fabric

Lay up

Vacuum Bagging

Hatch seperated from mold and on vehicle to check for fit

Acrylic windows cut out

Engine pictures

Lihang — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 20:38:37 +0000

Here are some pictures from assembling the engine:

Piston, courtesy of Synergy Models & Prototypes

Valve

Piston Rings, ready to be annealed

Annealing

Annealed

Machining rings to final OD

Checking valves for leak after grinding

Heat treating valve stems

Hardened valves on engine head

Testing the vehicle at 1AM in the halls…

Lihang — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 20:22:00 +0000

These were taken from about 2 months back when we were testing the rolling chasis without the engine.

Pat lying comfortably

Driver’s view

Rolling down the hall

Lucky #13

Lihang — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 22:11:22 +0000

Hi everyone,

Just got back from the 2010 SAE Supermileage competition in beautiful Marshall, MI. It was our first time at the competition, and we took 2nd place out of 20 something teams on our only completed run with 1496mpg. A whole bunch of unlucky events occuring a week before we left for the competition delayed our testing until 2AM of the day we left for competition. Including:

Two fried ECUs
broken testing laptop
Missed package deliveries for the new fuel pump and ECU
Two fried ignition coils

We didn’t have time to tune the engine because the ECU didn’t come in until the night before we left, and we were only running the engine on 1 spark plug because we only had 1 coil left.

Our luck seemed to continue at the competition where we popped a tube on the last lap which took us 45 min to repair, and a fuel leak which we measured to be around ~5.5g (we used a total of 17g of fuel for the run) while running the pump for 35 seconds.

Despite all these unfortunate events, our team still persisted and took home the 2nd place trophy. Everybody at the competition was awesome, special thanks to ETS, Ryerson, Laval, Binghampton, SDSMT, and NYU-Poly for lending us their parts and tools! Even though we were competitors, they were still very eager to lend a helping hand.

Within the next week or two, we will tune the engine, fix the fuel leak, and do a few trials at the local race track to see what numbers we can expect for next year’s competition. Stay tuned!