Lipscomb's dune buggy zooms into contention after only two years competition in Baja SAE

Janel Shoun | 05/15/2008

In only its second year of competition, Lipscomb University’s engineering students came in 34^th out of 93 teams entered in the 2008 Baja SAE Competition, an off-road vehicle endurance race held annually by the Society of Automotive Engineers.

A core group of nine engineering students spent the past year updating and improving the Lipscomb University vehicle constructed for the first time by students last year. On May 1-3 they set off for Tennessee Tech University in Cookeville to compete in this year’s competition.

The team came in 34^th overall, after placing first in the sled pull race and ninth in the land maneuverability race, two of nine separate competitions that make-up the Baha SAE, a competition challenging students nationwide to design and build an off-road vehicle that can survive the severe punishment of a rough terrain and water track.

Click here to see overall results of the Baja SAE 2008.

Students who participated on this year’s Baha SAE team were:

Mark McMahan

Aaron Jacquez

Casey Burkhart

Greg Lesley

Kelsey Sowder

J.D. Morris

Sam Porter

Jordan Wilson

Britt Bartley
Kyle Collins

Teams from Virginia Tech to Georgia Tech, from Rochester Institute to Florida State, come out to motor in the mud, but the brutal off-road course knocks even big-name universities off-track. Only 58 of the 93 teams made it to the 100-mile endurance race after two days of stringent tech inspections and races to test water maneuverability, land maneuverability, strength and acceleration.

Sadly, Lipscomb’s dune buggy fell prey to the endurance course as well, even after two on-site repairs in the pits. The buggy finally broke a tire rod late in the race and had to be scratched.

Even so, the team’s performance was impressive, said Fort Gwinn, professor of mechanical engineering who mentored the student team over the past year. “The great thing is these guys got some tremendous experience and they will be a contender next year,” Gwinn said. Especially since the team was made up of several underclassmen as well as the three graduating seniors.

“They have already fixed the tire rod, got it running again and are talking about ways to improve the vehicle for next year,” he said.

Toiling away in the garage of the College of Pharmacy’s Granny White Pike offices, the engineering students managed to shave 140 pounds of weight off last year’s design and the goal for next year is to remove another 50 pounds, Gwinn said.

Thanks to the hard work of last year’s pioneering students, the 2008 team had all the equipment they needed and a basic design to start from. Last year’s group of nine seniors had to raise $20,000 to purchase all the materials, tools and equipment needed to build the car literally from scratch.

This year, the students only had to raise $10,000 in cash and in-kind donations to revamp the dune buggy. Major sponsors were Mary Ann Brown CPA, Bridgestone Firestone Tire LLC, Loftis Steel, Aerospace Testing Alliance and PDQ Disposal. In addition, Norris “TJ” Tennent, of Bridgestone Firestone, has served as a technical advisor to the group for the past two years.

“Last year at the competition, the pre-race tech inspection turned up many problems that we needed to fix, but this year there was only one problem to fix, and it was the same problem a lot of the teams had because of a change in the criteria this year,” Gwinn said.

The Baja buggy project is impressive for an academic program that is only six years old. This May, Lipscomb graduated six engineering mechanics majors.

Beginning last fall, students were able to choose whether to major in engineering mechanics or mechanical engineering, two slightly different disciplines. In May 2009, the program expects to graduate 11 mechanical engineering majors along with one engineering mechanics major.

The Baja competition, and other hands-on projects such as building a biodiesel plant and infrastructure projects built in Central America, have reinforced Lipscomb’s move toward providing the mechanical engineering major, which emphasizes application of theory in specific mechanical areas.

Mini-Baja project takes engineering program to "The Show," March 14, 2007