Formula High School: Team Del-Tech

Team Del-Tech Left to right: Xao Yang, Rob DeLeers, Bart Amenson, Eric Simon, and Derek Blackman

Formula High School Project Brief Our goal for this project was to start a new program called Formula High School. All teams were given the same basic chassis design from Kurt Lemay and the body molds from Jim Woodsmall from Sugar Groves Custom Cars. All teams were also given a Briggs and Stratton v-twin engine. We were required to improve the basic Chassis design, or make changes to the it in order to meet our team’s needs. After the design stage was done we would build the car from scratch, put the car together, and at the end of the year all teams went to the Briggs and Stratton Motorplex at Road America to complete time trials on different track configurations for each car. Since we all started with the same body, chassis and engine the performance of our car came down to our individual designs.

September: Designing The Car During the beginning of the month of September all groups were required to map out the year of what they would do on the car and start the designing of the chassis, the front end, and how everything was going to mount on to the car. The picture to the right is the required chassis design each team started with. Our team had designed our back end and axle to come up higher on the chassis and we also boxed in our motor. We also designed a removable front end assembly so the vehicle can be easier to maneuver, the front end is also adjustable. To the right is a 3-D model of the chassis design.

October: Cutting Material and Assembling the Chassis During the month of October one half of our group was in the lab finishing the design of the car. The other half was in the shop starting to cut material and piecing together the basic chassis design starting from the floor up. The base of the chassis is made of 1¼” steel square tubing and the side supports are 1” diameter circular tubs. Building the chassis took the whole month to complete, and at the end of the month we were able to mount our motor. The pictures to the right are of the first and last stages of the manufacturing of our chassis.

November: Front End, Interior, Body, and Back End During the month of November our group cut the body, mocked up the interior, mocked up the front end and back end. During the month of November our group went to Fiberglass Solutions a local company to lay out our body. Once we got the body into our shop we immediately started trimming it to make it look good and finished the trimming by the end of November, but we would like to improve the body a little more. While part of our group was working on the body the other part was working on the interior. We had designed a seat that flips open for easy access and mocked it up in the car. Also during this month we mounted our gas tank, attached our axle and wheels and attached our sprocket. We also had finished our front axle and mocked up our steering. The pictures to the right show how far the car is as of the month of November.

December: Interior, Steering, and Brakes During the month of December our main goal was to get our seat in the car, finish the steering, and start the brakes. For our seat we got it cut out by New Tech Metals. We also decided to mount the seat by the use of rivets. By the end of the month we had the seat finished. We also wanted to finish our steering we had it mocked up last month, and by the end of the month of December we had the steering completely mounted and working correctly. Another main goal for the month of December was to start on our brakes. During this month we finished the designing stage of our brakes and mounted the back brake caliber. To the right are pictures of how far our chassis and steering got during the month of December.

January: Exhaust, Brakes, Wiring, Engine Problems During the month of January we finished our exhaust, started our wiring, and nearly completed our brakes, but near the end of the month we ran into a small engine problem. The whole month was mainly committed to the production of our exhaust. In the beginning of the month we were brainstorming as a group to develop the best sounding exhaust we could. We decided to go with a four inch tip on our exhaust, and by the end of the month we had the exhaust finished and mounted. Also during this month we had all the brake calipers mounted and the brake master cylinder, and brake peddle mounted. We had also started working on our wiring, but while we were extending our wires we forgot to unplug or battery so we blew our ignition coils and will have it fixed next month. To the right is one side of our front end assembly.

February: Engine, Wiring, Brake Lines, Body, Throttle During the month of February we were able to fix our engine problems, continue the wiring, run the brake lines, and mounted the body. After we replaced our ignition coils in our engine we continued with extending the wiring, and while doing this we also installed our electric fuel pump. Also during this month we ran our brake lines and we now have working brakes. We then mounted our body and installed our throttle peddle and ignition. By the end of this month our car was fully functional and to finish the month we tested the car for the first time. To the right are pictures of our engine and completed front end assembly.

Testing The Car

March: Sand Blasting, Painting, and Reassembly During the month of February we finished the mechanical aspects of our car. So in the beginning of the month of March we took our car apart leaving nothing left but the chassis. We then sent our chassis to get sand blasted. Once we got our chassis back we immediately started painting. We had decided to paint the chassis black. Once the chassis was dry we then needed to reassemble the whole car. We needed to re install the front end, bleed the brakes again align the steering mount the engine and the axle. We then needed to make sure everything worked properly. Thank fully nothing went wrong. By the end of the month our team started to work on the body. We scuffed the gloss coat with scuff pads to get it ready to paint. To the right is a picture of the chassis painted and the car reassembled.

April: Body, Stickers, and The Racing Day During the month of April we were putting the final touches on our car, and finishing our body. The main project for this month was to finish our body. We finished scuffing and filling the body in the first week, but now we needed to decide on a color. We narrowed it down to either silver or black and decided to go with silver. After we got our body back from painting we applied a black trim to the sides of the body, and cut out vinyl stickers of our sponsors logos. We finished our car with time to spare, and on April 28 th we traveled to Elkhart Lake to test our vehicles at Road America on the Briggs and Stratton Motorplex. The pictures to the right show the finished body.

The Finished Product

Racing Day Oval Track: Average: seconds Best: seconds (Rob DeLeers) Road Course: Average: seconds Best: seconds (Rob DeLeers) Mile Course: Average: seconds Best: seconds (Rob DeLeers)

Racing Day Pictures

May: Fixing Our Car and Making Improvements After the races we realized that because of the excess weight on our exhaust the exhaust pipes cracked, so we had to remake the exhaust. To cut down on the weight we installed an aluminum dirt bike exhaust. We also developed a steel chain guard to prevent our chain from falling off, which happened during the racing day. To the right is a picture of our new exhaust and chain guard.

Thank you to our Sponsors We couldn’t have done it without you!