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

SAE.SJSU@GMAIL.COM

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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