doubtful that SAE committee will alloy rotary engines. A highly tuned 610cc engine will still be lighter and produce more HP then a single rotor engine.



In my opinion the ultimate setup would be a 500cc 4 cylinder 4 stroke honda motor from a japanese race bike made to run aircooled, E85. CVT. No diff. Monoshock concept. Full carbon monoquoqe, Al MMC brake rotors. No aero,



If you can get that under 350 lbs and under 15,000 USD you will place 1 number for sure provided you don't break anything.

 

and provided you have a good enough driver to drive it.



- Hand

 

driving skill really doens't have much to do with it. If you finish the 20 min endurance race you are automatically top 33% of all compeititors. If you did well in the design part you and finsiehd all dynamic events and the enduro you are most likely going to finsih top 15.



We finsihed 34th out of 140, and we only ran in one dynamics event last year after the engine blew, and the master cylinder wouldn't release.



Driver skill plays a small part in this competition.



Too bad their endurance race is 20 mins. Personally i think endrurance race means 6 hours plus, but i guess then no one would finish. Kinda sad that all that work and more then 50% of the cars cant even run for 20 mins.

 

Wow, I almost totally disagree with you.

I think you could totally blow off all the design judging and presentations and just drive the pants off the car and win the whole show. The difference between the top 10-15 teams, in terms of driving, and everyone else is huge. No amount of design points will make up for poor driving, imo.

 

I personally believe if you can finish all the driving events you are golden. Most teams break their cars after 1 or two driving events. If you finish the enduro you are sitting pretty.

 

Simply finishing them will not get you very far. Sure finishing the enduro pretty much guarantees you top 1/3, but beyond that the majority of the points are won in dynamic events.

Last year Queens only scored 41 points out of a possible 150 for the autocross. Your fastest driver was 10 seconds slower than the top 5 finishers. Where do you plan to make up those 160 points?

If you look at the way the points are awarded per event, it should be clear that the dynamic events are where all the points are won. I don't think there has ever been an overall winner that wasn't top 5 in the auto-x and the enduro.

Your strategy is hinged on the failure of other teams, and will probably never get you above 20th.

Good luck

 

i guess it depends on what your goals are, Queen's has been lacking in the past several years in reliability. We build our car while we drive down to detroit almost, zero test time. Our goals are place top 10, and number 1 in canada.

 

that used to be the case when teams like only cornell and UTA were running the competition.



more new schools are joining, and the competition is getting much more intense. teams can no longer rely on winning the dynamic events to win.



the winners are now being decided by design points and presentation. in the next 5-10 years, i'm sure the top 10 teams will be decided by things like cost and fuel economy.



this year, we too an approach to win design, lower cost, win presentation, and win all dynamic events. i dont think anything short of those goals will win the competition.

 

Well, you definitely have to get the reliability there first. We're still struggling with it.

I agree with the Aggie, in 10 years the overall winner will probably have to win pretty much every event.