Baja Buckeyes

Vintage Baja Videos

2009-12-08T00:57:00.004-05:00

We had an old 8mm film floating around the shop for a while and I finally got around to having it transferred. My best guess is that the videos are from the early 80s but I'm not too sure.

EDIT: According to one of the barrels in the film this competition happened in 1981.

The Baja SAE program has certainly come a long way!

-Andy

Thank you Starrett!

2009-11-30T21:53:00.006-05:00

The L.S. Starrett Company has generously provided the Baja SAE and Formula SAE teams at The Ohio State University with precision measurement tools. These are the highest quality tools the teams have ever had the chance to work with and are a welcome upgrade. Everyone here looks forward to using them.

For more information on the the L.S. Starrett Company and their products please visit their website.

Invitational Race Results

2009-11-02T09:46:00.003-05:00

On September 26th the team traveled to the Podium One motocross track in Charlestown, IN to participate in the second annual Midnight Mayhem race hosted by the University of Louisville. The Midnight Mayhem race is an unique event in that it's the only Baja SAE race that takes place at night. During the race the skies opened up turning the whole course into a giant mud hole. After navigating the dark and muddy terrain for three and half hours the OSU team secured a second place finish making this its second podium finish at this event.

A week later the team participated in the Dayton Invitational race held at the Transportation Research Center in East, Liberty Ohio. After a three hour race the team acquired another second place finish.

Midnight Mayhem results
Midnight Mayhem pictures

Dayton Invitational results

Website Changes

2009-11-01T18:38:00.000-05:00

We have made some changes to our website recently. We integrated our blog into our site so now you can get updated info about our team from one easy to find location. I plan on providing regular updates throughout the year so stay tuned!

-Andy

Name This Car

2008-05-29T15:02:00.001-04:00

By the way, the new car does not have a name yet. If anyone has any ideas for names, let us know. We need a name before we go to the race.

Help us name this car.

Testing Madness

2008-05-29T14:51:00.001-04:00

So the new car is fast, it handles, and it does not break. What more could we ask for. Here are some pictures of the car in action that we took when we went testing last saturday. We need to tweek the suspension a bit because it feels like we are driving a ford truck (that means that the shocks are way too stiff). Other than that, this think is ready to dominate.

RUNNING CAR!!!

2008-05-22T03:17:00.000-04:00

Since my last posts, we have gotten the whole car assembled, and think it will be running tomorrow. If anyone would like to come out and see it run, we will be testing at the airport this saturday, 5/24/08.

Also, if you would like to come out and help us finish the car, we will be working on it thursday evening at 6:00 and friday at 5:00. We do all of our work at C.A.R. (the center for automotive research). The adress for this place is 9:30 Kinnear Road, Columbus OH 43212. If you would like to come out and help, or just check out the car in person, e-mail me at hilty.24@osu.edu, or just stop out.

Hope to see you there.

-Devin

Gearbox Update

2008-05-22T03:15:00.001-04:00

So, we worked out all of the kinks, and here are some pictures of the new gearbox with gears in it. It is together now, and working in the car.

Rolling Chassis

2008-05-20T16:44:00.000-04:00

We finally got this car rolling. Here are some pictures of the whole thing standing on it's suspension. There is still alot to be done at this point, but it will get there.

Look at how long the A-arms are. That means long suspension travel. This car will be straight up awesome. I can't wait to take this thing off some jumps.

Drivetrain Update

2008-05-20T16:35:00.000-04:00

Update,

We got the drive train assembled and the mounts all in last week. I have some pictures of it below. Now we just need to finish some small machining stuff.

Since this picture was taken, much more was done. This thing is just about ready to fire up. All we need now is a small bolt that is on order.

Here is a picture of me standing satisfied next to it.

What was not finished was the CVT. See the two shafts sticking out of the big piece of aluminum? Those are where our CVT mounts. Then there is a big cover that goes on. We were working on machining parts of that. I will get pictures up when I can.

Basically, you are staring at about $8,000 worth of machining. That is pretty fascinating when you think about it.

CVT Cover

2008-05-19T21:18:00.000-04:00

You guys wanna see something sweet?

This piece of aluminum on the mill here......

Was machined down like this.....

And then it was turned into this.....

This is our CVT spacer plate. A CVT is a continuously varying transmission. That means that instead of shifting occasionally (like your car probably does), it does it continuously. Therefore, we can always be at the right gearing reduction. Thats how you get alot of performance out of a small engine.

The plate above spaces the CVT out. It is belt driven, which means that the spacing has to be perfect. Now we can weld in our drivetrain mounts and not worry about the CVT being out of line.

Cleaning the Ravine

2008-04-29T16:28:00.000-04:00

So I origionally set up this blog for a blogging class (Art 353 if you want to take it). Anyhow, there is another student in my class that is planning on cleaning up the whole Glen Echo ravine in Columbus . He is probably going to assemble a group of people to help him with this sometime in the near future. If anyone out there would like to help, check out his blog.

cleantheravine.blogspot.com

Custom Transmission Case

2008-04-25T16:37:00.000-04:00

This year, we decided to make a custom transmission. To do that, we had to somehow find a way to get about $8,000 worth of machining and materials for almost free. We found some sponsors to custom make some shafts and gears for us. And one of the kids on our team made the case. Here are some pictures of it. We just got it back a few weeks ago. It's pretty sweet looking.

He made this in a few hours out of two blocks of aluminum on a CNC Mill.

This is the left side of the box inside.

Right Side.

Outside of the box, check out the gussets below.

Here is the box with the drive gear in it. This gear connects to the CV joints in the back.

Laser Cut Parts

2008-04-25T16:27:00.000-04:00

We got laser cut parts made for us a few weeks back. Basically, these parts are being bent into brackets for the car. Most of them are already bent and on the car, but I don't have pictures of that yet. Here are the laser cut parts as soon as they came back from being cut.

When you look at these, just remember that they were all cut in about 15 seconds from a piece of sheet steel.

This is the bad assed block "O" in the back of our car. This piece also doubles as a suspension and transmission mount. Cool how that works.

This is the mount for the steering shaft and quickener. Also known as "The Bat Wing". This mount just got bent and added to the car along with the rest of the steering system. More pictures to come.

There are many of these bad boys on the car. This doesnt kook like much now, but it will soon be bent into a bulk head/ lower suspension mounting system. Pretty cool.

These are some of the brake and transmission mounts that we made. They are currently going into the car.

That's all for now. I will get some pictures of these things in the car next week.

Chassis Fab Pics

2008-04-25T16:03:00.000-04:00

So, I thought I would show off some of the chassis fab pics. It's come a long way. These arent all of them, so when I get the rest, I'll put them up here.

This is the beginning of fab. All we have up is the rear roll hoop.

Side impact up.

The upper roll hoop members are starting to go together.

In the past few weeks, we also got suspension, steering, brakes and all that fun stuff. Pictures are soon to come.

Design Report

2008-04-25T02:13:00.000-04:00

OK, so the design report is done finally.

For those of you who dont know what that is, it's a 14 page report explaining the design of your car. (what you did and why you did it.). This report took freekin forever. But now its done.

I dont know if this will work, but here is the link to it if you wanna look at it.

Car #29 Design Report

If anyone tries this, let me know if it works.

Also, here is last years. This actually got submitted this year for Heisman, which is the car we built last year. It's racing this year too.

Car #36 Design Report

We tried to make this year's much better, as you may have noticed.

-Devin

Update for the team

2008-04-15T15:05:00.001-04:00

Alright, so the build is coming along great. I need some pictures from people on the team, and I will have plenty to post. This is what's happening to bring everyone up to date.

A while ago:
1.) Custom transmission case machined- now we just need to get the shafts and gears finished. They should be coming in this week.

2.) Cockpit built

3.) Lazer cut brackets (for everything) were made.

Two weeks ago:
1.) front suspension mounts done

Last week:
1.) Front suspension complete
2.) Rear bracing tubes complete and put in.
3.) Rear suspension mounts done
3.) brake mounts done.
4.) transmission mounts about done.

I know that most people outside of the team dont know what any of this stuff is, so I will try to get pictures up here in the next day or two. Bear with me.

Basically, at this rate, we will have a car in two weeks.

Cost Report Misery OVER

2008-04-14T23:57:00.000-04:00

So we just completed the super awesome cost report, which was a huge pain in the butt. Basically, it is a cost tally of all of the materials, parts, labor, and assembly time of everything on the car.

No big deal, it sounds easy right? Consider this-We have to log everything.... EVERYTHINGGGG. Including each bolt, weld, and cut on the car. We also have to show receipts for all of this stuff. The writeup alone is about 30 to 40 pages of excel documents. And there were about 40 some pages of receipts. Also, we can get audited, which means that if one thing is slightly wrong, we get screwed in the behind at competition.

I'll try to get a link to the report if I can so that everyone can see what it is. Also, thanks to Matt Yoder and Nick Balzer for finishing it.

Welcome

2008-04-14T18:05:00.000-04:00

Fellow off-road enthusiasts,

My name is Devin Hilty, and I am the captain of the OSU Baja SAE Team. For those of you who don't know what that is, look at the picture below.

(This picture is real by the way. It's not photo shopped.)

Our team designs, builds, funds, and races off-road vehicles (like the one above) every year. The team is staffed and managed completally by undergraduate students at OSU. Hopefully, this blog will give everyone some insight into who we are and what we do.