My engineering friends and I signed up for the 7th annual UCSD Junkyard Derby as team ONE BAR. Its exactly as it sounds. We have a limited time to raid a junkyard, take what we can find and build it into a gravity racer. This is pretty much the ghetto version of a soap box racing event.
It all starts out by cannibalizing old bikes for parts.
Then everything gets welded together.
The theme was simplicity and SPEED. Initial testing went well but we figured something was lacking.
The car needed some down force and cool factor, so we added a rear diffuser.
Some gold and black paint later, it was done.
The next day started with design judging followed by racing. There were about 53 other teams. We moved up the chart pretty quickly.
In the final race we went up against this team that had a questionable but (i thought) rather clever design. The rules stated that the car cannot be powered by anything other than gravity. This car had a weighted lever on it that was set to pull on a chain that gave the car a bit of a push in the beginning. Technically speaking it still is gravity powered, but it's having to “prep” or add potential energy to the car before every race that’s questionable. We lost the race to them by mere inches. I give it to them for treading the fine line of the rules, that's how it always is in racing.
Team One Bar.
Our driver rockin’ his www.the-climb.net hat.
Special thanks to UCSD, Team One Bar and Evan’s bro for setting it up.
check out this site if you’re interested http://tesc.ucsd.edu/derby/index.php