The garage door to UB’s Society of Automotive Engineering headquarters rises without a button, a key, or the help of member Wes Burkman. Once it is open, triggered by a secret magnetic plate inside the wall, SAE’s Baja car stares the intruder in the face. The 500-pound off-road beast seems to challenge the viewer to look it in the eye. To the right of the Baja sits a large table with car parts and tools strewn about, and a wall decorated with the team’s awards. To the left sits a snowmobile with its engine exposed, as the team prepares to operate.
Next to the snowmobile rests the SAE’s pride and joy: their Formula One racecar. This baby looks like it can reach every bit of the 70 mile-per-hour top speeds it boasts. Strewn about the Formula car, more parts and tools are housed in various cabinets and shelves. No awards adorn these walls yet, but the team has high hopes.
This Wednesday, UB SAE will present their student-built Formula and Baja cars at the annual Buffalo Auto Show, held in the Buffalo Convention Center in Downtown Buffalo. The event runs from Wednesday morning until Sunday evening. Tickets for the show are only $6 in the SBI Ticket Office, or $8 at the door.
The Formula and Baja cars sitting in the garage were completely designed and built by UB’s SAE club. Formed over 20 years ago, the SAE annually enters national competitions including the Formula SAE Series, the Baja SAE Series and the Clean Snowmobile Challenge. The purpose of the organization is for students to gain hands-on engineering design experience, refine their communication and presentation ability, and learn the basics—time management, budgeting and project management.
SAE member Ian May, a senior Mechanical Engineer, has found a second home in the club. “When I first got to UB, I was disappointed that there was no automotive engineering program, especially since it’s such a large industry.” Then he discovered SAE, and sees the club as a definite stepping-stone to a career. “I can quite confidently say that I am one of the best automotive engineers coming out of UB this year, and I really owe it all to SAE.”
Members gain experience in manufacturing, welding and other machining through the development of a competition prototype vehicle. Students also learn machine shop and manufacturing skills including welding, machining, mechanical assembly, packaging, and composites. As one of the largest organizations on campus with more then 50 members, UB SAE is open to any interested student of any major. The investment pays off by teaching members the skills that allow them to have a competitive edge over their peers entering the job market. “Being a part of SAE is like having a part-time job. A lot of our members are in our shop 20-plus hours a week,” says Brian Kopacz. “Sometimes your GPA suffers a bit. But it is also a lot of fun, addictive, and is extremely rewarding, especially when you go to find a job.”
The Formula SAE competition is for students to design and build, from the ground up, a prototype autocross car for the weekend autocross racer—usually a nine-to-fiver during the week and a hotshot autocross racer on the weekend. There are plenty of restrictions, though. The price of construction must be less than $25,000, it must be easy to use, durable, low maintenance, and easy to manufacture. The idea is to sell the prototype to a theoretical car manufacturer who will produce 2,000 vehicles annually. Before vehicles are even allowed to compete, though, they must pass a rigorous technical inspection, making sure every part works perfectly so that drivers, well, don’t die.
During the mid-’90s, the Formula car SAE team competed against 130 teams from around the world, and were a force to be reckoned with, taking eleventh in 1994 and ninth in 1995. The team started the development and manufacturing of this year’s racer in 2005. In the September, 2007 issue of Racecar Engineering Magazine, the UB team’s Formula racer was named “One of the most innovative designs in the field.”
The 425-pound car tops out at about 70 mph, and can round a corner at 1.35 Gs on the pavement—a figure that is comparable to a high-end Porsche. The vehicle is not, however, limited to the road; it can also power through dirt and ice.
The UB Baja Team, also under the administrative influence of the UB SAE, is in charge of building something of a super-powerful go-kart. Founded in 1981, the UB Baja Team initially competed in water maneuverability, drowning the competition by capturing second place in the Baja SAE East competition in their first year. The competition has since moved away from water, and the new goal is to design an off-road racing vehicle from the ground up for a hypothetical 7,000 unit-per-year production, similar to the Formula car.
The Baja is designed with several features in mind—acceleration, maneuverability, suspension, and traction. The cars must also pass a series of strenuous tests including a hill climb, a rock crawl, and a mud bog. The endurance race for the Baja includes a four-hour, 100-mile race, in which vehicles are tested under stressful racing conditions. Two-thirds of the vehicles that begin the race do not finish. The other purpose of the contest is to create a vehicle marketable to the general public, so they must be inexpensive to produce, relatively easy to maintain, and as safe as possible for drivers. This 446-pound golf cart-sized machine maxes out at about 37 mph, but may have looked much faster when seen jumping the hill behind the UB bookstore earlier this month.
While most of its funding coming from the Student Association, the teams still find financing their projects tough. So rather than taking years to save the money to complete a vehicle, the teams go to the community for support. Major sponsors of the Formula car include Briggs and Stratton College, AMC Precision, Liston Manufacturing, QTA Machining, Buffalo Bearing, Custom Laser, and Sound Choice Audio Performance. Sound Choice will have their own selection of high performance super-cars in the Auto Show this year featuring a Lamborghini Murcielago, an Aston Martin, and a Bentley GT. These sponsorships come from the group’s Sponsorship and Marketing Coordinator, Greg Robbins.
“It’s really a fulfilling job,” Robbins says. “I get to meet many people from different aspects of the industry, which is great for networking and communication skills.” His job, he says, is a sort of two-way trade, much like any other commercial sponsorship. Robbins gets “free stuff” for the team to use on cars, “while promoting the companies that help us out. It’s an extremely important job and even though it’s a lot of work it’s a great feeling when things work out.
Some other highlights at the Buffalo Auto Show this year include appearances by Sabres’ Brian Campbell and Ryan Miller, a Robbie Knievel custom motorcycle, the Bumblebee Camaro from Transformers, as well as various concept cars created in the past year.
With growing national attention, the UB SAE team is hoping to turn some heads with their two newest creations. Whether you’re just going to score a lucky autograph from Ryan Miller or searching for an excuse to get out of your World Civ lecture, it’s worth checking out the sweet rides the UB SAE club designed, and its nice to see your student fee producing something worthwhile, let alone totally badass.
