Misumi & Testing
This week was a slower week at Owls Racing. With everyone now fully involved in their classes, we’re starting to see how much time everyone will actually be able to devote to the team. We’ve picked up a few new people, mostly freshmen, who seem really interested in the team. I hope they’ll be able to make the commitment they say they want to make. Strong work ethic over constant attendance; we’d rather have people who will work hard on the car when they can over someone who’s always there and doesn’t contribute.
So, things that happened this week: uprights are still being worked on; last few welds finished on the chassis; bodywork molds are coming together; electrical keeps trucking along; OR-16 got some testing done; and Misumi USA stopped by for a tour of the shop and pizza.
The most exciting things were Misumi and testing. Misumi has been a sponsor of Owls Racing for two years now. When I first heard about them, I just thought they were a parts manufacturer – nothing too exciting. But when the guy explained what they do, they actually have some pretty cool things. Basically, they are a hybrid of McMaster-Carr and a machine shop. You can customize parts (to an extent) that you really don’t feel like making and have them shipped to you. And they have just about anything you’d need for the car. They really like to help both FSAE teams and students with whatever their engineering needs are. Would highly recommend checking these guys out if you’re an engineering major or FSAE team.
We also went testing the same day Misumi came. OR-16 was taken out to Lot 5 for some radiator testing and suspension tuning. We’ve been testing various radiator setups for OR-17. We’re pretty sure we found a good one to use, so we went out to the track to do some endurance testing. No overheating issues the whole time we were out there – woohoo! Watch it sleet and rain again during endurance this year…
Following the radiator testing and some pizza from the generous man from Misumi (Chris Higgins), we went back out to do some suspension tuning. I’m not sure what exactly they did because I was too busy putting lights on the car… As a kid, I was the one who put lights on everything. Ridable toy Jeeps, bikes, RC cars, RC helis… And now quadcopters and racecars. I got a new tripod recently so I was playing with long exposures and… Wow…
Now the team wants more lights on the car! Trent Ksionek drove for suspension tuning while Josh Mesnick drove for radiator testing. Everyone had a pretty good time out there; it’s the first time we’ve been out testing in a while. Some of the newer members were out there, so hopefully that got them excited to help build the new one.
We also started a segment this week called Member Mondays. I thought it might be neat to put names to faces for everyone who follows us. This week was our top three members: President Marco Cheraso, Vice President Halle Mayne, and Lead Engineer Stephen Lyons.
I hope by doing this we seem more like an actual team and not just some random students who are building this car for FAU. And that makes it more interesting, I think. It adds humanity to the project. You’ll see our motivations behind why we do what we do here. The ups and the downs, the major successes and utter failures. We are, after all, human. We don’t always have good days here. But that’s what makes FSAE is about: the stories. Yea, ok, we did pretty good as far as performance goes, but the cliffs we had to climb to get there make it all the more worthwhile. These are the stories that we tell our families and coworkers about, how we stayed up all night working on the car, crammed for a test, took said test, then went back to racecar. And we do it all for the love of cars…
So after getting a little philosophical there for a bit, I’ll end this week’s post here. It’s getting to crunch time for us, so I’ll post as much as I can without giving too much away. Follow us on the rest of our social media stuff to stay up-to-date with our day to day activities!
