The Project, continued

Almost half of the school year was devoted to finding resources and designing. This varies depending on which subassembly you work on. The most design intensive subassemblies were the suspension and the chassis. The steering, brakes, and drivetrain also required some design work, mostly working with the chassis guy to make sure his parts would fit or finding parts that would fit. We realized that our designs would change many, MANY times during the manufacturing of our car.

Once each of the subassembly's design is more or less finalized, manufacturing can begin. This part of the project took the most time. Production of our Mini Baja started in March 2003. The manufacturing of our Mini Baja can be broken down into 4 major phases. The first phase was in March 2003 when we took our steel tubing to Al's place for bending. We cut and bent the necessary pieces for the chassis. The next phase took about a month. During this 2nd phase, we prepared the pieces for initial welding. This included fishtailing and setting up jigs. At the end of this 2nd phase, we had the front half of the chassis complete. The 3rd phase consisted of cutting and bending pipes for the rear chassis, fabricating miscellananeous parts, and welding together the completed chassis.

The final phase was basically putting the rest of the car together. This included fabricating the front suspension and mounting the brakes and steering to the suspension. We installed numerous driver items. We installed the seat, safety restraints, fire extinguisher, firewall, and floor material. At this point of the construction, we realized that an independent suspension in the rear would be too complicated and that did not work in our favor as the competition drew nearer. At this point, we decided to go with a swing arm assembly in the rear. As the competition neared, the entire team put in long hours to try to complete the car by the deadline.

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