UMD's FSAE road car.

"SonorousSpeedJoe" (SonorousSpeedJoe) 12/13/2014 at 18:35 • Filed to: None

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Terps Racing's Formula SAE car (not the Baja one) was at Design Day this past Tuesday, so I stopped by on my way to class and quickly snapped a few pics with my potato. Beyond the Hoosiers for track days, I don't know any of the technical details.

Bandit > SonorousSpeedJoe 12/13/2014 at 18:40

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Wow... their aero is so much more complex than what we're going to run.

SonorousSpeedJoe > Bandit 12/13/2014 at 18:47

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There was a Terps Racing member on here who did a write-up of the 2013 car, though he was last active in February. According to him, the aero that it had was effective enough to get the rules rewritten.

StingrayJake > SonorousSpeedJoe 12/13/2014 at 19:13

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That's pretty cool. Looks like a lot more aero than I remember the A&M car having when I was in school. I started in engineering and really wanted to get in with the SAE team, but I didn't stay in engineering long enough for that to happen.

SonorousSpeedJoe > StingrayJake 12/13/2014 at 19:21

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I want to take the MechE course associated with Terps Racing, but I have to complete all of my sophomore-level courses first (I've got one more left that I'm doing next semester). I plan to take the FSAE course next fall.

There's also a club for it, as I understand, but commuting and keeping up my grades get in the way of that.

dontbethatguy > SonorousSpeedJoe 12/13/2014 at 20:21

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The Michigan FSAE car run last year also got the aero rules rewritten for this year. Look it up- its a monster.

StingrayJake > SonorousSpeedJoe 12/13/2014 at 23:57

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From experience I can say that anything other than school work can impact your grades in that field of study. I still say high school didn't prepare me at all for the level of difficulty I saw, but I know I could have applied myself better. I chose other things over regular study and tried to cram for exams. It didn't really work out.

I think the SAE car was theoretically a club thing at A&M but they had use of the engineering and engineering tech labs. Anybody could participate but anything outside of sweeping the shop floor was left to higher level students.

StingrayJake > SonorousSpeedJoe 12/14/2014 at 00:02

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Actually I lied. Maybe it changed in the last few years or maybe I'm crazy but apparently the FSAE car serves as an technical elective for senior engineering majors. There's a Grassroots Motorsports car that is available for underclassmen to participate in. I really don't think the GRM existed when I was in school.

SonorousSpeedJoe > StingrayJake 12/14/2014 at 00:43

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When I was a freshman, I did attend a Terps Racing meeting for anyone who was interested - it seemed like the Baja car was oriented towards underclassmen, while the road car is worked on by the upperclassmen since the FSAE course is restricted to them. I chose not to do it, primarily because I was a BioE at the time with a heavy course load that I hadn't thought through when I was making my schedule.

The course I mentioned is one of two courses that MechE folks in the Automotive Engineer track take - I think the other one is a course on Vehicle Dynamics.