Young Newbie Eager To Learn

[Lemons]

Hello everyone, I've been hitting this site for quite a while now, but I just recently decided to become a member. I am currently a Mechanical Engineering student, but more than anything, I'm a car guy. My daily driver is a 73 Camaro with a AFR headed 383. The car is pretty rough, and I don't have any pictures yet, but I'll post them when I can. The car may not be very pretty, but I drive it everyday, and it just keeps going.

My plans are like everyone else's, pretty big. Since I am a student, I currently have no budget , but that's why I'm in school. I plan to eventually install a LS2 with a T56, along with Corvette a arms front and rear. I would love to design and build the front and rear myself, but I have a lot to learn. This site has a ton of great information, so you can bet that I'll ask for help. I also plan to reduce weight wherever possible, while maintaining a mostly steel body (composite hood and trucklid). I also want to do pretty much all the work myself. Well, that sounds like a lot to me.

I am also currently working on another project that you might find interesting. For my senior project I am on a team building a car to compete at Formula SAE Fontana. I don't know if anybody is familiar with this project, but it's a really cool project that is really teaching me a lot. I am a suspension engineer in charge of the kinetics (shocks, springs, bellcranks, and swaybars). I am also a CNC machinist on our Haas mill. Please check out our website.

www.ecs.csun.edu/sae/

I'm looking forward to learning as much as I can, as I have big dreams for my car and a lot to learn.

Chris

[Payton King]

I originally went to college as a mechanical engineer and I worked on a SAE project, but it was a buggy. It ran off road and had to be able to do a coarse in the water floating as well.

Sounds like you are well on your way and I am looking forward to watching your car progress.

[XcYZ]

Welcome to the site, Chris.

[Huxsol81]

Welcome to the site!

[Lemons]

Payton,

I have seen a couple SAE Baja cars, and they look like a ton of fun. We don't have a Baja team here at CSUN, but FSAE is a blast too. I've always been more into drag racing, but getting out there and autocrossing with our car has broadened my horizons. These cars handle really well. We did some testing with a data aq system and found our max lateral acceleration to be 1.6 gs. We run a Yamaha R6 motor and the car should weigh under 450 lbs. The motor is restricted so we top out at about 85 hp, but it's a pretty good ratio.

It's a great project that I would recommend to anyone that wants to go to school for engineering.

Chris