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Wednesday August 20 2014
Sport
The Star
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Race against time to prepare car
A team of students from Canterbury University are competing in the Formula SAE race car design competition. Andrew Voerman paid a visit to their workshop last Friday to see how they’re going AT ONE end of Canterbury University’s mechanical engineering building, a group of students in red coats are hard at work building a race car. They’ve been at it since February, and at the moment, they’re nearly a month behind schedule. Their car was supposed to be ready to drive at the end of July. Now it’s the middle of August, and they haven’t yet got it on wheels. A whiteboard at the front of their main room lays out the situation. Under a big red heading – “due Friday 15th” – is a list of around two dozen items, all supposed to be completed today. While there is still a bit of the day left to go, the majority of them remain unfinished. Even so, no one seems to be panicking. Team principal Tim White explains the situation to me. While he’s concerned by the delays, he says there’s no point getting on peoples’ backs and making the project less fun. The team’s biggest problem is that every day they’re still working on putting the car together, they’re eating into their development time, which is where the competition is won and lost. That means they have less time to try different approaches, less time to get drivers up to speed, and less time to iron out any kinks. Another member of the team, Jeremy Daines, pops his head in from the room next door. He’s been on the hunt for a certain design of wheel nut, with a
He tells me it’s been pulled apart ATTENTION TO so they could install a new sensor, DETAIL: Team and quickly puts all the pieces principal Tim White and second- together so I can see what it’s supyear student Ben posed to look like. Geayley inspect Outside, team member Dan the underside of Pugh is busy grinding away on last year’s car. what appears to be a big block of PHOTO: ANDREW cheese. VOERMAN It’s actually the mould for the round hole rather than an angular one. He’s tried every potential supplier in New Zealand, and those suppliers have been on to their suppliers on his behalf, to no avail. The only place he’s been able to find them is on a website based in the United States, and he wants the go-ahead to make the order. White says yes. I ask if they ever have any issues with customs. Nothing major, he says, but they’re always holding on to stuff more than they need to. It’s a small room, but there’s plenty going on. Benches and shelves covered in equipment run down both sides, and in the middle sit the skeleton
frames of two cars, this year’s and last year’s. I hadn’t expected the old car to still be around, but it quickly becomes clear how important it is. With the delays in getting the new car up and running, they’ve been using the old one quite a lot, in order to get their drivers time behind the wheel. Second-year student Ben Geayley is standing over it, and wants to ask White about something that he thinks needs fixing. The two start inspecting the underside of the car, and I wander down to the other end of the room to the new machine. Final-year student Adam Waterhouse is fiddling away with its engine.
car’s radiator shroud. It started as a big lump of polystyrene and he’s been slowly crafting it into the shape he wants. He says he’s been at it for two days, and still has another two days in front of him. I leave him to it. Next door to the workshop is a smaller room, filled with computers. Sitting at one of them, White calls up a file that contains the design for the car. It’s slightly out of date, he warns, but it does the job. A 3D model of a race car pops up on the screen, and White pulls up a list of its many components. He selects one of them, and up pops a brake disc. They were one of the items on the to-do list, and the team has
just heard that they have finished being cut. Team member Michael Furness has been dispatched to pick them up. Above the row of computers, stuck to the wall, is a timeline for the project. It includes the various deadlines they have to meet as per the Formula SAE rules, as well as their own self-imposed ones, arranged in three columns. Halfway down the second one, a date jumps out. Monday, July 28. The day they were supposed to start testing. It’s been and gone. They were supposed to be coming to the end of their second test by now, but are still playing catch-up. Around the corner from the computer room is another big workshop, where a pair of students are hard at work putting the finishing touches on the mould for the driver’s seat. Back in the main room, another engineer-in-training, Brooke Mitchell, is busy working on the car’s wheels. He lets me in on an interesting fact – this is the second set of wheels they’ve received this year. The first lot weren’t made according to the design they sent away – they were too narrow inside. Another of the many little delays that conspire to keep things off track. Furness arrives with the brake discs, which quickly get passed around. They’re somewhat smaller than I imagined. Waterhouse is still tinkering away with the engine, and gets into a conversation with Mitchell. They’re looking forward to firing up the engine for the first time, one of the project’s big milestones. You can tell by the smiles on their faces that it’s something they’re really looking forward to, and they’re hoping to do it by the end of the weekend. They may be under the pump, but there’s still plenty of excitement to be had.
Golden Oldies The Star continues to look back at its sporting past. This week in 1990, two Cantabrian athletes were involved in unusual events. John Hellemans had to battle jellyfish in the All Japan Triathlon, while Russell and Vivian Prince took part in a halfmarathon that involved climbing 2000m up a mountain. Much was made of how the All Blacks’ draw with Australia on Saturday put an end to their 17-game winning streak. The same weekend in 1990, Australia ended another streak, of 22 tests unbeaten, with a win at Wellington’s Athletic Park. It seems we took it more gracefully back then.
AUGUST 22, 1990
AUGUST 22, 1990
AUGUST 26, 1990