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The sprint competition started early Saturday. We had to drive
out to a remote rural area near the school. A new highway was almost completed
and we got to be the first vehicles to try it out. The pavement was brand
new and was perfect for the race. The team members are preparing the vehicle
for the race's start at 9:00 am. |
| Our neighbors happen to be the team from Missouri, who eventually
won the competition. They had the top sprint speed of 40.4 mph. This was
about 4 mph better than any other team. Their carbon fiber sprint fairing
is shown, along with their prototype bike. |
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Kendrick and Jason took a few runs with the vehicle fully
faired. After that we removed the fairing for the rest of the riders, due
to lack of practice while fully faired. Andrew is waiting in line for his
run while Brianne holds the vehicle steady and Kendrick looks on. |
| Here is another shot of the sprint waiting line. The first
vehicle is Clarkson. They probably had the ugliest fairing, but they had
the second fastest sprint speed, 36.1 mph. |
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This is a shot of Andrew during one of his sprint runs. |
| Here is Brianne during one of her runs. She had to lean to
the side to see over the nose cone because of a design flaw, but she got
the vehicle up to 24.3 mph, faster than she had gone in all of her test
runs back home. |
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About an hour before the sprint event was about to end. We
put the fairing back on for Kendrick and Jason to get in a few last runs.
Jason topped his speed with 35.2 mph. Kendrick was going for 36+ mph when
the poorly adjust shoe clip popped out and caused him to wreck. He almost
completely flipped the vehicle. Check out the video
to watch it happen. This wreck almost topped Michigan Tech. |
| Kendrick left a nice 15 ft skid mark on the brand new highway
pavement. He manage to come out with only minor scrapes. The roll bar did
exactly what it was supposed to do by protecting the rider. |
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The bike didn't fair as well as Kendrick did. The faring took
a lot of damage. The roll bar and the nose cone received some major scrapes.
But the almost crippling problems were the taco'd wheels. The rear wheel
took a major lashing but luckily we found a replacement at the local bike
shop. The front wheel was bent slightly, just enough that truing it couldn't
quite get it back to normal. |
| Here is Dr. Landman trying to straighten the front wheel.
The Oklahoma team were great sports and let us borrow their truing stand.
We straightened the wheel enough to be ride-able but not enough to keep
the front brake from rubbing. We should have brought a spare because this
was such a wacky wheel size. Barely any bike shops keep them in stock, including
the one in Tuscaloosa.. |
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Here stands Diatom with half its parts removed in our trusty
homemade stand. |
