UCCS’ High Altitude Race Engineering team celebrates first with new vehicle ‘Jalopy’

Dylan Banko was just one of extra than 1,500 graduates to full their instruction at the College of Colorado Colorado Springs this calendar year, getting a degree in mechanical engineering before in Could.

Banko is set to go to officer university in the Navy July 3. That wasn’t his initial ship day, but he negotiated with the Navy to get the date pushed back so he could just take treatment of a person last piece of organization from his new alma mater:

The Formula Modern society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) event going on in Brooklyn, Mich., June 15-18.

Due to the fact his sophomore yr, Banko has been a aspect of Substantial Altitude Race Engineering, a club at UCCS showcasing a team of engineers who have expended their spare time setting up race cars though pursuing an instruction.

“Jalopy,” the motor vehicle the group designed final fall and built this spring, is the initially auto, created by the club, that will be pushed at an SAE occasion. Significant Altitude Race Engineering debuted the vehicle to the community at UCCS’ downtown celebration heart Friday.

UCCS is one of about 200 schools to take part, and the High Altitude club will carry Jalopy to Michigan for a 20-lap endurance test, just to see how much the vehicle will run.

It will be one of about 60 electric cars entered into the competitiveness. It is a significantly cry from the team’s previous race vehicle, “Scarlett,” which designed it to final year’s competition but was in no way driven. From it, the workforce obtained the the opinions they needed to make their aspiration car or truck, Jalopy.

The tale of High Altitude Race Engineering commenced in January 2017. The club, then named Mountain Lion Motorsports, headed by learners who have considering the fact that graduated, made and built “Numero Uno” by that summertime on just a $4,000 budget. The automobile had an aluminum frame, ran on an 80-volt battery, and topped out at 45 mph, but it was a begin.

By distinction, Jalopy tops out at 104 mph and can go from zero to 60 in about 2.8 seconds. The autos aren’t the only items getting an enhance: High Altitude Race Engineering was not too long ago named UCCS’ club of the calendar year. The money lifted for Jalopy is about $18,000 and has piqued the interest of sponsors these kinds of as Massive Mission Motorsports and Kineo Manufacturing.

It really is also simpler to recruit other pupils with a fully finished race-able automobile to present off.

“In advance of we had a physical car to deliver out, it was naturally just making an attempt to offer the dream of ‘you men will aid develop a car or truck.’ When we eventually showed up for drop of 2021 … we ended up essentially capable to provide (Scarlett) out on its wheels and say, ‘this is what we made — you can enable make the future one particular,'” claimed club president Aidan Westbrook.

The target is to make Jalopy sustainable so it will only require tweaks future 12 months.

Westbrook, Banko and Karl Barstad make up the new, outdated guard of the club who observed the originators graduate and now sense they have some thing evolving and unique that potential learners can consider ahead.

The perform appeals to all varieties. Westbrook is an entrepreneur and economics important who was in a various club that labored in the exact workshop as Significant Altitude when he was recruited. Sean Harper also switched in excess of from a various club. Barstad, a mechanical engineer, satisfied the team at Overdrive Raceway, the place he labored again when they were being nonetheless Mountain Lion Motorsports.

Irrespective of the sponsors and greater budgets, the college students nevertheless pour a lot of their time and money into the automobiles, with many of the pieces getting built exclusively for the car.

“Any unique individual for the duration of the heat of production, and possibly document-making, will place any place involving 20 and 40 (hrs) a week extra (in the shop) just carrying out team things,” Westbrook said.

According to Banko, sophomore clubmate Mareck Newton is dependable for nearly each individual electrical aspect of Jalopy, no tiny feat, taking into consideration it’s an electric vehicle.

Jalopy runs on 6 batteries with a optimum 300 volts. It has a weight of 720 pounds with a driver and can run 22 minutes at whole electric power. Its body is produced of carbon fiber.

Irrespective of how the vehicle performs in June, the straightforward actuality that it’s a fact that the club can display off is inspiring, suggests the team’s college adviser, Christopher Foley.

“When we imagine about what goes into a task like this, they’ve progressed from a staff that has just place things jointly to exhibit they can get a little something to work, to one particular that has had a great deal a lot more guiding-the-scenes investigation, organizing, calculations to make guaranteed that where they get is wherever they want to be in conditions of the overall performance of the motor vehicle.

“I think it definitely represents a high quality of engineering and engineering at its true meaning.”