Hot Wheelz Takes 3rd Place and Wins The Innovation Award at Imagine RIT Festival!

 The Hot Wheelz team competed in a 60 minute electric endurance race on May 4th as part of the 2013 Imagine RIT Festival! After completing a total of 52 laps (10.4 miles) the team took 3rd place overall and won this years Innovation Award! The challenge not only consisted of taking a power wheels vehicle and transforming it into an electric endurance vehicle but also to win over the audiences attention by creating a themed vehicle. The team incorporated the Magic School Bus theme, dressed as nerds, and created an interactive sponsor banner. The audience loved it on race day! Major kudos to our hard working student team who contributed over 750 volunteer hours. Check out the slideshow below that features pictures from our build and race day!

Thank you to our sponsors ( see sponsors link) for providing funding and product to make the vehicle possible. Many thanks to Ken Snyder for electrical advice, to Rob Kraynik and Jan Maneti for help in the machine shop and to Dean Harvey Palmer for providing our permanent team/build space. Last but not least this project could not have been completed without our awesome advisors Jodi Carville and Marty Schooping. 

 

Hot wheelz 2013_blogslideshow from Maura Chmielowiec

 

 

Less Than 36 HOURS Until Race Day!!!

We can't believe that race day is approaching so quickly. The team is working hard to make the car the best it can be!

Meet the Team!

Just a Few Days Left...

Our team made a lot of progress last week; we learned a lot about machining techniques, electrical systems and how to fabricate this vehicle.  This project has been a great learning experience for every member of our team.

With only a few days left we need to finish some last minute modifications to make our car race-day ready, but the entire team is exited for Saturday!

Only 2 Weeks Left Until Race Day!!!

It's hard to believe that Imagine RIT is only 2 weeks from today and all of our hard work will soon pay off! Our car is coming along nicely but there is still so much more work that needs to be done before it is race day ready. The body is in the "paint shop" getting beautified and we now have a rolling chassis. Our motor is in and ready to be mounted and we are currently working through getting all of our electrical components wired. Check our progress below. We hope to see you May 4th at 9am for our e-durance race!!!

Researching Electrical Components

Our motor!

First trip to the "paint shop"

Visited Brockport High School

A small group from the team went to Brockport High school today. We visited with the Blue Devil's Racing Team. They recently competed in the Shell Eco-Marathon. We talked about what types of challenges their team had to overcome. They had a lot of really valuable information that helped us with our decision making process. If you want to check out their blog here is a link: Blue Devil Racing

Let's Get Rolling!

Now that our room is all decorated and looks great we can focus on the challenge ahead of us, (if you haven't heard about the ImagaineRIT event check out President Destler's challenge here).  

Our team purchased our Power Wheels and got together over the weekend to assemble the car.  We don't want to give away any our secrets yet; so you'll just have to come to ImagineRIT on May 4th to check it all out!

Room Decorating

The members of Hot Wheelz took some time over Spring Break to do some decorating in our new build space.