Laurentian engineering students race homemade all-terrain buggy
A group of Laurentian University students is back from California after competing in an international engineering competition.
The Voyageur racing team started with a box full of pipes and some paper sketches to eventually built an off-road buggy from scratch.
Justin Weaver, a fourth year mechanical engineering student and president of the racing team, said the group worked on its own time over the past two years.
He said the project provided them with real life experience in their field.
"There's no other opportunity. You're able to take what you learn in school and actually apply it, physically do your own design, try it, test it, work it and see how well it works" said Weaver.
The team of students participated two years ago in a competition in Illinois, but weren't able to finish.
Weaver said they realized their vehicle had to endure through the race. "Even though it wouldn't be the quickest or the fastest...[the vehicle] needed to last through the endurance race."
This time around the team worked to build a vehicle that would make it through the entire course.
Weaver, who drove the buggy in the California competition says the course was rough, with rocky terrain, big drops, mud holes, big jumps and logs.
Nathan Aitken, also a fourth year mechanical engineering student, was the Voyageurs' Team Captain.
He felt it was the manual transmission on the Laurentian buggy that made it stand out above the rest.
He believes it was that special factor that helped them with the steep, 91-metre hill climb during the race, although he said the buggy struggled at the end of it.
Aitken said the Voyageurs' buggy came in fifth out of 96 teams on the hill climb.
While they didn't win overall, Weaver said the team is pleased with its success, since they finished without any malfunctions.
The Laurentian team ended up in coming in 23rd out of 100 teams that participated.
With files from Jan Lakes & Martha Dillman; packaged by Angela Gemmill