2008 Chassis
Team Members: Abner Aviles, Mike Madsen
Design History
Initial design of the 2008 chassis began immediately at the commencement of the Fall 2007 semester. The main effort was headed up by Abner Aviles who believed that a chassis design could be finalized by late October. Initially the chassis was scheduled to begin construction in the middle of December 2007. The design process was however much longer than expected and the chassis team went through “14 completely different rebuilds,” as Abner attests, in order to comply with the advisor’s wishes. The final 2008 chassis design was not finallized until the middle of January where construction began.
Design Intent
The initial design intent of the chassis team was to provide improvement over previous years by reducing the weight of the design while simultaneously providing a platform that, in conjunction with the Suspension team, could increase ride height and other suspension characteristics. The 2008 design however had a difficulty not apparent in previous years due to the large range in sizes of the team members and the requirement that the car be able to fit all team members. Due to this face the 2008 chassis ended up being larger and heavier than previous years’ designs.
Construction
The 2008 car begin construction in the middle of January and proceeded until the beginning of April. This was a far cry from the initial schedule which put the completion of the chassis at the end of January. Constructing the chassis was a slower process than first expected. The care with which each angle and miter had to be done increased the difficulty tremendously. Further, the team only had a limited number of experienced welders which could weld the chassis together.