The University of Dayton's Society of Automotive Engineers recently returned from the 4-day Baja SAE Alabama 2009 competition.  Successfully completing all static and dynamic events, Lucky significantly improved on UD's previous performances.  Ultimately, the team - and Lucky - earned a rank of 34 out of the 100-car field.

After passing Technical Inspection with relative ease, Lucky fractured an exle during the brake test.  That night, the team worked long and hard repairing the faulty welds.  Saturday, Lucky competed in the acceleration drag-race, earning a 6th place finish with Evan Layton at the wheel.  The team struggled with finding a good lane in which to stage in the traction pull and dug a few holes at the start of the course, but with Brandon Virgallito behind the wheel, it easily pulled the 1000-lb Rhino through the rocks, sand and gravel, earning 43rd in the event.  The team then made their way to the far end of NCAT's property where the Suspension and Manuverability events were being held.  Experienced Rallyross driver Hector Fontanet guided Lucky through two successful laps, earning a 46th place finish.  Mike Malloy then suited up for his maiden drive in Lucky through the Suspension course, which, so far, was seeing approximately a 15% sucess rate!  Manueveraing through several hairpin turns and even flipping the car once, Mike and Lucky finished in 44th place.

Having sucessfully completed all the dynamic events, the team enjoyed the afternoon watching the activities of the competition, scouting the endurance course and replacing alternator bolts on Subarus.  Sunday morning saw the start of the infamous 4-hour endurance race.  Starting in 6th position, Lucky had an advantage in the land-rush start.  Unfortunatley, 2 laps into the race, with Fontanet at the wheel, another car landed on the left-front suspension and snapped the shock in half.  Luckily, Lucky managed to limp back to the pits where the team frantically welded new shock tabs in front, swapped the rear shocks into the front and modified a new set of shocks to fit the rear.  Spending nearly an hour of the race in the pits, Lucky made its way back onto the course to successfully complete 10 more laps with driving time split between Garth Justinger, Brandon Virgallito and Jared Szechy.  Despite the broken shock, Lucky finished 36th in the Endurance race with 12 laps.

Following the race, satisfied with their 34th place finish, the team cleaned up and packed up and prepared for the 11-hour drive back to Dayton.

Many long hours of work over Spring Break yielded a painted, reassembled and paneled car ready for testing.  Saturday, Lucky was taken to the Dirksen farm north of Greenville, OH for some romping and stomping in the woods, fields and creeks of the property.  Performing well, Lucky had a great afternoon of driving and came home to UD to get cleaned and receive the last few details before heading to Alabama in 2 days.

After several days of prep work, Lucky was finally ready to receive several coats of gloss red paint.  Correspondingly, many other parts were covered in baby blue.  The red and blue color scheme references the classic UD colors.  Wednesday will bring the reassembly of the car and components as well as the addition of body panels.  Further testing is postponed until parts arrive (rear axles and shock parts).  Look for a test & tune date at DMC coming soon following the completing of Lucky.

After 8 weeks and over 1000 shop-hours, Lucky made it onto wheels and managed to move under its own power Wednesday night.  Although almost a month behind schedule, this serves as a successful milestone.  Now, in less than 2 weeks, the drivetrain on the car needs to be tested and tuned as well as finishing a million other things.  A minor misalignment of the rear sprocket hub is the first order of business to repair followed by clearance issues of the upper control arms with our inner CV joint boots.  Body panels and paint are also on the to-do list.  The manufacture of spare parts will also start soon.

 Thursday evening will bring a change of pace as we are being featured in the monthly Dayton-area SAE meeting and have been asked to present our car and participate in a mini driving instruction class featuring mini Grand Prix cars at the White Allen European Auto Group.

Stay with us as the hard work continues over Spring Break and we prepare to head for Alabama in 13 days.