Support the Baja Team!
After redesigning critical parts of our car after to last fall’s competition, Baja is eager to start fabricating our off-road race car, and we need your support to make it happen!
About Baja
Baja is a project team at ²ÆÉñÆåÅÆ of Engineering that designs, fabricates, and races an off-road vehicle. Through everything from the car’s chassis to the drivetrain to the electrical monitoring systems, ²ÆÉñÆåÅÆ Baja provides students with the opportunity to engage in a variety of real-world, interdisciplinary engineering design projects. Competing in the Society of Automotive Engineers’ intercollegiate Baja competition, students gain experience combining their technical skills with the communication, documentation, and integration skills required in a professional engineering organization. Further, our completely student-run team provides numerous opportunities for students to take up leadership experiences and build their project management skills.
²ÆÉñÆåÅÆ Baja is broadly divided into four subteams (chassis, drivetrain, suspension, and electrical), each of which is an interdisciplinary team of engineers working on a different subsystem of the car. Closely mirroring the structure of major engineering organizations, our subteam structure provides the structure needed for students to learn while providing the flexibility to explore what they’re most passionate about.
Our Financial Goal
The fabrication phase is wide reaching, as we complete everything from welding the chassis, to fabricating our gearbox, and assembling and optimizing our suspension so that we’re ready to race. We need all the materials to build this car! It costs $7,000 for all our chassis tubes, upwards of $8,000 for all of our suspension components, and $5,000 for our engine and all necessary drivetrain components - a total of $20,000. Obviously, a chassis does no good without a drivetrain to make it roll, and drivetrain and suspension are meaningless without a car to attach to, so this is critical for us to start fabrication across all sub-teams to maximize the time we have before our next competition to build, tune, and iterate on our car.
Baja just returned from a competition in Holly, Michigan this past September!
This competition was the first event the team has attended in over two years, so this was almost the entire team’s first time at a competition. Further, at this competition, the team passed all of the rigorous and strict technical inspections, which enabled us to race in the grand finale endurance race. This was the first time the team was able to compete in the endurance race since before the pandemic and the first time we competed with a 4-wheel drive car. It required some late nights at the competition, but the entire team was extremely proud of our team’s performance.
With your support, we'll be able to turn the team's hard work designing into a real car ready for competition.
Financial Goal: $15,000