Tuesday, July 13, 2010

My Summer "Job"


last year i got hired by Dr. C. Greg Jensen of BYU's ME department. i was hired to help wrap up a senior project that was working on an Emerging Market Engine that was to going into an Emerging Market Vehicle.

i did that for a while, it was more work than anything, trying to get a single cylinder BMW bike engine to run off an aftermarket ECU. not to exciting.

about 6 months ago the 2008 senior project came back from korea. it had a laundry list of problems that we needed to fix in order for it to go out to the Mid-Ohio at the end of june.

some of the things that i headed up in fixing were; the steering/suspension bars collided with the magnesium wheels when turned to far (magnesium + friction = fire), fabricating air intake lines, stiffening up the engine/monocoque interface, wiring, broken slave cylinder, and a bunch of other odds and ends.
The Team Left to Right: Mark Roberts, John Hosford, Jesse Davis, Bobby Porter, Clint, ??, Jordan, Andrew. (i dont know the ones on the left that well, they were separate from us working on the carbon fiber parts of the car.)

and because this was all happening in june, which also happened to be my first month of fatherhood, megan brought the boy into the shop to get a little face time in. never too early to get him started!



it was a great experience and i look forward to doing my own senior project starting this fall.

here's a bonus- i get to go out to the Mid-Ohio with the car at the beginning of august to watch the American La Mans Race (ALMS)!!! it's a pretty big deal...

3 comments:

Annalisa said...

Awesome. I don't know much about cars but it looks cool. I remember taking linc to geoff's studio for senior year. Ah, BYU. I remember those days. LOL and now Linc is going on 8. All too fast.

Megan said...

This is pretty cool! AND, I can't believe how much Evan has changed already! Craziness! We need to get our little buddies together sometime! :)

Unknown said...

Nice work Bobby; that car looks very impressive. It looks a lot like my old Saab ;)