For the first time, the Warsaw Area Career Center Supermileage Team will be participating in the Shell Eco-Marathon Americas in Houston, Texas.
Teacher and advisor Joe Bryan made arrangements for cars for the Warsaw, Wawasee and Goshen teams to be transported all in one big truck. Bryan departs today, with WACC students flying down Thursday.
The international competition in Texas is one of three in the world. The other two are in Europe and Malaysia. Represented in the Texas competition will be the U.S., Brazil, Mexico and Canada.
Indiana is the U.S. state with the most team entrants, followed by California.
Bryan said the WACC team will compete in gas prototype and urban concept with a diesel car.
“The urban concept is big compared to the others,” Bryan said. “It requires a lot more.”
In the urban concept competition, teams have to make a car as close to a “real” car on the road would be, including such things as trunks, headlights, etc. The cars have to have hydraulics just like a real car.
Seven WACC students will be going to the Texas competition, Bryan said, though 11 to 12 students worked on the cars over the course of the school year. That doesn’t include the welding and machine tool classes that helped.
The seven students expected to travel down to Texas include Taylor Stouder, Landon Slone, Trenton Sumwalt, Omar Cardenas, Richard Hernandez, Kyler Pence and Nick Kuhn.
“We did the whole thing from the ground up,” Bryan said.
There was no way Warsaw could have done it, Bryan said, without all their sponsors.
The 2012 sponsors include Alienation BMX, Bar’s Leaks/Rislone, Chi-Town Race Products, Coblin Tool Inc., DePuy, Indiana VAC-Form, JEM Transport, Louis Dreyfus Commodities, Martin Motors, Mavron Inc., NAPA Warsaw Automotive, Pendry Powder Coatings Inc., Quality Glass, Roberts Signs, Shell Oil, Splendor Boats Inc., Supreme Corp., Trailhouse, VXB Bearings, Warsaw Engineering Inc., Warsaw Welding Technology, Warsaw Machine Tool Technology, Elliott’s Trailers and Carts and Explorer Van.
Sponsors provided everything from monetary donations to foam to wiring and graphics.
At the Texas competition, Bryan said teams will go through technical inspection Thursday and Friday. Cars will be on the track Saturday and Sunday, with the awards ceremony Sunday evening. Students fly back Monday.
“The kids are pretty excited,” Bryan said. “They’ve come together as a team. Just little things we have to do now.”
With not that many diesel engines competing, he said Warsaw’s team could do really well. Last year, the winning diesel car got 185 miles per gallon.
Bryan said the WACC team put a lot of hours into building the cars, especially after school hours.
“I couldn’t tell you how many,” he said.
The students started working on the cars at the end of October and increased their efforts after Christmas. Besides school and the car, most of the students also have jobs.
Besides the Texas competition, Warsaw again will compete in the Supermileage Challenge in Indianapolis in late April. In 2010, Warsaw won first place in sportsmanship at the state competition and finished runnerup overall.
“It’s about taking knowledge to the next level and applying it to something they’ve never done before,” Bryan said. “It allows them to be creative, and it’s constant problem solving. They all worked together to build this thing. It’s been crazy, it just has been. No words can describe it.”
