How many on your team had prior experience working on cars?

[Drew Price]

What sort of percentages of members on your teams had any prior experience working on cars before they joined?

At least at Northwestern, and especially in our engineering school, there is a huge lack of people with any prior experience digging very deep into working with mechanical devices.

I believe 2 or possibly 3 of our members had extensive experience (building engines, engine tuning, controls, heavy maintenance), another 2 could probably change oil and maybe batteries, and the other 5-6 we had at the beginning had no prior experience, and sometimes had to have tools they were supposed to fetch described to them for a while.

So around 50% with moderate experience, ~25% with extensive experience. People who could reliably serve as mechanics in the dynamics areas at comp or at autocrosses or during testing is still around 50% (IMHO).

There were three of us who modded cars during high school. Curious to see what sort of incoming experience other people usually see.

Best,
Drew

[Drew Price]

What sort of percentages of members on your teams had any prior experience working on cars before they joined?

At least at Northwestern, and especially in our engineering school, there is a huge lack of people with any prior experience digging very deep into working with mechanical devices.

I believe 2 or possibly 3 of our members had extensive experience (building engines, engine tuning, controls, heavy maintenance), another 2 could probably change oil and maybe batteries, and the other 5-6 we had at the beginning had no prior experience, and sometimes had to have tools they were supposed to fetch described to them for a while.

So around 50% with moderate experience, ~25% with extensive experience. People who could reliably serve as mechanics in the dynamics areas at comp or at autocrosses or during testing is still around 50% (IMHO).

There were three of us who modded cars during high school. Curious to see what sort of incoming experience other people usually see.

Best,
Drew

[John Grego]

Down here it varies from year to year but the majority of the teams have little or no experience when they get started in September. This last year we had 4 people who had extensive experience and had been working with SAE cars for more then 3 years, but the other 15 people had only seen an SAE car in our hallway and never worked on one, let alone design, build, and race.

Our 2007 team had 1 member out of 18 that had worked on a car before.

This is where good leadership and a great faculty adviser comes into play. Down here, he is the only person that is a part of every single team. We try to pass on as much knowledge to the next years' teams as possible but that can be difficult with an SAE car to build.

[Chapo]

We have a similar situation down in Canberra, our team is usually of very limited experience, maybe one or two people who have had what you class as extensive experience over the past few years. Most of our people fit into the "need tools described to them" catagory. Hell I was like that when I first joined.

This is a problem that we face due to the type and size of our university, we are a Defence Force Academy, with a population of about 850 students. As such most of our team this year are not engineers, but anyone who is willing to come alonge and learn how to make stuff and maintain a race car.

In order to try and compensate for some of this lack of experience my self and one of the other guys on the team are writing what we are calling the ACME Racing "bible". Its aim is to cover everything as a beginners guide to our cars, how things work, how to pull bits apart and put them back together, basic workshop practices, trusted suppliers for the team, everything kind of rolled into one book. Our intention is to have it all printed off and put in a binder so we can change it around as we need to.

At the moment it is sitting at 16 pages lots of words, not enough pictures and only covers a portion of what I mentioned above, it is a massive task. When it is done it should be really good as a guide for people working on the car right from the beginning through to the advanced stages of the team. And the best part is its all wonderfully formatted using word http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

Thats my 2c

[RacingManiac]

I have to say it varies. Myself have had really rather useless autoshop class(credit requirement, the teacher don't really teach much, and spend most time taking stuff apart but not put back together) in Highschool before Uni. A few maybe have worked on their own cars before, but not really to any great extent I believe. Some years you might get a few more people who have tinkered with cars or bikes before. I have to say though most people on Toronto's engine section in the last few iteration of the team have tend to have more experience working on motors before, which I guess was the reason why they signed on to that section....Other sections tend to have people with no prior experience to do with the section and just learn from the senior at the time as well as read on their own time...

Stuff like CAD though some have more experience than others.

Other random prior experience such as working with fibre glass from sail boat to making wake boards and stuff have poped up quite often as well, and they tend to start by making bodyworks....http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif

[exFSAE]

Previous or concurrent experience.. this is of course neglecting previous years FSAE experience as underclassmen...

2005 Seniors - 1, raced karts.
2006 Seniors - 0 coming to mind.
2007 Seniors - 1, assorted SCCA racecar prep
2008 Seniors - 2, one raced karts, one on Nascar team.

Of course we always had folks and freshmen coming by and saying they could drop in some sikk turbos etc.. and wound up being flakes obviously.

Other than that, yea maybe they wrenched on stuff and changed oil and what not. As such, had to get a heavy focus on getting the freshmen hands-on experience from day 1. Be it simple welding or machining projects or sitting in on suspension design sessions or what have you. Experience carried from year to year.. #1 thing.

Just gotta find people that enjoy it and are interested in picking up new knowledge and skills.

Freshman year I wasn't on the team, had ZERO previous hands-on manufacturing or "wrenching" experience. Sophomore year I was working full time in a machine shop learning a lot, and started showing up for FSAE meetings, wrenching on the car, "nut and bolting" the car and going through whole prep list, learning to bleed brakes and install cams and gearbox parts. NEVER thought I'd know nearly enough to be in leadership position. Junior year felt confident enough to sort most of the car out mechanically and did an independent study in mechanical design / DFM. Also started welding. Senior year team captain, design/fab lead, all major CNC machining, steel and aluminum welding, some wire harness work, suspension design, exhaust design, etc.

Every year you wind up with a handful of people who can sort the whole car out mechanically or electrically. And that's enough. Just need to get em started early.

My 2 cents..

[Wesley]

I know this year that none of our team had any FSAE experience but for one guy. That said, I had restored a car from the ground up, including lots of research for engine etc, we had one guy that had a lot of dirt track experience, and the rest of them were pretty much just car enthusiasts.

Even so, we did pretty well, due to a legacy car and the members trying quite hard to pick up the slack.

Considering how little experience our team had, we did well with 3rd in Cali this year, so I expect next year to be even better.

So I guess the moral is, even with little experience, with dedicated members you can do well.

[Yellow Ranger]

Training is nothing, will is everything

[flavorPacket]

Freshman year I couldn't even use a mop, let alone a wrench. Didn't stop me from doing anything. I agree with the above statement that willingness to learn is by far the most important trait.

[mtg]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by flavorPacket:
Freshman year I couldn't even use a mop, let alone a wrench... </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Unfortunately, I knew people that after 4 years still didn't know how to use a mop, but knew how to wrench. Makes it hard to keep a shop clean....

From my experience, it seems that the average in FSAE is that some people have a little bit of wrenching experience when they join the team- ie most of the people don't really know anything going into it. And judging by the skill level of highly active team members after a few years on a team speaks worlds of the FSAE program itself, and the students that voluntarily put in that much work.

[joshiepoo]

worked on everything from saabs to hondas for about 10 years prior. worked for honda and acura dealers for three years prior.

[James Morris]

We had a small very experienced core team of 7 people this year,

1 x Ex Hyundai WRC, 1 works at triple8 at the weekends, 1 work on jay leno's tank car over in the states and had a Mahle placement, 1 has a st170 engined fiesta running on throttle bodys and mapping and had a Mahle placement and 1 x prodrive placement. The other 2 guys had tinkered with Hondas and VW's before.

James Morris
Swansea Metropolitan University