Despite a promising lead in last weekend, the ISU Mini Baja team faced malfunctions that stopped them short of their goal.

The 12-person team competed at the May 19–22 Society of Automotive Engineers Baja 2010 competition in Bellingham, Wash.

The competition consisted of three main parts, sales, design and dynamics.

One of the hardest things leading up to the event was the time span for the project.

“The idea of having students design, make and test a car in a year is a big challenge.” said Chase Schuette, senior in mechanical engineering.

Schuette is the team’s fabrication director and assistant project director. He is one of the 12 students who worked on this year’s off-road racer.

While the event focuses on engineering, Schuette said it’s much more than that. “There is a business side with the sales pitch, and as well as the design aspect, too.”

The opening day of the Baja competition consisted of judging the car’s design. The team this year decided to try new ideas on the vehicle including making it a lighter car then the team’s previous entries.

“We put a lot more design work than any other year,” Schuette said.

The team built custom shocks from a volkswagon car’s shocks and a custom-made gearbox.

Also, they had an original idea of developing an electronic clutch, so the driver could press a button to choose whether to send power to just the left wheel, just the right wheel or to both.

Schuette said he hadn’t seen any other car with a similar clutch yet. The new style of clutch took more training for the driver so he could get used to it.

After the design part of the competition, the team had the sales part of the event. The event focuses on teams trying to pitch their car compared to other off-road racers in the competition.

Schuette said the team did okay in the event but not outstanding.

Still, the team felt good going into dynamics, their practice runs had good times and thought they could reach their goal of being within the top 10 teams at the competition.

The dynamic event’s first day consisted of time trials in which the teams were awarded points on how fast they completed each competition. The trials included acceleration, rock crawl, traction and maneuverability.

The team was feeling even better when they found out they were ranked ninth going into the final and most challenging event.

The final event of the Baja competition is a four-hour race and the outcome holds the most points. For Schuette it’s challenging because it’s hours of nonstop driving, except for pit stops during the race.

At first, the race started out great, but after a couple of laps, the left front shock blew out and the car had to come back to the pit for a quick fix. Then the both rear shocks blew out, and the driver spent three hours with no rear shocks.

Then the car was hit in the rear by another car. Later, the electronics system controlling power to the rear wheels came loose and caused some blown fuses.

In the race, the team completed 23 laps and finished in 46th place. The top three teams completed 47 laps.

Their performance in the final race dropped the team to 28th overall among 85 scored cars.

“It was a fine job, we were still in the top quarter, but we were a little bummed,” Schuette said.

The team is backed by the sponsors: Iowa Laser Technology Inc., of Cedar Falls; Dassault Systemes SolidWorks Corp., of Concord, Mass.; Compressor Controls Corp., of Des Moines; and 3M, of St. Paul, Minn.