Laurentian engineering students race homemade all-terrain buggy

A group of Laurentian University students is back from California after competing in an international engineering competition.

The Voyageur racing team started witha box full of pipes and some paper sketches to eventuallybuilt an off-road buggy from scratch.

Justin Weaver, afourth year mechanical engineering student and president of the racing team,said the group worked on itsown time over the past two years.

He said the project provided them withreal life experience in their field.

"There's no other opportunity. You're able to take what you learn in school and actually apply it,physicallydo your own design, try it, test it, work it and see how well it works" said Weaver.

The team ofstudents participated two years ago in a competition inIllinois,butweren't able tofinish.

Weaver said they realized their vehicle had to endure through therace."Even though it wouldn't be the quickest or the fastest...[the vehicle] needed tolast throughthe endurance race."

This time around the team workedto build a vehicle that would make it through the entire course.

Weaver, who drove the buggy in the California competition says the course was rough, with rocky terrain, big drops, mud holes, bigjumps and logs.

Nathan Aitken, also a fourth year mechanical engineering student, was the Voyageurs' Team Captain.

He felt it wasthe manual transmission on the Laurentianbuggy that made it stand out above the rest.

He believes it was thatspecial factor that helped them with the steep, 91-metrehill climb during the race, although he said the buggy struggled at the end of it.

Aitken said the Voyageurs' buggy came in fifth outof 96 teams on the hill climb.

While they didn't win overall, Weaversaidthe team ispleased with itssuccess, sincethey finishedwithout any malfunctions.

The Laurentian team ended up in coming in 23rdout of 100 teams that participated.

Up North7:32Laurentian Voyageur Racing Team return from world wide competition with best results ever.

Fourth year mechanical engineering students Justin Weaver and Nathan Aitken couldn't be happier about placing the highest ever for LU in a recent world wide race in California with their buggy. It took their team two years to build from scratch.