County students win mileage challenge
Four Butler County students were part of a team from Penn State Erie, The Behrend College who won the Society of Automotive Engineers' International Supermileage Challenge last month.
The team's carbon-fiber test car got nearly 1,300 miles from a gallon of gas.
That's roughly the distance from Butler to Dallas.
It's the second year in a row Behrend's Supermileage Club has won the contest.
This year's winning team included Cody Colpo, a sophomore from Evans City; Tyler Dorsch, a freshman from Harmony; Robert Ford, a sophomore from Mars; and Matt Lachesky, a junior from Butler, as members.
Dorsch, a mechanical engineering major who graduated from Seneca Valley High School in 2012, said the competition June 6 and 7 at the Eaton Corp. test track in Marshall, Mich., was “fierce but friendly.”
“We all want to do the best we can, we all want to keep pushing ourselves,” said Dorsch, the son of Monica and Dean Dorsch of Harmony.
Lachesky, an electrical engineering major who graduated from Butler High School in 2011, was also one of the 14 club members to make the trip to Michigan.
“Everyone that went is an engineer. We might have one or two chemistry majors, but 99 percent of the club is mechanical, electrical or plastics engineers,” Lachesky said.
“Once a year we go out to the Eaton Corps. proving grounds in Marshall, Mich., where they run dump trucks at 70 mph on a track. We take the car out and we run five laps,” said Lachesky.
“They weigh the fuel bottle, and after the laps they take the fuel bottle away and weigh it and extend that to average miles per gallon,” said Lachesky.
The car is not street legal, he said.
“It's completely custom built from the ground up. The body and the frame is carbon fiber. The motor is a 4-horsepower Briggs & Stratton. There's no headlights, no turn signals,” said Lachesky.
The three-wheeled vehicle is 10 feet long, 2 feet wide and 18 inches high. The driver lies on his back and looks out the windshield through his feet.
Lachesky said the car rests on two front wheels and a single, rear drive wheel.
He said the tires resemble those on a bicycle, but are actually custom-made by Michelin at $1,000 apiece.
“You can do as many runs as you have time for in a day,” said Lachesky, adding that it takes 40 minutes to complete a lap.
Five runs a day is not uncommon.
“The rules say you must average 15 miles an hour, and the minimum weight the car must hold is 140 pounds. Drivers that weigh less must carry bags of lead shot as ballast,” Lachesky said.
A team from Brigham Young University did better on the track — their car got 1,330 mpg — but the Behrend team dominated the design phase of the two-day competition,Lachesky said of the 20 teams, only 14 passed a stringent technical inspection to race.“You have to send in a full design report with the technical details. The reports are judged and the Behrend team won first place,” Lachesky said.In addition to a trophy, the team got a check for $1,400, money that will go toward a car for next year's competition, said Colpo, a mechanical engineering major.“We wanted to concentrate our refinements on engine development,” said Colpo. “But none were completed in time for this year. We're going to concentrate on getting the engines to run extremely well.”“We want to refine the body,” said Dorsch. “It's a great design. We want to make it smoother, smooth out some of the rough edges, try different engine designs to see which one is the best.”But Lachesky, who's taking over as club vice president in the fall semester, said a three-peat will be difficult because many club members have either graduated or transferred to the main Penn State campus.“Half the club is gone. We will be bringing in a lot of new people. We can't build a whole new car,” said Lachesky, adding the club will use this year's model but make improvements.He said the tires need to be reviewed and the engine's power throttled back by decreasing the block from 4- to 2-inch bores by using sleeves and smaller pistons.“Hopefully, next year will be the third time we win. We will have to see about that,” Lachesky said.“We will take the car down to the club rush and hope to get people interested” in joining the Supermileage Club in the fall, said Colpo.“Everyone in the club has so much fun and everyone is great friends. We spend time being productive and then have fun,” said Colpo.“During the semester, we meet on Friday night at 6 p.m. and it would be 2 or 3 a.m. before we'd be finished,” Lachesky said.“It will help significantly on the resume. I think if people have on their resume that they helped design a car that won an international competition, that's a good thing,” said Lachesky.“But we still have a blast,” he added.
