This competition update is from Otis Clapp, it was written in two sections and tells what has been happening to the University of Maine, Mechanical Engineering, Clean Snowmobile at the Competition in Houghton Michigan, hosted by Michigan Technological University.

Tuesday March 14:

 

Here is what has happened:

 

We did not finish the endurance event, the sled over heated at around 6 laps and we were forced to shut it down. 

 

Once we got the sled back to the shop we started trying to fix it.

 

We think that the over heating was caused by a few small to medium problems that combined to be a BIG problem. 

            1: The quick disconnect that we had was EXTREMELY restrictive, so we replaced it with another that wasn't

            2: The thermostat was stuck closed.  We tried to find a replacement but none were to be had so we cut off the spring part and reinstalled as an open.

 

After we fixed those problems we went out and tried to see if the sled would work.  It overheated again and we had to limp back to the shop. 

 

We re-filled with coolant and changed the oil.  The oil was BURNT! 

 

Checked engine compression, even in all cylinders

 

We figured that it seemed like an air bubble that was in the engine so we purged the motor of air by following the procedure in the manual.

 

Ran again and over heated.

 

Flushed the system of air again... over heated again.

 

Ate dinner

 

Went back and worked more... purged again... over heated.

 

thought the water pump might be bad.   Disassembled ... nope not bad.

 

So now that it was about 10 PM and we checked everything we thought we could check we gave up.

 

We think that the problem is head gasket, cracked head, maybe a base gasket.  So the final diagnosis is that we can not fix the sled as it sits now and here. 

 

I guess we are going to go ahead and do the presentation despite the sled being dead.

 

We don't think that anything we did this year killed the sled; maybe it was the lack of proper breaking in, the snowmobile gets very hot during previous competitions when it is run on the dyno for emissions testing.

 

That is the report and morale is lower than a snakes belly in a wagon rut.

 

Otis

 

Wednesday March 16

 

Well we have kinda fixed the sled... kinda.

 

We were fully intending to give up because of the bad head gasket or whatever so we spent the morning putting together a puzzle and then went to the garage to reassemble and pack up because the sled was not running for any amount of time.  But when we got up there we were informed that we would be allowed to use the local machine shop if necessary to create a gasket and/or machine the head.  This sparked the 5 of us (Matt W., Jessie, Darrell, Ashton, and I) pulled the motor from the sled and disassembled it.  We checked the head and it seemed more or less level and the top of the block, it may have been slightly warped but it didn't seem too bad.  We then coated the old leaky head gasket with spray copper adhesive and re assembled the motor and installed it. 

 

We then went to the static display.

 

After the static display we returned the garage and tweaked the motor as best we could then started going out to do our endurance miles.  We had to stop every 12 laps or so to let the sled cool down and be filled with coolant.  We completed 25ish laps out of the 41 we had to do before the supervisor (at Midnight) had to leave so we stopped.  During the run we cut away the bottom plate that was under the hood scoop to allow the engine to breathe more.  And the catalytic converter and the header were glowing red after even a short time.

 

The cold start worked perfectly.  Then the sound test where we may have scored 1 DB louder then the electric sled, but either way we think we did well.  Then the subjective handling event was held and we limped through that event some how. 

 

We then began the endurance run laps we had remaining.  We had to limp hardcore but we made it.  We even tried removing the cat and putting on just the muffler, but it didn't help so we are reinstalling it.

 

This is where we called it quits for the day.

 

Otis

 

Stay tuned for a final summary of the competition