Pete's Clubhouse - Cowboy Racing

We're proud to debut our new series, Pete*s Clubhouse, with a report by Ashleigh Duke on OSU Cowboy Racing, a student run group sponsored by the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.  Our coverage features Drew Milligan (President) and Brianna Nichol (Public Relations Lead), and other members of The OSU Baja Team about the experiences that make the world of Baja competitive racing cool for people who want hands-on experience and practical knowledge in design, engineering, programming, marketing, administration, and, yes, racing too - making good friends and good memories along the way. Find OSU Cowboy Racing on Instagram or online, and donate to their Gofundme if you can to help them keep up the awesome work.

Audio engineering and vocal talent: Blake Miller.

Visit the Stuff OSU Should Know homepage to browse previously released podcasts!

Transcript

Baja Auto Racing Club (Final) Transcript

SOSK Member: [00:00:00] This is Stuff 

Chant: O-S-U 

SOSK Member: Should Know. 

Blake Miller: Hey kids, welcome to Pete's Clubhouse.

Ashleigh Duke: Howdy pokes, my name is Ashley Duke and you're listening to Pete's Clubhouse with the Stuff OSU Should Know podcast. If you've ever thought of building your own car from scratch, selling your own product, or just having fun racing around, this might be the team for you. The Oklahoma State University Mini Baja Racing Club does all of these and more.

Here to give more information is Drew Milligan and a couple of his teammates. 

Drew Milligan: Uh, hi, my name is Drew Milligan. I'm the Cowboy Racing President, uh, which is, uh, OSU's SAE Mini Baja team. Uh, SAE stands for Society of Automotive Engineers. Uh, each year we take a Mini Baja car to a competition of around a hundred different other teams.

Um, the main goal of the competition is to design and build a, uh, off road Mini Baja [00:01:00] car, and you go from the ground up. Almost every single thing on these vehicles is completely custom made by us in house or bought OEM purchases like differentials and engines and stuff. Uh, the competition itself is, uh, an international competition.

So we have teams coming in from Brazil, India, all sorts of things. And they also have competitions in their countries as well that we could attend if we wanted to. Um, but we don't, um, the main reason we don't is there's three competitions, uh, in the series every year for the U. S. side of things. Um, this year is SAE California, SAE Williamsburg, maybe, I don't know, it's in Pennsylvania, and then, uh, SAE Michigan, uh, and we're actually going to SAE California, which is in Gorman, California.

It's about 90 miles from Venice beach. So hopefully we'll get to get to go to the beach and enjoy some of that stuff. Uh, I think my favorite part of being on the team is [00:02:00] the design work, doing all of that, and then all obviously like the hands on skills and stuff like, um, three years ago, I couldn't weld anything.

And now I'm doing all of the welding for the car. Um, and John over here is, uh, learning how to 

John (Member of Auto Racing Club): do all the cam for cam and CNC machining. It's been a Quite a bumpy road learning all of it, but it's getting there. And it's quite the skill to have 

Drew Milligan: most of, I will say most of the things that we do are, uh, self taught we get help from advisors and stuff, but there's no advisor, like fully teaching us how to do this.

Most of the stuff that we do is like either by ourselves or we learn from other members or something along those lines. Um, I'm not a car guy at all. I knew nothing about cars whenever I showed up. Which is insane because now I'm the president or whatever. Um, but yeah, everything that I know about cars comes from this club and I absolutely love them now.

And I want to build cars after school. [00:03:00] It's just really awesome, isn't it? It's definitely a passion project. So, so we're here like what 40, 30, 40 hours a week. Sometimes it's almost a full time job. Nearly. If we were getting paid. Yeah, if we were getting paid. So Fall Frenzy is a, uh, uh, an event that we host every year, uh, where we invite teams like OU, Wichita State, K State, Kansas, LATU, pretty much any team that we can get to come from around the region um, that will come, we invite them and they all show up and do like a little mini uh, Four hour endurance race.

Uh, I think what we do an hour, we did an hour. Yeah. We normally do an hour and then it's just kind of a time to hang out with the other teams, get to know them, share some knowledge, some shop stories, stuff like that before and after the race. And then during the race, obviously we have fans that are there cheering us on some crazy stuff happens.

If you go to sooner off roads, [00:04:00] Instagram, um, you'll see a video of them. On our track, and their entire car does a full somersault off of one of the jumps that we have. Um, and, I mean, our track is, uh, is pretty brutal, but it's, it's nowhere near competition brutal. And we have about, uh, what are the jumps, like five foot jumps, probably?

All the jumps are about five foot. Um, we got some tabletops, we got, um, hairpin turns. We've got drop offs. It's it's the, it's the whole shebang. So it's, it's pretty crazy. So yeah, it's about the perfect setup. Yeah. Probably my, my favorite memory is, um, last year, uh, me and the other, uh, lead design guy for last year's car.

Um, we're up all night. Basically, we were trying to figure out a way to optimize gears and code so that we wouldn't have to do the, all of the calculations and iterations by hand. And so we were up literally all night and, uh, [00:05:00] we had one simulation running. We finally got the code to run and it was going to take like, I think like an hour to run.

Well, we were like really hungry and it was like 4 a. m. We left to go to Whataburger, and he brings his, uh, laptop with us. And while we're ordering and getting our food, he's In the Python program, typing out everything that's going on days like that, when, you know, it seems super crazy and it really is crazy because it's nobody should be doing that or even staying up that late in the first place, much less for like a project this complicated, but it was just, it was super funny.

Yeah, it was probably one of my favorite ones. So, 

John (Member of Auto Racing Club): yeah. And my favorite memory is we took a little trip to Wisconsin to manufacture our entire frame with a really nice company called Bintec. And on our way back, a design report for the car was due. So one of us is driving, the others [00:06:00] who are doing the design report in the back of the car, and then the laptop dies.

We stop at the closest gas station to try and find an outlet to plug in. Well, there were no outlets in the gas station. And then we finally find one on a lamppost. I remember, I turn around, When I see Drew, he's plugged into a lamppost submitting the design report. 

Drew Milligan: Like, an hour 

John (Member of Auto Racing Club): before it's due. An hour before it's due.

Brianna Nichol: So, my name is Brianna Nickel, and I am the public relations lead for Cowboy Racing. And I would say, whenever I started helping out with Cowboy Racing, I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to jump in on projects where I was needed. I didn't feel like I needed to know much engineering jargon, and what I needed to know I was taught.

And um, yeah, it's a really laid back environment. It's really fun. I think for people, individuals that are [00:07:00] not engineering majors, my advice to them is to just come check it out. It's more cool than daunting. Yeah, it's just cool. And I think that's what people need to know about it. Anyone's welcome to join pretty much at any time right now.

So there's no harm in trying it out and seeing if it's something that they'd be interested in. 

Drew Milligan: Last major thing is, uh, we have meetings on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6. 30 to about 9 p. m. Um, and then we do a Saturday meeting, uh, at 10 a. m. Uh, it's a kind of whenever we normally do like a team lunch, we go get slims a lot.

We also headed to Wisconsin this year. Like John mentioned earlier, that was a super fun thing that, uh, some of the guys got to go on that trip and learn about more manufacturing processes. So we're always trying to do something with our members, whether that be drive days, going to Wisconsin, stuff like that.

Um, and then we do a lot of campus outreach as well, uh, and K through 12 outreach. [00:08:00] Um, Odyssey of the Mind came last year and we went and presented our cars and talked to some of the younger, younger kids, uh, that were up here. And then also just like lights on Stillwater, we're in the, in the parade, all of that sort of stuff.

Also, our Instagram is, uh, at cowboy. racing, so you guys should give it a follow. It's pretty awesome. So, yeah. 

Ashleigh Duke: Thank you for listening to Pete's Clubhouse and be sure to check out the Mini Baja Racing Club. Have a great day and Go Pokes!