NDSU received the Rookie of the Challenge Award and finished sixth place overall during the 2010 Society of Automotive Engineers’ Clean Snowmobile Challenge held March 15-20 at Michigan Technological University in Houghton, Mich.
NDSU was one of only three entries to complete the Endurance Run portion of the contests and was competing in the event for the first time.
NDSU’s snowmobile was the product of a senior design project for mechanical engineering majors Keith Leier, Rugby, N.D.; Steven Schmidt, Mohall, N.D.; and Michael Fegley, Berthold, N.D. Nine fellow members of the campus Society of Automotive Engineers chapter assisted them, and their driver was junior Derek Pokrzywinski, a civil engineering major from Lankin, N.D.
“We went to the competition with the goal of developing a durable snowmobile that could compete with the other teams, and we were able to do just that. Not only did we accomplish our pre-competition goals, we definitely opened some eyes and proved that NDSU's Clean Snowmobile Team is a force to be reckoned with,” Leier sad.
The competition requires engineering students to re-engineer a stock snowmobile with the goal to reduce emissions and noise while maintaining or boosting performance.
The University of Wisconsin at Madison won the 19-squad event.