Team Picture

Looking good!

- Chris Twarog

Racer X

We were on the way to Emissions testing and had to stop for a nice photo op. We're showing Englishtown that you can save fuel at the race track. Who wants to race for pinks :-)

Huskynox Means Business

The sun crested the tree line this morning, and the Huskynox was ready and waiting to dominate the competition.  The tech inspectors didn't bother with an inspection since the vehicles' reliability and the teams workmanship is well known and respected.

Well, it didn't go quite as scripted but due to some hard work by the team in the pits this bad machine is ready for a good flogging.  It is actually behaving quite well, and MTU has already claimed victory in one metric!

Big day tomorrow and Thursday when this country car gets to spend time with some city slickers down in NYC.

- Chris Twarog

So it Begins

We are all waking up this morning wondering what is in store for us.  A plane ride for sure for the ten of us traveling to Newark, NJ our first stop in the ten day road rally to Washington, DC.  You know there are ten of traveling, and these ten people know how to make a hybrid car, but I will be in shock if all ten of us show up on time to Newark.
-Radar

The Truck is coming

36 hours from now a big truck is coming to steal away our prized hybrid.
We can't complain a whole lot since GM is taking us on the "vacation"
highlight of our college careers. The plan is a rigorous road rally
featuring extensive vehicle testing, fancy hotels, enough press releases
to satisfy a national news paper and of course a ton of fun. Our MTU
vehicle has been running great the last few days and Cobasys just signed
off on our new battery as being OK for the journey. Washington DC here we
come!

Todd Cimermancic

Re: Lower Michigan

The huskynox just died in traffic. A nice guy from GM gave us a ride to
Jims house to get the truck and trailer. We've got 15 hours to fix it
before our media event and we know we're chasing an electrical gremlin

Todd Cimermancic

All nighter?

Saturday, April 12, 12:02 AM

Well, today has been a sweet bonding day for some of the team. We started the day with class, but luckily were done with that by 1. Then Adam, Todd, Doug and I (Mindy) piled in to a B.A. Ford Fusion rented from the MTU Motorpool for 49 cents a mile. For those of you that follow the Huskynox team you would know that we don't wait for things and when we need something we get it ourselves. So we drove the 158 miles to the closest Suzuki dealer in Escanaba. You may wonder why we went to a Suzuki dealer for Huskynox parts, but that is a very long and frustrating story. So we got the parts we needed got some lunch and stopped at the local Honda dealer (you know you are in the U.P. when its spring, snowing and you are looking at motorcycles) then made the trek back to Houghton. Now mind you last night we got about 11'' of snow and it was snowing and really windy all day today. We got back to Houghton about 8 hours later and went right to the shop where we met Dunda, Woon and Bono. Dunda has been making some awesome refinements to the controls system. We have been here since the end of the road trip installing the parts we picked up and preparing the car to run for our ride and drive event we have tomorrow (Saturday). It is now 12:20 and the car is starting to go back together, its going to be running on time. Sunday Todd and Doug are taking the Huskynox down to the Detroit area for SAE congress and some more media/ ride and drive events. We are keeping the tradition of late nights and having things come down to the last few hours. Well its time to get a few more hours in tonight, we will keep you updated on the awesome things we do. LAAAATERRR!!!!

Update So Far

So it has been an interesting week.  After getting the battery pack back we had a few issues with the Motron communicating with all the components.  After swithching out a few fuses and finding a few loose wires everything was talking to everything like it should.  After checking everything else on the car we drove the car and tested all the components.  We only made it a mile until the gears in the rear differential started skipping.  Limping back to the shop we realized that the differential was shot.  This being our second rear diff and only having 800 miles on this new one we still are not sure what is the culprit.  It seems like once something is fixed something else wants to go wrong.
--
RADAR
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Shop work last weekend

After spending 7 hours on Friday and 7 hours on Saturday the exhaust is finally complete, and 100% leak free!  The new front axle shafts are in and hopefully before Spring Break the engine will be purring again.  Wednesday of this week inspection is scheduled for our car.  Not being able to drive the vehicle is a little hinder but there is nothing we can do without a battery pack.

RADAR

Busy Week

So it has been a busy week for us here.  The exhaust is slowly starting to get taken care of while we wait for word on the battery situation.  The intake has been nearly completed, and now we have switched our focus to fixing the cooling system and the AC lines.  Hopefully we can at least have the engine running again by spring break.  It will be nice when the car finally gets off the lift.

- RADAR

MTU CHALLENGE-X EQUINOX HYBRID

Good Evenning:

All is well at ATDC on this MTU Winter Carneval "All Nighter" , Wed. 08
Feb. 06.

check out the mtu web site winter carneval for further details

Ron M. Savela @ ATDC

Battery Troubles

After realizing our battery is shot we decided to completly tack the rear battery compartment apart and make it more sound proof and cleaner. All the old insulation has been taken out of the battery compartment and our plan is to replace it all with a light weight, waterproof sound deadening material. Also in the battery compartment all the wiring was more organized and we made the area more repair friendly.

On the front half of the vehicle the clock spring was replaced in the steering wheel allowing us to utilize the controls on the steering wheel. Also the radiator has been repaired.

We have a lot of work ahead of us in the next few weeks and hopefully we can replace the battery with our older battery to be able to drive the vehicle while we are waiting for a new battery pack.

RADAR