Engineering Students Build Diesel Snowmobile And Take Top Honors!

There are so many cool things going on in this world it is hard to keep track of them. Every time we turn around, someone is doing something unique or radical. When possible, we like to bring you some of the cool stuff we hear about.

We, recently, came across a story of a group of college students building a diesel snowmobile from scratch to enter a competition. The design project is part of their senior design class. Ever year senior college students are required to take a design class which serves as a culmination to their engineering studies. The senior design class is designed to bring all of the individual aspects of engineering studies that the students have gone through and bring them together in a real world situation.

How exactly that is done varies by school. In general, design projects are offered up to the students and the students break up into teams and work on that project (usually for a year.) One such team from North Dakota State University (NDSU), recently, took on a project of designing, building, and competing in a Clean Snowmobile Challenge.

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The Clean Snowmobile Challenge is sponsored by SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) and was held on March 2^nd through the 7^th in Michigan at Michigan Technological University. The students entered the diesel category where the competition was judged in the following categories, fuel economy, low emissions, low noise, design and draw bar pulling contest.

We were faced with a lot of adversity and challenges — Nathan DuChene

“We were faced with a lot of adversity and challenges since day one of the project, but through persistence and hard work, we were able to overcome all of them. The project and competition were fun – we learned a lot about snowmobiles and diesel engines not only from our research, but also from working hands-on throughout our project,” said Nathan DuChene from NDSU.

The group of NDSU who were up against not only US teams but international teams ended up taking top honors in all categories! Their hard work and determination truly paid off.

If you enjoy the automotive industry, but don’t want to turn a wrench for a living, there are lots of way to make a good living. These students are a great example. Many of them will enter the work force and will probably stay in the automotive industry for most of their career. Engineering programs like this are offed at a number of universities around the country and a quick internet search is all you need to find what these programs are all about!