Chris Lowrey
QUYON Sept. 17, 2018
The Carleton Raven’s racing team was in the Pontiac recently testing out its new high performance vehicle.
The racing team is made up of fourth year students at Carleton University from a variety of different programs, though most come from the mechanical engineering program.
The vehicle itself looks kind of like a race car, but on a smaller scale.
“It’s totally custom, so it’s not really based on any platform,” said the team’s social media coordinator Eric Canam. “We built it from scratch, we designed the frame, the engine comes from a KTM dirt bike.”

Every fourth year mechanical engineering student at Carleton has to complete some kind of design project in order to complete the program. Several students have chosen to work on this project.
Each year there are about 50 students who each design one component on the car. Their contributions can range from the aerodynamics of the vehicle to the members of the volunteer team like Canam who handle the logistics of everything else.
“I do all of the social media stuff,” Canam said. “We all go out and help with the manufacturing.”
Each year a new group of Carleton students builds a new version of the vehicle.
“We kind of started in the summer and we expect to have a working car in or around February,” Canam said.
Not only does the racing team compete against other universities, the fact that this initiative has been going on since 1998 means each new graduating class is competing against those that came before them.
Each year the vehicle is disassembled and, while some parts can be reused, many have to be made from scratch.
“There are some parts that we are required by rules to rebuild, like the frame, so we have to get all new steel, cut it up and weld it back together again,” Canam said. “But there are some parts that we do reuse, like the wheels and this year we’re going to reuse the steering rack.”
Canam stated that the main goal is to improve each year. But the ultimate goal is to finish in the top ten of the Formula SAE in Michigan. The event is an international design competition for students to gain valuable experience and a chance at bragging rights.
Last year’s event featured over 120 teams made up of more than 2,500 students. Last year, the Ravens racing team finished in seventh place.
“It’s like a whole league, if you will,” Canam said. “People will build cars, just like we’re doing, from other schools.”
There are static and dynamic events for the vehicles.
“The dynamic events are where we actually race the car, where we’re just trying to put down fast lap times,” Canam said. “Whereas the static events, we’re doing stuff like presenting to judges our decisions in terms of design.”
The top speed of the vehicle is anywhere from 100 to 120 km/h.
The racing team chose Quyon Karting as one of its testing grounds because the track provides a good test for the vehicle.
“Quyon is a fairly challenging track,” Canam said. “It lets us just run the car through its paces but Quyon is also a very generous sponsor of ours, they lend us the track.”
Since track time can be quite expensive, Canam said that by lending the racing team the track, Quyon Karting helps the team save money.
They also test the vehicle at the Calabogie Motorsports Park as well as parking lots around Carleton University late at night when everyone has gone home.
But not just anybody can get behind the wheel of such a finely tuned machine.
“The car is fairly difficult to drive so we ask that anyone that drives it, especially at competitions, have previous experience driving either race cars or go-karts,” Canam said.
The rules dictate that the vehicle’s driver has to be a student.
Although the fourth year students get a credit for participating, many who are on the team do it for the experience and because they love vehicles and racing.
“I mostly started to get into cars around the twelfth grade and I realized Carleton had this team around second year,” Canam said. “So I joined and I’ve just enjoyed it ever since.”
“The volunteers and even a lot of the fourth year project managers, we’re all just in it for fun,” Canam said. “It’s really just a hobby for us and there’s not a lot of room for doing this sort of thing in your garage at home.”