First of all we want to send a big thanks to all our sponsors! Thank you so much for your help and support to make it possible for us to compete in Shell Eco-marathon 2011.

We also want to say thanks to Sundin’s Inn and Erikson’s bed & breakfast for hosting us during our travel to and from Germany and thanks to all other service along the way!

This project has been very interesting and we have learned a lot! Working together with students from different fields of study, and together with good teachers and helpful companies, has been a great experience.

Our result in at the Shell Eco-marathon 2011 was 674 km and that put us on 34^ths place out of about 200 participants. We had hopes for a better position, but after 34^th place out of 200 are quite good!

We also want to send thanks to the other Swedish teams, we might be competitors on the track, but we all helped each other out off track at the Shell Eco-marathon. Still, we did manage to make a better result than KTH J

So again thanks to all the sponsors and people that have made this project doable!

Skilži 2011

So… the count down is over we are finally in Germany, Eurospeedway Lausitz.  We arrived late Monday after 2 straight days driving from Luleå to Lausitz, or approx 2000 km. And that to find out that one of the tent-poles for our tent was missing. We used our engineering-brain and found our cooling-box good instead of the tent-pole, well it works for now before the right pole arrives tonight.

Those two days we have used to work on details on Skilzi to be sure to get through the technical inspection and the safety inspection. The only thing they weren’t satisfied with was the start-engine light. We used the exact same solution as last year but this year it was obviously not good enough so we resolved it by placing a new light in the back of Skilzi. That made us pass the technical inspection and now we are allowed entrance to the tracks and the start-stop area.

We had hoped to try the car on Tuesday on the track but it was a lot of small details to be fixed and late Tuesday night we felt ready for the Technical Inspection. Today we had also hoped to be on the track, but the Technical inspection and fixing the light and other things took a lot of time, but by 16.00 we felt ready to try out Skilzi on the track. At first it seemed really good, but after the start we found out that there is a big difference between Ethanol and Ethanol and the engine wasn’t running any good. After a couple of hundred meters we were brought off the track with some help. This night’s work will be to calibrate the engine to run with the Shell Eco-marathon ethanol, E100… It’s nice that it isn’t too cold over here and to be able to stay outside and work in our tent for a while.

The teachers also arrived tonight even though the volcanic-ashes made them a few hours late. But they arrived in Berlin and that was good, the captain on flight 1647 told them before take off “..this flight departing for somewhere in Germany”.

The internet over here is… well not the best.. so we’ll get back to you when possible…

Bye for now…

Hi Again

Today we had our first real test drive in Arcus, a sports arena in Luleå. We were quite satisfied with the turnout. Our driver Caroline had the possibility to really get to know the vehicle and Alexandra (our reserve- driver) were also able to test drive a little while. The press was there to catch the moment and the first real test drive of Skilži this year.

We promised to announce some facts about Skilži so…

Type: Prototype vehicle
Approximate cost: € 40,000
Width: 650 mm
Length: 2800 mm
Height: 631 mm
Weight: 38 kg
Top speed: 50 km/h
Fuel consumption: 1201 km/l
Tank volume: 0,1 l
Drive train: Mechanical
Fuel: Ethanol
ICE type: Fuji Imvac BF-25EI, four-stroke
ICE displacement: 25 cc

The fuel consumption above is from last years Shell Eco-marathon and that’s the main parameter that we want to improve this year. The best Swedish result in the prototype class is 1243 km and that’s something we really want to beat at Shell Eco-marathon in May! Other schools participating from Sweden are KTH and Chalmers, and of course LTU want to get the Swedish Golden-trophy 2011!

So long!

So, as usual and not surprising date of the competition is moving forward… Today we were contacted by Shell, they wished to get more pictures of Skilži. We have applied for the design award, which is an off-track award. That simply means that the award is for something that isn’t measured on the tracks. We are also participating in the Safety Award and Best Team Spirit. Good team spirit is something we know we have, whether or not Shell thinks that’s the case in the end.

Right now we are also working on the visual appearance of Team Baldos; stripes for the cars on the way down, roll-ups, information flyers and profile clothes.

Bye for now!

Hi Again

Hope everybody has enjoyed a lovely Easter holiday. Parts of Team Baldos have, parts of us have been working hard. Our programmers have been working with the engine all weekend, and with results!

If you walked outside LTU this weekend and heard an engine inside the workshop, well that was probably us! It’s amazing how many lines of code such a small car as Skilži can have. Our mechanical engineers are quite happy that our haxxors showed up in the beginning of our project. Without them it should have been a lot harder to make the engine run just as we like!

But enough said about code, the mechanical engineers have definitely contributed with their part of the project and more! The machines in the workshop are working on the last pieces of equipment for the car and excitement rises… It’s so close now!

So once again hope you had a lovely Easter and we’ll get back to you soon!

So, just a few weeks left until we leave for Germany. It feels really weird, the time has run so fast, and I think everybody in the team agrees to that.

A lot of the parts are manufactured at this stages and all our low friction engine parts from Oerlikon arrived last week. Soon the engine will run as smooth as ever, hopefully!

The team is working hard in the workshop to get all parts ready for our test-period. We know the importance of test driving the vehicle so during May we will focus all our efforts on improving the already improved Skilži. It will be so interesting to see what we have managed to do regarding the improvements of Skilži, how far will it be able to go?! Just wait and see, we will soon have the answer.

During our trip to Germany it will be possible for everybody that is interested to follow our performance to log on to our webpage and follow Skilži-data live.

Baldos.se will be continuously updated during our travel and at the competition at Shell Eco-marathon, we hope you all will follow us!

And now when the spring has arrived in Luleå we long to take Skilži out for a drive! But to remember our lovely winter in the north of Sweden I will serve you with a wonderful winter picture of Skilži.

Skilži winter 2011

Today we had our first press release. The focus was on Caroline – our driver this year. TV was here to visit as well as radio and some newspapers.

The purpose of the press release was to give media and everybody interested the opportunity to meet Caroline and to get a first look at Skilži.

Norrbottens Kuriren were there and you can read their article here.

24 Norrbotten were also there, and you can see the clip from their news cast here and here.

Ny Teknik, well known to every engineer also published this article about us.

And SR – the Swedish radio – sent the following broadcast.

Regarding the car itself everything starts to look good, the powertrain is starting to come together and all parts needed have soon arrived.

The team is really looking forward to May and the Shell Eco Marathon race!

Team Baldos consists of many students. Four of us are working on the electrical part of Skilži; this includes the circuit boards, the software and the website. This year we have redesigned and improved last year’s circuit board and we are currently hard at work on the software.

You can follow us and our work more closely on our separate blog. It is written in Swedish so our English readers can read it with the help of Google Translate.

/Stefan Sundin

So… middle of Mars.

The project is moving along. The details about the improvements of Skilži are as good as done. The team is working simultaneous on different parts of the car. We are also working on different types of external measurement-systems to make sure that the adjustment we do actually increases the performance of Skilži.

This year’s driver is also excited about how the project is moving forward and is just waiting for when the car will be ready for test driving. We all start to see the light outside and hopefully the ground will be clear of snow just in time for our test driving.

Almost every part of the car will go through major adjustments before this year’s Shell Eco Marathon. The Shell Eco Marathon will be in Germany the 26^th to the 28^th of May.

Our driver will see clear improvements in the driver environment, the information and way of getting it will be upgraded from last year, both regarding the equipment and the software and code.

A couple of weeks ago our new motors arrived and we are really excited to start working on them.

We also thought it was time to show you all Skilži in its real environment, so here you go:

Skilži

Hi!

Welcome to our team-page.

Right now there is a lack of photos of Skilzi on Baldos.se, we are sorry for that and will try to fix that as soon as possible!

The team is working hard with the optimization of Skilzi. We have done some test-runs with the car and those have went just fine, not as fine as they will be in May of course, but good to be right now!

We have been looking over almost every part of last years car to try to find ways to improve it. It’s a quite extensive job, but everybody in the team seems to think it’s interesting and a lot of the time even fun to be working with.

This project is a really good way of using our engineering skills, not to be stuck behind a book but to be able to use the knowledge in a real, live project. The team members have a lot of different engineering skills from different programs and everybody still has the ability to try theory in practice and everybody definitely has the chance to gain so much new knowledge.

This year we are traveling to Germany and Shell-Eco Marathon to become at least Sweden’s most fuel-efficient car, will you join us on our journey?!