Well I have just recovered from managing a school team in this years RACV Energy Breakthrough. This is an event for Human Powered Vehicles (HPV's) and Hybrid Vehicles which race for 24hrs straight. There are different classes depending on the age of the students.

 

My team "RUN A MUK" were competing in the open class (no gender or age restrictions) against 20 other vehicles. Overall there were around 80 entries on the HPV track (hybrids compete on a separate track due to the speed differences).

 

The team managed to set a new record for the most laps covered by the school for the second year in a row at 591 laps :).

 

So to answer the question this works out to be 670 km's of pedalling by eight riders in 24 hours.

 

This included being rolled 3 times during the race - twice within 2 laps by teams that were trying to catch us :D

 

Overall results were

* Fourth outright

* third in class

* first display and presentation (open class)

* first design and construction (open class)

* overall best display and presentation (secondary)

 

When all of the above was added up we lost the overall point score for the open class by 2 points :hmm:

 

Some pics below

 

 

 

 

Edited November 29, 200520 yr by coln72

jesus, you'd wanna be fit :hmm:

The problem is that we weren't fit - I finished the race with only three riders capable of riding and we were beaten by 60 laps overall.

 

There are some serious HPV's competing now - complete carbon fibre vehicles are common and some serious work is being done with areodynamics by some teams.

 

Our HPV has a chrome moly chassis, carbon fibre reinforced aluminium canopy frame and a coreflute body. It weighs around 27kg and is considered fat. The junior schools HPV weighs 15kg!!!!! Top speed was around 54km/h in the race.

 

One roll late in the race actually ground away half of an aluminium tube on the side of the bike. It finished the race held together with race tape :hmm:

Yep the end of November so I have 12 months to fix the vehicle. Took 12 months for the students to build it - I didn't have to lift a tool :hmm:

 

don't have the funds to build another from scratch :sad: (any sponsorship gladly accepted) next year so this one gets a rerun after it is patched up.

Edited November 30, 200520 yr by coln72

That is awesome!! Race tape always works :hmm:

 

I'm sure you learnt heaps from this years event anyway, and will do even better next year. I can say this knowing that I don't have to compete :D

freakin skinny bastards...... :hmm:

"freakin skinny bastards"

 

They have to be to fit in it - my 90kgs barely squeezes into it. It's track is approx. 600mm wide.

Good Job Colin :D . It certainly looks the part. At least you can re-design and move forward for next year. Its a shame about missing out by 2 points though. :hmm:

I guess your a Secondary School Teacher? Did the School donate some funds to get you started, or are all the sponsors to thank for that?

Everything is paid for by sponsorship - school does f@$k all to help (actually they made it harder for the teams this year by restricting training). They are glad to accept the glory if we do well though.......

 

I don't have any signage representing the school on the vehicle at all - only the schools initials on the kids shirts (in pissy little writing).

I don't have any signage representing the school on the vehicle at all - only the schools initials on the kids shirts (in pissy little writing).

 

 

Thats the Spirit. :P

My school entered one of these a 10 or so years ago, we had a battery/peddle powered car the batteries would run the car for 5 or so k's then peddle for 10km to recharge the battery, there was these two older guys in the race that made an EFI engine with there bare hands it looked like a block of steel but they ran for 5 hours on 5 litres of fuel, i think there car went around 30km per hour.

Ingenuity here... I'd imagine that it would be reasonably hard to pedal in a situation like that... at the moment i struggle to ride 50km in a day, I honestly can't imagine myself in a vehicle like that!

From memory they averaged over 30km/h just pedalling. Speedo said max speed was 53.1km/h.........

 

The schools hybrid - 50cc honda power with pedalling will top out at close to 100km/h if they don't restrict its fuel use.

 

It is actually easy to pedal as it has a very low frontal area. hardest part is actually seeing out of the thing :D

 

last year I rolled a vehicle in training - slid for 11m on its side before it stopped (measured from the aluminium smeared into the road surface with my elbow dragging on the ground :(

that thing looks awesome. nice one colin. maybe try some sort of outrigger to stop it from falling over. hehe.