Rough Terrain Vehicle with Synchronized Transmission-A Student Design Project

A Rough Terrain Vehicle has been designed, constructed and tested by Mechanical Engineering Students for the Mini-Baja 77 Races. This one seat vehicle has an eight horsepower engine, five speed transmission, independent front wheel suspension and disc brake. The gear train has been matched to the engine performance curves. A wooden mockup was used to establish the man-machine interface. The design and construction of this vehicle was the assigned problem in “Mechanical Engineering Practice”. This paper presents the design of this vehicle and then comments on the effectiveness of this project in achieving the objectives of this course.