r/FSAE

India currently runs one of the largest SAE eBAJA platforms globally, with 90+ teams actively developing electric off-road vehicles focused on EV systems, suspension engineering, vehicle dynamics, and endurance racing.

Our team from India has been using FOX dampers for more than 10 years and recently approached FOX regarding purchase of their SAE coilover program shocks (Model: 885-06-161) for our upcoming eBAJA vehicle.

However, FOX replied that:

• the SAE shock program is only for U.S.-based teams,
• products are not available internationally,
• and they cannot even be purchased for shipment through U.S. contacts.

This was surprising considering the scale of international SAE participation and the growing EV/off-road engineering ecosystem outside the USA, especially in India where eBAJA is now highly competitive and technically advanced.

https://preview.redd.it/0gf2ccdegf2h1.png?width=926&format=png&auto=webp&s=d19f78679d9863606387bddcc1de372329f34f44

We fully understand sponsorship limitations, but restricting even direct purchase access to international student teams feels inconsistent with supporting global engineering innovation and student motorsports development.

Has anyone from non-U.S. SAE teams faced similar restrictions with FOX or other motorsport suppliers?
Also, if any U.S.-based SAE/Baja team is willing to help us source these shocks through their domestic SAE program access, please feel free to DM.

I have honestly found the use of tools like Antigravity and Claude Code during the development of telemetry and vehicle dynamics tools really hands freeing. But I haven’t found a sure way to really implement them without having doubts. Do you utilize such tools and to what extents? Have you trusted them to adapt more than code (e.g. physics models) ?

For a carbon fiber rear wing, is it better to 3D print a direct female mold or print a plug first and then make a fiberglass mold from it?

https://preview.redd.it/h5pioq5hu22h1.png?width=595&format=png&auto=webp&s=5d59d86185efd5462b3341d380f6968f3a1c4dbe

https://preview.redd.it/xtnf7k5hu22h1.png?width=578&format=png&auto=webp&s=656886bf8d2cbbc48e00d91ad1065e1610468467

Are these results trustworthy?

Can somebody give me a research oriented project proposal structure please. I have no idea about that. Somebody please guide me

As the field in the IC class has changed shape over the last couple of years, one thing I've noticed is the influx of teams from smaller schools in North America joining us to race for the first time.

In 2025, I believe we had 6 new teams on site: ITESO, Maine, Grand Canyon, SIUE, Montana Bozeman, and Trinity (sorry if I forgot anyone). As you can imagine, the brand new cars in some cases were creative interpretations of the rulebook as they had never been to competition before. I recall complimenting Maine and Montana in the Cost tent for earning their tech stickers, something that is rare for a brand-new team in this competition. Every single one of the named teams above showed up in 2026 with a greatly-improved vehicle and their performance in the event showed in the scoring. Maine drove in every dynamic event and earned Efficiency points; SIUE drove in every event as well. I had an excellent discussion with the ITESO team at tech on Friday and the car showed remarkable improvement. Grand Canyon doubled their statics points, and Trinity and Montana weren't far behind.

In 2026, we once again had 6 new schools on site: Oral Roberts, Rhode Island, Stony Brook, NJIT, Loyola, Benedictine, and York University. We also had teams return who we haven't seen in a long-while including North Dakota and Syracuse. Of the first-year teams, about half of them arrived with completed (or close-to) cars. NJIT really impressed me, and I really admired Rhode Island for working hard to get the car done and borrowing parts to have a mostly-rolling car that was only missing a few bits. Rhode Island bailed out UND by lending them a harness they wouldn't be using, and that speaks to the camaraderie built in the competition. I want to shout out York as well as they were one of my SES teams; they were so quick to reply with edits and frankly the SES was very well done the first time, something rare even from veteran teams.

I know a lot of the attention is on the top-10 teams (as there should be) but I really wanted to take some time to highlight the new kids on the block as they are working hard to catch up to everyone else. I can't wait to see what they bring for 2027.

I know this is off topic, but you guys seem to have a lot of experience with this kinda stuff
We're trying to make some wings for a UAV using 3d printed moulds
We don't have access to prepreg so we're sticking with vacuum bagged wet layup
Currently, we have mould, layer of fiberglass, then 2 layers of carbon fiber, peel ply, breather.
We've tried a couple in the past and every time the outer surface that contacts the mould has layer lines and is quite rough. How do we smooth it?
Also, how do we seal the two halves of the wing? JBweld?
This question might apply less to this subreddit, but how do you attach stuff to the wing? For example, we need a motor mount on the wing. Do we just epoxy it on the outer surface? or is there some other way? We also need to add cutouts in the wing for the servo etc, and I'm not particularly sure how to do that either. Any tips?
Sorry if this is the wrong place, I am also very inexperienced with composites 😅

Hello,

I am wondering if anyone has any good resources to look into for designing a center-lock spindle & wheel nut. If there's any good write ups on designs or if anyone has advice to design them it would be appreciated. things like thread pitch/size, wheel nut torque, spindle design/tolerances with the centerlocks, etc. would be appreciated.

After looking at the fsae Michigan ic event I can't help but be jealous at the amount of ic cars in the USA. There is a steady decline in the number of teams in Europe and the class is getting less and less competitive. Do you think there is a possibility that a large number of EU teams make the trip to the USA? Is any other team considering this possibility for the future? Could 5-10 teams coordinate in some way to make the car transfer more cost effective?

I was hearing rumors around the paddock that UConn has an F4 driver on their team, did anyone else hear this/ can anyone on UConn confirm?

I am spearheading my teams dive into aero and in my research the best low drag option to create downforce is a floor and diffuser, I also want to implement sidepods and the top of the undertray (on the sides). I have no idea where to even start to design them so any reasources to help would be amazing! also if you think this is a bad idea please tell me why because I am very new to this.

What’s the deal with some teams being rude? Like, with some teams I was able to go to their paddock and have really good, in depth, conversations about their team and car. But there were a few teams where I had gone to tell them that I like their car and they would either not say anything, give dirty looks, or straight up brag about how they are doing better than my team and dog on our car.

This was my first competition with FSAE. I’ve been to other competitions, including world championships, with other team based organizations and I have never had interactions like this before. Usually other teams will give compliments back or just idk genuinely be nice.

I guess I came here mostly to vent, but it would be nice to know why some teams feel like that’s how they should act. Again, it was only a few teams out of the many that were at MIS, but it kinda leaves a bad impression.

Four of our students need to complete their SAE membership payment so they can be registered to compete, but all four accounts fail at the payment step on fsae.org

As is my tradition of late; here is a link to my photos from Endurance - I stationed myself at the northeast end of the endurance course with a long lens as part of my role in technical inspection (it's a good vantage point to see parts dragging on the ground, belts flopping in the wind, helmet-headrest clearance, etc.) but in case any of the teams/students want the photos I make them available here: https://www.amazon.com/photos/shared/iJ2Y-dv-QLmDZ11e47uHaw.J7NS6ieg1tpjls3W8TmTam

I try to capture each driver of each car that competed in the Endurance event. There are a lot of photos (~5500), and I have not gone through them to cull any that are not in clean focus... I hope that you enjoy/can use them, and hope you had a good competition!

I grant individual students currently on FSAE teams, future FSAE students, and FSAE teams full commercial rights to these photos without any restrictions. I also grant Universities/Colleges use of these photos as long as they are attributed properly (reach out to me here for details). Other organizations or entities are not granted rights to these photos without explicit discussion/agreement.