Edgerton student club designs, builds high gas-mileage vehicles
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Edgerton High School sophomore Wyatt Venske drives the school's high gas mileage vehicle around the school parking lot after school.
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Edgerton High School sophomore Tyler Maratik cleans the windows on the team's high mileage car before a test run at the school parking lot.
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Edgerton High School students who built the school's high gas mileage car used a golf ball for the throttle grip and intend to use one for the second car they are building to run in April.
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Edgerton High School sophomore Dylan Counter, left, and senior Max Ylvisaker fill the 250 milliliter tank on the team's high gas mileage car before a test run at the school.
More information
To follow Edgerton High School’s Supermileage Vehicle Club online, visit edgertonsmv.blogspot.com.
For more information on supermileage vehicle competitions and other events through the Wisconsin Energy Efficient Vehicle Association, visit challengewisconsin.org.
EDGERTON — Although it’s decorated with flaming duct tape and its driver is equipped with a crash helmet, a harness-style seatbelt and a fire extinguisher, the main point is not how fast Edgerton High School’s super vehicle can go.
It’s all about the gas mileage.
With unleaded gasoline topping $3.90 a gallon, the high school’s Supermileage Vehicle Club could be the envy of any driver stuck with a fuel-guzzling pickup truck or SUV.
The eight-member, engineering class/student club, which is in its third year, is finishing work on two gas-powered supermileage vehicles built to compete in two fuel-efficiency competitions this spring.
One of the vehicles, a one-seat, three-wheeled model that students built last year, got 160 mpg in a competition last spring.
This year, the club has tweaked the vehicle’s fuel intake with a goal of squeezing another 10 to 20 mpg out of it, its members said. Meanwhile, the club’s finishing a new three-wheeled vehicle it’s been building all year. It’s lighter and sleeker, with a more fuel-efficient motor.
The club hopes both vehicles will blow the doors off their performance last year.
“We’re really, really excited to see how both vehicles will run, especially the new one,” said Edgerton High School senior Max Ylvisaker, who is captain of the Supermileage Vehicle Club.
Ylvisaker and the club will compete this spring in two competitions sponsored by the Wisconsin Energy Efficient Vehicle Association.
One is April 27-28 at Fox Valley Technical College in Appleton and at Wisconsin International Raceway in Kaukauna. The other is May 14-15 at the legendary, four-mile Road America road course at Elkhart Lake.
The point of the competitions and the focus of the Supermileage Vehicle Club is straightforward, said Joe Mink, a technology education teacher at the high school who is the club’s mentor and instructor.
“I tell the students that I need a vehicle to get me from point A to point B safely and efficiently,” Mink said.
The tough part is actually doing it.
Edgerton’s Supermileage Vehicle Club is a fall-semester, for-credit course that morphs into a club activity in the spring. Students who take the class spend thousands of hours engineering, designing, building and rebuilding one-seat vehicles.
The project starts with a frame and wheels and gets more complex as work on the transmission, engine and steering systems comes into play. Every decision students make—from wheel type to body weight to gear ratio—must factor in friction, drag and aerodynamics.
In competitions this spring, Edgerton will face other student clubs from around the state, some with vehicles capable of running at 300 to 500 mpg.
Ylvisaker said it’s little things such as a tire rubbing on the frame or a throttle tuned too high can kill gas mileage.
“It gets down to fine, fine tuning,” he said.
Its new vehicle is unfinished, but the club is field testing revamps to last year’s vehicle.
The one-seater weighs 170 pounds. It has a boxy aluminum frame and a body made of clear Plexiglas and lightweight greenhouse siding. It’s powered by a 3 1/2 horsepower Briggs and Stratton racing engine that’s connected by a chain drive to a single rear drive wheel.
The two front wheels steer using a lever-operated, fighter jet-style steering system.
While a tennis team practiced in the background recently, the club’s driver, sophomore Wyatt Venske, took the vehicle for a practice run in the north parking lot at the high school. Venske circled parked cars, making about a dozen 100-yard loops.
The vehicle scooted at speeds up to 35 mph, but its engine killed a few times. That drew groans from club members. They’d spent several hours earlier in the week dismantling and rebuilding the carburetor.
The good news: The practice run barely put a dent in the vehicle’s tiny, 7 1/2-ounce fuel tank. Dakota Salm, a sophomore who’s in his second year on the club, estimates the vehicle could make a round trip from Edgerton to Janesville on a full tank.
“We could run like this all night,” Salm said.
The club’s taken its best ideas from last year and rolled the knowledge into designs for a new car, Ylvisaker said. The new model sits lower and has a more efficient engine, improved gearing and better brakes.
Plus, it’s 10 pounds lighter. The club cut weight by covering the vehicle with plastic boat shrink-wrap.
“We went on trial and error last year. Actually, it was more trial than error. But we’ve learned a lot, and that’s paid off with production this year,” Salm said.
Mink said Supermileage Vehicle Club requires students to draw from a knowledge base that spans academic areas including math and science. Some even pick up new skills, such as aluminum welding.
Even English composition comes into play. Because the club is funded mainly through private donations of money, equipment and materials, the club spends hours writing letters that detail their project to potential investors.
Mink said many former members have told him the club made them want to go into engineering.
“At the very least, it gets them thinking about how to conserve energy and possibly improve their own lives,” Mink said.
Club member Tyler Maratik, a sophomore, always has been into working on cars and small engines, but building a vehicle from the ground up is a new experience.
Maratik said the club’s focus on fuel efficiency has him yearning to ditch his pickup truck in favor of something that uses less gas.
“I’m definitely looking into a motorcycle, now,” he said.
Apr 10, 2012 at 2:38 p.m.
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Kids, keep up the great work! You are our future!
Apr 10, 2012 at 2:34 p.m.
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Meant to say my litte pinky has more common sense than all of you.
Apr 10, 2012 at 2:27 p.m.
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Grow up! People have their own opinions and they are entitled to them. You don't like it, too bad.
Apr 10, 2012 at 2:23 p.m.
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kaysbrew: Who do you think you are calling me a hypocrite. I have mofre common sense than your little pinky. Everything I have seen you post here has been hypocritical.
Apr 10, 2012 at 6:45 a.m.
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dkush21
Hope you ride a bicycle to work or hop on your horse, don't be a hypocrite. We have enough fuel in the United States to keep us going for the next 200 years without foreign oil. Even longer with inovative kids like these youngsters. Obama is giving away more money to failures like Solyndra then Oil Companies are making after expenses of exploration, drilling, refining, insurance, payroll, etc, etc, etc.
Apr 10, 2012 at 6:20 a.m.
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Oops! Big money. Well, same thing.
Apr 10, 2012 at 6:19 a.m.
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Kudos to these guys! But with Big Oil and Bug Money running this country, I don't see this going anywhere if it cuts into their profits. What a shame.
Apr 9, 2012 at 4:26 p.m.
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I will be interesting as to where this could go, but I dont see this leading to the type of power required for pulling anything. My guess is that at some point those of us still needing the power to pull will be spending big bucks, as a standard car will have absolutely no standard parts with any other vehicle. There will be a big divide (even greater than today) between the small fuel efficient models and the larger vehicles. Power = fuel = size.... You wont be able to get a pick-up in the future, it will cost way too much.
Apr 9, 2012 at 3:42 p.m.
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Scummy drinking water. Yes mouse, I want to drink scummy drinking water. I see the puppet masters of liberalism stupidity has penatrated your tiny brain.
Apr 9, 2012 at 3:08 p.m.
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OMG mouse - look at what they are using...GAS!!!! Drill baby Drill!
Keep those planes in the air and the economy in action with fuel. Oil, as organic from Mother earth as pond scum. And keep us out of the dark ages of stage coach and horse and buggy.
Apr 9, 2012 at 3:06 p.m.
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Keep it up guys. Somebody somewhere will listen. This comes from a guy whose heroes drove a car on the moon.
Apr 9, 2012 at 11:17 a.m.
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gamblerone- engineers have made huge strides. Consider just the increase in power/cc in motors. My kawasaki motorcycle engine makes 160-170 hp out of 1 liter of displacement. In the 80's it took large 6 cylinder engines and even some small block v-8 to make that kinda juice. We've got small displacement forced induction inline 4 and v-6 engines making over 300 hp that it used to take large v-8 engines to produce. Over the years for every pound that engineers have taken out of the chassis and drivetrain, we have replaced with heavy weight adding things like 10 airbags, 10 speaker sound systems, televisions, GPS units, heating units in the seats, and an array of other things that make vehicles heavier, "Safer", and more inefficient. If Americans are serious about fuel efficiency they need to realize that they can't have living rooms on wheels.
Apr 9, 2012 at 10:47 a.m.
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Isn't it kind of funny that a group of high school kids can design and build this, but our high paid engineers and auto company's can't even come close. Makes you wonder who is getting paid off by the oil companys. More power to you guys. Keep up the good work!!!!
Apr 9, 2012 at 5:10 a.m.
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The important take away from this article is students pursuing excellence for the sake of excellence! They are learning what that means and are having fun doing it. If the intrinsic value of excellence was measured by the number of people who recognize it, we would still be living in caves. Full speed ahead, guys! :-)
Apr 8, 2012 at 10:12 p.m.
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Nice work! It's too bad that, no matter the price of gas, Americans still buy the biggest and least fuel efficient cars on the planet. Way to think about the future America! Maybe these kids can be the start of the change that should have happened years ago.
Apr 8, 2012 at 4:38 p.m.
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Great work indeed. Sad thing is, no one would buy one of those cars. Americans want gas guzzling SUVs, the hell with fuel efficiency.
Apr 8, 2012 at 4:15 p.m.
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Great work, guys! Very cool.
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