The NIU Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) is building its fourth race car for the International SAE Formula.

The competition is from May 19 to May 23 at the Pontiac Silverdome in Pontiac, Mich.

Each year, 125 schools from all over the world compete, including schools in Brazil, Australia, the United Kingdom and Japan, according SAE.org.

“Building and racing a car is a great experience for all of the team members and a whole lot of fun,” NIU SAE Chairman David Harroun said.

The car is sponsored by the College of Engineering and Engineering Technology.

Each SAE chapter has about nine months to design and build its car. Typically, the team members who work on the car are undergraduate engineering students, but this year some graduate students are helping work on the car, Harroun said.

“Because this is intended to be a tool for learning, we are supposed to pretend like we are a company creating a prototype race car that we are trying to sell to a manufacturer that will produce a set amount of these cars,” Harroun said. “For this reason, the car is tested not only on the track, but also on paper.”

SAE International puts out a book every year consisting of about 100 pages of rules and specifications that each car must meet to participate in the competition. Most of the rules are created to promote safety. The car is powered by a 600cc motorcycle engine that is purchased and modified to make it fuel injected.

Aside from the shocks, wheels and engine, the team designs and constructs every part that goes onto the car. Although the engine is bought, the team has to switch it to fuel injection and custom-make the intake, throttle body and exhaust system, Harroun said.

After building the car, the teams test the car in braking, lateral acceleration, acceleration, sound, noise and a tilt table test. Then it goes to the autocross and the endurance/fuel economy event.

There is also a design event that asks students questions about why the car is designed the way it was.

Additionally, there is a formal presentation event where teams have to make a pitch about why their car is better than the others.

Harroun said they are required to record all costs of the car.

The engine alone is $2,000 and the wheels run about $3,600 to $4,200, Harroun said. Last year’s car cost about $18,400.

“If you include the man hours in the design time and all of the tooling required, it would be way beyond that,” Harroun said. “We manufacture mostly everything on the car, but what we do have to buy is really expensive. The good part is that once we initially purchase these parts we can reuse them.”

NIU placed 20th in the design event in 2003 and placed 70th overall.

Many of the judges are employees from GM, DaimlerChrysler and Ford, who are the sponsors of the competition. Other judges include professional race engineers and designers, Harroun said.