Monday, April 14, 2003

Education

Sadlon plans to go from Dartmouth to Down Under

By Jeff Miller

In mid-May, Scott Sadlon will travel with other members of his Dartmouth College team to Pontiac, Mich., where they will race the single seater car they've built against more than 100 other university teams in the 2003 Formula Society of Automotive Engineers (FSAE) race.

Some day, perhaps, he'll work in that city, fulfilling a dream he's had since about the time he learned to read: designing cars.

"I've always had car magazines around," Sadlon said. "I love driving, but that's just part of it. I love the engineering in a car - how it melds design, performance, strength and mechanics. It's a thrill to engineer part of the car and drive its creation."

As a member of Dartmouth's FSAE team, Sadlon is responsible for implementing an electronic control system for the Yamaha motorcycle engine that will power their car.

"My job is pretty much to get the engine to run well," Sadlon said. "All modern engines have some sort of control to do injection and ignition timing. And once we have it running, my job is to tune it."

The car, which is just a bit bigger than a go-kart, looks like a miniature version of a Formula One racer.

The course, however, is tight, with lots of tight turns, so the car never achieves Formula One speeds. But they're not toys. They'll do 65 mph in the race.

"We tune the car for acceleration and fast turning and handling ability," Sadlon said. "It can do 0 to 60 in four seconds. At 500 pounds and 70 horsepower, it really moves."

Because he's pursuing an engineering degree, Sadlon will remain at Dartmouth until December. After that, he hopes to head off to Australia.

"My girlfriend will be there in a nursing co-op, so I'll join her and get an engineering internship, I hope. They're just as car crazy down there as we are," Sadlon said.