Baja SAE — Suspension Lead

Davidson College's Baja SAE team is in its second year. We're building a single-seat off-road vehicle from scratch to compete against 100+ university teams in the SAE Baja series, a competition that includes a four-hour endurance race on rough terrain, hill climbs, and maneuverability events.

I'm the primary engineer on a three-person leadership team. My job is to design virtually every component and get it built, either fabricating it myself or delegating to one of our 10+ members. The other two leads handle finances and club operations. Every engineering decision goes through me. Nothing gets finalized without sign-off from all three of us.

We compete Spring 2026.

Davidson's program is only in its second year. We inherited a partially welded chassis from last year's team and have been building everything else from scratch. No institutional knowledge to fall back on, no senior members who've done it before, no big budget.

Low budget means we fabricate most of what we need ourselves. Every bracket, every mount, every suspension component has been designed in CAD, reviewed by the team, and either welded in the shop or sent to a local manufacturer for parts we can't make ourselves. We write the BOMs, get the quotes, and negotiate sponsorships to offset costs.

The suspension system is what I own. That means:

Geometry first. Choosing the suspension architecture, defining kinematic parameters (track width, wheelbase, camber curves, roll center height), and validating the design under SAE rules.

Then CAD. Modeling every component in Fusion 360, producing drawings that can be fabricated from, iterating based on team review and faculty feedback.

Then fabrication. Welding components in-house or working with local manufacturers for parts beyond our shop capability.

The suspension has to survive a four-hour endurance race on rough terrain. Getting the geometry right is critical to ensure our car passes the finish line.

Here is the most recent picture of our car. The drivetrain is in, the suspenson is fully mounted, the seat is in, and we can roll it around the shop. We even have a seat! Rolling it around the shop was a huge milestone for us.

There is still a lot to do: install the footbox and breaks, electronics, body panels... But we have a functioning chassis and suspension, which is the critical path for the rest of the project. We can start testing subsystems and iterating on our design based on feedback from test drives.