Five engineering students create an F1 racing car from scrap metal
News — By The Desk on June 23, 2010 at 2:39 PMPune Mirror: Inspired by liquor baron and owner of Force India Vijay Mallya, five youths from Pimpri-Chinchwad have achieved a remarkable feat. These students of engineering have created an F1 racing car. They took a whole year to realise their dream and now hope to present their product to Mallya himself.
Sumit Vadhovkar, Prafulla Hiremath, Shirish Hagvane, Vishal Idalkar and Ashish Shelke of Pimpri Chinchwad College Of Engineering (Akurdi) are the creators of the Drive Your Dreams car.
Their toil started about a year ago when these youths got to know that an F1 car has come to a mall for display. All four of them, students of final year of B E (Mechanical) went there and got the information they needed to made a replica of it. Vadhovkar owns a unit of production of the spare parts of the car.
The group decided to try their hand at building a replica of the car they had seen in their spare time. They first created a Thermacol model based on photographs of the car.
Then they transferred the design onto a metal sheet. When the group could not find a tyre for their F1 car, even after looking all over the country, they created a single tyre of 300 mm width out of tyres of 165 mm width. After facing many hurdles, the 800 kg heavy and 1,300 cc engine car is finally a reality.
It has an automatic gear box and can run at a maximum of 150 kms/hour speed. The creators incurred an expense of Rs 3 lakh for the whole project.
The car will be displayed soon in their college, and next year, the students hope to participate in an international exhibition to be organised in China by the Society of Automotive Engineering. They will be seeking help from the University of Pune for that.
Vadhovka said, “We purchased a 1,300 cc engine of a Maruti Esteem. Most of the parts, we have collected from a junkyard in Nanapeth and Kurla in Mumbai. We made the automatic gear box from Zen and Piaggio suspensions and some other vehicles. The weight of the car is 800 kg which is almost equivalent to an F1 car.
Before making this car, we have already made a Ducati racing car from the engine of a Kinetic bike and the challenge was to convert the front wheel drive to rear drive. We got financial support from the Wadholkar Group of Companies (WGC).”
