Helping new buggy teams

[aileen]

My experience (back in the '70's) was that the lusty Tri Delta sororiity was very good at beating off opposing members. Maybe they could use a helping hand now, too.

Whoa, dude. Is there context to this, or was that just a bit out of left field?

[BuggyBob]

My experience (back in the '70's) was that the lusty Tri Delta sororiity was very good at beating off opposing members. Maybe they could use a helping hand now, too.

Whoa, dude. Is there context to this, or was that just a bit out of left field?

Some of the current drivers are Tri Delts.

[Carl Nott]

I suspect if a dozen fast guys were handed, say, a 90's Spirit buggy and a few hundred dollars of wheels, they'd make the top 10 at least.

I disagree.

[lemuroid]

I suspect if a dozen fast guys were handed, say, a 90's Spirit buggy and a few hundred dollars of wheels, they'd make the top 10 at least.

I disagree.

At a minimum, they would get dq'd for having 7 too many pushers

[GraydonL]

Without trying to be confrontational, I would suggest that Fringe is in a similar if not worse dry spell on a per buggy basis. From what Sam indicated, you have built 3 'refinements' since building the quick 2007 buggy. Given none of these has been fast enough to replace the 2007 buggy, are you progressing? Please build something amazing for 2011.

I was the head mechanic for Fringe from the year after Banyan, the quick 2007 buggy, to the most recent raceday. I take full responsibility for the lack of progress on the fastest buggy front. But I wasn't trying to do that. So, lemuroid, while not being confrontational, I appreciate the question for me to fill in my two cents. And this belongs in this thread because it's (what I deem) good advice for building and maintaining a buggy team.

Keep the drama out of buggy: Easier said than done. After Banyan's build, 2007, our team had many weakness. We weren't cohesive as a team, plenty of drama that I'm sure still exists, but since then we have been able to separate it from buggy. Keep the drama out of buggy.

Mechanics Aren't That Important: Our recruiting had been lackluster, but we fixed that over the 3 years too. As SDC proves, there are great advantages to having a big team. Before getting fast I would recommend to any new or "non-competitive" team to get big. Someone pointed out earlier that great mechanics can only do so much, this truely is a sport where you need the mechanics, the drivers, and the pushers to have their best day of the season on raceday in order to stand a chance of winning. I assuming in most orgs the most active members are the mechanics, they probably have the biggest time commitment. But over the years all of the head mechanics before me would remind me that spending a year in a garage building a buggy that went a second faster in the downhill was nothing to the amount of time dropped if I spent the same time training a team of pushers and a driver. Mechanics Aren't That Important.

Mechanics Are That Important. In both 2007 and 2008, Fringe DQed 3 of it's teams each year. By 2010, we had practiced enough that hatches wouldn't come off and we made sure buggies were on the line before the 5 second rule and we didn't have flammable materials at raceday. In a year where plenty went wrong for plenty of people, Fringe didn't DQ a single team in 2010. I attribute that to going out to every weekend of rolls, even when there were only 3 other teams. Mechanics Are That Important.

But from a purely mechanical stand point. In 2007 our garage had 12 buggies, 7 of which could compete on A-Team on raceday. We didn't need another fastest buggy on the course, there were other issues.

Learn By Doing: 2008 Bristol was a building year where we built a buggy, nothing much more than that. Contributing to Banyan's build I learned a lot about building a buggy, but nothing about leading a build. There was a lot lost in transition. Frankly, we got lucky. As blue pointed out, Bristol had some maintaning issues, but it was fast! It had a downhill time as fast as Banyan with the same hill 2 pusher. However it was dumb luck, more importantly that year we figured out many ways not to build a buggy. As any Fringe mechanic will tell you, there is no better way to learn how to design, build, and mechanic a buggy than to just do it. Learn By Doing.

Reliability and Versitility: 2009 Bedlam was the year we fixed the maintaning issues Bristol had as well as the braking issue blue refered to. Our habitually A and B team buggies 2007 Banyan and 2006 Bantam were quite tight on the petite drivers they were designed to, and both of those drivers had graduated. The need I saw was for a fast buggy that could accomodate a host of proportioned drivers. Bedlam filled that need. Reliability and Versitility.

The Essence of Buggy: By senior year, we decided we had to put the champion 2001 Brazen out to stud, but we had fast buggies for all sizes of drivers. We had a lot of new faces in the garage (see Mechanics Aren't That Important above) so we took the year to pass the knowledge on (hopefully they can absorb more than I did), to give them the opportunity to learn by doing. Most importantly, I took that year to have fun with the build (oh yeah, color changing paint). Fun. The Essence of Buggy.

I was fortunate enough that progress for the fastest buggy on the course wasn't necessary. The alumni before me had done that heavy lifting.

lemuroid, I may not have built a faster buggy. But here are the progress statistics I'm proud to share with you that Fringe hasn't had 3 dry years:

Number of teams per year: 2008-6 teams, 2009-7 teams, 2010-7 teams
Number of DQs per year: 2008-3 DQs, 2009-1 DQ, 2010-0 DQs
Mens A: 2010 faster than 2009 faster than 2008 faster than 2007

You can claim lack of competition, so dismissing getting first in design all 3 years and taking 7 of the 11 trophies in 2010 (we still got 5 teams back to second day before many of the DQs) heres the stat that's really cool:
2010: Set 4 of our organizations 7 record times (Mens A, C, D; Womens B)

My secret for success:
Have an active alumni group that knows when and how much to be involved.
Build, build, build. By luck you'll get a Banyan, or Malice, or Chimera.
A big team where there are enough strengths to cover everyone elses weaknesses (but more importantly to split the alcohol bill . More people = more fun.)

Edit: Holy crap I wrote way too much. I apologize, but lemuroid asked.

[DeVos]

My secret for success:
Have an active alumni group that knows when and how much to be involved.
Build, build, build. By luck you'll get a Banyan, or Malice, or Chimera.
A big team where there are enough strengths to cover everyone elses weaknesses (but more importantly to split the alcohol bill . More people = more fun.)

I would add that because the mechanics devote so much more time than the average pusher, they have an added effect on the org. Having mechanics that form a strong core team makes it much easier for a team to pass strength from one year to the next. A big team without a smaller group of very dedicated people may have one great year but will have trouble maintaining that momentum.

As for building, I'll agree that there's nothing quite like having participated in a build to teach you how to do it. As a mechanic who was part of CIA's departure from the classic frame-and-shell style, I can attest to how much of a learning experience that was. However, without building the year after that, much of that learning would have passed out of the org without being passed on to new mechanics. Even if it wasn't a Banyan or Malice, it was important to build Freyja just so new mechanics had some idea on how it was done and some of the things learned from Rennaisance. I think that building every few years is important not because of statistical odds of getting lucky but because you keep the knowledge of building in the org.

Lastly, more fun. That's what buggy is supposed to be about right? So, try to keep things sort of in perspective. If members aren't having fun, it makes it very hard to convince them to come out to rolls let alone recruit new members.

[abordick]

I couldn't agree more on the fun thing. While most probably wouldn't look at Pika as being a "fun" buggy program, I can tell you that we had a great time working together. I was pleasantly surprised that some of the goofy, fun traditions still exist in the program and most of them are just stupid, yet relieve a lot of stress.

Also, mechanics who are team builders and leaders is what helped for my team. Our push team was gigantic, we had 6 teams. We had 3 Push team captains to move that along. We also had like 9 mechanics and almost any senior who was gung ho could help out. I guess I was lucky that I had a bunch of leaders who were all aligned to a common goal. That helps.

[nbonaddio]

I believe I can distill what is necessary in building an elite program into three simple tenets:

1. The track team
2. Autistic engineers with fetishes for material science and mechanical engineering
3. Grain alcohol

[Jmohin]

I believe I can distill what is necessary in building an elite program into three simple tenets:

1. The track team
2. Autistic engineers with fetishes for material science and mechanical engineering
3. Grain alcohol

you forgot:
4. people with absurd tolerance for sleep deprivation
5. mechanics who don't have butterfingers and fuck up everything they touch
6. MORE GRAIN ALCOHOL

[kcp]

Let me know how I can be a help. The students that I have talked to are overwhelmed and a conversation with an alum about the ins and outs of what it takes to be a buggy team would help.

The other major hurdle for a new team is the buggy. Having something they could start from puts them ahead a bit. Money is an issue too, but Student Government has monies for non-JFC groups. I can also talk to a new team about what their potential on-campus funding sources could be.

NROTC decided not to participate, even with BAA alumni support, because their men did not want to wake up on Saturdays and Sundays when they do that all week. Also, their group has non-CMU students involved and they would not be able to participate.