jeffrey robert lange

This past Wednesday I, Jeff Lange, went out to Illiana Motor Speedway to help out with the Valpo supermileage car. My sister’s boyfriend, Luke Schroeder, is the main contributor to the SAE group. He basically built the entire car, which by no means is an easy task. So we drove out to Schererville to go to the track, and there are some reporters there, which I knew about beforehand. I tried to stay out of the way because I know that this was mainly about Luke and the car, not me. Even though the reporters knew I wasn’t involved, they still asked me questions. Luckily, I knew most of the answers. For the ones that I didn’t know, I referred the reporters to Luke or J.D. Groff, another Valpo alum that was helping us out. My sister, Jessica Lange, was the driver for the day, simply because she fits into the car and she weighs 103 pounds, so that’s light enough to test the car.

There are a numerous amount of rules that you must follow at the competition, which takes place in Marshall, MI at the proving grounds. Some of the rules are: you need to wear a helmet and goggles, you need to wear pants, there must be several “kill” switches on the car that kill the engine, there must be a fire extinguisher inside the car that is already pointed at the gas tank and engine, and the list goes on. Valpo isn’t alone, though. Several college teams compete, like UCLA, Purdue, and other schools.

I taped most of the beginning part of the testing, leaving out the boring stuff. The car did well, but there were some problems. The fuse by the battery had blown. The battery starts the engine and powers the tail light. On one of our actual tests, we wanted to have the car go around the track nine times. We were doing well and making good time the six laps. Jessica and I were talking on our cell phones so that we could relay important information to each other. On the 6^th lap, she asked me what that noise was. I thought it was a construction project going on just outside the track. I told her I thought that’s what the noise was. She said ok and kept driving. The next lap we didn’t coast as far as before, and it seemed somewhat unusual. Jessica turned the engine back on, just as Luke had told me to tell her. She started screaming and freaking out, and I could see the car start to wobble. I asked Jessica what was going on, but she was still screaming. I asked her if she was ok, and she said a simple, “yes.”

Jessica stopped the car, we took off the back cover to see what went wrong. The back tire had blown. The car was wobbling because all the power from the engine goes to the chain and then to the back tire. Since the tire was flat (that’s what the weird noise Jessica heard) and she was putting power to it, she lost traction and made her skid out of control.

Jessica was upset and really dehydrated, so we bought a liquid reservoir for her to put ice cold water in during the competition. The reason it gets so hot in the car is because there is no air flow, the engine is right behind the firewall, which is the back of the seat, and it was 90 degrees out that day. Needless to say, we didn’t do anymore test runs that day.

Hopefully everything goes well at the tournament in Marshall, Michigan. I wish the team the best of luck!