Category Archives: News

As part of their annual high school day, the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) brings dozens of local HS students to CMU to introduce them to science and technology related fields. This year, CMR was invited to participate to help demonstrate real-world engineering, and we were happy to participate!

The students were very energetic about the project and really enjoyed touring our Garage and experiencing engineering first hand We hope these future college students will look to engineering in their career path.

Carnegie Mellon was excited to participate in UPitt’s annual car show this past weekend. CMR 57 was on display next to many classic and new performance vehicles on a beautiful Pittsburgh day.

Lincoln and Loudon here we come!

For the past several weeks CMR has continued pounding away at our design and verifying that all rules are being accounted for.

With our fingers on the refresh button, this week CMR officially registered for Competition in both Loudon, New Hampshire in April, and Lincoln, Nebraska in June. Our numbers are:

Lincoln: E225

NH: 16

Although many months away, we are already looking forward to racing our new electric vehicle!

With a month of school now complete, CMR is approaching the peak of our design stage, with several design reviews scheduled weekly. Project leaders are very busy on new design elements like electric motor mounting, motor controller mounting, and the accumulator container, while previously proven designs like the chassis and unsprung mass are set to be ordered in the next week for an incredibly early completion.

Testing and driver training on CMR 57 has also been organized in the Morewood parking lot along with team building at PittRace Karting. We are happy to say our new members have been extremely helpful in every aspect of the team, and have already begun machining the traditional rotor buttons. Look out for much more exciting action coming soon!

Carnegie Mellon Racing now has a Microryza Project Page! Microryza is a crowdfunding website designed to support research projects exactly like our electric vehicle design and build. We are hoping to raise $7,500 through the site to purchase an additional motor controller and motor so we can continue developing our electric powertrain.

Please visit our page here: https://www.microryza.com/projects/carnegie-mellon-racing-student-built-electric-race-car and help us achieve our goal!

Now that we are several weeks into school CMR is in full swing! After much recruiting, tabling, and introduction, we have many new members who are getting involved in all areas around the team.

Thanks to dozens of man-hours cleaning, organizing, and removing almost 1500 pounds of scrap metal from the Garage, we now have a much more open and productive space. Even with our new milling machine courtesy of the Mechanical Engineering Machine Shop, we still have plenty of room which is being put to great use by our new members making minor repairs to CMR 57 and 67 so testing can begin.

Design reviews have also already begun, and our team has fully entered the design stage, so we are excited to watch our car grow in CAD.

Hello new students! Welcome to the Carnegie Mellon Racing (CMR)/CMU Formula Society of Automotive Engineers (FSAE)/ fastest club on campus website.

Now once the excitement of Orientation begins to settle down you should start to look into some extracurriculars. To save you the trouble of looking through all of the listed clubs that do not build race cars, I’ll just make that point clear – we build race cars. Of course by building I mean we actually engineer each car, then build it, which is totally different and also the reason CMR remains the most rewarding and beneficial organization CMU offers. If you want to learn how to be a real engineer, we will teach you.

To get a better feel for the team, how we operate, and what we do, I recommend looking back through the older posts and pictures down below. They catalog our entire build process up until the competition in Michigan at the end of the year where schools from around the country and across the world compete. This website is also where you can find  updates about the team’s progress, learn about our car in the ever-expanding Wiki, check out the awesome sponsors who give us money, and even stalk out our garage via the webcam. You can also follow us on Twitter @CMURacing for more updates.

If you want to be as cool as these guys:

then you’re in the right place.

For more information on our organization and to check out our latest car look out for these IMPORTANT DATES:

Thursday 8/22: Recruitment activities on campus by Scaife Hall

Wednesday 9/4: Activities Fair

Friday 9/6: First new member General Body Meeting

Carnegie Mellon Racing is now on Twitter! Check out CMR @CMURacing for updates and the latest news about the team.

A few weeks ago a local news program called “Open Throttle 360” shot some footage of Carnegie Mellon Racing and CMR 67 for their weekly television program. This week’s episode aired featuring CMR at the 12:40 mark. Thank you to Open Throttle 360 and CMR for this great episode!

Yesterday the team returned from Michigan International Speedway excited for next year after a Competition filled with highs and lows.

On the first two days, everything ran smoothly and as expected – we passed all technical inspections with only minor fixes needed for sound and the headrest, while our well executed Business and Cost Presentations landed us in the top 20 for Static events.

However we ran into trouble prior to our acceleration event, when an engine backfire broke our 3D printed intake, and a coolant line disconnected due to excess pressure. In trying to determine the cause, we found that a head gasket leak had developed in our engine. The excess heat and pressure that was be created propagated throughout the powertrain system and caused the failures.

With not enough time to properly fix this issue, we ended up missing the Skidpad, Autocross, and Acceleration events. Not discouraged though, we looked ahead to Endurance hoping our engine would hold without overheating.

The final day of Endurance began very promising. CMR 67 completed the first 12 laps in spectacular fashion – we passed several cars and put up the fastest track time in our heat. During the driver change though, we were forced by an official to discontinue Endurance due to excessive coolant loss through the catch can, even though we were confident the car could finish the race.

While this prevented us from finishing Endurance, and ultimately will lead to a much lower score than anticipated, Carnegie Mellon Racing is proud of our accomplishment in 67. It’s clearly demonstrated a high level or performance and build quality that reflects on the vast effort put into the car throughout the year.

Moving forward, work has already begun on converting Carnegie Mellon Racing electric, and the team has become even more committed to succeeding next year. We would like to thank our generous sponsors, alumni, advisors, and team members for making this all possible.