{"id":165392,"date":"2016-06-09T12:53:24","date_gmt":"2016-06-09T16:53:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/?p=165392"},"modified":"2017-06-06T16:59:20","modified_gmt":"2017-06-06T20:59:20","slug":"india-baja-team-gets-ride-of-their-lives-in-rettner-hall-fab-lab-165392","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/india-baja-team-gets-ride-of-their-lives-in-rettner-hall-fab-lab-165392\/","title":{"rendered":"India Baja team gets ride of their lives in Rettner Hall ‘fab lab’"},"content":{"rendered":"

The thought of assembling an all-terrain vehicle 8,000 miles from home on short notice was daunting to 14 engineering students from India.<\/p>\n

So before leaving for Rochester, Team Helios Racing took their car apart and put it back together.<\/p>\n

Piece by piece. Just for practice.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did this many times,\u201d Yash Mehrotra says.<\/p>\n

That ingenuity paid off when Mehrotra and other students from Rashtreeya Vidyalaya College of Engineering arrived in Rochester on Monday and learned that the box carrying their 300-pound, disassembled vehicle had yet to arrive at Rettner Hall, where the team was scheduled to rebuild it. It finally showed up Tuesday afternoon, three days later than scheduled.<\/p>\n

\"Yash
Yash Mehrotra from India’s Team Helios, left, shares a laugh with Kevin Bonko ’17, president of Rochester’s Baja team, at the fabrication lab in Rettner Hall.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIt was a little nerve-wracking,\u201d says Mehrotra, who will be a junior at the Bengaluru-based school this fall. \u201cBut we knew what we had to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

It took the team 6 \u00bd hours to assemble the car in Rettner\u2019s fabrication lab. Wednesday, Helios raced it around Rochester\u2019s River Campus practice track in preparation for this weekend\u2019s Baja SAE World Challenge at Hogback Hill Motocross Track in Palmyra. The event is hosted by Rochester Institute of Technology and features 100 collegiate teams from around the world.<\/p>\n

More than 1,200 students will take part in the Society of Automotive Engineers race, from colleges such as Purdue, Ohio State, Cornell, Michigan State, and Johns Hopkins, plus teams from Canada, Venezuela, Brazil, and Mexico. Six teams are here from India.<\/p>\n

Design, safety, engine and technical inspections are at RIT\u2019s Gordon Field House and Activities Center on Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Dynamic events such as hill climbing, acceleration, traction, and land maneuverability competitions are Saturday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Hogback Hill. Sunday\u2019s four-hour endurance race begins at 9:30 a.m. and is free and open to the public.<\/p>\n