Tuesday, December 17, 2002
By David Lore
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Three years ago, when auto ennui crept up on Ohio State University students Jennie Layman, Tom Sopko and other members of the OSU Smokin' Buckeye race-car development team, they decided to trade up to something faster.

Thus was born the Buckeye Bullet.

At 241 mph during an unofficial test run in August, the battery-powered car is a contender for the world's fastest electric roadrunner.

The current world record is 245.5 mph, set at Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats in 1999 by "White Lightning," a car engineered by Dempsey's World Record Associates.

The Santa Ana, Calif.-based company was founded by inventor and race-car driver Edward Dempsey.

"They invested $2.5 million in White Lightning, but our kids spent a lot less than that," said Craig Taylor, Buckeye Bullet's designated driver.

Smokin' Buckeye came out of the OSU Center for Automotive Research in 1993. The experimental electric racer went on to rack up five national college championships between 1994 and 1998.

"We had been racing the Smokin' Buckeye for a while, but then we got bored with it a little bit," recalls Jenny Layman Sopko, now married. "And about that time, one of our sponsors, Shoemaker Industrial Solutions of Columbus, mentioned they were interested in building a new motor."

Taylor, president of Taylor Race Engineering in Plano, Texas, had been at the wheel of Smokin' Buckeye since 1994. The engineer and race-car driver said, despite the car's success, everybody was looking for a new challenge.

The Buckeye Bullet moved Ohio State into a different league, one which no other college team to date has dared to enter.

The difference can be measured in speed. Smokin' Buckeye, for example, topped out at 149 mph.

Buckeye Bullet, in its first trial run in August, hit a top speed of 260 mph. This didn't eclipse White Lightning's mark because the official record depends on average speed over a specified course.

"A lot of colleges would probably be a little scared of this," Jenny Sopko said. "Race cars are dangerous enough."

Taylor, a University of Wisconsin graduate, agreed.

OSU students "were the only ones with the imagination and courage to try it," he said.

Getting there wasn't easy. The design and mechanical problems involved in achieving such speeds with a battery-powered vehicle took years of work to resolve.

Smokin' Buckeye was built to strict specifications set by intercollegiate race organizers. Among other things to consider, the students had to adhere to weight, chassis, battery and safety requirements.

With Buckeye Bullet, however, students had free rein to build the fastest vehicle possible and were bound only by the limits of physics, engineering and safety.

The result was a rocketlike sled, 30 feet long and 2 feet wide. The 3-foot-high chassis rides only a half-inch off the ground to provide added stability. This minimum clearance works fine on a track such as the Bonneville Flats where potholes are not a problem.

Powering the Bullet are 12,000 special nickel-metal hydride batteries packed in 22 battery packs. It took a special power converter -- built by Saminco of Lavalette, W.Va. -- to convert the DC battery power to the AC power the motor requires.

Industry literature, however, puts output at more than 500 horsepower. "We found we had more power than we could use," said graduate student Ed Hillstrom.

In an age when dashboards and cockpits have become increasingly complex, the controls available to Taylor are fairly Spartan. His primary tools are a clutch, gear shift, an RPM indicator and a steering wheel with limited range.

"You can only turn it five degrees left or right," Taylor said. "Its turning radius is slightly greater than that of the Queen Mary.

"But at these speeds, you don't need a lot -- you're just trying to go straight."

There's also no speedometer -- Taylor has to estimate his speed based on the gear setting and RPM gauge.

"The first time I went 230 mph, I was supposed to be going 200 mph, but the sensation hardly changed at all," he said, referring to the Bullet's trial run in August.

"There's very little sensation of speed."

The barren salt flats provide no visual cues and there's no engine roar or even wind noise, given the Bullet's aerodynamic design.

"There's lots of mechanical noises inside the car, but outside it's silent," Taylor said.

Buckeye Bullet goes from zero to 241 mph in about 90 seconds, said Maria Soliman, associate director of the OSU auto center.

Since the brakes don't work at speeds above 100 mph, the Bullet is rigged with two parachutes to slow it down.

At the Flats, the cars run on a 7-mile track. The average speed for miles 3 through 5 is what counts.

When it goes for the record, the Bullet will have to run the course and a return lap all in the space of 60 minutes.

That's not easy, Taylor said, especially since the batteries have to be recharged for 30 minutes between the two laps.

In August, the Bullet only ran one lap -- it was strictly a mechanical and safety test, not a shot for the record.

Next August, however, Ohio State will go for the gold. "I think they'll answer the challenge next year," Taylor said.

Buckeye Bullet has cost the university and project sponsors about $500,000 so far, not counting the thousands of unpaid hours put in by student volunteers, most of them undergraduates.

Taylor said that's a bargain, considering the educational payoff.

"Lots of kids come out of these engineering programs without knowing which end of a screwdriver to grab," he said. "What they've really done here is not just build a race car, but learned how to achieve things working in a group by combining everybody's strengths and weaknesses."

These race-car projects are extra-curricular and don't award course credit. But they give OSU students hands-on experience and accomplishments to talk about when they sit down with industry recruiters.

Jenny and Tom Sopko -- who were married two weeks ago -- met while working on Smokin' Buckeye.

Both went on to earn master's degrees in engineering during 2001-02 and work today for Caterpillar in Peoria, Ill.

At Ohio State, Jenny was mechanical team captain for the Bullet project, while Tom was electrical team leader.

"Both of us did a thesis on the car," she said. "I think this experience definitely helped me when it came time to interview. I came in with experience to start with."

At Caterpillar, Jenny Sopko is a test driver for bulldozers, which, at top speed, may reach 8 mph in third gear. She made sure she was in Utah in August to watch the Bullet fly.

"It was truly awesome," she said. "It's unbelievable the dedication everybody had to go out there."