Super Mileage Club competes in Challenge

By FRITZ BUSCH

Journal Staff Writer

NEW ULM -- With the recent gasoline price hikes, more interest in expected in the 16th Annual Super Mileage Challenge today and Wednesday at Brainerd International Speedway.

Seven members of the Super Mileage Club at New Ulm High School, a college engineering major and advisor Jim Pickus rolled two ultra-light, aerodynamic cars into trailers and headed up north Monday morning.

High school students from 58 schools will field 120 three-wheeled vehicles in competition designed to produce a vehicle that goes the farthest on a gallon of fuel.

About 20 competitors will bring vehicle that use E85 fuel, which is 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent petroleum fuel, that can power vehicles with flexible-fuel engines.

Other categories include stock (unmodified, lawn mower engine-powered cars), modified and experimental designs. Many of the vehicles use super-lightweight aluminum and other space-age materials like aircraft-grade carbon.

NUHS Bryon Kuehn, Cody Trullinger, Dale Scharbach, Jim Kline, Jayden Sievert, Brad Kosel and Minnesota Valley Lutheran student Jeremy Fredrich form the team for the Super Mileage Challenge. Brian Mohr, a freshman engineering major at South Dakota State University who competed in the Super Mileage Challenge at NUHS, also made the trip.

The two New Ulm ultra-light cars will compete in the experimental class. Students hope to record more than 200 mpg. They must make six successful runs of two laps around the race track at speeds of 15-30 mph to qualify for mileage tests.

While some schools in the competition will bring flawless, factory-made vehicles to the competition, the New Ulm entries were designed from scratch and created with the help of AUTOCAD (computer-aided drafting). The vehicles were created after regular school hours by the Super Mileage Club.

"We take lots of pride in building the cars ourselves," Pickus said. "Our cars aren't perfectly machined like some others. Everything is donated. If something goes wrong with the cars, the kids can probably fix it."

Students attempted to use a 3/4 horsepower, "weed whacker" engine in one of their cars but it wasn't powerful enough.

"It was like two chipmunks in a squirrel cage," Pickus said. "We've got two good cars and expect to do well."

A 3.5 horsepower engine was placed in the vehicle and worked out better.