I'm studying Mechanical Engineering. So chances are I will be doing the mods at sometime anyways, simply because it is in my blood, haha.

It is an awesome major...nearly everything comes back to a Mech. Eng. or is somehow related to it. I think the thing I really love however are the programs my university competes in.


I'm hoping that for my senior design project I'm with the University of Idaho Race Car design team...build a race-car from the ground up (design & build it) and have major automotive companies rate us, and then race it and see who wins. I'd just love to design & race this beast...personal goal to build a vehicle from the ground up.

Right now our Snowmobile Team is working on modifying a 2-stroke engine to be Turbo/Super-Charged and still having it pass emissions to be driven in National Parks. Right now it is illegal to drive a 2-stroke vehicle in a National Park due to emossions, but they're working on fixing that...cool stuff.

Finally we were in the future truck competition. They took a Ford Explorer, IIRC, stripped it to the frame and applied some paints to the frame/body with special properties to reflect heat, moved the radiator out of the engine compartment and onto the roof (insane how much this helps prevent engine overheating), and worked on getting rid of the 12v Lead-Acid battery, and of course make it a hybrid vehicle with a computer and other cool stuff. That was 2 years ago...didn't win in the desert for some reason, but it was cooler in the car that was off than in the shade, and it was the probably the only vehicle that didn't overheat... Last year they took a pickup truck and made a hybrid hydraulic car...ie storing potential energy in hydraulic power instead of electrical power. Not sure what is up this year...


Anyways, Mechanical Engineers....yeah! Use those videocard heatpipes that use a form of phase-change heat transfer to keep that card cool...similar to how they keep the ice under the oil pipeline through Alaska frozen but on a smaller scale and at different temperatures