EPHS Supermileage Vehicle

No, it's not a Veyron... There just wasn't a "Custom" option

This is a purpose built Super-High Mileage Vehicle that myself and around 9 other high school seniors built.  It was the culmination of over 3000+ total man hours, and was the FIRST EVER high school level supermileage vehicle to use a successful Electronic Fuel Injection and Electronic Ignition system.  My friend Kyle and I put together an entire custom EFI/EI system to a 2.4HP Briggs & Stratton, making us the first students to ever successfully build an EFI/EI system from scratch.

The car was entered in the Minnesota Technology Education Association's "Supermileage Challenge" at BIR in May, 2009.  We logged a 2 lap run of the track with an average MPG rating of

1202.78 MPG!!!!!!!!!!!

Unfortunately, we had to swap out our EFI equipped engine for a stock version on our second run of the day...  Our primary drive chain broke, severed our O2 sensor lines, and destroyed the fittings for our fuel pump...  This prevented us from making the 1202.78 MPG run "official," because we could not use the same engine for the required 10 minimum laps...  But, without the chain failure, we would have won our Modified class by over 500 MPG!!!

This is not meant to be a street car, our objective was to design, build, and test a vehicle that could achieve the highest MPG rating possible.

Here are some pictures of the building process. My friend and I logged over 650 hours of time (each) working on our EFI/EI setup.  Mind you, that is in one semester with a full load of high school courses as well as 5+ hours in the machine shop daily!  That being said, we are all VERY proud of what we accomplished here, and I hope you appreciate it for what it is!

I machined our custom throttle body out of 2 solid blocks of aluminum.  The throttle position sensor is from a Ford Escort

Our throttle body with our injector set and mounted in place.  This piece took over 30 hours to machine and weld by hand

Our chassis.  It consisted of 2 hand made triangular aluminum rails and 3 layers of carbon fiber vacuum bagged around the base.  The tires are specifically made for supermileage vehicles and have an ultra low rolling resistance.  Our steering system was fabricated entirely by us.  also, in the back you can see the mandatory roll cage.

Painting the body.  The body is made entirely out of carbon fiber with interlaced layers of core mat material for rigidity.  We constructed the mold from fiberglass and put down the carbon ourselves.

Our Frankenstien project: the EFI/EI system.  Essentially I fabricated the throttle body, injector mount, exhaust system, O2 sensor mount, VR sensor mount, intake, mass airflow sensor mount, electric start gear and fuel fittings by hand.  Kyle was responsible for the majority of the wiring and finding sensors that would be compatible with such a small engine.  Kyle also was responsible for most of the early stage programming and performance calculations.  When it was all pieced together, we both worked hard on tuning the engine to run as lean as possible for about 3 weeks before the competition

Our baby mounted on the chassis and firewall before the competition.  we had to re-route the intake to fit withing competition requirements and rewire the entire system... lots of fun

The Final Product.

Favorite decal of all time :) got us a LOT of attention at the competition.

Not too comfortable, but well engineered :)

Needless to say, it made the mandatory Grad Party appearance at each of our parties.  The relatives were impressed!

Thanks for checking our our car!