Page 40 - YANTRAEVUE

To prove that our love for cars goes beyond just looking at ‘pretty pictures’ of them, few of our me-
chanical students went ahead and made one. They made to Go-Kart for participation in a certain
competition, and this being their first attempt at making a fully working vehicle the work they had
to do was daunting.
We sat down with one of the members of the team which made the Kart to discuss the aspects of the
process they followed in the making of the Kart. The following is the account of the interview:

W hat was the name of your team?
‘The team was called Team Wheels.’
H
ow many members did your team consist of?
‘We were a team of twenty people; divided into groups assigned to
different departments of production.’
A nd those departments were?
‘We had a group each for chassis, Steering, Braking, Management,
and power train. Each group had a department head who is respon-
sible for the management of that particular department. And we had
one Capitan overseeing the activities of all the departments.’
H ow did you approach the project financially?
‘The registration fees for the competition was Rs. 16700, but that
seemed like a huge amount to produce in a single stroke so we de-
cided to collect the money from the members in instalments.’
Mr Srinath Reddy went on to tell us how he generously funded the
entire project privately, so as to avert a financial crisis, and later col-
lected the money from his fellow team members.
H ow much time did you take to complete the task?
‘It took us six months, although the production was entirely done
in the last two months. The first four were completely dedicated to
planning, allocation of members to different departments, stock-
piling on necessary components and all the post-production work
was done in the first four months. In that time we had to plan and
re-plan design many times, and for this task alone most of the time
was spent.’
W hat was the name and nature of the competition?
‘The name of the competition was National Karting Racing Cham-
pionship (NKRC), it was held at Mohit Racing Academy, Kolhapur,
Maharashtra; an international track of great prominence. There were
200 participants. Of the 2oo, 175 were Go-Karts and the other 25
were E-Karts. The competition works on the basis of ‘winner takes
all. The first to finish will be the first to first to flourish.’
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