AMSOIL Sponsors SAE Clean Snowmobile Challenge

Nowadays, people everywhere in every way are looking for ways to go green. This includes more than 150 engineering students from seventeen universities nationwide participating in the 2009 SAE Clean Snowmobile Challenge. Hosted by Michigan Tech University, this year’s theme is “Flex Fuel.” The event spans six days in March 2009. Students compete in one of two categories, taking a stock snowmobile and reengineering it to reduce emissions and noise while maintaining or improving performance. Finalists compete in a variety of categories including emissions, noise, fuel economy, acceleration, handling, cold start and design. Overall, each team aims to make a better sled that has less impact on the environment.

The first category includes sleds driven by one Internal Combustion (IC) engine, and those in the second category are sleds driven by electrical power with Zero Emissions (ZE). These snowmobiles must be built to meet or exceed the 2012 standards for exhaust emissions and noise output. Furthermore, they must run on bio-fuel only. This creates quite the challenge for these students, and lots of time, research, and ingenuity goes into each project. AMSOIL is very pleased to be associated with these future engineers of America as they look for solutions to better the future of snowmobile design.

The event is hosted by Michigan Tech, and will be held March 16-21 2009 at the KRC Keweenaw Research Center in Houghton, MI. Upwards of 1,000 spectators are expected, and the public is invited to attend any of the competitions. If you can make it, also check out the Polaris Acceleration Event and Polaris Objective Handling Event on Saturday the 21st on the KRC test course. AMSOIL will update the promotions blog with further information as it becomes available, so stay tuned.