Development of a Flex-Fuel, Two-Stroke, Direct-Injection Snowmobile for Use in the Clean Snowmobile Challenge and National Parks
Grant
Overview
abstract
Due in part to stringent noise and air pollution control measures recently imposed on snowmobiles by the US National Park Service, the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) instituted a student competition called the Clean Snowmobile Challenge (CSC) in 2000. The competition is designed to encourage the development of a snowmobile that will meet or exceed specific required pollution and noise control measures, while maintaining or improving the snowmobile’s performance.
The objective of this project is to produce a snowmobile that will meet the criteria for the 2009 CSC, which requires that snowmobiles be flex-fuel (i.e., able to run on any mixture of gasoline and E85, or 85 percent ethanol). The snowmobile has a modified stock chassis with a drivetrain designed to minimize sound production and maximize power transmission. The power plant for the 2009 University of Idaho snowmobile is a smaller stock two-stroke engine which has been retrofitted with direct fuel injection. This engine and basic snowmobile have been proven with a CSC first place showing in the 2007 competition and a second place in 2008 and will be modified to be flex-fuel. The team will continue to use graduate mentors as leaders for this primarily undergraduate competition team.
