Revving Up Enthusiasm for Auto Engineering

If you walked out to North campus and down the dirt path, you might eventually start to hear the sounds of music, ratchets, clanking metal, and excited banter. It sounds awfully close to what your local oil change garage sounds like, but it’s actually the Upper School Automotive Engineering Club.

The club had been dormant for a few years, but last year students expressed interest in starting it back up again. The problem was, they had no advisor. So at the start of last year, a call went out looking for an advisor for the club. Ben Ramage, Assistant Director of Facilities, who had only just started at Overlake three weeks prior, took on the challenge, not knowing what to expect.

“It’s been really fun,” Ramage says. “It helped reignite my ability to work with kids again.”

Last year the club spent the year taking apart and getting familiar with a V8 engine that was likely never going to run again, so Ramage encouraged the students to really dig into the engine and become familiar with the tools. He has been impressed with how much the students have learned in the last year. “Now they’re able to look at a situation and work with the knowledge they’ve accrued over the last year and apply it to the problems they’re having,” he says.

This year, the club has been using the skills they have honed over the past year on their current project: restoring a 1972 Jaguar XJ6. The car was included as a part of a property Overlake purchased last year and it’s estimated that the car has been sitting idle for 20 or 30 years. The brakes had rusted over, and the car couldn’t be moved.

Ramage remembers, “It was stuck solid. There’s a lot of things that could be wrong with this, but if we can get this thing to move on its own, we should do it.” The first few times they worked on the car they had to go down the hill to where the car had been stored to decide how they could get it moving. One of his favorite moments came when they had done enough work to get the car to roll so it could finally be towed up the hill. “Everybody just shrieked with joy!” he recalled.

As they work, students have started to recognize and apply principles they have learned about in other classes. “The kids talk and argue about the physics of the engineering and how dynamics work, but I just encourage them to grab a tool and figure out how it works,” he says.

And the work does help cement the concepts that are often more theoretical when learning from a book. Senior Avery V. says that his engineering and chemistry classes have been immensely helpful. “There’s a theoretical understanding that’s important because you can understand the mechanical movements of the engine, but why it moves is entirely chemical.”

Senior Sammy C. who is one of the original members that started the club says, “We have this unique opportunity to actually see how a car works, how internal combustion works, and to experience challenges associated with automotive engineering.” He comments that a lot of the YouTube tutorials are edited to make it look quick and easy but the reality of auto work is a harder and slower process. The club members are reinforcing their knowledge more and more each week as they continue to experiment and attempt to get the car running. “Eventually if we want this engine to start, we have to learn why an engine works and the chemical processes that make it tick.”

Since the car was acquired just a few weeks before the end of last school year, they didn’t get much time to tinker with it before the end of the year, so the club members asked if they could come in over the summer to work on it. Every week, a contingent of students came in over the summer to spend more time working on the car. There are several seniors in the club that recognize that it is going to take time to get the car running and they may not even get to see it competed. But they are enjoying the process while they can and look to leave a legacy for younger and future students.

If you would like to support this club’s work, the group could use donations of tools, oil, coolant, or anything else to restore an old car. But most importantly, they need knowledge. If you or someone you know knows how to work on old cars, reach out to club advisor Ben Ramage to help these budding owl mechanics learn.