VHS Team Stokes Engine For Even Higher Successs

Seven Valders High School students and their teacher are striving to make an even better motorcycle than last year’s team made.

The students on the VHS team in the Manitowoc County High School Manufacturing Project are working with new technology education teacher Jacob Haag in the second year of the mini chopper project has been offered.

Teams from Manitowoc Lincoln, Mishicot and Valders high schools each are designing and building a motorcycle in the project.

Students are building the frame and deciding how to attach parts to, Haag said.

“We want to have a better product at all times,” he said. “Everyone tries to help everyone else succeed."

Ben Cisler, a VHS senior at the team’s head of design, said he and his team looked at last year’s bike and decided not to do the same thing.

“We looked at their bike,” he said. “OK, we don’t want to do this. We want to make it longer and we want to make it taller. We Googled ‘bike frames’ and we looked at a whole bunch of different regular motorcycle frames. We said ‘We want this piece here and this piece there.’

“We tied all our good ideas into one frame design. We tried to make that a reality on the computer. From there, we modified it a little bit.”

But students do not have to build the engine because that is pre-made, senior Logan Figueroa said.

“I never built a bike before,” he added.

On Oct. 19, senior Jarod Kohlmann took the engine home, found the correct wiring diagram for it, built the proper wiring harness and returned the engine to school the next day.

Recently, Figueroa and Kohlmann got the rear tire ready so a chain can connect it to the engine to rotate the wheel.

Then, Jeff Griffey, agriculture instructor, connected the engine and the wheel with the chain. Although he periodically lends a hand, Griffey said he is not involved in the project.

He talked to the students about putting the engine in the correct place so it does not shift.

“If that’s going to shift, then you can shift it this way,” he said. “Do you want it centered or straight?”

Meanwhile, Haag cautioned, “Leave yourselves some wiggle room, but not much.”

Although they did much of the work in the school’s shop, Cisler said students did some work at the team’s sponsor, Baileigh Industrial Inc., which sells industrial and shop equipment. Baileigh is located in the Manitowoc Industrial Park.

After students bent frame pieces at Baileigh, junior Matthew Meidl welded the pieces together at the high school.
Before doing welding, students developed a jig, or a form to keep the frame from changing shape because of the weld, Haag said.

“Our first stepping stone to the frame was to cut this jig,” he said.

Meanwhile, Kohlmann said he has put his experience in working on his family’s farm and participating in garden tractor pulls to use in this project.

“I can take the things I learned from pulling to help get everything done,” he said. “But I am not the person who is doing most of the designing.”

Senior A.J. Kenneke and Cisler worked on measuring the frame during a recent work session.

Others on the team are Ben Spellich and Cole Waniger.

Haag praised his students for their teamwork.

“These guys are starting to come together and work as a team,” he said. “Everything is starting to fall together. It is not one person who is doing all the work.”

“It is kind of a trial and error sometimes. All that stuff is important to talk about. The biggest thing is to make sure everyone understands the concepts of how it is put together. We are all going to do this and agree on it.”

Although class time for building the motorcycle is 46 minutes a day, students go to the metal shop or computer lab to work on the project during study halls, Haag said.

In addition to helping students learn about designing and building the motorcycle, Haag said he is learning to do the same.

Last year, Ha taught at Two Rivers High School, which did not participate in the mini chopper program.

“It is new to me,” he said. “I didn’t know the whole aspects of it. I’ve had other people come in and help.” The deadline
for completing the motorcycle is in late April.

Building the motorcycles provides many benefits to the students, said Ken Stubbe, executive director of the Economic Development Corp. of Manitowoc County.

“First of all, building these small motorcycles is fun,” he said. “It also exposes local kids to the vast number of local skilled and professional manufacturing careers.”

“The project allows the students to get to know potential future employers. It teaches the teams to work on time on budget and according to specs while encountering the typical difficulties of any complex project.”