User:Ejunker

Ejunker
Real Name	Eric Junker
E-mail Address	eric.d.junker@gmail.com
Authorized to use:	Car uppy go downy
Certified Trainer on:	None

Intro

I'm Eric Junker, as of the time I'm updating this (August 2023) I just recently graduated from college with a BS in electrical engineering. A lot of my hobbies, interests, and projects revolve around racing. I have a decent amount of experience with metalworking of most varieties (machining, welding, etc.) from working in a machine shop at university. I love talking to other people about their projects and learning more about what's out there and what people are interested in!

Projects/Things

FSAE

If you know what FSAE is then cool! If you participated in it then I'm here for therapy if you need it. If you haven't heard of it, it's Formula Society of Automotive Engineers. Basically just building small formula style racecars in college. I was a member of Penn State's team from 2019 to 2023 and built an ICE car in 2022 and an EV in 2023 (I wish I could have done more but covid sucks).

24 Hours of Lemons

For those who don't know, 24 Hours of Lemons is a super budget endurance racing series where the goal is to build a car for $500 or less and race it in a timed endurance race against other cars. The car that I currently run is a 1995 Mercury Grand Marquis and I generally race with a group of friends from my university's FSAE team. I've talked to a lot of people that are interested in racing in this series so if you're interested in getting started please feel free to reach out! As someone who's done a fair number of races I'd love to help newcomers get involved and avoid some of the mistakes my team and I made early on.

Sim Racing

A sim racing rig was the first thing I was working on when I joined so it felt fitting to include it. Mostly just modifying an okayish steel framed rig I bought online a while ago. I do a lot of endurance races so if you're into sim racing in any of the GT or prototype classes hit me up! I'm always down to meet new people who are interested in racing.

Electric Skateboard

I figured I'd include this one because it's probably the first significant "makery" thing I did that I can think of. I built an electric skateboard in high school (around 2018) as a fun project and a way for me to get around my future college campus (until I realized they didn't take kindly to electric skateboards, oh well...). The first one was pretty simple with just one driven wheel and a slew of cheap ebay components thrown into tupperware containers that were screwed into the board.

I did plan on making a second iteration to improve on what I learned from the first board with a custom battery pack, higher quality speed controllers, dual motors, and some other improvements but at that point I had started college and was already neck deep in FSAE. It's something I've always wanted to revisit but just haven't had the desire because I can't really see myself using it that frequently.