#GirlsinSTEM Change the Rules FABricating the Ultimate BMW Driving Simulator
Written by Loxley Browne
It all started with one question. “You’re supposed to get your learner’s license soon, aren’t you? How is your driver training going?”
With a grimace, Akshaya looked at me, “I tried driving my dad’s car in a parking lot and it was really stressful… another car almost hit me.”
From that conversation, came the idea for Simmie. We would take a regular street car, gut it, and turn it into a spectacular driving simulator.
Within days we had located the perfect BMW 318 convertible, much like the scarecrow on the “Wizard of Oz,” it was missing a brain. Not to mention, it was the perfect price!
“My favorite thing about working on this project was being able to create memories with Loxley while having educational, once-in-a-lifetime opportunities! We never do the same project twice!”
–Akshaya, 2022 FABricator
The day we picked up the car our whole team was all smiles. Texts and pictures were pinging the phones of all team members! We had found the perfect car below the amount we had budgeted. All of that work we had put into planning for the past month was coming to fruition. The excitement was building to get started on our FABcamp build for 2022.
Now, most would question, “Why take a perfectly fine car that just needs one part and deconstruct it?”
Our Board had discussed how anxious the members appeared when talking about driving, but how eager they were to jump on the driving sim and give it a try. How could we help them to see how much fun driving could be with practice and experience?
Pose that question to a car-loving designer, engineer, and fabricator and the innovative brainstorming results in something most would never consider! We conceptulaized the idea of the real-world feel of a vehicle combined with esports gaming components. The perfect enticement to get a teenager to learn something!
Our special team of student members had spent the prior month researching what would be needed, putting together a budget, and having Zoom meetings with experts across the US. This gave us the intel needed to approach the car on the first day with the mindset of discovering any issues that we would need to address and the steps to deconstruct the car. Project management skills being learned and tested!
Take a drive, with Jeff Zevely of CBS and Club Athena member Sonia, in the BMW driving sim FABricated at our 2022 summer STEM FABcamp!
Then the dirty work started! In one day we pulled the engine and transmission in one fell swoop. Our motto “get your hands dirty” was a reality as we yanked out parts and got dirt and grease all over us. Thankfully, with the help of our BMW mechanic expert, we accomplished more than we imagined we could have in one day! The hardest part was chasing down all the electrical wires and decommissioning them.
With the engine gone, it was time to clean up the front bay and prepare it to be our storage location for supplies and electronics. It is amazing how you can keep finding 20-year-old congealed oil in all the nooks and crannies three washings later!
“Destruction therapy” was possibly one of the most fun pieces of this project for us. The dash of a car is really not meant to come out of it once it has been put in, but come out it did!
“Sometimes, we were not able to get the parts out of the car easily,” said Akshaya. “Our solution to this problem was getting our safety gear on, and using our hammers and crowbars to hack away at the unnecessary materials!
With sledgehammers, prybars, and grinders, we manage to get all of the unnecessary parts of the dashboard and console out within two days.
The most intense part of the fabrication was concentrated on the dashboard and console area. Because we would be putting gaming components into the car. We needed to create a stable environment to attach them.
Then we went to work on creating a mount for the monitors on the exterior of the windshield so the driver would have the full experience of looking through the glass for the driving experience. These projects are where true invention, design, and fabrication came into place. Many sketches, long conversations, and paper or cardboard templates later we had crafted the perfect interior environment for our gaming setup. We upcycled where we could and used items you normally wouldn’t think about, but they worked. A lot of the metal was crap left over from other projects. The cover of the consul was a black blanket that was swag from a company. The gaming components themselves were actually donated by one of our favorite racers, Erin Vogel.
“Working on Simmie, I was able to learn about a car by tearing it apart, finding the root of the problem, and then seeing how it was built. This helps me continue practicing the life skill that even when life sometimes brings problems, its good to work through them. Being able to solve those problems develops you into the person you become in the long run!”
–Akshaya, 2022 FABricator
We had the opportunity to debut Simmie on CBS! With Sonia at the wheel, she shared our Athenian story with the world. An aspiring gaming engineer, she splits her extracurriculars between FIRST Robotics and Club Athena. She is a multitalented advocate for #GirlsinSTEM helping to show the world that talents needed for gaming and engineering exist in all of us regardless of gender.
Next, we took Simmie on a roadtrip to the Lucky Dog Racing Series Enduro race at Chuckwalla Valley Raceway. Unbeknownst to us, the weather had other plans, and we got to experience high winds, extreme heat, a sandstorm, tornadoes, a thunderstorm with a deluge of water that you could see advancing across the desert like a wall, and hail. While we thought we had everything secured and stowed away, we missed a few items.
Lesson learned: in order to take Simmie anywhere she needed to be inside a custom trailer.
The best lesson in all of our summer STEM camp projects that our Athenians are discovering is that our projects keep evolving and improving. Just as you see automotive makers continually adapting and upgrading their cars, we will do the same with Simmie. There are more sensory components that we want to add to the experience and improvements upon what we have created.
Building this driving simulator from an actual car has been one of the most fun experiences of being Athenian. With each FABcamp we keep doing a fabrication project that builds upon the knowledge of the one that we completed the year before. You’ll see us continue to improve upon Simmie and make her better.
Just know… keep following along with us because we do FABulous projects!
FABcamp is my favorite thing to do each summer. The speakers have inspired me to follow my dreams of designing spacecraft. I can’t wait till next year! I’m ready to build!
~Anna
