JAMM AQUINO / JAQUINO@STARBULLETIN.COM Damien Memorial High School senior Manuel Benitez goes for a test run around Damien's basketball court. Benitez, along with a team of 11 students led by Damien math instructor Jonathan Bromberg, built the car from junkyard parts, including "For Sale" signs and bicycle tires. The car will compete tomorrow in a race at Ford Island.

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Isle schools
revving up for race

Damien's makeshift vehicle is
among 27 competing tomorrow

When someone calls Damien Memorial High School's electric car a pile of junk, no one will be insulted.

That's because students scrounged items from street curbs and other odd places and fastened them together, using plenty of spit and sweat.

Damien students will be happy just to finish tomorrow's 10th annual on Ford Island. Damien's entries never finished the last two races.

Teams from 27 high schools have signed up for the event, which teaches students of diverse strengths to work together and to design and build an electric vehicle that performs. Admission is free to the 9 a.m.-12:30 p.m. event, but security measures will be in place for entry onto Ford Island off Pearl Harbor.

JAMM AQUINO / JAQUINO@STARBULLETIN.COM Manuel Benitez takes Damien's electric car, which can hit a speed of 20 mph running on just two 12-volt batteries, for a test run while Jonathan Bromberg, adviser for the 11-person team that built the car, watches.

With a shoestring budget of $900 from HECO, which also provided the basic engine kit (worth about $800) to all of the teams, the Damien team had to beg and borrow parts instead of buying them. The total value of the car is about $2,700, Bromberg said.

Bromberg is a former Navy test pilot who has no experience building cars, like most of the team's 10 members. They all learned to build the car just by reading the instructions and putting in hundreds of hours, beginning in August, he said.

"We had to learn to weld and cut metal. Nobody is an experienced builder. This is new to all of us. ... We weren't encumbered by prior knowledge, so we just kept going," he said.

But Bromberg did borrow something from his previous career. He suggested the students use push rods to steer the car "like an airplane," instead of a wheel. And the "aerodynamics are different from anyone else's," making it "highly maneuverable," said Bromberg, whose engineering degree also came in handy.

The car was constructed in a crowded, stuffy shack on the edge of the track field at Damien.

As lead mechanic and pit stop manager, honors senior Manny Benitez will be in charge on the race course.

Benitez pointed out all the different pieces of scrap used to build the car: bed frames to build the frame and chassis; the bottom section of Bromberg's old desk chair for the axle; a plastic chair from the library for the driver's seat; and "For Sale" yard signs for the sides.