Modular All-Terrain Rescue Vehicle (MARV)

CAD · Metal Fabrication · Drivetrain Engineering · Reverse Engineering · Team Leadership

MARV is a modular, off-road rescue vehicle — narrow enough to get through debris and doorways, with a truck bed and swappable rear modules for supplies or an injured passenger — built to reach people after a natural disaster where an ambulance or truck can’t. It started as a 16-person freshman team project that produced a drivable but functionally incomplete prototype, and it is now being rebuilt around a salvaged ATV engine, four-wheel drive, and full independent suspension.

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Project Overview

Two phases, two organizations, one vehicle that kept getting rebuilt

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I led this project through both phases. In phase one I was Staff Lead of the FLiNT Vehicle Design Team, overseeing 16 students split across chassis, drivetrain, and modularity sub-teams, and directly leading the 6-person chassis team — teaching Fusion 360, MIG welding, and general metalworking hands-on rather than only assigning work. In phase two I founded STEEL (Society of Technological Evolution and Engineering Leadership) and led the 15-member team that resumed MARV, where the work shifted toward reverse-engineering a donor ATV and redesigning the chassis around its drivetrain. That team disbanded in April 2026; the project continues with me and two others.

The page is organized chronologically by phase, so the gap between what the first prototype was supposed to be and what it actually became is visible — that gap is the reason phase two exists.

Project Snapshot

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Role Staff Lead, Vehicle Design Team (phase 1) · Project Lead, STEEL (phase 2)

Team 16 students across three sub-teams (phase 1) · 15 members, now 3 after the team disbanded (phase 2)

Development October 2024 – present, across two phases

Core Function Narrow, modular off-road vehicle for delivering supplies and evacuating injured people through disaster terrain

Recognition $2,500 Meloy Innovators grant, Texas A&M University — grant application written personally

Phase One

A drivable prototype that fell short of its own design targets

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The FLiNT Vehicle Design Team had six months and a materials budget to turn the concept into something that moved under its own power. I held staff oversight of all 16 members, led the chassis team directly, and mentored the drivetrain sub-team — teaching them to calculate gear ratios that matched the engine’s power output to a target tire speed and a usable torque-to-speed balance. I also made the parts-sourcing and compatibility calls for chassis and drivetrain hardware: matching Honda four-wheeler hub and spindle bolt patterns to the golf-cart wheels already in use, evaluating Honda Rincon wheels while flagging how their larger diameter would change the gearing, and specifying mild steel for the axle-bearing brackets so they could be cut in-house on the CNC plasma cutter if sourcing them cost too much.

What was built

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• Welded a square-tube mild steel frame, with plate and sheet parts cut on a CNC plasma cutter that couldn’t cut holes under roughly 0.5" — which forced several design changes.
• Drove the vehicle with a 439cc, 18 HP DuroMax gasoline engine through a centrifugal go-kart clutch and chain drive, 60-tooth driven sprocket to a 14-tooth clutch sprocket, with the engine on a custom sliding track for chain tensioning.
• Built the front end from Polaris Ranger control arms, rack-and-pinion steering, golf-cart wheels, hubs and spindles, and motorcycle shocks on custom mounts.
• Fabricated a sliding-bolt linkage from the brake pedal to the caliper, because the stock hydraulic line was too short to reach.
• Finished at roughly 14’ × 6’ × 4’, about 500 lbs, around 40 mph top speed, for about $1,300 in materials plus an estimated $1,200 in labor.

Where it missed

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• The single-speed engine gave it no selectable gears and no reverse.
• The rear axle ended up solid, not the independent rear suspension that was designed.
• Four-wheel drive was planned and never made it onto the vehicle.
• The front suspension caused steering problems and had to be solid-mounted, defeating the point of having it.
• The throttle pedal never worked — driving it meant engaging the throttle by hand at the engine.

Phase Two

Rebuilding it around a donor ATV instead of patching the prototype

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Phase one proved the concept moved and showed exactly which subsystems weren’t worth another iteration. Rather than fix V1 in place, the 15-member STEEL team I led started from a donated ATV: a complete drivetrain and suspension package that solves the gearing, four-wheel drive, and independent suspension problems in one move, for the cost of tearing it down.

What changed

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• Disassembled the donor ATV and harvested its engine and transmission unit, front and rear independent suspension, front and rear differentials and axles, and OEM electronics.
• Stripped the V1 prototype back down to prepare it for rework.
• LIDAR-scanned the donor engine to produce an accurate 3D model, then used it for engine placement and motor-mount design in the chassis CAD.
• Reworked the chassis design around the salvaged drivetrain and suspension while resolving the problems identified in V1.
• Won the project a $2,500 Meloy Innovators grant at Texas A&M University on a grant application I wrote.

What’s next

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• Finalize the chassis redesign and fabricate the updated frame.
• Assemble the drivetrain and suspension onto it, then test and verify.
• Reverse-engineer the OEM ECU’s dash communication protocol, read that data on a microcontroller, and build a modernized custom dashboard display.

Project Outcome

From a running prototype that missed its targets to a ground-up rebuild

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MARV began as a six-month freshman team project and ended that phase as a drivable vehicle that fell short of nearly every drivetrain goal it set: one gear, no reverse, no four-wheel drive, a solid rear axle, and a front suspension bolted solid to keep the steering usable. Those gaps defined the second phase — sourcing a donor ATV for its engine, differentials, and independent suspension, and reverse-engineering the engine geometry with LIDAR so the new chassis could be designed around real dimensions instead of estimates. The project is active and has no fixed end date: the 15-member STEEL team disbanded in April 2026, and I’m carrying the rebuild forward with two of them.

I’m showing both phases because the first prototype’s shortcomings are what made the second design worth doing — the interesting engineering here is in what the failures taught us, not in a single finished photo.