Electrathon America Forum

Nitoragro · Senior Member

My New Car #365 Build Process

Nitoragro · Senior Member

I then had to make the pivot arm, Mr. Robinson / Electrathon Vice President, showed me how to incorporate an ankerman angle with a pivot arm. Making it took about 3 man hours and 2 attempts to make it perfect.

I then added the handles to the steering wheel for the driver's hands and brake levers. Then I had to had the linkage rods.

I then put all the wheels on and started pushing it around, the first problem I saw is that it's turning radius was huge, I didn't want to make a longer pivot arm so I modified the spindles again, I drilled a new hold for the linkage rods to be closer to the kingpin. After fixing that it was able to turn much better.

Steering%20Spindle_zpsjzsixx09.jpg

I need to get a conduit bender before I can do anything else, this is because the rear fork is not braced yet and the rounded roll bar will be a support for the rear fork. Once the rollbar is in I will add a floor, then the driver's seat, then the motor mount.

Archer321 · Senior Member

Interesting build you have going there. Will you have trouble seeing past your knees with them up so much to clear your steering arrangement? How upright do you foresee your driving position to be?

I like your triangulated frame rails. It looks like you have a good start. I hope to see it in person next season.

-- Edited by Archer321 on Sunday 17th of July 2016 05:39:12 PM

Nitoragro · Senior Member

My head will be about 28 inches above the ground so ill be fairly reclined. As for sight it is better than you would think, the mid-back section of the canopy is higher than where the knees go.

mhodgertt · EA President

Nice documentation of the build and looks like some interesting solutions to issues. Good luck and keep us all informed.

Nitoragro · Senior Member

I finally got my conduit bender earlier today so I was able to finish up my frame.

The rear fork had no support so I added 2 rollbars, one for supporting the main rollbar and holding the rear fork in place.

After I got the rollbar in I had to finally add the front of the car, I had to extend it farther out then what would normally be expected because a cone needs to be put on to make the front aerodynamic with the canopy.

I believe the next part is the most crucial for this car. Making sure the driver is over the motor but under the rollbar, while not being to far forward to interfere with the steering, but not to far back to not be able to reach. And somehow everything fit me. I decided to have 2 of my batteries up front just infront of the axle and under my calfs, the 3rd battery is behind the driver's right shoulder, opposite the motor.

With 32 man hours in the car in the past 6 days building we just need to mount the motor, wire the car, mount the harness, and mount my mirrors then I can start driving.

Ron · Veteran Member

Ryan;
Real nice car, looks like you are figuring out all the questions you have asked in the past and incorporating them into a very nice car.

my one question (comment, concern) is protection for your legs in case of frontal impact at a level higher than the front "loop" of the frame.
Also protection for your knees if an impact (from other car or barrier) were to damage or "remove in some way" (tear off) your canopy...

I know this is an event that is not likely to happen... but such things DO happen...

who would have thought you would have to tell people to "hook the strap" on their helmets but just this May I saw a car roll over...
and of course what did I also see? the drivers helmet come flying out of the car!!!!

when asked if the event was that violent the driver replied "no, I just didn't hook my helmet strap"

(tip for safety officials: now as well as checking for functioning brakes, eye protection, and gloves/long sleeves on the starting line...CHECK HELMETS!!!!)

sorry for the tangent... but as speeds increase we need to be more safety conscient.

I just don't want to see you get even a little "boo boo" while driving..

hope the car runs well for you, and next season is both fun and fruitfull for you.

Ron

Nitoragro · Senior Member

I think i see what toy mean a front crash, I added a reinforcement bar from the top of the axle to the front of the loop. It makes it MUCH stronger Also you can see in an earlier picture with the canopy that there is a large gap between the frame the the front of the canopy, that is where we will add a nose cone with some structure so it is stronger and more aerodynamic. As for the knee protection I have two ideas. One would be to reinforce the actually canopy. If i did this I would add a little rollbar attached near the front of the canopy so if I was hit from the side the canopy (hopefully) wouldn't break. My other idea would be to directly weld it to the frame. I think this would be better because if the rule change goes through for a rollover line that goes from the rollbar to the frame then that would make the car legal and make it safer. The only problem with that is it would be a little harder to get in/out.

The more I think about this I see a solution that I think would work best. I would put a rollbar over my knees and then add a bar that goes from the top of the knee's rollbar to the nose of the car while all staying under the canopy.

Two nights ago I was able to get the car wired and the motor spinning. I was unfortunately unable to get the chain cut because my chain breaker broke when it was trying to break chain, kinda ironic. Hopefully when I get back from my college tour I can mount the canopy, the batteries, add the chain, drive around the neighborhood a little, then add the finishing touches to make it race ready.

Archer321 · Senior Member

I see you threw your little 4 lb battery in there beside the motor... Whatcha planning?

Nitoragro · Senior Member

Not yet, that blue thing is my controller, if you mean the other thing that is my 3rd 23lb battery. I haven't been able to fibd a SPDT (single pole double trigger) switch i could use (it lets power go left or right, not both, not neither). I also only had a $245 budget ($2 remaining) and whatever i had laying around my teams shop, when i get the car to 100% i could find a little battery and find a way to use normal kill switches as a SPDT. When i get that booster battery in ill be sure to tell how it goes.

Nitoragro · Senior Member

We are just about finished with the car now after 2 weeks. We had our first test drive a day or two ago and I learned a few things with it. Flat tires are no good for driving, and my steering wheel was to far away. But if i moved it closer I wouldn't be able to turn it, so i extended it out and turned it inwards to it inward. This made it MUCH more comfortable and handle a lot better.

However once I had this steering in the throttle and two hand brakes wouldn't fit. I would have to put both brakes on one side and it just wouldn't work. So i decided to make my two hand brakes into two foot brakes. I had some 7/8 tubing leftover and added it to the front of my car and put the brake levers over it. And it worked great, I just need to move it forward about 4-6 inches and it will be perfect.

Since this entire car was made to fit under our canopy it was time to start mounting it. I cut some holes in the sides of it to allow the steering rods to fit through. I plan to add a custom hinge to the canopy that will work kinda like a Blue Sky lifting canopy that lifts up the canopy and tilts it back at the same time.

To be 100% done we just need to make a structural and aerodynamic nose, add mirrors, mount the harness, add interior padding to hold the driver in, and maybe make some wheel covers.

mhodgertt · EA President

Looks good. Good luck with the last details. Am a little worried about the hand break handles for your foot breaks. You can always make two peddles our of flat plate and hinge them to the floor. Then attach break cables to them and they are more like foot breaks and your foot will not slip off and you won't break the aluminum handles. If you want a picture of one of these send me an email. 'mike.hodgert@bethel.k12.or.us' Also if you want to see any pictures of our eTek motors for sale or sprockets from your message to me.

Zahrack · Member

Hey I really love where this build is going! I also like your progressive blog type posting on the build progress. Also...

I absolutely respect and love the fact you and your team are repurposing an aircraft canopy for an electrathon car's windshield. I'm actually an aircraft mechanic by profession so I get to see a lot of aircraft in my work field. I think it's sad to see aircraft in bone yards so it is enlightening to see that at least some good can come of that. To be honest I actually had an aircraft styled canopy for one my earlier electrathon sketch designs but I later moved to more of a tear drop shaped half bubble in favor of simplicity and ease of construction. On that note would you mind telling how thick the canopy material is? Maybe you know if it is polycarbonate? I wrote a topic on it a while back but I never seemed to attract any answers to my question. Hopefully you can help me out?

I won't pretend to have any experience building electrathon cars, I really don't, but I'd like to make a couple of suggestions blended with a few questions.

First: Those wheels axle bolts you tack welded. Did you later fully weld them after you were sure of their position? I'm not there to judge in person and I don't know how rigid they are but for your safety I was wondering...

Second: I was curious about the wheel diameter you were using. I think they are bigger than 12 inches but if they are 12 inches in diameter would you mind telling me where you got them? Thanks!

Third: I was wondering about that steering setup. It looks amazingly simple and I don't want to gripe on you. I have a concern about the comfort and safety. Do the handle bars jab you in the ribs at all? From one of the pictures it looks like the steering mechanism would come oddly close to the body during tight turns. My suggestion would be, in the event that it is an issue of comfort or safety, you could leave a straight bar almost exactly like how you had it in your first setup but instead have 2 cantilever "pushrods" that would be parallel to your body. Each "pushrod" would be hinged at the straight bar so that they could always remain parallel to your body no matter how tight your turn radius is. You have a choice to connect another "paralleling straight bar" to the 2 cantilever "pushrods" so that they will always remain parallel to each other. Or you could leave the cantilever "pushrods" free to spin and just install stops to prevent them from going to close to your body. I'd install the stops near the driver's body though not on the "straight bar" itself. Otherwise you'd risk impaling the driver in a collision. (Or at least breaking a rib if your handlebar stopped it's travel towards the driver's body.) At the ends of the "pushrods" would be handle bars much like what you have in your last setup. Because I recognize that may be confusing I'll attempt to attach a sketch here:

This sketch has the safer design in my opinion. But anyways. That's my two cents. I can't wait to see what ya'll do for the nose! (and sidewalls?) Thanks!

Nitoragro · Senior Member

Thanks you

First on the axle it was tac welded, I did that so if I did not weld the bolt on at a perfect 90 degree angle it would be an easy fix, so once I got it perfectly perpendicular i finished welding it all the way around making it much safer (I wouldn't trust those tacs just sitting in the car).

As for the wheels, they are 16" DOT so the rim is 16" across, in bikes it is 20" because the tire diameter is 20". They are not the 12" you use but I HIGHLY recommend them they are SUPER tough, fairly cheap, and they look cool, I got a set of rims with brakes for around $100 on ebay, i run the same thing on my other car and got the same thing for around $140-$150 on a moped website. They are Tomos Moped wheels.

As for your steering design I love it, I never would have thought of it and I think it would work, just not for my car. I am about 17" wide at my waist and the canopy is 24.5" wide on the inside. That means I have about 3.75" on either side so the steering wheel has two options:
1) Make the steering wheel so it does not need to turn very much
2) Make the steering wheel turn more but it overlaps the driver

I picked the 2nd option, so it would be physically easier to steer. I did not post a picture but when sitting in the car it is like sitting in a chair that is leaning far back, so my waist, upper thighs, and lower stomach are all below the steering wheel, what that does is it lets the steering wheel wrap around the driver so that weird curve in the wheel lets the steering wheel curve around the drivers legs.

Your option would have a similar problem as my first steering wheel had, that paralleling straight bar would hit the driver's legs without the wheel turning much, but it would fix the reach problem. So what I would have to do is make it so if I turn the wheel 10 degrees the wheels would move 20 degrees. To do that I would need a short arm on my spindle and a long arm on my pivot arm. I already had a short spindle arm, but I can't make my pivot arm any longer, if I did it would be very uncomfortable for drivers because then the pivot arm would hit the driver. So then the car would not turn enough to fit on our Tampa tracks.

So with the steering i have if i were to crash and my wheels hit a curb making the wheels jerk which would then move the steering wheel the steering wheel would then wrap around my body keeping the driver safe.

As for the canopy it is polycarbonate and the orange part is aluminum. As for thickness I do not know exactly, I just dropped the car back at my school so I do not know what is it right now, but if I had to guess it is between 1/16 and 1/8 of an inch, when my school starts back on Wednesday I can find out for you and i'll PM you.

Zaine Stapleton · Senior Member

Nicely done! If you can drive the car around and put it into "hard conditions," that way you can check to make sure everything is working correctly.

It's better to check this during a practice and have something fail compared to going to a race and having something fail on the car where it counts.

Again, good job!

Zaine

Nitoragro · Senior Member

Thanks you, we were actually doing some race like test driving on Tuesday and we found some failures... the steering broke off. The pivot arm sheared off the metal on the steering wheel (the weld held, not the metal). I got away much better than what could have happened, nearly missed a parked Mercedes and a tree. I also found that brakes held and work, but nearly failed, good thing they didn't, but the spindle where the brake mount is was just not strong enough.
We are going to redesign the pivot arm and reinforce the brakes. But other than these two simple fixes it is ready for its first race September 24th.

Nitoragro · Senior Member

New update on the car

I added a knee rollbar that goes over the steering wheel and covers the driver's knees, my teacher was surprised seeing me work on safety and not upgrades.

I was able to get a new motor 36 hours before the race and was able to get it in minutes after it was delivered to the school. We were able to do minor testing on the car just to get the speed right with the new motor and gearing.

We were able to make the race on September 24th, we had a little trouble with inspection on the car, 2 minor problems, the red triangle a little hard to see, and flooring not going all the way to the front, luckily my team brought everything needed to get it race legal for the race. I the 1st heat of the day I was trying a different driving strategy, I tried to get a lead at the start going fast the 1st 20 minutes then going to normal speeds, I did this thinking I would never run out of power with my super aerodynamic canopy... I was wrong. I was in turtle survival mode at the last 5 minutes of the race. However even with that I was able to manage a 2nd place finish, with my old car getting 1st.

In the 2nd race I was talking with my team mate who was driving the car I drove last year (#80) and we set up a drafting plan, I would draft him the first 10 minutes, then we would switch who drafted who every 10 minutes. I have never had a team mate before and wow was it GREAT! We were able to do that for 55 minutes until my team's car went down with a slipped chain, it took about 3-4 laps for him to get back up. I once again finished 2nd but this time another team got 1st. In this race I went from 81 to 82 laps BUT i still had about 20% power left in my batteries so we could have gone faster.

Overall I was able to get 163 laps, tied in lap counts with another team, I was able to win 1st by just a few seconds. And even more impressive it was able to have a day of racing without needing to pit!

The next race was 4 weeks away and we didn't have anything to do to repair the cars so we focused mainly on safety and a steering modification
The modification was just reducing the castor from 20 degrees to 8 degrees, we did this so the car would be easier to steer.
After this modification and safety upgrades it was time to make it look good, we originally raced with the chipped orange paint and a white nose, everyone at the race thought the nose made the car look like a duck... so we embraced it. We painted the car like a duck, just to have some fun.

The car is now known as "The Duck"

When we brought it to the second race of the season which was Oct 22nd we got some funny looks and a lot of pictures, it was a comical hit. Then my teacher surprised me, he attached a duck call to the car using a hose to I could "quack" from the inside. Being on the starting line quacking a LOT of fun, and I couldn't stop laughing and neither could some of the onlookers.

As for the 1st heat I was able to finish 2nd, with 1st being taken by my old car (again). But the 2nd race was far more exciting. I was drafting my team mate going fairly quick and I feel the steering is a little off, like I had to move the steering wheel a little bit more than I should have needed to, I didn't think anything of it, I just thought I was going crazy, but on the next turn I found out what it is, I had another massive steering failure. The steering wheel got sheared off. This caused me to hit my rival teams trailer (luckily I hit the tire so no damage was done) crushing my duck bill. This was different from the last steering failure which was the pivot arm, this time it was the steering wheel, but both times it was the same issue. The metal we used was to thin, we need to redo the steering with MUCH thicker metal and we should be good from our next race in 2 weeks.

-- Edited by Nitoragro on Monday 24th of October 2016 12:33:39 AM

-- Edited by Nitoragro on Monday 24th of October 2016 12:57:44 AM

Archer321 · Senior Member

So what did you get for a new motor? What was the old one?

Nitoragro · Senior Member

The new one is a ME0909, the old one was a 8 year old ME0709 that was on it's last leg.

mhodgertt · EA President

As a University of Oregon grad and life long "Duck" I approve...even if our football team sucks this year.

I take it the sprockets I sent are working out.

Nitoragro · Senior Member

Yeah they are working great! They've even won us a race already.

Zaine Stapleton · Senior Member

I was just going to say you need to add a duck quacking noise to the car.
Then I just watched your video, beat me to it!

Zaine

Archer321 · Senior Member

Hey I just saw a YouTube video with your car in it. What size sprockets are you running? That rear one looks pretty big.

Nitoragro · Senior Member

In the first 3 races we ran we used a 22 on the motor and an 88 on the wheel; however, i made a big mistake. I run a 36v system but my speeds were far below where they should have been. So we suspected it was our new motor so the company we bought it from had us check the motor voltage. The motor was only getting 22.2v while the controller was getting 36.8v. I wired the controller to half speed... I unplugged the 3rd wire on my throttle (the controller only needs 2) and i doubled the speed of the motor. So now i use a 17 in the motor and a 104 on the wheel (at least for the next race). The reason this is so much bigger than other 36v cars is the RPMs per volt. The etek and similar motors have 72 RPMs per volt, while my ME0909 has 84 RPMs per volt.

Zaine Stapleton · Senior Member

When are the races in the Florida region happen typically? At some point I would like to travel around and race at different tracks in the future.
Go around and see some new places, etc. etc.
Thanks!

Zaine

Nitoragro · Senior Member

We normally race 1 Saturday a month from September to May. Our full race schedule is on ElectrathonOfTampaBay.org/www

Zaine Stapleton · Senior Member

Thanks!

Zaine

Archer321 · Senior Member

Where did you get that 104 tooth sprocket? Is it for #35 chain? Steel or aluminum? Thanks

Weenier for the win · Newbie

hello mr archer,

Weenier for the win · Newbie

hey, I'm filling out my application forum, does anybody know any weiner like numbers

Weenier for the win · Newbie

sorry for the random post, i'm a total newbie, but on a positive note that duck call is awesome . I'm very impressed with your car, sorry for the random posts agin.

mhodgertt · EA President

For Weenier's numbers--how about 111 with the middle 1 red for the hot dog and the outside two sort of rounded and white for the bun. But I don't think you will need numbers much as your car will be very recognizable. My Wolverine car everyone in the NW is #38. Your car looks like fun. Enjoy