This is the first car Zaine Stapleton built for his senior year at David Douglas.  Car #59 has raced at one race so far; the Eugene Celebration Kilowatt Klassic.  The goal with his car is to get David Douglas interested in kick starting the electrathon program again before he leaves.  The Intergrated Systems class at David Douglas has one car so far, car #55; the goal, build another before the racing season starts up again for the 2010 races.

Congratulations! I can tell by the way you drove it in Eugene that it will be a top competitor.

Thanks Nathan.  Spring is going to be a really good Electrathon season.  Hurry and get your car in the show off section too! :D

Haha, I will. My new car is almost done, it can roll now. All it needs now is a steering wheel and a few batteries. But I will as soon as possible. Nice talking to you.

If your going to have a night race, your going to need head lights.

First electrathon event happened last weekend at Mount Hood Community College.  Both David Douglas cars finished in the top 10.  #55 driven by Kenneth got 10th, #59 driven by me, I got 2nd in the student class.  Yay!

-- Edited by Zaine Stapleton on Saturday 13th of March 2010 02:21:00 AM

Here is the new #59.  Raced at Hood River, it did very well.  Some slight changes to my new car compared to #51, biggest difference is the sweeping tapered back end of the car.

New stuff that got added to my car.  1-wheel covers and 2-the shiny new nose piece that covers the rack and pinion under it.

Very cool. You and Nathan raced great in Lacy. I hope to get my car done before the end of the year.

Thanks, that would be awsome if you had your car ready to go before the seasons end.  But there area  couple of races in the summer time too that you could possibly go to as well.

Hey, Zaine I was wondering what size of alluminum you used, how much you needed, and about how much it cost. Thaks, Nicholas Morrell #25

I took these before the da Vinci days race in Corvallis while still in Portland. I bought a 1959 Volkswagen Beetle ragtop sunroof last summer on the fourth of July. This is why my electrathon car is black and white, part of the reason why it is numbered 59 along with the transponder. It didn't occur to me when I realized that 59 keeps following me around, oh well. I like it.

Zaine, tell me about your windscreen. Did you make it yourself? How does it attach? Have you done any testing to see if it makes a difference in top speed and or amp draw? Up close pics? Thanks Drew

My dad and I made it for the second day at the race at PIR. The windscreen has a hinge on the front of the car made out of aluminum, the rest of the car is also made of aluminum as well. Since the lexan is trying to spring back out, we made aluminum tabs to prevent the  bent with two 90 degree angles in it pop riveted, two on each side. 

Zaine, Something tells me you need to do white wheel covers with black centers :) VW and Electrathon look awesome, now all you need is a trailer to tow the race car with the bug!

I actually really want to do that Kyle. Maybe after college I'll make one, or during college if I do a metal shop class. I just need to find a tow hitch to fit the bug or make one. :p

I drilled and tapped mounting holes to hold Harbor Freight LED lights on the front of my car. Consists of a clamp with a rubber grommet on the inside of the ring that holds the LED in place, then tightened down with a button head screw to keep things nice. Its fun to drive in the dark with them on :]

Something tells me an electrathon race under the lights would be VERY fun next season :)

My dad and I had an idea for a night race at David Douglas high school in the south parking lot.  There is enough lighting at night in the parking lot to hold a night race.  All of the cars would need two white lights on the front using Harbor Freight LEDs or bicycle lights.  Then have at least one or two red lights on the back of the car so you wouldn't run into someone during a race.  I think it would be practical to hold a race, just need to get lots of volunteers to help.

Zaine, One of the biggest issues I know of with a night race is people driving home. If you hold the race at 7:00 it gets over at 8:00, it is 9:00 by the time you pull out of the lot and may well be after midnight before you get home. It makes for a tiring and very long day. I do think it would be fun though. Aaron

Perhaps a night race at PIR? Since it's a two-day event anyways...

It could be a night and morning race, so the issue of driving home wouldn't be a problem.

You could use the track at PIR Sunday evening, the other evenings are taken by the drag races.

I could design a course using the back side of the track, would be a bit short but it would do for an exibition type event.

Hoping you could answer this one Aaron.  I know your cars (#12,#25,#42) all have hyme joints built into the front steering section.  Have you done camber with any of the cars?  If so, does it make a difference going around corners?  Does it create drag that is significant enough to slow you down?  Does it eat up the tires more or less depending on how rough or smooth the track is?  I thought I might try some for the fun of it to try different things and experiment for the spring season, since I would be doing the adult class next year.  Your one of the few teams that has hyme joints for steering, thought I might ask.  

-- Edited by Zaine Stapleton on Thursday 18th of November 2010 03:34:35 AM

We have about 15 degrees of king pin inclination (about the same caster).  Usually run just a couple degrees of camber, top of the tires in.

In all honesty we have never got it so that during a tight turn things were right. It does seem to work well during the first part of the turn (the first 10 to 15 degrees). As we turn farther we get tire scrub.

Rough tracks are always tire eaters. A smooth track you can get away with more tire pressure, if it is rough we tend to drop the pressure to minimize trashing the tires.

The joints help keep the turning smooth and tight. The also give the ability to adjust the camber in and out a few degrees.

-- Edited by electrathon on Thursday 18th of November 2010 04:34:19 PM

The weekend of Presidents day I decided to do some work on my car to help strengthen the rack and pinion.  The rack was all twisted up on the left side of the car before (shown in the first photo.)  I only had so much weld to keep the rack in before, and decided to add two 45 degree pieces of aluminum to keep the rack from twisting about when driving (which explained why steering was stiff in the corners to work before this change.)  

First thoughts on running LiPO batteries at the LCC race last weekend: they are a night and day difference. Still need to figure out a better way to charge them up since my power supply isn't able to supply enough power to the charger to charge both channels at a 1C rate to charge in one hour. I had to get the car geared as close to what I usually do and didn't want to change the motor sprockets around a ton, so I did the math and came up with a custom 120T monster sprocket that measures out to 14.5 inches in diameter roughly. Even with such a big sprocket making a 6:1 ratio (120/20) the car pulls hard because of the torque. I'm running four, Tattu 6s 14000mAh packs with AS150 connectors in series-parallel to get the voltage up to 12s to take advantage of the lower current draw. These packs when doing the math meet the power requirements of 1Kwh or less of power at 994 nominal watt hours. I took it easy at the LCC race since I didn't know how the car was going to react with now a 15-16 pound battery pack that just dropped 57 pounds roughly off the car, but to my surprise the car handled really well. I might add in some negative camber to the front wheels to help with cornering, was getting some wheel chatter due to the car having more torque than I am normally used to and the extra weight from running two Optima Yellow top lead-acid batteries. So far I'm impressed with how the packs performed, other thing too was they were barely warm after the hour run. I only used 848wh, so I still had plenty of power left in them. Voltage on all the cells came down to 3.78v for all four batteries, which for being new I was expecting but for one hour of driving that makes me very happy to see The car was also eerily quiet going around the track, but since I ran a tail cone and windshield I think it muffled the motor noise a lot. Inside the car however, that motor was really spinning up and howling pretty good. Also since the car had so much voltage, I was getting pushed into my seat during and at the end of the race, just to show how much power and torque the car had I'm typing this up on my phone, so I'll need my laptop to be able to post the photos of how I got everything in the car. I'm excited now, because this opens up new car design ideas. For how small the batteries are, one could make an even smaller and slimmer car now if using these packs for the same power output as two Optima batteries. All four fit in the same space as one Optima battery does which is HUGE for making even BETTER cars in the future