I have been building a new car to race here in Tampa and I'm making this to show my process for building, along to share some of my ideas.

To build this car my first thought was how to make all the wheels perfectly lined up, to do this I had a friend and my Electrathon teacher (wood shop teacher) help me make a frame mock-up. It was made just using a few 2x4 but we made it as accurate as possible, it took us around 1.5 hours to get it perfect. It would be used to line up the front spindles and the rear fork. We will not use the wood as the frame  but just as something to line everything up with.

I used 2x1 rectangular tubing for the front axle and 3/4" square tubing for the base of the frame

https://i1348.photobucket.com/albums/p735/Ryan_Norden/WoodFrame_zpsg6ujakuw.jpg

I have tried making spindles before and I was not very good at it, so I bought a set from Northern Tool, the only problem with them is they have 7/8" axles and my tomos wheels need 1/2" (I modified them to not need 12mm by drilling out the drum brake and replacing the bearings). So what I did is cut out the giant axle off of the spindle and I tac welded a 1/2 grade 8 bolt on. It was only tac welded so if it was not perectly straight it would be easy to fix.

The spindles I bought came with brackets that were really easy to weld onto my front axle

My team bought a plane canopy from a crashed plane last season and we haven't been able to use it, until now. This frame so far is designed to fit under this canopy, and this was our first test fit with me, and my dog. As you can probably see the drivers knee's are really high up, so a normal steering wheel that goes over the knees would block sight, if it was put near the thighs it would be impossible to get in and out. I have tried traditional dual lever steering before but my teacher was not to fond of it (it was very loose and wobbly) but we needed a way to have the steering on the outside. So we found a new way to do it with a pivot arm and lever hybrid, I will explain that more later.

Right now the frame is WAY to weak to have any weight put on it so I had to make some bracing, i didn't know how much bracing so I used a truss analysis software to see what would work best.

The next part to add is the steering. This hybrid steering uses a similar input system as dual levers but works off of a pivot arm. The "steering wheel" actually will go under the driver's knees and extend out to the driver's sides. The first thing I had to do with making this steering is figure out how to mount the steering wheel, so I found some 5/8" internal dianmeter tubing, welded half to the frame, the other half to the wheel and bolted them together. The wheel would then pivot on the bolt.

One thing i like about this is the steering wheel is so wide it will give the driver a LOT of leverage, because of this we can put in a lot of caster (20 degrees) and the driver won't get as tired.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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!

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

Thanks!

Zaine

hello mr archer,