High school solar car project

[70burntorangeT/A]

Me, 4 other students and my physics teacher are building a solar powered car in our physics class. 3 of the students dont do anythign so me and my friend wes have done every bit of building and fabricating on the entire car. It will be controlled by a 1/2 hp electric motor running off of a battery that is being charged by a solar panel. The only pic i have is of me sitting in it. We just got the front end on it today and got the rear wheel mounts fabricated and welded on too. If there is much interest I will post alot more pics as we go and tell alot more about it.

[NoMope Greg]

Absolutely there is interest.  Anything you learn in physics class will only help you later in life.  Besides - it's a car on a car enthusiast forum - of course we want to see it. 

[69bronzeT5]

Paint it orange, put a 01 and flag on it and have some fun when it's done I can't wait to see more progress on it

[70burntorangeT/A]

Ok here is where we are at so far. The frame is PVC with steel reinforcements in all of the places where weight will be put on it, the 2 long main beams are also reinforced with 2 inch algle iron. The motor was donated by a local electric company, we had to get a power inverter because the motor is a 115 volt. the inverter was donated by my dad. the seat is a chair we found in the attic of the school adn cut the legs off and welded some mounts on. My friend wes fabricated the rear wheel mounts which are the rectangular pieces in the pics. it is 3 wheeled. 2 in front one drive wheel in back. So far we have about 150 dollars invested in this due to most things being donated. the front steering assembly came off an old go kart i had.   If you have any questions about it feel free to ask. WE hope to have the car moving very soon, we only get to work on it about 45 minutes a day, 5 days a week. so progress is a little slow, especially since it is only me and my friend working on it. the very last pic is a 3-d model of how we would have built it if we had an unlimited budget lol

[lemming303]

That's cool dude! I never got to do anything cool like that in Physics class!

Who made that 3d model? That looks really great! Is that supposed to be speakers behind the seat?

According to your calculations how fast do you think it will be able to and how much weight will it be able to support?

[426HEMI]

   Cool project for physics.  I am glad you are getting to do that in school because it will help you in later life for sure.  Learn all you can while there.  We never got to do anything like that in our physics class.  We did a bigger project in high school automotive class though. 

Keep us posted. 

[70burntorangeT/A]

That's cool dude! I never got to do anything cool like that in Physics class!

Who made that 3d model? That looks really great! Is that supposed to be speakers behind the seat?

According to your calculations how fast do you think it will be able to and how much weight will it be able to support?

I made the model myself. I have a class called EAST (Environmental And Spatial Technologies) where we use the most high tech equipment, and we have to come up with our own projects. I used a program called google sketchup that anyone can download for free. The only things i didnt make myself were the wheels, and engine. Someone else made them and i downloaded them into my model. Other then that i did it all myself. I have more pics to post tonight, we got alot done today.

[lemming303]

Well you've got talent kid. Keep us posted on your project.

[moparmaniac59]

Very cool Brandon.
As already been said, I too wish my physics classes had been more interesting. We had to listen to an 80 year old professor that always had the back of his jacket covered in chalk dust. Nice rendering of a prototype. Looks like wilwood brakes. I don't think you would have to worry about stopping it!! Keep us posted on the class project!!


                                                  Matt B.

[70burntorangeT/A]

Well you've got talent kid. Keep us posted on your project.

Thanks A lot man.    It has taken me who knows how many hours to build taht model. It took me 8 weeks getting 5   45 minute class periods a week.   So about 30 hours.   the next few pics are of the model, then i will post pics of the actual car.   
1. at first it started out being a 4 wheeled vehicle
2. then i added the solar panel
3. then we decided to make it 3 wheeled so i converted it to a 3 wheeled vehicle and added the motor
4.then i added a speaker box with subs just for fun, gotta have music
5.then the battery and wiring
6.then a custom speed switch, thought it was kinda funny 
7. and finally i widened the body, to accomodate the name of the company that donated some stuff to us and to add our high schools name. i also added the power inverter and other misc. things. also changed the color to black and orange (my friend wanted to see what a Harley Davidson edition would look like )

[71ChallengerSE]

Your physics class looks much more interesting than my magnet physics class where all we do are calculations and demonstrations with physical and computer models. I know how long it takes to do those computer models, my multimedia and communications classes do the same things, but unfortunately they don't let us do anything car related. I did design my own logo that us comprised of a 08 Challenger grille. You have some talent and patience and one cool school. We don't even have a place to do fabrication like that.

[70burntorangeT/A]

Now for what we acomplished on the car. we have 2 inch angle iron supporting the main beams and the rear wheel mounts are welded to the angle iron which moves aound jsut a little bit so the first pic is the piece of metal we welded in to keep it from moving. then we made a custom mount for the motor out of expanded steel. then we mounted the rear wheel and finaly it rolls. the guy sitting in the car is my friend wes, we have been the only 2 out of the 5 students that have ever worked on it. it has just been us and out teacher since day one. When i saw it rolling today for the 1st time it was such a great feeling of accomplishment because most people in the school have been telling us that we couldnt do it, I just hope we have a powerful enough motor.     And to the guy taht asked how fast will it go. well the motor we have now noly turns 700 RPM, it will do 6.5 MPH, however we will be getting a bigger motor that turns 2250RPM, so at 2250 RPM with the bigger motor it should do 20.89 MPH

We have 150 dollars in the car so far, it has been almost all donations and scrap parts

[Super Blue 72]

WoW!  That looks soo cool and fun!  You look like you're doing a great job!

The thing is that you do not have a very big motor to drive your vehicle to trying to decrease weight and friction is a must. 

I would suggest to loose the metal chair and go with something lighter, like one of those white plastic lawn chairs modified to fit within your frame work.  Also, I notice areas where both PVC and metal is used for the frame.  It will increase durability but also it does increase the weight.  The metal frame looks liek a must so I would see where you could cut out/minmize the use of the PVC frame.  You also can drill holes to lighten the PVC frame like they did in the frames of old race cars or like the Pontiac Catalias with the "swiss cheese frame".  Just some weird ideas.... 

How large dimentionally will the solar panels be?    I assume the entire surface of the top of the PVC frame?

Looks great!

[70burntorangeT/A]

WoW!  That looks soo cool and fun!  You look like you're doing a great job!

The thing is that you do not have a very big motor to drive your vehicle to trying to decrease weight and friction is a must. 

I would suggest to loose the metal chair and go with something lighter, like one of those white plastic lawn chairs modified to fit within your frame work.  Also, I notice areas where both PVC and metal is used for the frame.  It will increase durability but also it does increase the weight.  The metal frame looks liek a must so I would see where you could cut out/minmize the use of the PVC frame.  You also can drill holes to lighten the PVC frame like they did in the frames of old race cars or like the Pontiac Catalias with the "swiss cheese frame".  Just some weird ideas.... 

How large dimentionally will the solar panels be?    I assume the entire surface of the top of the PVC frame?

Looks great!

The metal chair actually doesnt way as much as you might think, it is really thin metal and probably only weighs about 5 pounds. Plus it has a lot of padding on it and since the wheels are directly mounted to the frame we will probably need the padding to make the ride a little less rough on the driver. The only problem right now with taking the pvc out and just leaving the metal is we are all seniors working on it and we are graduating in a little more then a month so we are just trying to get it running right now. The school is going to save it and let next years physics class work on it so they will probably do a lot of improvements to it. Like i said in my other post too we are going to order a bigger motor. The bigger motor is actually for electric scooters and is made to pull 400-600 pounds.

[70burntorangeT/A]

Here is what we got done today. Got the rear wheel adjusted and got the chain on, and hooked the motor directly into the wall (great thing about it being 115 volt) and the it ran good for the 5 feet of cable that we had. however when the motor starts up it torques and the piece of expanded steel isnt strong enough to hold it perfetly in place. so we started welding some support brackets on but didnt get done with them today. Also my teacher told me to just figgure out a way to mount the brakes he didnt care how it looked. So i took the old brake pedal and ran a brake cable off of a bicycle from the brake assembly to the old pedal and attached it with all of the old bicycle attatching hardware and it works PERFECT.(the pics show better then me trying to explain it).   so for tomorrow we are just going to be doing some wiring, the wires are just dangling everwhere right now. Ill try to post more pics tomorrow night.