Completing my car

A few days ago, my car crashed badly into the end of the track as there was not enough padding, and it slightly ruined my car. It jarred the axle housing, making the car not run straight. It also jammed the wire at the front into the gap at the end of the track and the wheels stopped staying on. It made the time drop from 2.856 seconds to about 3.8. I fixed it as best I could during lunch times as we did not have anymore lessons, and managed to get the time down to even faster than before. In one of my final runs, I got the time of 2.774, which was my fastest. After this I stopped racing it as I did not want to risk anymore complications.

Since my last post, I lubricated more, glued on one of the wheels to make it more steady, and shortened and soldered all of the wires. I also attached a windshield to the front of the car.

Below are some images of my finished car.

This has been one of my favourite units so far, and I wish we could have spent longer on it so we could experiment more with different designs. I am definitely looking forward to racing the cars on Monday, but am also slightly worried that mine will not perform as well as it has been because I have been experiencing complications lately. Hopefully everything will be fine, and even if it isn't, I know that I have made my car as well as I could have and am very satisfied with how it has done.

Progress on car

Since my last post I have glued on the engine, switch and batteries. The first time I raced my car, when it hit the end the engine and switch came off. When gluing them back on, I used much more glue than the first time. Every single time I have raced it after that, one of the batteries has come out when it reaches the end. I don't think this is a problem, if anything it is better because it automatically switches off after every race.

I am fairly happy with how it has been working out so far. In the final few lessons that we have I am going to work on changing small things to improve its speed. I can lubricate the axis that the wheels are on, as well as the side of the wheels that comes into contact with the body. On top of that, I can lubricate the wires on the front and back end, and shorten all of the wires. I also need to solder the wires near the end of the process. If I feel I have time, I wouldn't mind testing out the engine with the smaller cog to see if it works any better.

Images of the progress on my car can be seen below.

Reverting to original design

I have changed my mind about the location of the engine again. I am placing it under the body, like I was originally planning on doing. There should be plenty of space under the car, and if the batteries are placed towards the back, the weight will be centralised in the correct location anyway.

Change to design

I have decided to place the engine on top of the car, with the batteries angled on top of that. This is because the engine would have to be quite far forward in order to match the cogs if it were underneath, and this could make the car more unbalanced. I think it would be more important to have the car less aerodynamic but more balanced, than unbalanced and aerodynamic.

I have also progressed further in the creation of my car. I have attached the large cog and wheels to my car. It goes almost perfectly straight, leaning a very slight amount to the right, but not enough that I bothered fixing it. An image of my car so far can be seen below.

Starting making my design

So far we have had a couple of lessons on designing/making our cars. I have made the body of it and attached two thin pieces of wood to the base of this to give more support to the plastic for the wheels when I attach it. I changed the body of the car so that it is curved on the front. This was done to make it more aerodynamic and an easier shape to attach the barrier at the front to.

In the next lessons I am going to attach the wheels and make sure that it goes straight, before attaching the cogs and gluing on the engine, batteries and switch.