Electric Racer Update!

[vyselegend]

Wow that's two impressive pieces of work guys! =D>

Flynfrog, why are solar cars like yours mounted higher (in comparison with Greenpower's electric car). Is it down to the rules or is there another reason you wouldn't search for such a low CoG? Is it straight line races only?

Also, are you both using Glass fiber bodyworks or is carbon fiber allowed (and affordable)?

[flynfrog]

Wow that's two impressive pieces of work guys! =D>

Flynfrog, why are solar cars like yours mounted higher (in comparison with Greenpower's electric car). Is it down to the rules or is there another reason you wouldn't search for such a low CoG? Is it straight line races only?

Also, are you both using Glass fiber bodyworks or is carbon fiber allowed (and affordable)?

or rules specify minimum driver eye height so thats why the cars are so high also we try to get it out of ground effect. We also race on public roads with traffic so you don't want to be super low. We do track races also and our car handles pretty good for a solar car.

Our car was a carbon body over an aluminum space frame weight as race prepped with ballasted driver and one liter of water was 605#

[greenpower dude reloaded]

I looked in to early solar car design before, it really is interesting.

One of the reasons they are so high is because they require such a huge flat surface for the solar panels yet require the smallest frontal area possible.

SO, instead of setting the body down low and having the wheels peirce the main body (compromising the surface area for the panels and also casting shadows,) whilst you do your best to stop air going underneath is only ever going to be an efficiency compromise.

Your much better off taking the car up with the wheels having a wider track and getting a true aerofoil shape (when looking side on) for the main body, it allows you to have a massive surface area, tiny frontal area, and as these compete on the roads i suppose they need to have a certain amount of both road presence and the ability to tackle a sleeping police man.

Flyn Frog roughly how wide is the track on that vehicle?? Mine is only 540mm and yours looked considerably wider, so there probably isn't a vast differance in CofG, we'd have to get the car to roughly 55degs before it would roll.

Oh and I'll be using Fibreglass first of all for the body the chassis is made of aluminium/fibreglass sandwich and ali/ali sandwich. The two Shell eco cars i helped with are mostly carbon its got a carbon body and a carbon/nomex chassis.

http://s18.photobucket.com/albums/b134/ ... GREENY.jpg
Theres the shell Eco cars at Silverstone

[flynfrog]

I believe the wheel base was 190 cm and the track width was 175 or so Dont really remember


An idea of scale

[greenpower dude reloaded]

wow thats a brilliant pic Flyn, 175 is almost 2 1/2 times the width of our car and i doubt your 2 1/2 times taller so I imagine the handling characteristics of that vehicle must be briliant!! our wheelbase is roughly 155cm long so theres not as big a gap between our cars there..

[flynfrog]

It really had to much chassis flex

and there is about 2in^2 total contact patch so handling is pretty good for a solar car

[greenpower dude reloaded]

Season Opener Results

We covered 91miles in 4 hours and finished 15th out of 27 but 3rd out of the corporate cars (beating the bentley you may have seen all over web by so an excellent result for the first event especially on a car we know we can gain a lot more speed from there was no rear bodywork for a start.

Heres a brief video of the car at the race exiting the chicane.

[youtube]http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=qNSnqHlG7_E[/youtube]

We lost a few laps to the gear indicators not working so we had to listen to the motor RPM, not easy! so we could still have done even better.

[flynfrog]

cover those wheels

[greenpower dude reloaded]

Oh don't worry they will be covered!!! inside the bodywork as well as having bodywork wrapped around them!

[flynfrog]

why the lower sides on this car? better areo?

[greenpower dude reloaded]

Yeah that was partly the thinking behind it was also partly down to the regs. We were after a much lower CofG and have a narrower track so we needed lower sides.

I was sitting way too high in this shot when my sister is driving her head is no higher than the top of the wheels.

Should look really cool once i've got the rear on, need to start a plug for that though and not long until Castle Combe!!

[flynfrog]

do you have a cad model of this or do you just wing it? Id love to play with body ideas in my non existent free time

[greenpower dude reloaded]

-Flynfrog,

It's a bit of both really, I do have a CAD model PM what format you can read it in and you can have it. I'll send you the original design and how it turned out (totally different )

On a different note I don't know how many of you live in england or for that matter still watch Blue Peter but we were on there today!!

[greenpower dude reloaded]

Well we've been incredibly busy of late competing at lots of different events and tearing about in litterally every direction in the country. But it's all been worth it we're 3rd in the series at the moment and only 2.6mph off of the current 1st place car so it's very close.

I've just updated the website as well, it incorporates our newest car "whoosh" a little better, which has had a spray job in the mean time. Although unfortunately we still haven't got the back end finished!!

We're also planning to incorporate a windscreen as well at somepoint but we'll see how things go. We've just got to find someone kind enough to let us use they're Vacuum forming machine!

Anyway take a look at the website www.horsfallracing.co.uk and let me know what you think.

[flynfrog]

Glad to hear things are going good.
I look forward to new updates (and a drive)