Post by lkraft92 on Sept 22, 2014 19:33:53 GMT -6
Hey guys. I've been doing working on a project this last month that I think you guys would be interested in. At school, I am a member of an eletrathon racing team. Electrathon is the designing, building, and racing of single person electric cars. Basically, whoever gets the most laps around a track in one hour wins the race. I have been involved in this for two years now. We have a car that the team had before I joined, which i improved periodically. It uses two Optima RedTop batteries in series to get 24v. Its not really a competitive car. Its an all steel frame with a fiberglass body. Its a heavy car, and not very aerodynamic. So we decided to do something that would be competitive.
Last year, we decided that we wanted to build a new car from scratch. So me and a couple other guys got working on designing a new car in CAD. Last semester, we got a grant to turn this new car build into a one credit hour class. The grant will pay for the tuition of the students involved plus a good amount to actually build the car. So this semester, we finally got to building the car.
We are currently using 1in square, 1/8in wall aluminum tubing for the frame. We are going to run a Motenergy ME0709 electric motor and an Alltrax AXE4834 programmable motor controller. For the batteries, we are using 2 24v 20ah lithium iron phosphate batteries. We are still trying figure out what configuration we want to run the batteries, either series(48v x 20ah) or parallel(24v x 40ah). We also have a Speedict Mercury electric motor computer. I am kind of excited about the Speedict Mercury. It connects between the batteries and motor controller. It tracks stats of the batteries, temps, and speed, and displays it through and app on an android phone. It can record up to 12 hours of data that we can go back to and check. We are also planning on using carbon fiber for the body. We would like to use vacuum resin infusion to do the body. The body could still change, but the hope is for carbon fiber.
securing the base frame to be welded
welding base frame
base frame finished
current state of the frame, back rest and leg rest done, still need to do some supports and roll bar.
Next on the list is to weld front axle to mount the front wheels. then we are going to build the rear assembly. Its going to be a swingarm that mounts the rear wheel, motor, and shock. Basically its a softtail.
here is our electronics: motor, controller, batteries, charger, data logger, and wiring.
I really am enjoying this and its a lot of fun. We actually have a race coming up on thrusday. We run two races that day. we are planning on using the current car with the normal setup for the first race. For the second race, we are going to swap the optimas for the lithium batteries to see what kind of performance we get. No one else in the state uses anything other than lead acid batteries, so we really have no idea what they are going to do. This is the best way to get an idea what they can do.
If you guys think this is cool, i could keep posting updates. If you guys really like it, you could go like our facebook page, www.facebook.com/FHSU.Electrorally.Team. its still a new page, but we hope to promote it and keep updates on it.
Last year, we decided that we wanted to build a new car from scratch. So me and a couple other guys got working on designing a new car in CAD. Last semester, we got a grant to turn this new car build into a one credit hour class. The grant will pay for the tuition of the students involved plus a good amount to actually build the car. So this semester, we finally got to building the car.
We are currently using 1in square, 1/8in wall aluminum tubing for the frame. We are going to run a Motenergy ME0709 electric motor and an Alltrax AXE4834 programmable motor controller. For the batteries, we are using 2 24v 20ah lithium iron phosphate batteries. We are still trying figure out what configuration we want to run the batteries, either series(48v x 20ah) or parallel(24v x 40ah). We also have a Speedict Mercury electric motor computer. I am kind of excited about the Speedict Mercury. It connects between the batteries and motor controller. It tracks stats of the batteries, temps, and speed, and displays it through and app on an android phone. It can record up to 12 hours of data that we can go back to and check. We are also planning on using carbon fiber for the body. We would like to use vacuum resin infusion to do the body. The body could still change, but the hope is for carbon fiber.
securing the base frame to be welded
welding base frame
base frame finished
current state of the frame, back rest and leg rest done, still need to do some supports and roll bar.
Next on the list is to weld front axle to mount the front wheels. then we are going to build the rear assembly. Its going to be a swingarm that mounts the rear wheel, motor, and shock. Basically its a softtail.
here is our electronics: motor, controller, batteries, charger, data logger, and wiring.
I really am enjoying this and its a lot of fun. We actually have a race coming up on thrusday. We run two races that day. we are planning on using the current car with the normal setup for the first race. For the second race, we are going to swap the optimas for the lithium batteries to see what kind of performance we get. No one else in the state uses anything other than lead acid batteries, so we really have no idea what they are going to do. This is the best way to get an idea what they can do.
If you guys think this is cool, i could keep posting updates. If you guys really like it, you could go like our facebook page, www.facebook.com/FHSU.Electrorally.Team. its still a new page, but we hope to promote it and keep updates on it.