Millard West Black Team
Riveting/Windshield
Documentation
At the beginning of January, we began dedicating a considerable amount of time in order to complete documentation. We had Tim B. and Jacob E. work on it nearly every day including the website, monthly report, and all the necessary papers for our final product.
While they were working on the documentation, the other team members were riveting and finishing the plastic shell. Our first attempt to cut out our windshield didn’t go as well as we had hoped; about a foot short on either side of the cockpit. Because of this, we had to recut the windshield as well as a few pieces of the black plastic; we also needed to re-measure and re-cut three large pieces that were miss cut similar to the windshield.
The the process felt shaky, but the final result came to a sleek finish. The Car looked good above all else, though still in need of a few touhes here and their regarding the nosecone attachment and suspension metal color.
We've just started our wheel alignment. After watching a short video over how to align our wheels and steering for optimal performance, we went to work.
We set the car down on the ground using tile and t-squares as two parallel lines. We've decided, to start out, the wheels would be toed-in on the bottom about 2-inches and same amount out on top.
When we put the car to the test in the halls of our school, the car did great turning right; but when turning sharp left, the right wheel dragged. We are still working on perfecting our alignment.
These have given us a good amount of trouble. We've learned that there is a fine balance between perfect wheels and strong brakes. When the brakes are strong as iron, the spindles have very little grace room, and when the wheels spin smooth, the brakes are weaker.
For the time being, we've decided to stick with stronger brakes in order to pass the push test. We definitely plan to return to this issue in hopes of having both minimal friction and iron-strong brakes.
Wheel Alignment
