Millard West Black Team
Stripping the Car
Test Driving
At the beginning of November, we test drove our only two functional vehicles after their shells were removed. This allowed us to see how each of the two cars would handle, and helped us determine if what we would have to redesign about them.
The team also felt this was a good experience to set a bar that we need to surpass. If the finished version performed better than they drove this day, we could consider the rebuild successful.
After we finished test driving, we started to take all of the interior parts out of the two cars. We pulled out the batteries, motor, steering system, wheels, and various other electronics.
Doing this allows us to work on the car's frame and other components freely without having to worry about damaging other parts in the process.
The last project for this month was to start the construction of the vehicle’s back hood, which can lift up and down to cover and uncover the motor, batteries, and the vehicles various electronics. We set out the hood’s parts inside out, laying the exterior on the bottom and interior parts on the outside. This way we were able to lay out each metal tube and metal band before any welding.
Although it came out quite well, we found it to be a very difficult fabrication. Once we had finished building it, we ran into the issue of the hinging it onto the car. For our solution we welded two thick bars, which we would place the hinges on, from the bottom back of the car to the top of the roll cage. This proved to be a very convenient placement for the hinges.
We then moved on to the construction of our car’s nose cone. The team agreed to make it out of fiberglass; unfortunately, the process for this was very tedious and time consuming. First we shaped a polystyrene mold that the fiber-glass could lie on. This process took many days of careful sanding and carving. Next, we layered Bondo on top of the polystyrene, sanding in between each layer, in order to smooth up the polystyrene’s imperfections.
Lastly was the fiber glassing which, like the other steps, took multiple days. In addition to the nose cone’s fabrication, it needed to be put onto the car. We fabricated two metal brackets to fit onto the front of the car under the nose cone. These two additional pieces served the purpose of extra leg room on top of securing the nosecone.
During this time we also moved the bar, which supports the back of our seat, further back. This allowed for even more space and comfort in our car, as well as giving us more headroom for the two-inch-rule.
Fabricating the Back Hood
