37 degrees for the last two days, but it not humid, and there's been a good breeze to make it bearable, almost nice!
At the track teams are starting to arrive. At the track now are:
Helios (France)
Principia college (USA)
Kormilda College (Australia)
OSU (Japan Champion)
Soko high school (Japan)
Aurora (Australia)
Southern Aurora (Australia)
CDPM University of Malaya (Malysia)
Also around town are:
Nuon (Netherlands)
Cambridge University (UK)
Michigan (USA - Rumours only)
Umicore (Belgium)
Twente (Netherlands)
Team spotted or waiting for their car:
Esteban (Canada)
Eclipse (Canada)
Swissspirit (Switzerland)
Leeming high school (Australia)
One of the Turkish teams
MIT (USA)
Nuna were spotted today testing on the road again. Their car is mostly fixed now, but it looks like it was a pretty major crash resulting from a tyre blowout at 110kph. There's now info on their website http://www.nuonsolarteam.nl/ They've got some great links to other teams in their blog.
Aurora are very casual at the moment, no last minute rush here! A bit of driver training, checking out the car after the journey up here, and a neat little project to map out the I/V curve of their array to fine tune their trackers. This team has the relaxed confidence of a team with 22 years solar racing experiance!
I'm real keen to have a closser look at the two Japanese cars. OSU beat Tiga in the last Suzuka Dream cup, they have two Mitsuba motors on the car, and a beautiful finish! They are adventure class, and I'm picking they will be the fastest car in the race, but of course they will be held back at Alice Springs due to adventure class handicaps.
Another interesting car is Merderkar2 from Malasia. Built on a very tight budget with minimal aero, the car is very practical. They use a German motor with a 5:1 chain drive, 4x 200W sharp panels with outbacker trackers. 48V, 108Ah lead acid batteries. The use Maxis 20" and 26"(dual rear) tyres, and have several other brands to try. One student is doing a PHD on vribration analysis, so the whole frame is covered in strain gauges. The use National Instruments loggers and desk vue software, keeping the software simple! The wheels are cast Aluminium bicycle rins with real bearings on the front, and side by side spoked 26" wheels on the back, one driven, one with a brake. Front brakes are hydrolic, rear is cable.
I've got lots more interesting photos, I'll update them soon.
Hi Rob,
ReplyDeleteWell, I don't know which one I like best, OSU's Formula 1 looking carbon-fest or Merderkar2 for having doors that open and shut!
These two cars are on two totally different planes (or planets?!) but I am leaning towards Merderkar2 for their resourcefulness and practical engineering solutions on a budget. It looks like the front wheels are steering on forks, is that true?
Ah, the good old 20" Maxis tyre strikes again! Funnily enough I put a tread-depth gague over my Maxis 20" tyres just yesterday and they have 2mm when they are brand new which will be just enough to get you through scrutineering (or a wof!). I am not sure about the speed rating of the 20" Maxis tyre yet (Maxis Miracle), but I suspect it may be 50 kph or less. This is an issue that I am looking at for my electric car.
Can't wait to see some more pics of these cars!
Dude... BTW you need to learn how to spell "hydraulic" or was that latest murdering of the word for my benefit? LOL
Cheers
Barry.
See later comments about OSU, photos soon. I've got more photos of Merdeka2 (getting the spelling right - highdrollick. I'm quite impressed with it as well. They have tried to use as many off the shelf parts as possible with mimimum of programming or modifications, which should make for good reliability. I like the conventyional car layout too, doors, a nice bucket seat, a huge dash with everything on it, even a clip on current meter for the main power.
ReplyDeleteYip front steering is on forks, head bearing and all on the end of equal length double wishbones. No trail, caster, camber or scrub radius so the wheels tended to flop about a bit, so they added a second bar across front steering arms, as well as the rack on rear steering arms. I've got close ups. I'll try to upload all my photos to facebook.