What's new
CK5
Register an account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members.

Electrathon race car- a different type of build- Input Please!

Overview Gallery Discussion
stockk5

stockk5

1/2 ton status
 Premium
Joined
Apr 13, 2004
Posts
2,304
Reaction score
415
Location
Cromwell, CT
stockk5 submitted a new Build:

Electrathon race car- a different type of build

Now, I know that this build may be a little different than the typical ck5 build, but I thought a few of you may enjoy this, or if this is totally off topic and should not be on here, fully understandable and I will not continue.

To give you guys a little back ground on myself, I am a tech ed teacher at a local public high school, this is my 3rd year teaching. This is our first year having this car as a full year class. Last year it was simply an after school program with a small group of students.

This has been my dream since I started teaching to start this program to help the kids learn the ins and outs of fabrication/design/engineering. It is finally coming around.

The electrathon race is a race in which local high schools build a small electric powered race car to race against other schools. The students physically drive the car on a real race track. It is a race of efficiency. The goal is to get as many laps as they can in 1 hour. They are allowed to used 2 red top optima car batteries as fuel and once the batteries die they are out of the race. It is quite the challenge and I am learning a TON along side of the students. I do not consider myself a master fabricator, professional welder/etc but I have a huge drive to design/challenge students and learn and this is one of the better ways to do that.

I am very lucky to have a principal who is a huge advocate of the technology education world, so the grants he writes to fund our racing is truly a blessing.

Two years ago when we were given the grants, it was baptism by fire, we had only 3weeks to order every part we needed, and I had no idea what I would need. Much like the builds on here, there are hours of research etc that go into this, so we figure our first round, we should use a kit car.







Now, I wont waste any more time typing the rest of this up if you guys feel its too off topic for our forum, but I know the knowledge base we have here is huge and could be very helpful to myself/students. Here are a few quick pictures from what we have done so far.. ill explain more if you guys would like to see!


...
Click to expand...

Read more about this build here...

View attachment 230334
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I dig it :waytogo: Who am I to say no anyway, I've got a build thread on a 53 Willys wagon in here :D
 
Totally awesome, wish my high school would have had a program like this. Even after school would have been fine. I probably wouldn't have played sports if there would have been something like this to get involved in.
 
We are building a Shift EV kit also, not necessarily for Electrathon purposes. We are trying to figure out how to get the 2 yellow top optima batteries to fit in the battery box. My students have looked over your design and see that you have 2 different red top batteries. Did you modify the battery box to get the batteries to fit and sink lower than the top of the battery box?
 
I dig it!!! :waytogo:

So.... what sort of total distance do you get for a 1st place finish?

:dunno:


-G
 
stockk5 said:
Now, I know that this build may be a little different than the typical ck5 build, but I thought a few of you may enjoy this, or if this is totally off topic and should not be on here, fully understandable and I will not continue.
Click to expand...

Keep it up and by all means post on! I say diversity in builds is a good thing, judging from the responses to my goofball bulldozer thread. Although I think I still have the slowest vehicle award locked in =))

Surprised the rules spec lead-acid (vs lithium-whatever), though I guess as the Optimas are commercially available, it levels the playing field, yeah?

-- A
 
Interesting build if you ever come back... Was gonna say those wheels should be as narrow as you can go, for efficiency and high pressure. Also, you may be able to get by a bit lighter on the steering using the steering from a tadpole recumbent. - tiller style.. If you come back to this build anyhow.

Also, where'd you get the fiberglass from?
 
WOAH I forgot I posted this here... I have been teaching for 6 years now and we have been doing nothing but going up and beyond with these builds. I have grown a lot as a teacher and the program is really taking off. I have a ton of pictures and we have done our own custom frames from aluminum. We are still getting top 3 in our races due to the dedication of my students. I am really lucky with having the great support from my principles still! Let me just throw up some pictures and ill try to update. The best updates are on instagram, @stockteched

We built our first frame on our own while learning TIG




During the race


Then we kept growing from there.













 
JoshHefnerX said:
Interesting build if you ever come back... Was gonna say those wheels should be as narrow as you can go, for efficiency and high pressure. Also, you may be able to get by a bit lighter on the steering using the steering from a tadpole recumbent. - tiller style.. If you come back to this build anyhow.

Also, where'd you get the fiberglass from?
Click to expand...

So the first car was a kit, a company supplied the whole set up to us. Honestly it was ok at first, but total garbage as we learned more.
 
I am going to make a new thread for our new build.. a lot has happened in the last few years with our builds.
 
So I am going to try and give you guys a quick update, I will be hopefully updating this thread on the regular with our new car build. This is car build number 6 in the few years I have been teaching. To give you a quick recap...

Car 424 was our first kit car, steel frame, fiberglass tub and plastic shell

Car 424 was our first attempt at welding up a our own car, we made it out of PVC first, then aluminum

Car 426 was our first real we know what we are doing build, pretty happy with that car

Car 428 was improvements of that previous car

Car 430 is our latest car, again we changed a bunch of little things and learned a whole lot.

We have now started our newest car, 100% in solidworks, 100% of it will be built in the computer before we cut any metal this year.

Electrathon 323.JPG

Electrathon 422.jpg

IMG_3160.JPG

20160427_165816.jpg

20151006_080947.jpg

20160406_082337.jpg

Electrathon 248.jpg

bartlett7four.PNG

bartlett7one.PNG

bartlett7three.PNG

bartlett7two.PNG
 
I’ve gotta tag in on this one!
 
Last edited:
So the way that things work in the school is well slower than most builds, we just had our 1st race of the season. Its our fall race and so we have just been prepping and practicing our racing, pits stops etc. There has been no real building other than some small tweaks to get the cars ready for the race this past friday. I am happy to report we ended up in 2nd place again! It was a smaller turn out with only 17 cars but we did really great and I am happy with the results.

Team

Team


Team

Team


430

430


430

430


Team

Team


430

430


428

428


428

428


430

430


Team

Team


Team

Team


428

428


430

430


428

428


So we are going to start our new build in a few weeks. The pictures will be updated as we build and cut on a weekly basis.

I have some questions for you guys in regards to timing systems that you may know of for races. So basically during the race you have a panel of 5 or 6 college kids counting each lap of each car as they go by. I also have our students count our laps and time our laps, we ended up counting car 430 doing 52laps in the hour and car 428 doing 45 laps in an hour. However car 428 got 2nd place and 430 we dont even know until they post the results.

Basically what I am saying is that this has happened many times and I am sick of it. I would love to spend the money on some type of a timing system that each car could use. If we each buy a chip and then pay into buying a timing system for the organization to use I would love that. Anyone know of something that we could have 30 individual set ups and count how many laps each car does and just have it all on a spread sheet?

Thanks for the interest!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest Posts

Top Bottom