After testing our car between Coober Pedy and Alice Springs two days ago, DC suggested that we drive through the night to get to Darwin on the 20th. None of us could come up with a reason not to. As it got darker, the kangaroos showed up- which made the driving much more interesting. This country has ridiculously straight roads, so in my opinion anything that makes the driving more interesting must be a good thing.
Anyway, we made it to Darwin on the 20th at about 5pm. Today we’re going to be fixing up all the loose ends for scrutineering tomorrow.
Testing the solarcar
Thanks to the generosity of the folks at the Kangan Batman TAFE automotive training facility in northern Melbourne, we’ve spent the last two days prepping the car for the drive to Adelaide. We still have a lot of testing to do before we can call it ready, so we’re looking forward to getting miles on it in the drive up to Darwin.
Click here for more photos of the car (on my/nathans/DCs/marvins/matts trip blog)
Badged up
We’re at DB Schenker picking up the car. Nathan and Sasha are working on getting the van to start, after it was starved of petrol prior to shipping.
Solar car!
Still in one piece
Sasha just got off the phone with the shipping company- apparently neither customs nor quarantine wanted to even look in our container. This means that we should get both the car and the van as soon as they are unloaded from the boat, which should be by 2pm tomorrow (Tuesday 13th). This was basically our best case scenario, since the boat was delayed coming into dock. Great success.
We’re currently driving back from a track day at Laguna Seca!
Overall the day was a huge success- after being pulled off for being underpowered on the second lap, we made some changes to the drive train and ultimately completed 9 laps of the 2.4 mile course. The car performed extremely well, even running under conditions almost antithetical to what it was designed for. Although we didn’t have nearly the same off the line power as some of the other vehicles, Apogee was very good in the corners (we got tire squeal, but not substantial loss of traction), and our battery life was far superior to anything else there!
We weren’t able to reach our top speed because the motor was configured for low end acceleration, and the aerodynamics were severely affected by not having a top shell. However, we were able to comfortably reach 100km/h (60mph).
Unfortunately, we were cut short at 9 runs because one of the hall effect sensors in the motor fell out…
On the other hand, this was fairly inconsequential compared to some of the problems other vehicles suffered
All in all, we learnt a lot about our car and had a great time!
Apogee has been driving under her own power for the past nine days! We’ve done a ton of work fixing bugs in BPS and the driver interface. A lot of effort has gone into improving the telemetry software and making it more robust, and today it proved invaluable in isolating a rogue isolator that was generating a fictitious voltage reading.
The taillights are more or less done (and they rock), and we have cruise control. Both of these will prove useful next Sunday when we’ll be testing the car at an electric vehicle event at Laguna Seca.
Mechanical team has the highest rate of success so far, with no failures. At all. Nevertheless, Nathan HS has decided that our only option is to reinforce the suspension with gratuitous titanium plates. I don’t pretend to understand these things, I’m just electrical…
We’re still having a couple issues with the hall effect sensors in the motor, and the driver control board tends to overheat if left in the sun for two long; both these will be fixed soon. We’re making progress!
