Cutting of my nose.....

Having carefully read the new 2013 regulations from Greenpower the build of Projectile has to take a slightly different turn.

Firstly, under the changes there wont be any battery changes during races. This means the carefully planned and located battery access with the front-flip nose is now unnecessary....

.....Also in order to future proof the car as much as we can, we have noticed that Greenpower have already said that the 2014 regs will require 200mm of impact resistant foam in the nose of each car as opposed to the current 100mm.

This has caused us more of an issue since the front bulkhead which carries the front axle only has 100mm gap inside the carefully moulded nose of Projectile......gulp!

The only way we could see our way around this problem was some MAJOR surgery, in which we had to chop of the existing nose and sculpt a new longer one......



We decided to sculpt the entire nose from the squashy, impact resistant foam.

No mean feat I can tell you (and we only just had enough foam!) I'm more happy with the resulting look than I expected to be, I had worried about it looking a right dogs dinner, but not too horrible!!



I think I'll keep the battery 'hatch' just in case they decide to change the rules back....

I think the new profile certainly gives the car a more aggressive front end, although I'm uncertain how to paint it or cover it given that it is a) squishy and b) absorbent!

Out with the old...

 

 

And in with the new...

 

The National Finals....Wet and Jinxed...

And so to the National Finals...

We eventually qualified 20th on the grid of 75 cars and after a later than planned start to the day, left the school at 6.00am on October 13th, destination Goodwood.

Quickly through scrutineering, we enjoyed the full hour of practise laps, putting in some very promising times and data through our telemetry system.

At 1.00pm sharp, Lord March the owner of Goodwood, waved the flag to start our 4 hour race. We quickly settled into a steady pace, gradually making ground with some fine driving from all members of the team despite some horrific weather (horribly cold and very, very, very, wet!!).

All was well until Mr Stephenson (Headmaster) made his annual appearance and instantly jinxed us!!!!(this has happened before in previous years!).

As our final driver of the day (Liam Hazzard Lynch) began his long 1hour and 20minute stint on the last set of batteries of the day, he was pushed off by Reece.........and promptly rolled to a stop at the end of the pit lane!!!!!

On recovering the car it took 10 minutes to diagnose a sheared main power cable and a further 15 minutes of frantic work to fix it, leaving us out of the race for 25 minutes.....DISASTER!!!

Because of the lost time, Liam was able to push much harder than we would normally and he quickly began to regain places working his way from 42nd back up to 22nd before spectacularly spinning off at Woodcote corner twice and having to be pushed back onto the track by a marshal. Despite this setback, Liam valiantly struggled on through the frankly God-awful weather and managed to finish the race 32nd, tired, wet and a little disappointed!

On a slightly more positive note, having crunched the numbers post race, we have worked out that had we not suffered a 25 minute breakdown, we would have come approximately 12th.......promising!

Top Gear track excitement!

Been a while since the last update....sorry about that, the beginning of term is always very hectic indeed!!

On 29th September the team travelled to one of my favourite tracks, Dusfold park in Surrey, more commonly known as the BBC Top Gear track.....yes, the one that the Stig drives around!!!

Arriving nice and early, we quickly got through scrutineering and managed an hour's decent practise before the race.

Despite some very over enthusiastic marshals (very) who continually made driver changes far slower than they ought to have been, all of our drivers had a good race (bar a couple of spins as the Hammerhead bend was slippery) with the notable exception of Tash the Crash, who was unceremoniously side swiped off the track and onto the grass by another team!!

During our final driver change a quick visual inspection reassured us that no serious damage had been done and our car continued faultlessly, gradually gaining places right up to the flag placing us a very respectable 5th at the end of the race.

Castle Combe Camping and Race

Last Saturday the team met at 2.30pm and boarded the minibus, bound for Castle Combe circuit in Wiltshire.

After a brief stop over at a motorway services (allowing Kirt to get a cup of tea), we arrived at the circuit at 6.00, to witness the last few vehicles departing from Rally day, the event that had taken place that day....

The team made short order of putting up their tents and we managed to have a very decent BBQ before the daylight went. Following the BBQ, I assembled the audio-visual gear I'd decided to bring and following a brief squirt of Lynx deodorant to encourage the portable generator into life, we all watched "The Empire Strikes Back" projected onto the side of our race trailer!!!

Up bright and early the day of the race, the team managed to get 2nd in line for scrutineering and spent a good hour practising out on the track.

After a frankly blistering formula 24+ race it was finally time for us to race and Natasha Layley took her place on the huge grid of 50 cars. The flag dropped to start the race and.......nothing.....the car rolled to a stop 50 yards form where it had been pushed off, the pit crew had not turned the isolator key far enough!!!



Tash, right in the middle of the field!

After some swift and welcome intervention from a nearby marshal, we were finally underway, and during her 40 minute stint, "Tash the Crash" managed to climb her way from the back of the field to 28th place...a pleasing start!

Following Tash, Charlotte Finding took the wheel (stick?) as our second driver and continued to climb through the busy field of cars despite feeling quite poorly the night before....now that's what I call dedication!

After a good pit stop to change driver again and put in our second set of batteries, Billy Nightingale put in a sterling effort and clocked our fastest lap time yet finishing his drive in 15th place!

Another driver change and Carlos de Costa had an engaging drive, which saw some epic tussles as he fought hard for position amongst some truly excellent cars. at the end of his drive Carlos had managed to gain a couple more place, putting us in 13th.

Our final driver change and our third set of batteries put Liam "Hazzard" Lynch in the car for the gruelling 1hr 20minute final chase to the flag. Despite slipping back a few places during the last pit stop, Liam quickly put in our fastest lap of the day and started gaining places as cars ahead of him began to slow or suffered from mechanical issues. At the end of an exciting 4 hours of racing, Liam was over taken in the last ONE SECOND of the race and was just squeezed into 11th place.

Given the superb pedigree off the cars ahead of us this was a real achievement! That combined with our highest ever mileage of 99.9 miles, we have now edged our way up the qualification table for the National Finals to equal 14th place!!!

One more heat to go (tomorrow) at the BBC's "Top Gear" track before the National finals in October!

IT ROLLS!!!

After school Greenpower club continues on Wednesdays, however the dedication of Reece Bawden is frankly outstanding!!!

He is now working hard on the new car several evenings a week, with the aim of entering formula 24+ (16-24yrs) races next season!!!!

Since my last post we have experimented with mounting the derailleur mechanism....

Made the steering column and tested it for "feel"....

Bolted the front axle to the front bulkhead with little CNC made "top hats" and had the first tentative roll down the corridor.....

 

 

Finally, we made the steering track rods and connected them up, stuck the shell on and had a bit of a sit in......

 

Even I can just about fit in!!!!!!

A Nail Biting Race at Bedford Autodrome.

On Sunday the Plume team gathered before dawn in the school car park, climbing wearily aboard the minibus, we departed for Bedford Autodrome for the first race back after the summer holidays.

Having passed scrutineering, Billy Nightingale took Darkside out for a few practise laps, before handing the car over to our least experienced driver Ellie Pennick (she'd only driven once before). As Ellie racked up some decent times in practise and said that she felt confident, the decision was made that she should be the first girl ever in Greenpower history to undertake the longest, final stint in the race (more on that later!).

Come race-time Charlotte Finding drove well from the grid, tackling the sharp first corner consistently and clocking up laps despite being overtaken by some other teams, who as time showed, were pushing too hard too soon!

Charlotte ready for the grid...

After 40 minutes the first driver change allowed Billy Nightingale to get back in the car and he quickly started to gain places, climbing over the course of his drive to 11th place.

A second driver change and a fresh set of batteries and Kirt Cowell rapidly set the fastest lap so far, but sadly whilst tussling with Philip Morant's Fireblade, Kirt suffered a black flag for "cornering too enthusiastically"........harsh I felt!

Despite this setback, Kirt continued to gain positions reaching 7th place by the end of his 40 minutes. The next driver change to Carlos de Costa was frankly disgracefully slow and cost us quite a few places....much more practise needed I think!!! Carlos lapped well and despite managing to spin the car twice on the now slightly damp first corner, he maintained position, battling hard with several other teams throughout his session.

The final battery and driver change went much more smoothly and Ellie quickly settled in to her marathon session, clocking up faster and faster lap times and eventually setting our fastest lap time (much to the frustration of Kirt).

Despite also spinning on the first corner a couple of times, Ellie battled on and managed to climb to 4th place before a serious crash between two other teams temporarily stopped the race!!! Thankfully, both drivers were shaken, but uninjured. The race got underway again with only 10 minutes remaining! Despite Ellie lapping faster than both 3rd and 2nd place cars, we simply ran out of time, finishing less than half a lap behind 3rd place.......WHAT an exciting race!!!!

Special mention should go to Natasha Layley, who despite serious injury during the summer holiday, came along to support the team. We wish her a speedy and full recovery.

A nice suprise and a little progress...

So.... the pupils' first day back of the new academic year and within hours, my trusty team were pecking at me to do some work on the new car after school!! We began with a well overdue tidy-up and then got to work on locating the steering column and mounting the rear derailleur sprocket onto the back axle...well done chaps!!

Liam, Kirt and Billy measuring and  marking-out the location of the steering column.

Looks promising!



Drive sprocket mounted to rear axle, mock up of motor location.
The rear derailleur mechanism will be mounted upside down.....somehow! 

Rockingham Raceway success!

Yesterday, the year 9 Greenpower team left school very VERY early in the morning (5.30am early!) to travel to Rockingham Raceway near Corby in Northamptonshire!!


Following our success in Saturday's Ford Dunton heat, we had decided to trial a new and more aerodynamic 'tail' on Darkside to see if the very lightweight team and the added aerodynamic advantage would allow us to push a little harder and go a little faster!

In addition to the tail a slightly higher gear ratio was also selected, just to see if we could get away with it?!

Following a short practise session the 4 hour race began with Natasha Layley at the wheel. "Tash the crash" fortunately did not live up to her nickname and had a smooth run although Mr Giddings experienced some software issues and spent most of Natasha's drive not receiving any data from the car via our telemetry system....

40 minutes in and the first driver change saw Kirt Cowell (Mr Cool) settle into a steady 10th position and put in some very consistent lap times. Following Kirt, the pit crew of Billy "whiz" Nightingale and Charlotte "full throttle Charlie" Finding, managed a nicely rapid battery and driver change to Ellie Pennick.
Ellie made her debut in Darkside driving very well despite her nerves and putting in the fastest lap so far at 27.5mph!!

Our 4th driver of the day was Liam "Hazzard" Lynch who is shaping up to be a bit of a stig, promptly beating Ellie's previous fastest lap and putting in a very consistent set of laps before unfortunately triggering the new speed trap on returning to the pit lane at the end of his stint. Having been delayed by 2 minutes as a punishment for speeding, our final battery and driver change was a speedy one as Carlos de costa took control and quickly began making his way through the field, reaching a promising 7th place before DISASTER!!

The little grub screw securing the motor sprocket had worked its way loose and poor Carlos ground to a halt and had to return to the paddock on a recovery truck. The problem was quickly rectified and Carlos returned to the track, fortunately having not lost position, and managed to finish the race in 7th position out of 45 cars and completing 94.1 miles, Darkside's highest ever mileage! (perhaps if we had no speeding penalties and no recovery, we might have hit the 100 mile mark.......who knows!)

Our next race is in September (after the summer hols) and is at Bedford Autodrome.

FORD DUNTON ESSEX HEAT RESULT!!!

WOW! Yesterday was the Essex Regional Greenpower Heat and we came 1st!!!

After a somewhat shortened practise session (having left the practise batteries at the school and having had to go back to get them) the race itself began at 12.05.

Our first driver away was Charlotte Finding (now nicknamed "Full Throttle Charlie") who managed in her 40 minute stint to work her way from midway down the field of 13 cars to 4th position. She managed to negotiate the extremely narrow and tricky hairpin with skill and apparent ease.

Our next driver was Natasha Layley, who was understandably nervous, this being her first drive ever! "Tash the Crash" had an eventful drive with several nudges into the hay bales, however no damage done and she managed to maintain position in time for some fresh batteries and our third driver Kirt Cowell.

Kirt, aka "Mr Cool" is proving his mettle as a reliable and skilled driver as he managed to tussle with the top runners, enjoying a stint in 1st place for a while, before being black flagged for being perhaps a little over enthusiastic and overtaking a slower car on the steeply banked bend at the end of the Dunton track.

Our fourth driver was Liam "Hazzard" Lynch, so named after his aerial antics last race. Liam was extra careful during his drive and put in a fine performance, easing the car up to 3rd place by the end of his session.

Cue our final battery change and our final driver Billy "Whizz" Nightingale, who was in for a lengthy 1 hour and 20 mins. By now the blistering hot day had raised the track temperature to 55 degrees centigrade, hot enough to feel through the soles of your shoes!!! Billy clocked up good lap after good lap and about halfway through his marathon drive, took first place and managed to extend his lead by a over a mile ahead of second place by the end of the race!

In 7 years of racing this is only the second time Plume have ever made the podium, so a massive thanks and congratulations to the year 9 team and their amazing and supportive families!!!

 

 

Roll on Monday, when we are at Rockingham Raceway in Northamptonshire!!

A new Battery Trolley

The second race of this season is nearly upon us and last season we managed with just a battered plastic trolley to move our batteries to and from race quarantine. So I thought it high time we made a proper trolley...

Billy, Liam, Charlotte and Natasha construct the base

Mr Raymond and Carlos work on the axle

Reece from the year10 team helps out by drilling some axle blocks

Not too shabby for something knocked up from offcuts of western red cedar that the builders have been using to clad the school!!!

Musings.....

A glass of wine and a brief stint of mucking about on 2D design hopefully shows what the final shape of Projectile will be....

 

Best get started on the head cowling soon then!!!

 

 

Narrowing the Fraxle and Cutting the Shell

Having narrowed the back axle (baxle) last post, today we completed the narrowing of the front axle (fraxle?) to match and gave it a jolly good sand blasting while we were at it!!
Following reassembly came lots of measuring, sighting, squinting and sucking of teeth as the body shell was carefully marked for cutting the flip front which will give us access to the front axle and the batteries in a kind of bonnet...

Bonnet Shut







Bonnet Open!

 

Pretty good battery and axle access!!

 

Ooooh! that's pretty nice looking!!!

 

 Helmet is in the position it will end up when car is being driven

 

Finally we can get a really good idea of what the finished car will look like!!!

 

Narrowing the Back Axle and CNC lathe work

In my last post I brought you up to speed on the rebuild of Plume Projectile. Today was Greenpower afterschool club and the year 10's helped to reduce the width of the back axle (affectionately known now as the 'Baxle') by some 170mm. It now looks less ungainly and should also be a lot less prone to bending.....

View from the rear of the new, narrowed 'Baxle'

In addition to this sterling effort, our tame 6th former, Tom, has been hard at work all day sorting out our little Boxford CNC lathe. The feed rates and chuck speeds as supplied from Boxford were more than ambitious and were the cause of many a horrid graunchy noise during manufacture. Tom and I have now rectified this and Tom has managed to produce the first of a run of 8 aluminium spacer 'top hats' designed to spread the load and prevent us from crushing the delicate core of the aluminium honeycomb chassis material.




Tom, hard at work on the CNC lathe!

The End Result:

 

 

 

NICE!!!!

 

 

THE REBIRTH OF PLUME PROJECTILE

Way back in 2007, we built and raced a car by the name of "Plume Projectile"



Projectile racing in 2008

It was a pretty successful car and raced for three seasons, reaching a national ranking of 22nd at its best. Sadly, following the car's last race in 2009, the competition rules changed making it difficult to continue racing without a major rebuild, so Projectile was unceremoniously stripped of all her useful and re-usable parts (motor, wheels, brakes etc.) and consigned to the scrap heap.

Since then, the development of Darkside of the Plume has taken precedence and only recently has the decision been taken to re-launch Projectile with a new chassis. The plan was to have the car ready for the beginning of the 2013 season, but things never progress as fast as I'd like and we have made the decision to take our time and not rush the build at the cost of quality.

So here is the progress so far:

First, the back end of another roof box was cut off and a more aerodynamic "tail" was moulded from slices of MDF and Cellotex roofing insulation left behind by the builders....

After a bit of smoothing (not much!) we started to stretch 10mm thick strips of pink insulation foam over the mould, glue-gunning them along the bottom edge....

 



Once the mould was completely covered, the bottom edge was trimmed flush and a couple of layers of  thin fibreglass cloth were draped over and wetted out with resin....



Trimmed and fibreglass cloth and resin on the inside to add strength and durability and hey presto! the beginnings of a really lightweight yet strong, foam-core composite, pretty nifty body shell!!!

An so on to the chassis. We decided to push the boat out and fork out for a VERY EXPENSIVE 8'x4' sheet of aluminium honeycomb composite. It's very, very light but stronger than plywood of the same thickness! The body shell was placed on the sheet and drawn around and the honeycomb was cut out with a jigsaw. Here you can see the freshly fabricated front axle (pre paint) and the batteries in their rough locations...

 

The stiffening chassis sides were glue gunned into place (to be fibre glassed later) and a temporary back rest added....

 

 

 

Can't resist testing it for space! If a tubby chap like me can fit in, the students should have NO problems!!!

 

 

 

The side walls had to be cut down somewhat to fit inside the curved body shell, but still plenty strong enough I think! The brown goo holding it all together is epoxy mixed with micro resin balloons!! The back axle is in-situ and the whole thing is starting to look more like a car!!

 

 

 

 

Close up detail of the proposed drivetrain. The bearings are SKF ultra low friction (supposedly 33% less than a standard bearing) they were pretty expensive and are running in housings modified by me to take them.

The cassette is custom build by me, I hacked 2 Shimano 10 speed cassettes and combined sprockets from each to create a cassette with only one or two tooth steps between each gear. The thinking is that we should be able to use it to keep the current more constant by compensating for upwind/downwind and uphill/downhill sections within every lap!!! We'll see...

 

 

Close up detail of the drive transmission system. The little silver steel pins locate into the disc mount holes on the driven wheel. This way we should be able to remove a wheel quickly if  needs be, by just undoing one central wheel bolt....

So this is how far we have got as of Friday 21st June.....Next step is to cut the nose off to provide a flip front battery compartment and front axle access. Lots of careful measuring and breath holding for that!!!

 

 

I might narrow the back and front axle a bit as well, they are REALLY wide!!!