Friday, December 1, 2000

RC Car

This is a quick and dirty afternoon car I made to let my sisters son play with something when we got there for a visit. It has some major flaws as you'll see...

It's controlled via my radio control for model airplanes and some polarity switches.

This is another project I built as a side tracked project to the Hercules.


As you see it's quick and dirty indeed. No time for design here ,)




Moving to the back...




This is the bottom. You can see both propulsion motors and their z24 slip gears.




This is a shot of the chassis as I tore the car down. The bright red micro motor drives the steering. This is where the major flaw is. More on this later.




Here's part of the drive train and the differential.




A better view of the drivetrain. I used two motors for better power. I wanted this to be pretty fast. It was :) I don't think it ever drove on a floor big enough for it to accelerate into top speed. I tried it outside but it didn't move. Damn snow, all 5cm (two inches) of them! :) And yes, I was to lazy to get out the shovel that night...




Full frontal. Note the rubber bands that hold the battery pack for the RC equipment.




And as always when I build something with the radio control in it, here's the on-off switch :)




Side view...




Detail of the steering. This micro motor drove the axis that turned the wheels. It was not powerful enough to steer when the car stood still and I had nothing to make the wheels center themselves when you let go of the joystick. Next time I'll skip the polarity switch and motor and let the servo do the trick. My sisters six year old boy really had problem with this design and so did I :) The main difference is that I stopped driving when I got close to a wall and backed up ,) He literately made the wheels fly off.




Top-down view of the same poor design.

I noticed the flaw in the design before we left for my parents place, but there was not time enough to fix it. I only built it for my sisters son to play with so...





If you have built the 8462 Tow Truck you should recognize this design ,)

It works OK until you hit something, then it falls apart.






Top-down view of the whole thing.





The best thing about this car, IMHO, is the dual wheels at the back. If you position your 8462 Tow Truck wheels like this you can get a perfect + center for your cross axles! I added 3L friction pins to hold the wheel in place. I had played with this dual wheel while watching TV for a while and it's where I started when I built the car..





Like I said, perfect + for the cross axles... Note that the two wheels are positioned "back to back" and not just next to each other.