Stage 2: The Next Step

The Next Step

Finding a Transmission

Last week ended the first quarter of school. We had a little celebration on Thursday because we got SK2 running, but now the party's over and it's time to focus on getting SK2 perfect and then moving on to SK2.Whoa (SK4). This week our goal is to find a transmission. We know we want a motorcycle transmission, but we don't really know anymore than that. So it's time to start researching and asking questions.

Learning about transmissions...

Mission Accomplished

Mission Accomplished

Everything's all hooked up!

This week we accomplished all of our goals regarding the charge controller and we even got the throttle mounted and hooked up. Basically, once the mechanical team gets the chain on, one of the front tires inflated, and we figure out what we're doing for the brakes, the car will be ready to roll! Then, SK4.

What a beauty...

Breaking Metal

Breaking Metal

With a Hammer.

Just a quick update before the end of the week post, we have everything mounted and hooked up for electrical that we need! Which is awesome! Right now, we're trying to get the throttle mounted. Only problem, we have to bend metal to get it to work. We tried to bend the metal using a hammer yesterday, and we broke it. Hopefully we can get this thing running before tomorrow.

The Charge Controller

The Charge Controller

Let's Finally Get This Thing Mounted

This week our goals are to:

• Mount the charge controller
• Hook up the charge controller to the batteries
• Possibly try to program the charge controller to get it to work
• Get the whole car running by next week
  
  

End of Week

End of Week

Pretty Much Two Out of Three

This week we completed our goal of making the panel for the switches to the motor and the solar panels. We also found basically everything we need to hook up the charge controller (the Outback) to the car. We've decided to cut out some things that felt extraneous, for example, we're not totally sure that we need the 80 amp breakers, but we left all of the good basic stuff like the fuses and all that. The only goal we didn't actually complete was that we didn't get the charge controller actually hooked up to the batteries. We'll hopefully get that hooked up next week and then we'll just keep rolling forward.

Goals for the Week

Goals for the Week

Making connections

This week we'd like to:

• Rewire the batteries correctly
•  Make a control panel for the batteries and motor
•  Find everything we need to connect the Outback
•  Connect the batteries to the Outback
  

Batteries

Batteries

Positive to positive, negative to negative, positive to negative

Today we've got the batteries all hooked up to each other so that the four are acting as two. We're gonna keep working on finding electrical parts and researching what's what. The car is looking good; the mechanical team has the rear wheel mounted. Pretty soon we'll have SK2 up and at 'em.

Batteries!