Soapbox car
Now this was a project. At first just a few guys in class wanted to participate in a competition by red bull. so they where drawing in class. Later the teacher thought it would be an interesting project so we all had to make a soapbox. You could team up but I decided to do it by myself, to avoid property questions and so I could do the design I wanted. I based the shape completely on airfoils to minimize the air friction. since there is no propulsion you have to do everything to make it go as fast as possible. Thin wheels, low mass, steamlined and oiled.
Here are some pictures of the race. It was at le Genval lake near Brussels. I had a technical K.O., a steel pipe bent because of the awful street an very tight curve. But otherwise they say I would have been among the 10 first or better. I had to carry it over the finish line and couldn't do the second run.The green see-through 3 wheeler is François's team he was also the first in class, I must say this was ok, it was the best design, but then again they had a month more time. The red one is Marcel. the coffin was michael's car. the white/orange and blue 3 wheeler was the winner but then again that was a team of 5 university engineer students. The washingmashine was the funniest.
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Here are the pictures to illustrate how I made my car. Thanks to Rotarex rapid development for the free milling. The design was made on Rhinoceros. First I made a steel chassis and put the foam around and finally covered it all with 2 layers of thick fiber glass. What a job.it took me 4 weeks nonstop work from 3D drawing to completion , all alone, no help whatsoever.
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Download the avi animation 1.1mb DivX
