Some additional metalworking photos...

Rear hub flanges which tie the rear wheels (which have bearings) to solidly mount to the axle. This was instead of welding the bearings:

http://frederic.midimonkey.com/booto...r/IM002075.JPG

And here are the steering column bearings, spacers/hubs/collars:

http://frederic.midimonkey.com/booto...r/IM002076.JPG


Farmlaw, what do you mean welding it twice???

 

frederic, great looking project you have, question is this for your son or really for you?

Is that you I see on TV the guy who can't make decisions doing the Prestone commercial? Had to ask.

 

I've never been in any commercial. I'm available for hire if anyone needs a peddler who is balding, greying, slowly getting fat and has grease under the fingernails!

It's for him, of course

 

My son testing out the partially assembled buck. Make sure you wave back

http://frederic.midimonkey.com/booto...r/IM002081.JPG

The rear of the buck has been structurally enhanced, using pine wood that I've been tripping over for about a year.

http://frederic.midimonkey.com/booto...r/IM002082.JPG

Since the dash area is the easiest to fiberglass, and I didn't have enough clamps to do the back of the body, I did the dash area. Almost logical.

This is the same process that guys use to make homemade subwoofer boxes and kick panels for their vehicles. Fun to do, wear gloves or you'll be picking this crud off your fingers for a week.

http://frederic.midimonkey.com/booto...r/IM002084.JPG

 

Cute guy and HAPPY which is the most important!

Worse is picking it OUT of your fingers for a week...

 

yea sure, you say that now, but just try putting john back into the truck to go home when he wants to stay and play at a new place. that kid has a set of lungs on him, and is not afraid to use them.
i never could figure out why fred was so deaf at such a young age till 2 weeks ago.

 

My son did to but he quickly learned about the "Evil Eye" that was a raised eyebrow on old Dad... He would quit screaming in mid yell. Mom just did not have the same control. Kids played together happily all day long for Dad but the second Mom's keys rattled in the door the screaming and crying began. She never would believe they had been angels all day until a friend came over and observed and corroborated my story.

 

My son's really good until it's nap time, or bed time. Then he lets me know of either by shrieking. Soon as he sees his crib (or his mom) he immediately stops as if nothing happened. Then again, I should know better than to take my son to a junkyard close to nap time He likes his routine...

 

now now. thats not true, and you know it!
he was fine in the truck to the junk yard, in the junk yard, and in the truck on the way home to lunch. it was that dang McDonald's fault. yea, yea, I'm gonna stick with that. if we did not stop at McDonald's, he would have never woke up, and we would have never have had child services coming over to the house to see what all the screaming was about.

 

LOL

as I said, it's routine. He fell asleep on time. We woke him up for camel burgers so it was our fault

 

Needed to make one more flange/hub for the large diameter sprocket, but had no more round stock to make the flange out of. Square plate works just fine, but requires a bit more cutting to make it round:

http://frederic.midimonkey.com/booto...r/IM002097.JPG

http://frederic.midimonkey.com/booto...r/IM002098.JPG

The homemade flange/hub now has a sprocket attached to it!

http://frederic.midimonkey.com/booto...r/IM002101.JPG

And of course I found yet another area where I flucked up so I had to hack a bit into the frame to clear the sprocket, and add supports to tie things back together. I have on more crosspiece to add, just didn't get to it this evening. I wanted to do it after I installed the motor, this sprocket, and the chain to make sure I don't put another piece of chassis in the way yet again.

http://frederic.midimonkey.com/booto...r/IM002105.JPG

My motor mount design requires a semi-circle cut into a piece of 1/4" thick plate, pushed to one side of the plate. I didn't have a properly sized hole saw (nothing even remotely close actually) so I decided to take a risk and chuck the piece into my lathe, and cut the semi circle out that way. I had to be careful not to feed the cutter too fast as it was continually cutting the material, then not touching for 170 degrees of rotation, then whacking it's way into the leading edge of the spinning motor plate, then continuing to scrape an arc. Trust me, I fed VERY slowly to protect my face/body as well as the cutting tool. Worked out just fine actually... glad I sharpened the HSS cutter beforehand.

http://frederic.midimonkey.com/booto...r/IM002106.JPG

http://frederic.midimonkey.com/booto...r/IM002107.JPG

Motor on motor mounting plate:

http://frederic.midimonkey.com/booto...r/IM002108.JPG

And finally motor mounting plate welded into the chassis. I have two angled pieces I already cut to put next to the motor to tie the plate to the right side of the chassis (top of the picture) to ensure the plate can't bend under load. Probably overkill, but I already cut the plate but my back is quite sore and I didn't feel like aggrevating it by hunching over more welds and grinding.

Before I did any of this I wired up the motor with the 5k speed potentiometer to verify 1) the motor worked and 2) that the stated counter-clockwise rotation was correct if looking at the face of the motor. The minimal instructions didn't state that so I wanted to be sure before I cut and welded anything. Would suck to have high speed in reverse and slow speed in forward.

 

Got the motor, chain and sprockets installed, and cut off the weird connectors on the motor's harness and installed a more generic set of Molex connectors from Radio Shack. Just so I can replace pins and housings later should they get damaged, without having to mail order parts and wait a week plus.

http://frederic.midimonkey.com/booto...r/IM002111.JPG

Even though I don't have the steering column completed (or installed), I decided I wanted to test things out while the last layer of resin on the body dries.

I clamped the steering straight ahead using a pair of vice grips, cobbled up a simple wiring harness that allowed me to hold the "go" pushbutton as well as the 5k throttle potentiometer, and sat on the chassis with my legs hanging off the front, balanced precariously on my *** on the open frame chassis.

I pondered for a moment before I pushed the "go" button, wondering how bad of an idea this is. But, it's only a 300W motor geared down 5.something to 1, so how fast can this be?

So I push the go button. Nothing happens.

Aaah, one of the battery connections hadn't been tightened. Fixed that and sat back on the chassis, again legs hanging off the front.

Push go button. Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaa!

I've concluded several things.

1. It needs a seatbelt for my son when I put the finish the body and put it on the chassis.

2. Vice grips don't hold the steering straight and fall off on the first bump in the lawn.

3. The body needs to have an additional panel between the passenger seat and the motor, as the motor gets freaking hot. Grabbing it for balance was a bad idea.

4. #3 was further emphasized by my old t-shirt getting sucked into the chain and the tiny motor sprocket. Tore a nice chunk out of my shirt. It's okay because this particular t-shirt has holes in it from welding but that's not the point.

5. I need to device some kind of braking. I thought the motor with the built in controller had this feature built in, but when one closes the "brake switch" all it does is put the controller and the motor into sleep mode - it still freewheels happily.

I'm thinking now about the throttle... instead of attaching the throttle potentiometer to the gas pedal, what I'll do instead is wire the pushbutton behind the pedal, for an on/off effect, and put the pot at the back of the chassis on a metal plate, with a "max speed" ****, so speed cannot be controlled from inside the car, at least for now since my son's only 19.5 months old. This way I can set things to a really slow, baby-tame speed and I can run after him if necessary. At full speed I could barely hold onto the chassis (though other than the scorching hot motor there wasn't much to hold onto!) and I don't need my son flinging himself into danger at high rates of speed.

Amazing how much kick a puny 5" diameter, 300W motor has. This was with a single, 12V battery from the old riding mower, I can only imagine how it would be with 24V like the motor is expecting. Might be why it got so hot too - not enough voltage so it drew more current.

Well, that's enough testing for one day. Gonna go ice my hand.

 

NO FAIR!!! WHERES THE DANG PICTURE OF YOU RIDING THAT BRONKIN BUCK ACROSS THE FRONT YARD????

 

Me thinks this is a DIY Frederic's toy car.
It will have 500 mile on it before little one gets a chance to drive.