The Design

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History of Solar Car at MGGS

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THE DESIGN

We had no major hiccups with our design as most of its elements had been tried and tested last year, except when we realised that our new invention for attaching our two front pivot wheels together via a piece of flat aluminium, thus allowing them to pivot in synchronisation with each other would not work.

This was because we had created the two front wheels as 'trolley wheels', as we had done last year, meaning that they each pivoted. However, when attached rigidly to each other and then rigidly to the chassis, the bearings themselves become rigid as there are more than one pivot point.

We solved the problem by creating only one pivot point, because we knew that this would allow the entire wheel set to pivot together. We did this by removing the bearings and accompanying brass rods on each of the wheels and also the piece of flat metal that joined the wheels together. We replaced this metal with another piece that lay across each wheel and bolted the wheels to it. We then drilled a hole in the middle of the flat metal and inserted a bearing. Into this we inserted a piece of brass rod which was locked into the piece of metal at the front of the chassis. The result was a set of two wheels, attached rigidly to each other, able to be spun around on a bearing (attached to a brass rod).