How To Get Into Cars: Drifting Mods

January 4, 2021 by Lewin Day 31 Comments

Drifting is a hugely popular motorsport unlike any other, focusing on style and getting sideways rather than the pursuit of the fastest time between two points. It’s a challenge that places great demands on car and driver, and proper attention to setup to truly succeed. Here’s a guide to get your first drift build coming together.

Getting Sideways (And Back Again)

Drift cars are specialised beasts, and like any motorsport discipline, the demands of the sport shape the vehicle to suit. If you’re looking to drift, you’ll want to choose a project car with a front-engined, rear-wheel drive layout. While it’s somewhat possible to drift with other layouts, the act of kicking out the tail and holding a slide at speed is best achieved with the handling characteristics of such a vehicle. It all comes down to weight transfer and breaking traction at will. Of course, over the years, certain cars have become expensive on the second-hand market due to their drift prowess, so you may have to get creative if your first choice isn’t available at your budget. It pays to talk to the drifters down at your local track to get an idea of which cars in your area are the best bet for a drift build. Once you’ve got yourself a car, you can get down to installing mods!

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ABS Mercedes Rims Push The Limits Of 3D Printing

January 3, 2021 by Danie Conradie 49 Comments

While we’re big believers in 3D printing here at Hackaday, there’s no denying that some things just aren’t meant to be printed. For example, most of us would agree that it’s not the first choice for making rims for a passenger car. We imagine that [Jón Schone] from Proper Printing probably feels the same way, but that didn’t stop him from trying to do it anyway.

A couple of months ago [Jón] got a test subject in the form of an older Mercedes with 19-inch rims. The first two challenges are bed size and warping, so he modified a Creality CR10 S5 with a heated chamber capable of reaching 70 °C to reduce warping with the ABS filament he intended to use. Another challenge is the amount of filament required for the print, especially since [Jón] wasn’t keen on babysitting the machine to replace the spool every so often. His attempt at building a filament joiner ultimately didn’t work out, so in the end he simply sourced the filament in bulk size rolls.

Bolts hold the two halves of the rim together.

Eventually [Jón] managed to print a complete rim in two halves, bolted together around its circumference. Unfortunately, even with the heated chamber, the parts still warped all around the edges. This left a gap at the seam, but to fit a tubeless tire, the rim had to be airtight. So the entire inside surface was painted to close any small gaps, and the larger gaps were filled with sealant.

In the end it was still unable to hold pressure with a tire mounted, so it was test fitted to the car just to see if it would carry the weight. This test also failed, splitting on the thinnest part of the rim. [Jón] has headed back to the drawing board to try again in 2021. We probably would have moved on by now, but you have to admire his tenacity. We hope to see success in the new year.

Printing large parts brings its own set of challenges, but if you stick to good old PLA it’s not too difficult. [Ivan Miranda] has made a name for himself with massive 3D printed projects like a ride-able tank, and also built a supersized 3D printer for future projects.

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Active Aero For A Radio Control Car

January 3, 2021 by Lewin Day 12 Comments

Motorsport became obsessed with aerodynamics in the middle of the 20th century. Moving on from simple streamlined shapes, designers aimed to generate downforce with wing elements in order to get more grip between the tyres and the track. This culminated in the development of active aero, where wing elements are controlled by actuators to adjust the downforce as needed for maximum grip and minimum drag. Recently, [Engineering After Hours] decided to implement the technology on his Traxxas RC car.

The system consists of a simple multi-element front wing, chosen for its good trade-off between downforce and drag. The wing is mounted to a servo, which varies the angle of attack as the car’s pitch changes, as detected by a gyroscope. As the car pitches up during acceleration, the angle of the wing is increased to generate more downforce, keeping the nose planted.

The basic concept is sound, though as always, significant issues present themselves in the implementation. Small bumps cause the system to over-react, folding the wing under the front wheels. Additionally, the greater front downforce caused over-steer, leading to the install of a rear wing as well for better aero balance.

Regardless of some hurdles along the way, it’s clear the system has potential. We look forward to the next build from [Engineering After Hours], which promises to mimic the fan cars of the 70s and 80s. If you’re looking to improve aero on your full-size car, we’ve got a guide to that too. Video after the break.

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Hyundai Mini 45 EV Is A Small Car With Grand Ambitions

December 23, 2020 by Roger Cheng 20 Comments

One of Hyundai’s recent concept cars was an electric vehicle named “45” in honor of its inspiration, another concept car from 45 years ago. When footage of a child-sized “Mini 45” surfaced, it was easy to conclude the car was a motorized toy for children. But Jalopnik got more information from Hyundai about this project, where we learned that was not nearly the whole picture.

The video (embedded below) explained this little vehicle is a concept car in its own right, and most of the video is a scripted performance illustrating their concept: using technology to help calm young patients in a hospital, reducing their anxiety as they faced treatment procedures. Mini 45 packs a lot more equipment than the toy cars available at our local store. The little driver’s heartbeat and breathing rate are monitored, and a camera analyzes facial expressions to gauge emotional stress. The onboard computer has an animated avatar who will try to connect with the patient, armed with tools like colorful animations, happy music, candy scent dispenser, and a bubble-blowing machine.

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V12 Corvette Gets Electronic Gauge Mod

December 22, 2020 by Lewin Day 21 Comments

[Wesley Kagan] is building a Corvette with a V12 engine swap. Much of the driveline will be entirely replaced, which means the components to drive the mechanical speedometer and tachometer will no longer be present in the final car. Instead, [Wesley] came up with his own electronic gauge conversion to do the job.

It’s a build that respects the original aesthetic of the car, reusing the original gauges but driving them differently. In place of the original mechanical drives from the transmission and distributor respectively, the speedometer and tach instead get servos installed in the back with a 3D printed gear train. The odometer gets its own continuous rotation servo, too. An Arduino Nano is used to drive the servos, using data from a GPS module and the car’s ignition system.

Files are available for anyone wishing to 3D print parts to modify their own gauges. We can’t wait to see how the gauges look when finally installed. We can imagine some teething problems with slew rate or update speed, but we’re sure it’s nothing [Wesley] can’t engineer out with a few revisions. Custom gauges are something we’ve seen a few times around these parts; this digital setup is particularly useful for engine data. Video after the break.

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Implementing SENT Sensors On The Raspberry Pi

December 22, 2020 by Lewin Day 12 Comments

The SENT protocol, standing for Single Edge Nibble Transmission, is used for sensors that need to send high-resolution data while keeping system costs low. It’s most typically used in the automotive world, where it can be found in such parts as throttle-by-wire pedals and temperature sensors. [Mark Smith] set out to see if he could get the Pi Zero to read such sensors without the use of an intermediate microcontroller.

[Mark]’s initial attempts relied on Python and the RPI.GPIO library. Unfortunately, the overheads introduced made decoding SENT traffic impossible. Undeterred, [Mark] pressed on, leveraging the pigpio library and its callback function which allowed sampling at up to one microsecond. This was fast enough to read the messages from a LX3302A inductive position sensor that uses the protocol.

It’s a project that could prove useful for those trying to work with certain sensors who want to avoid adding complexity to a Raspberry Pi project. Files are available on Github for the curious. We’ve seen other direct sensor builds with the Pi, before too – like this power monitoring system. Video after the break.

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World Solar Challenge: How Far In A Solar Car?

December 21, 2020 by Lewin Day 90 Comments

Solar power is a great source of renewable energy, but has always had its limitations. At best, there’s only 1,000 Watts/m² available at the Earth’s surface on a sunny day, and the limited efficiency of solar panels cuts this down further. It’s such a low amount that solar panels on passenger cars have been limited to menial tasks such as battery tending and running low-power ventilation fans.

However, where some might see an impossibility, others see opportunity. The World Solar Challenge is a competition that has aimed to show the true potential of solar powered transport. Now 30 years since its inception, what used to be impossible is in fact achieved by multiple teams in under one tenth of the original time. To keep competitors on their toes, the rules have been evolving over time, always pushing the boundaries of what’s possible simply with sunlight. This isn’t mainstream transportation; this is an engineering challenge. How far can you go in a solar car?

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