LandyManLuke

It may be a small point, but ambient lighting has a part to play. I find decent ambient lighting makes the weld much clearer to see. sounds silly but a few 100W bulbs make a difference.

It depends on the current output of the alternator, IIRC. The 45A models have a plug, the larger models have stud & ring terminal connections.

Mark90 has drawn what i'd draw. I think you can get Carling switches in on/off/on, i've got a standard toggle switch in that configuration that was a couple of quid.

Show off!

255/85 on mine too They work well.

I've got Mangels wheels, they've lasted pretty well i think.

Adwest re-build on mine, been fine for over a year now.

I can do Sheffield/S****horpe to yours, if that helps things along. edit: Naughty-word filter is 100% operational!!

As BM said, surely the different ratio is more of a concern?

Ditto, great words and pictures. very interesting.

Depends what load its under. maximum current draw will be in the region of a couple of hundred amps. why?

I feel for you, I've suffered the same thing, to a less dramatic extent. End of the day at Manby, 'just do this bit', same as you. no drama, went back to the entrance and cleaned the lights and number plate ready for the drive home ,at which point someone says 'what's that on your tyre', further inspection reveals that i've got a bit of re-bar right through the side of the wall. changing a muddy tyre is never fun, especially when it's not been on the truck more than six months!!

Yuh, Wow. Great pictures!

The steering will be fine when the belt's dried out, it was slipping. Alternators always suffer, looks like they'll continue to do so!

I thought the distinction was between a working vehicle and a broken one. By definition, the AA and RAC only use their frames on broken-down cars. Towing a perfectly roadworthy car behind a landrover/camper van/lorry is illegal because there's no actual need to, as it's not 'broken down'

God-damn you're funny Andy

if only it was that simple ...... 3.391 seconds

a valid point about the baseline, however our initial brief was along the lines of 'get it better than you could do it by hand' no mention of the baseline vehicle mass FWIW, we've just got a consistant lap time of 3.6s so we're getting there. tuning from datalogged plots and guesswork is a time consuming iterative process.

Thanks, The time for reading papers has passed, we've got 3 hours of lab time left and the report due-date is monday, this was a kind of last minute attempt at finding some sort of revalation that might help us out. The project is fundamently flawed anyway, the bare car could do a 6m lap in ~3s with a fixed voltage supply, we're now fighting to get it under the 5s mark due to the weight of all the hardware we've added.

Thanks John, That 15% ties in with our lab experiments (ish), the car accelerates faster with a degree of spin, but then asymtotes as spin increases. Can't measure the speed of the non-driven wheels, as they don't touch the track! stooopid pick-up plate gets in the way. Our goal is to limit the rate of acceleration so as to attain ~optimal performance, i'm after a bit of logic/theory to steer us in the right direction.

I'm currently working on the automated control of a scalextric car (3yr Masters Project) and whilst we're 90% of the way there, we're having some problems with wheelspin. the on-board microprocessor uses an optical encoder on the motor shaft to calculate displacement, obviously, if the wheel slips and spins the displacement measurement gains error but we want to accelerate as fast as possible. I understand that once torque is greater than traction, the wheel spins, and that maximum accleration should be when the torque is equal to traction. what happens when the wheel spins? why/how does traction recover? when? I appreciate that this is all a bit 'in-theory' bet never having studied mechanics in detail, i'm struggling with the subtlties of this one. any help appreciated!

Mr 300, - You asked why 'the forum' doesn't like ScrapIron. - Members told you why. - You're not going to change member's opinions. - Member's aren't going to change your opinion. Stalemate - job done? finished? sorted? finalised? I don't see this going anywhere. There's nothing wrong with different opinions, we just don't need to ram them down each others throats.

Slowly, with cutting oil. HSS has always been ok in my experience.

Am i pleased to report, I have on offer: Dark Choco-hobnobs - end of packet, been out of the (full) biccy-box perhaps a little too long Milk Choco-hobnobs - Brand new packet, crisp as you like, quite simply a proper biscuit Choc chip cookie - the slightly smaller own-brand variety, though with a decent chip:cookie ratio, no skimping allowed Jaffa Cakes - just broken into a 3x12 packet, so plenty going Those marshmallow tea cake things - nothing to do with me, the girlfriend likes them but i'm sure she won't mind. Super Extreme Orange wrappers available for all, shall we say, ummmm £50?

I tried, I now have a very crumby CD drive.