Friend High School

Monthly Reports

January - Car S13
Everyday we are working hard on the electric car fixing mistakes, putting things together, and the team sometimes debating on what, how and where something’s go. But all in all we have a hard working team that knows what we are doing. Now the other part we are working on is the body. We had ran into a little problem cutting too deep on the side of the car but we overcame that problem by filling the gap with foam, the second step was smoothing it all out to where it became even to the other side. The third step was painting it with enamel so that the fiberglass wouldn’t disintegrate the foam. The fourth step was putting 3 layers of fiberglass over the enamel and making it all even so we wouldn’t have to smooth as much off the body. Afterwards the fiberglass had eventually hardened and dry, so we had taken a Saw Zall and cut squares into the foam making it easier to take out the foam. After we managed to take the foam out we put a layer of bondo on the fiberglass shell. We then smoothed it so we could put another layer of bondo on it. So we are going to keep building up on the body until its ready to be connected to the frame. The boy’s think it looks pretty good so far, so hopefully it stays that way.

During that process, Logan, Russ, and Jordin were working on the suspension we had finally welded the bracers for the a-arms. We ran into a problem when we welded the braces, the ones on the right side warped, so we had to readjust them. Which required us to taking an acetylene torch and heating up the welds and then tweaking them back into the correct position. Now the a-arms are finished and all we need to do is determine the angle, which will tell us where we need to connect the bolt to the tire. Us three think that, that part of the car was a pain, but there’s a lot more obstacles to go. We are happy that the a-arms are done but unfortunately we still have a lot to do. 

February - Car S13
We are now into the month of February and things are getting frustrating for the team. We still have so much to do and yet such little time to complete the tasks that lie ahead. Nate is still working on the body; he has cut a shield through the body and it looks pretty snazzy. Nate, Kolby, and Ethan have been working on the body for a long period of time; they have been sanding the body because the enamel that was put on there was of course, bumpy, so to make it all even, we had to sand it. 

As for the frame, Russel and Logan are making great progress. We had finished connecting and making the roll bar. So, now that, that is done we connected the shock into place. Logan had also just welded the sidebars on so we could attach the body to the frame when it is done. While Logan was doing that, Russel was making a seat. Last year they had a seat that was just a thin metal sheet bent to fit the person’s body. It was really uncomfortable, so we changed that right away. Russel is going to make a styrofoam seat, and that should be better than last year. It should also give us just a little more support on our backs.

Now, for the steering, last year they bent a “U” shaped bar, turned it upside down, welded it to the frame, and then welded the steer bar to the “U” shaped bar. This year the steering is being put at an angle, set in between our legs, making it easier to steer left and right. This year’s steering I think, is the best idea we have had. It was alright having “a straight” on steering wheel, but it is way easier for us to maneuver it at an angle.

Our next chore is the nose. We have tried before to make the nose, but it just did not work out that well. We either blew up the ball we had to use or the filling just kept seeping out of the other balls. So this time, (as you can see in the picture to the left), we are taking this big yellow balloon and putting a cast like element over it and then putting fiberglass over that to make it more compacted. Hopefully, this will work to our advantage, and if not, we can conquer this conflict by thinking of another idea for the nose.

March - Car S13
In this month our goal is to get the body on the frame done and wires hooked up. The canapé is almost finished; we still haven’t painted it yet or fixed any of the cracks.

The next task we are on is the frame, it’s coming a long well but we have a lot to do. Right now we are trying to put the body on the frame. We are making the body round so that we have more legroom. Last year the car wasn’t round and there wasn’t as much room for their legs to move around. The tallest person in our class, that can drive the car, is Nate, which he is 5’ll”, Logan is 5’9” and Jordin is 5’5”. It’s going to be a little difficult for Jordin to drive the car because of her, to some extent, shortness. To prop her up closer to the wheel we are going to put more padding behind her. With that said, since the wheel is coming up at an angle, from in between our legs, making the body on the car round, will be helpful. We just recently finished sanding the metal sheets with a pladed disk, and it’s a special disk to take paint off, but it also polishes the metal. The reason why we sanded the metal was so we could glue the metal sheets to the frame.

We had finally chosen a color; Nate and Jordin had picked silver and a dark red. The top of the canapé is going to be silver and then we are putting a black pinstripe under the silver to separate the silver from the red. The red color we picked is a dark red, like a maroon, but theses colors both have a glittery tint to them. Talking with other classes from different schools they all had bright colors, so we picked a dark color. Logan had just finished hooking the belt onto the car and that took no longer than a day to hook up. We now have moved faster and made more progress than we ever have. We got out early on Wednesday March 19, so some of us stayed after school to work on the car.  Now, we pretty much have all the metal sheets attached to the frame and glued on there. The next step is to hook up the reflector to the back of the car, plus the wiring.