Today we changed some things on the car and tested it with different wheels. To know exactly if a change is useful or not, we had to take the race time (10m) very unimpeachable. To realize that, we built a microcontroller-based system to take time measurements, we used two red Lasers with Photoresistors to detect the start and the finish of the race. On a small LCD-Display we could read the time in 0,1 s - resolution.

We get a wonderful time, but we had problems to reproduce it. But we will improve that. Moritz isn’t very happy to go on a school trip to Italy the next week, but all in all we are ready, and the last days before the flight we are going to work hard on the two fuel cell mobiles a last time …

Good things come to those who wait. Or work.

The cell was´nt doing what we wanted. The power was definitely not on a normal level like we had before. Now, after so many hours, we were abled to locate the problem. It is a very small one but the effect of it is dangerouse.

Puhh, at long last we finished the fork lift “Senf 3″ and added the fuel cell(s)! Now we wanted the cell to work, but as we know you can only use perfectly destilled water, and the dest. water, you can buy in a supermarket isn’t as clear as we need it.

So Moritz asked his chemistry teacher for destillation equipement, and by courtesy of him we get a perfekt gadget. The school feels up to support the project with material. Thank you!

Back in Moritz’s garden, we installed the hardware, and the first millilitres were born! We hope to get enough to experiment always with the fuell cell power and no more with a batterie (that we used before to do the tests of turning moment (torque) for example).

The speedcar “Wurst 1″ is also developing.

Our new efficiency motto: “less fuel, less cruel” 

Today a big problem was solved:

How to get a reel centred on to a axis? We solved it with a lot of glue:-). But the drive wheel was broken. The repaired one works but we prefer to pay some money into a new one than losing some energy because of the broke wheel.

Today the first test run was made. We tried different ratios and collect the time per distance.

After that we put these information into a “Speed/Time”-  and a “Distance/Time” -diagramm because we had just 4 meters to test. With the new facts we were abled to calculate how long the 10 meter drive nearly would take.

We are not shure whether the formulas are right. But we are still working on it and we can smell the right solution!

Today the fuel cell kit arrived. I opened it with a boring machine because we haven´t find a knife :-).  Now we could continue finishing the modells. The forklift already looks very good. The fuel cell will be married with the basic constractions of both modells. Once again we can see a goal and it makes more fun to handle with the stuff we have.

We are very confused. We get angry about the best conclusion for the drive system. We havent any information about the motor that we will get. To start a motor test without a motor isn´t very useful.

Today we were more focused on the fork lift. 

This week we had a lot of work in school. But nevertheless we concentrate on the theoretical part of the car technic. We just calculated the drag of the car and the torque of the motor (in fact a motor, we hope it’s similar to the kit’s engine). There we had some physical questions, so we are going to look in the academic library of our schools. We made a new fixture for the bearings. Manuel’s table overflows with material for the car and Moritz’s room looks like a fork lift factory

In brief, all works like a charm

Moritz & Manuel

We just worked until 1 am in the morning on our concept. Certainly, it’s secret :-)… But we have a good construction on paper for the fork lift, and the car drove it’s first centimeters (of course with the fuell cell we bought already, we hope it’s similar to the fuell cell we will get). We think we can get the best results, if we look very precisely on the efficiency. After we toppled over the bowl with the destilled water, we decided to stop working for the whole night. For the next work-meeting Moritz is going to buy some carbon bars and Manuel is going to worry about little ball bearings.

We made an important step. Our first “FUEL CELL MODELL CAR” was delivered. We bought a finished modell because we wanted to test a fuell cell before we start working with it. It was funny and amazing that the cell works. We made an electric measure: The cell has a power of 3 watt!! We excepted a much lower result.

Today we collected more detailed information about the construction of our modell. Also we took some new photos. We think you can see, it was a lot of fun :-).