Lego RC Car

Challenges

This model has had many upgrades along the way. The first challenge was the steering and as it used a linear actuator and it was very temperamental since it would take a long time to steer. It also had a motor driving the rear wheels

However the second upgrade involved adding a fake v8 which works and speeding up the linear actuator with a gear ratio.

The third design had differential on the real axel, a better steering mechanism which which has return to centre, speeding up the rear wheels and modifying the controller (go here to see more).

The next design involved taking out the v8 to make it lighter, adding a second motor to the rear wheels and putting in front suspension, however I soon had to take this out as it made my car too weak.

The current design involves making the steering circle better by changing from a rack and pinion to a much simpler design. Separating the two motors so they go on either side of the differential which improves the torque a significant amount, to make this compact I had to use a chain drive on one of the motors. I was still having issues with the steering and after trying many iterations of designs for my steering system I realised that the problem was that the steering was only effective with fresh batteries. This meant I had to be able to change the batteries regularly (I decided to start using rechargeables to avoid wasting batteries) so I redesigned my car to make the battery compartment easily accessible.