quart
Apprentice Designer
Greetings. I recently came across the forums and have started pouring through all the tons of great information here.
While I am a big motorsports enthusiast and have some experience with karts, most if from more than 20 years ago win I built and drove old metal framed Briggs & straton based kits.
Recently, I started playing arould with the idea of building a gravity car, which if you google you will find several very sleek looking examples by Bentley, Lotus and some of the big Hot Rod makers. While, I love the cosmetics of some of these, I live in a fairly flat area of the country and wouldn't have much use for a gravity powered vehicle, so I started thinking of maybe designing something with electric power and more in tune with some of the eKart concepts out there.
While I am only at the early design stage, I am starting my research on the best power plant/power source for such a project, as well as suggestions as to how I might come up with a template to design the frame to be almost universial so that I might be able to experiment with different power options.
Hypothetically, if one were to design something with almost a monocoque, with modular front and rear sub-assembles which could be swapped out for different power plants and steering schemes I imagine it would be ideal, however I worry about weight. While I am very proficient with polyresin and fiberglass, I am not prepared to get into the expense of something like carbon fiber, so am having issue with the fisability of such a design and maintaining a managible weight, of say under 100 lbs for the frame and body.
Modular chassis design asside, I am also wondering if the traditional electric motor and controller would be enough, or would it be smarter and easy to find a junk golf cart that I can scavenge parts off of to use. I am thinking of doing either a single or two wheel drive kart with 24-48v max, and keeping it as simple as possible.
Thoughts?
While I am a big motorsports enthusiast and have some experience with karts, most if from more than 20 years ago win I built and drove old metal framed Briggs & straton based kits.
Recently, I started playing arould with the idea of building a gravity car, which if you google you will find several very sleek looking examples by Bentley, Lotus and some of the big Hot Rod makers. While, I love the cosmetics of some of these, I live in a fairly flat area of the country and wouldn't have much use for a gravity powered vehicle, so I started thinking of maybe designing something with electric power and more in tune with some of the eKart concepts out there.
While I am only at the early design stage, I am starting my research on the best power plant/power source for such a project, as well as suggestions as to how I might come up with a template to design the frame to be almost universial so that I might be able to experiment with different power options.
Hypothetically, if one were to design something with almost a monocoque, with modular front and rear sub-assembles which could be swapped out for different power plants and steering schemes I imagine it would be ideal, however I worry about weight. While I am very proficient with polyresin and fiberglass, I am not prepared to get into the expense of something like carbon fiber, so am having issue with the fisability of such a design and maintaining a managible weight, of say under 100 lbs for the frame and body.
Modular chassis design asside, I am also wondering if the traditional electric motor and controller would be enough, or would it be smarter and easy to find a junk golf cart that I can scavenge parts off of to use. I am thinking of doing either a single or two wheel drive kart with 24-48v max, and keeping it as simple as possible.
Thoughts?
