Things have certainly changed since two nights ago; I meant to-- and vainly attempted to-- update late last night, but attempting to hook up with a hotel wireless network didn't seem to work out as well as was planned. We moved out of our hotel yesterday morning to save the fees and the gas money, and with that gave up our constant wireless connection. The Motor Ranch here does have wireless, however 25 teams with several laptops each and a plethora of last minute research slowed the connection here to the point of shutting off. It should be okay though since there is a McDonalds in Granbury that has wireless access. I just won't be able to check my email or update the blogs quite as quickly. There's still Twitter though-- and unlimited text messaging-- so it'll work itself out.
Yesterday was hectic. And that was to say the very, very least. We started the morning early; we left Fort Worth at around 6:20 a.m. to be in Cresson by 7:30 a.m. We had missed the original registration time due to traffic, and the race regulators kindly let us register the next morning. So, after blindly wandering Cresson and Granbury, a neighboring city, for a good half hour, we finally found the Motor Sport Ranch. Google Maps had sorely let us down, and with that huge trailer, many u-turns weren't an option. But we got there around 7:45 a.m., registered and set up shop for the day.
We ultimately got a lot done. The blinkers and tail lights are in the process of being corrected (we had an interesting switch in that; the taillights turned on when the brakes /weren't/ pressed). The batteries are in the process of being documented for the race officials. It was something we just didn't have time to get to back in Columbia, and that will need to finished before 4 p.m. if we want to use them on the race.
However, we learned last night that, while it would be nice to have the batteries on the race, they're not completely necessary. Last night Garrett took Tigergen for her first drive with the body around the roads in the Motorsport. She reached 70.4 Km/hr, or approximately --- mph, and Garrett said that with a little more space, she would go even faster. That's close enough to the minimum speed on interstates that we may not need them to complete the race. However, they'd be nice to have.
We drove her in the evening in the middle of our camp area- and video of this is posted on our Youtube channel- and possibly the coolest thing was that a lot of the other solar car drivers stopped work on their own cars to watch her drive.
After the drive, we did learn that there were some issues with the car that'll need to be fixed this week. We had a hard time fitting the top of the body to the bottom, but we think that may have just been because of the heat. Also, the wheels scraped against the ferrings (the carbon fiber-nomex coverings around the wheels) when turning. This isn't so much of a safety issue as just annoying and just a little painful to Tigergen's body.
Also about midway through the drive, the back of the bottom body dropped a bit. It didn't scrape against the ground or anything, but it did make a lot of noise and shuddered a lot. That, though, was most likely because we didn't match up the body fully and the "L" shaped pieces of carbon fiber-nomex that lock the two halves together weren't in place.
Those were the technical things that needed work. Garrett did have a little issue with putting Tigergen in drive after reversing. After pulling up a little hill, he reversed and when he placed Tigergen back in drive, she just stayed in reverse. Finally she went into drive, but produced no torque. However a little push from Eric sufficed at the time.
But more pressing is scrutineering. Scrutineering starts today at 1 p.m. with our mechanical inspection. Inspectors will go over Tigergen's frame, up rights, axles and just about everything else that holds her together and make sure she's fit to drive. Then is our electrical systems inspection at 3 p.m., our battery pack systems inspection at 4 p.m. and at 6 p.m. we have body, sizing and driving inspecions. That last one simply checks Tigergen's body to make sure she fits regulations and essentially begins the driver's training process. They'll weigh in tonight so we can get the proper amount of ballasts and inspectors will make sure everyone can get out through the canopy in under 10 seconds. Ballasts, I should mention, are not as much of a big deal for us since we're a demonstration car and not technically racing for scores. In the NASC, all cars must have 176 pounds of weight attributed to a driver to keep everything fair. However, since it's hard to find at least four 176 pound drivers that can easily escape from a tiny, cramped car in under 10 seconds, teams can add extra weight in the form of little lead balls in sacks to make up for the difference in weight. I'll let you know how we do in scrutineering. From what we've heard so far, a lot of cars had trouble passing the first time.
The race itself starts Sunday in Plano, and we're pretty nervous. So far, Garrett has been the only person to drive the entire car, and that was just for a couple minutes to make sure everything sounded stable. It is, though, looking pretty good. We just have to get through all of this little stuff first.
Our only stop in Missouri, as I mostly likely have mentioned before (we're all lacking sleep), is in Neosho, in the southwest corner of the state. I'm not sure exactly what time we will get there, that much depends on how quickly we drive and how often we need to stop. We will though be in Neosho Monday evening (July 14) and Tuesday morning (July 15). We'll probably show the car a bit at Crowder College (610 Laclede Ave., Neosho, Mo), and if you stick around into Tuesday morning, you can watch us leave from the college, which should be fun.
Wow. This is quite long.
Check out the videos on Youtube and the photos on Flickr:
