Next, getting it movin'!

ABOUT THIS PROJECT     BUILDING IT    BURNING MAN 2010     PHOTOS     CONTACT US   LINKS

We wanted to build a trailer-based artcar that drove itself around without a towing vehicle and eventually wanted it to be remote radio controlled too. We know we know we know...why? Like climbing Mount Everest, we just had to do it. We were possessed, that's all. Where else can you make mad stuff and go out and use on people? Burning Man rocks!!!

Our original highly technical design document. Ah. Literally drawn on a napkin at our local diner and then scanned and retyped legib'lee. Funny how knapkins don't like joined up writing very much.

And the equally technical top view. It's odd but this is exactly what we built. Well eventually something like this anyway.

Here's how we did it. Wilks contacted Randy from Canadian Electric Vehicles, based in Vancouver, Canada. He was super helpful when we told him what we were trying to build. He recommended this.

It's the motor and axle unit from a Might-E Tug, an industrial multipurpose electric towing unit. 2 1/2 hp, 24 volts and uses about 70 amps. Here's the transport when we first got it, before we welded the plate and a vertical steering spline on to it.

It has a built in differential so we knew we could mount it just like that under the tongue and still be able to turn it ok when the vehicle is stationary. One wheel goes one way and the other goes the other. It's very cool.

Here's a bunch of motor controller stuff. We got to know this mess very well.

It's a alot more organized than this pic looks. But it's the only pic we have of all the control cabling...ironically it had all been thrown in there to look neat for the photos with the velvet cover on. Heh.

We cut, welded and manhandled a 500 lb piece of 3/8ths steel diamond plate to get a triangle shape that fitted exactly over the tongue to use as a base plate. This is attached by a U-shaped bracket and grade 8 nuts and bolts. It is designed to fit on any trailer tongue.

Yep, with this little motor system we could power any trailer or dolly, by simply bolting it on to its tongue. Thinking ahead eh? We might tow the Love Sub around in future behind some cool other art car and use this transport for some other project. Send us ideas - we're open to 'em!

The steering spline which is welded onto the top of the wheels passes through a hole in this right where the trailer front leg usually pokes though. We have 2 bearings, a vertical weight bearing bearing from a Ford truck clutch, and a horizontal axle bearing from an agricultural machine.

It is spring mounted using hardened steel bolts and 8 heavy duty springs which we salvaged from used truck automatic transmissions. We visited all the tranny shops in the local area. They thought we were nuts. It works though. Lateral movement is managed by this, not putting too much strain on the bearing...it held up well this year. And helped gentle the ride too.

The motor circuit uses a 70 Amp 24 Volt Curtis motor controller.This is needed to be able to control the speed and acceleration/braking of the motor itself. Braking during motion is regenerative and is very effective on reduction of throttle power. There is an electrically set physical parking brake which is set to click in half a second after the wheels stop turning.

The left LED is the current draw - the system uses about 20 amps when driving along the playa with about 12 folk on board, and uses an extra 15 to 20 amps when the steering actuator is running. The right LED is the system voltage. It should be around 29-31 volts with a good charge on the batteries. Some nights after we had been out late we were crawling back to base with just over 24 volts only. The rubber wheel is actually the throttle, twist it to the left and you go forward, to the right and you go backwards.

The steering is powered by a 500 lb 18" long 24v actuator which is bolted to the steering arm and is controlled by holding a toggle switch underneath the throttle wheel either left or right for the duration you want to turn the wheels. There is an auto stop at the end of the steering travel at both ends so it cannot burn out the actuator motor. It took us a while to figure out all the right angles, pitches, distances and so on to get it to work ergomically in the right way. We wanted the steering to be self centering, so you could steer it with a little sprung steering wheel like the remote controlled model cars are, but this proved too much to try and do this year.

There are 4 x Deka DC27 12v deep cycle batteries running the main 24v bus. They are set up in a paralled serial bank and are in a internally sealed and externally vented space under the rear bench inside the trailer. They are 200 AmpH each, giving a total of 400 AmpH at 24v and we get about 2 hours driving from them without recharging. Here they are sitting under the front seat before we moved them to the back as they were too heavy for the tongue weight. We are thinking of increasing the voltage to 36 volts next year to give us better top speed - up from 2 1/2 mph to 4 mph for those long cross playa trips.

We also run a rear mounted 2Kw Honda gennie which powers 4 separate 10amp 12v battery chargers at the same time.

This gives us about 30% more range when we are driving and charging at the same time, and means that whenever we are stopped we are catch up charging the bank at a total of 40 amps. Well actually less due to charger and battery inefficiency...around 30 amps in practice. It was tricky figuring out the wiring - each charger is 12 volts, but we are running a 24 volt system from 2 separate serialed 12 volt battery sets . We set it up so that each *paralled* 12 volt set of batteries is charged with 2 x 12 paralled volt chargers. Thanks to Randy at Canadian EV for the help here!

We found that we needed to stop and catch up the charge about 30 mins for every 90 mins of drive time. Here's the main ignition switch and the switches to change from wired to wireless control. Pardon the nail polish. It *is* Burning Man you know people - it's "de riguer"!

In previous years we used a carpet of around 18 6ft x 4ft red xmas light nets to cover the trailer. Problem is that when one bulb goes it is almost impossible to find and you have lost the whole panel.

And yes, we bought the industrial quality ones last year and we still lost whole panels. Expensive waste of money. And a large current draw.

So..this year we decided to bite the bullet and install EL wire permanently on the outer skin. We will recover the cost over three years if we had continued to use new xmas nights new every year :)

And it will never lose sections, AND it only uses 6 amps at 12 volts. To put this into context, the xmas lights used the equivalent of 80 amps at 12 volts...

We used about 850 feet of red EL wire, in 17 x 50 foot sections. Each section terminates at the rear as you can see here and is permanently riveted to the outer skin of the trailer about every 18 inches with a 3/16th aluminum rivet and an aluminum folded cable clasp from Home Depot.

Due to potential cooling problems, (we were prewarned about this by Benjamin from Cool Neon ) we mounted the entire driver system on the rear fender of the trailer. There is a single switch on the left that controls the entire rig. The upside of this is that the drivers were nice and cool. The downside of this is that they are completely open to the playa dust. The individual drivers are not, as they are sealed units, but all the quick connectors and junction cables are. We will see how these survive after 12 months storage. Re-soldering all these is possible of course, but will be a royal pain in the ass.

The El lighting rig is powered by a separate dedicated deep cycle marine battery also mounted inside under the rear seat which is constantly charged by the 12v battery charge feed from the gennie. The battery alone gives us about 24 hours of neon light. We used a total of 17 neon drivers, each powering a 50 ft section of neon. And a whole bunch of tricky fiddly delicate soldering (thanks to Wilks' dad who did some awesome work here!) About 500 aluminum rivets and cable clasps were used to permanently attach it strand by strand to the outer skin of the trailer. It took us about 4 x 12 hour days to do this. Oddly not a pain in the ass task as it was very satisfying to be able to hook up what we had done each night at dusk and see what we had made.

We are very happy with it...at night it looks like a kid drew a picture of a trailer in red crayon. We had SO many folk come up to us during BM this year. Thanks for all the love!

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