so far, our 2 major ideas for steering is to get a 1/4 scale servo and plug it into the rack n pinion type steering, or use this motor we have, with a belt that will go around the steering wheel of the jeep. http://banebots.com/p/M4-R0062-12
so its basically pay 25 bucks, and have alot of fun mounting a servo in the middle of nowhere in the jeep, or rig the motor idea, which probably will not be very reliable.
What a day this has been for the R/C Barbie Jeep! Me and Ben went to the newly found LHS, picked up a 1/4 scale futaba s5050 servo, some spraypaint from lowes, and got right to work with the jeep... we drilled a new hole in the steering rack for the servo, mounted the servo nearby on the body, with a custom made servo arm with a slot for the pin to move in. we then cut up some old bike tires, and then screwed them into the plastic wheels for alot more traction. It took us from 4:30 til 7:30 to do everything but treading the front tires... we played with it for a half hour, then ben left, then I finished the front wheels, and a few other minute details, and played with it for another half hour. The batteries still have 3/4 charge in em too!
So Me and ben were talking, and we have decided that we want faster than what we have now, since according to Brian's speedcalc, it tops at 8mph... 8mph just isn't fast enough for us, so we are devising a plan to speed things up a little bit. we decided to take the CIM motor and gearbox we have, get the gear set from banebots needed to make it a 9:1 ratio, get a pair of sprockets for the shaft and the new solid axle. to mount it we will beef up the mounting for the stock gearboxes with all the gears removed except the output gear, which we will adapt to the axle. Hopefully if the CIM doesn't rip everything apart we will get up to 35mph!
OK, you guys can stop yelling at me! I finally have outside videos of this running! its not the greatest though. It was raining, so I just put the camera in my room next to me and taped. As you can see, there are some issues with steering that we gotta work out...
Attention RC-Monster users: I decided to create my own website for the barbie jeep project in order to seek sponsors as well as building a showcase for my resumé. Anyways, I will be making updates there, so you could either subscribe to the RSS feed or check here, as I will post in this thread when there is an update.
Just a quick update with some pics, We have a solution for the servo problem drawn up in 3d, and we bought an electric scooter to use the 500w motor out of at a garage sale today. for more info and pics click here.
playing with girls' toys wasn't what I was looking at, but with internships from lockheed martin coming my way, this sort of stuff can show that I didn't choose to go into engineering for nothing, and the experience here shows it.