Starting off with some exciting news. We have been in contact with Autosport Labs, company which develops open source technology for motorsport applications. They have a brand new data acquisition and telemetry system called the RaceCapture/Pro MK2. The open source nature of the RaceCapture/Pro MK2 makes it ideal for a unique project such as ours. Data collection is critical for us in terms of making design decisions and maximizing performance. There will be more details coming in the near future.
We had hoped to be able to race this month at another UBC Sports Car Club event but we are still working on sorting out an appropriate charger to buy. The trouble on this front is that we don’t want to buy two chargers, one designed for the test pack voltages and another for the final build. If we cannot find a charger that works for both voltages then we plan to buy a charger which works the best for the final battery pack and hopefully we get that built sooner than later.

We have made significant progress on the new battery pack design and various other projects.
We have decided to house the new battery pack in new pods mounted on the side of the car. The car has existing pods which were used for ducting cooling air into the engine bay. We plan to build new pods out of carbon fiber which will be mounted in the same area but will be somewhat larger to accommodate the batteries. In the image below you can see a cardboard mock-up of the proposed pod.

For short range telemetry we are able to use XBee transmitters. These transmitters are about 2 square inches in size and work well in line of sight environments like what can be found at an AutoX event. So far we have used a simple  box to house the transmitter and attached it with tie-wraps and silicone sealant. Some of our team members have designed a housing which will clamp onto the roll bar (no drilling required) and provide a water-tight enclosure. They have completed a model in SolidWorks and plan to have a prototype 3-D printed soon.

Preparations for painting are progressing quite well. It’s a huge undertaking to sand the bodyshell and Sebastian has been putting in some long hours to get this job done. Most of the sanding is now complete and we will now be repairing the many damaged areas with fiberglass, tears, and even more sanding. In the photo below you can see the old paint being exposed. At this point the entire bodyshell has that mottled orange/yellow look. We can’t wait to finish up the painting and have the car looking good.