Introduction: DIY Mini Solar Car! (14kph Toy)

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Feast your eyes upon the beast of all solar cars! A small scale dragster, runs 14-20kph!. A project great for beginners! I made this when I was 6 y/o, this guide is kinda* a remake of my original project. It only took me $4 to one. It runs with two 5v ultra fast 2400rpm efficiency motors, recycled from old "DVD Drives". This small scale experiment would become real lifesized vehicles in the future.

The future is closing in, small projects like this are what helps our engineers develop full scale versions. It's completely ecofriendly, zero emission & battery free! The car's top speed is extremely fast, although it lacks torque which result to a slow starting acceleration. 

This thing runs an average of 14kph. Granzeier made an equation below to get the car's speed. 20kph is achievable but requires a lot of sunlight. Not bad for a car powered by sunlight!

The video on the left shows 1/3 is the car's max speed potential. It was taken during night and only had a 30w fluorescent lamp as its light source. You can watch the car's max potential speed in the video below. 



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Watch This Insane Video! See How Fast It Really Goes :D
You wouldn't believe this :)) Not bad for a car powered by sunlight :DD

Step 1: Tools & Materials

Parts & Materials:
- 2x Recycled DVD Drive Motors (2400rpm)
- Recycled Pulley (for the 3rd wheel)
- 6V Mini Solar Panel 
- Soldering Wire
- Super Glue 

Tools & Equiptment:
- Soldering Iron
- Hot Glue Gun
- Leatherman
- Scissors

Step 2: Adding a Right-Angle Support

Later, both motors will be mounted using hotglue. It is ideal to add a 90 deg. support for the motors to stay put. You can use a small piece of acrylic or a small strip of broken ruler, then superglue the support to the solar panel.

Step 3: Mounting the Motors

Heat up your glue gun, it's time to mount the motors. Apply as much as you can, make sure the motor stays still. The high speed collision of this ultra fast vehicle is enough to break itself :DD

Step 4: Soldering the Motors to the Solar Panel

Absolutely requires no circuit! Just solder your motors directly to your solar panel's positive and negative terminals. Your car is now ready to race!

Step 5: Glueing the 3rd Wheel

Like most racing solar cars, most of them are equipped with only three wheels. In my case I used the 3 wheeled orientation in order to reduce friction &amp; drag.<br> <br> The 3rd wheel illustrated on the picture, came from a recycled cassette player. The easiest way to mount this below the solar panel is by hot gluing the pulley.

Step 6: Sticky Wheel Mod (optional)

When the wheels slip too much you can surround it with 3M's sticky double adhesive tape. It's so sticky it can go down a wall without falling.

Step 7: Starting a Drag Race :D

Call your friends and build tons of these customizable solar cars, mod them and find out who runs fastest!&nbsp;

Step 8: Enjoy!

Next stop, a RC solar car prototype! 

If you haven't watched the video you might watch this, and see how fast it goes! :D
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