Making a SOLAR POWERED CAR... Full Build

[Music] in this video I'm harnessing the power of nature and building a car that charges itself using nothing but the Sun and it's pretty fun to drive too so I just want to start off by saying that once again I didn't really know at all what I was doing at the beginning of this build and there's a lot of stuff that I would change along the way but this isn't a story of how to build a perfect solar-powered car this is the story of how I built one so let's get into it to start I picked up some inch and a half square tubing at the thinnest thickness I could find which was 0.065 inch [Music] so first I'm cutting up the main body of the frame which is basically a rectangle so I'm making some 45 degree Cuts with my 14 inch chop saw I really don't have any fancy metal working tools so I'm just making do with what I have I'm kind of more of a wood guy you know what I mean [Music] thank you after I made some Cuts with the chop saw I just use a sanding disc on my angle grinder to take off the rough Edge and get these pieces ready for welding [Music] so I laid out the four pieces of the frame and then used a square to get Each corner as Square as possible and used a welding magnet to hold this in place while I tack it [Music] for welding I'm just using my old Canadian Tire special flux core welder again I'm not a metal worker and this welder is super easy to use for beginners and you get pretty solid welds with it I've used it for like eight years [Music] at 200 bucks in like eight years not bad since that welder decided to crap out on me today I went back to Canadian Tire and picked up literally the exact same welder for the exact same price eight years later the only thing that's different on it is the updated logo [Music] so I tacked all four pieces together and then confirmed everything was square and then went ahead with the final welts [Music] one side the corners welded on all four sides I used an angle grinder to clean up the amateur but structurally sound welds [Music] [Music] then I cut up a little more steel and added this box on the front end of the frame [Music] as well as another structural bar down the middle [Music] the main bed of the frame done [Music] so kind of what started this whole build in the first place is I found these two 20-inch fat tire bikes at a local liquidation place for a couple hundred bucks each and I started thinking how could I make these into something super unique for YouTube so I'm basically going to use some portions of these bike frames and the front wheels to build the steering column for my solar car so basically I measured up a little platform to set the bike on at the height I wanted it to be on the frame and then I just taped a marker onto the end of this 2x4 and traced a cut line onto the bike frame where I wanted to weld on to the Mainframe I just made up [Music] then I stripped the bike all the way down to the frame and cut the cut lines using a cut off wheel my angle grinder [Music] also these frames are made out of some high strength steel make sure you don't get one that's made out of aluminum or carbon fiber [Music] after a little bit of tinkering and grinding the cut Edge I got the one frame fit in exactly how I wanted it so I brought up the second bike and did the exact same thing with it foreign on the frame pretty similarly I grinded off the paint around where they're going to be welded [Applause] and after a quick cool down I welded them into place [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] with those in place I took a piece of one inch square tubing and traced around this profile of the same pipe and it's going to be welded onto and then I took my time to cut that out with a cut off wheel on my angle grinder [Applause] [Music] nicely I set it in place and traced another cut line along the frame and cut that off as well then I welded these into place on both sides [Music] [Applause] [Music] next I added on another piece of inch and a half tube and connecting the two stems of the bikes as well as some vertical supports from the frame bed up to this cross member [Music] [Music] then I grinded down all these welds and that's some pretty good progress for a couple days work [Music] [Music] the next day I started off with some 3 16 inch steel flat bar and I cut off a section that's going to be an axle mount for our rear wheels with the axle Center marked out and punched I drilled through a pilot hole and then used a step drill bit to drill it to the size of our axle [Music] and then I used a cut off wheel to cut out a slot into the hole so that the axles can drop out the bottom then using some one inch steel I welded up this side arm and mounted one of the axle mounts right in the middle [Music] I clamped the side arm onto the side of the frame and then clamped on another axle mounting plate roughly in the center of that opening so for my rear wheels I'm using these 1500 watt 48 volt e-bike Motors and I'm going to be using two of these so basically I'll have a rear wheel drive car but I won't have to worry about building up any drivetrain or anything like that because the motors are inside the hubs of these wheels so with the wheel in place I'm squaring it off the frame by taking a measurement from the side of the rim to the side of the frame at both the front and back of the wheel and then I can kind of Tinker around with the position of that mounting plate until the distances are the exact same and then my wheels Square to the frame and then I can weld that mounting plate in place as well as the side arm itself [Music] now I'm going to add some brakes on the back and I figured the easiest way to do that was take the discarded frames and I'm going to cut off this rear plate that I originally mounted the brake caliper so I don't have to make my own then after a lot of measuring and marking and taking off the wheel and re-adding the wheel I finally got the caliber in a place that wouldn't drag on the disc so I welded it in place and hopefully that'll work just fine to stop this unit along with the front brakes that are already on the stock Forks [Music] now back to the front end to steer both of my forks with one set of handlebars I picked up a old bike on Kijiji for 50 bucks and then I disassembled the front end and I'm cutting off this stem tube [Music] then I grinded down one of these protrusions to be perfectly square and the other one just down to the stem tube as far as I could then I clamp this on to the middle of that front cross member and used a square to get it perfectly vertical [Music] in a place with some of the best welds I've ever done I think now with the fork tube on that bike I cut off the actual Forks and then I have this piece of eighth inch by three quarter inch angle iron and I'm cutting this funky angle [Music] and then I'm drilling a 3 8 inch hole in the end that's gonna have a bolt go through it and basically be the center point of the steering link [Music] so I welded this angle onto the bottom portion of that fork tube [Music] and installed it back into the stem [Music] then I welded on two more of these angle pieces one onto each set of forks foreign these all together I have the steering link connector bolt things and I'm just going to use these along with some threaded rod and these threaded Rod couplers but these have different thread than standard threaded rods so I'm just going to drill out the threads in one of the couplers about halfway and then I'm just going to tack weld this right onto the coupler itself [Music] so on the middle link I set a bolt through and then I used washers to space out both couplers and used a nylon threaded lock nut to lock it in place so the beauty of using this threaded Rod is that I don't have to get it perfect the first time and I can adjust it anytime by just taking off one of the bolts and unthreading or re-threading a little bit to make sure the steering is perfectly straight I filmed this all with 5 16 inch threaded Rod but I later updated it to 3 8 inch because I wasn't sure it was quite sturdy enough basically what I did there is I just have a rough cut section of threaded rod and I threaded that into one of the couplers and then I threaded the steering link bolt onto the other end foreign and then lined it up with the hole and put through a bolt and some washers to lock it in place [Music] then I tightened down this knot to make sure nothing moves out of place and that's my first ever built steering link got a satisfying stuff works now on to the last part of the body which is basically this cage that goes over top and is going to hold up the solar panels so I plugged in a lot of Dimensions into my SketchUp model to get me some exact angles and lengths that I need to cut this cage at and since these aren't just a straight or 45 degree angle that's easy to measure with a square I printed out the exact angles and then just traced them onto the steel and cut it out with a cut off wheel [Music] and I welded on the vertical pieces at the front and back of the frame [Music] and then I cut the pieces for the main cage [Music] before I welded it I confirmed the angle with a protractor within a few degrees [Music] and I started welding everything into place [Music] [Music] with that welded I did a final grind of all the welds and then went over all the steel on the entire frame with some 120 grit sanding discs and that changed the whole feel of this build it really made it go from this weird little go-kart thing to almost this supercar-esque Frame and finally one last little bit of Steel work I welded these tabs onto the back of the cage [Music] I have this u-shape I welded up out of one inch tubing and this is basically going to hold some solar panels on it and then open up like a trunk to attach this to the frame I clamped the two pieces together and then drilled a 5 16 hole through and then I fed through some bolts and washers and I also used these 5 16 inch ball bearings and this gives it a really nice smooth opening with no creaking or cracking or metal to metal contact then I drilled a couple more holes near the bottom for some locking pins so that this trunk stays down during travel [Music] one last touch I welded up this little rectangular box with some more one inch tubing [Music] and attach this onto the front of the frame as a bumper and that's all the metal work for this build pretty much entirely done I'm curious what it weighs so far [Music] about 102 pounds a little heavier than I'd like it to be so far but like I said before this is not how to build a perfectly highly functional solar car this is more of an entry level proof of concept so now I need to make a floor for the frame so I have some 3 8 inch plywood and I just measured out the size of the frame and all the little notches and stuff and cut my panels to size [Music] [Music] I'm going to do some fiberglass and paint work on these a little bit later so for now I'm just going to set it aside but now it's time to put on the wheels and see if this thing is actually somewhat rolling and functional [Music] [Music] all right that's looking pretty and cool so now it's time to unpackage some solar panels that came in and see how these are going to work so I have these 175 watt flexible solar panels from renergie and ideally I would have got the rigid ones but they weigh about 60 pounds and these weigh about six so I'm just gonna work out some way to make these rigid [Music] after some intense pondering I thought wood would be a great way to give these panels some structure specifically cedar because it's lightweight and weather resistant so I just have some five foot cedar fence boards which are about 5 8 of an inch thick and I'm just going to rip these in two and a half inch sections [Applause] then I measured out the solar panel and left about a quarter inch over each Edge and cut the 45 degree angles of the frame to fasten these together I used some wood glue and then just tacked it in place with the Brad nail and then I used some three inch deck screws to rigidly secure these together [Music] with the outer frame complete I put one extra bar down the middle for some extra support and now the solar panel will Mount right onto this Frame and this Frame weighs about four pounds giving the whole panel unit a weight of 10 Pounds versus anywhere from 40 to 60 pounds of the fabricated rigid panels so I clamped the frame into position on those top rails and then after making sure everything was Square I drilled through a pilot hole and a quarter inch hole all the way through the wood and both sides of the steel then I'm going to use these t-nuts that dig into the wood to bolt these into the frame [Music] I put one of these in all six places that the cedar overlaps the top Rail and I just bolted them in for now because I still have to take it apart to paint but once I put it together permanently I'll use Loctite on all these bolts so they stay in place and that's a pretty solid lightweight solution to that problem now I can install the solar panel right over top of this wooden frame I just used some 5 8 inch screws and some Fender washers to hold it in place for now once I do the final assembly I'll use some silicone underneath as well so these two back panels are mounted onto the trunk portion not the main frame so that they'll lift up and I can access the electronics below and then I also have this spare piece so flashing I had kicking around the shop so I cut this into a flat strip and then I'm installing this between the two panels underneath the upper panel and over top of the lower panel so that whenever this gets rained on all the drips won't go down in between the two solar panels into the electronics it'll keep running all the way down the first panel onto the second and off the back this will also get a bunch of silicone on the seams once I assemble everything permanently [Music] One Last Thing Before I disassemble for painting I drilled in a couple 3 8 inch holes and then I have this 3 8 inch aluminum round bar that I cut to a rough size and basically I can prop this inside both of the holes and use this to hold up the trunk this is actually double purpose because it allows me to hold up the trunk and it also allows me to move all three solar panels onto the same plane so basically whenever I'm parked I can point all three panels at the Sun and charge a lot faster [Music] so now it's time to disassemble everything I just did and get it ready for painting after I took off all the parts I went around with a maroon pad and scuffed up pretty much everywhere on the frame this is the equivalent of 320 grit sandpaper it's basically just deburring everything and scuffing up the surface a little bit so it accepts the paint better then I went ahead with a few generous coats of white primer [Music] foreign [Music] after that dried for about half an hour I did my first color which is this glossy aluminum silver color I'm spraying this over pretty much the whole frame except for the top rail which I'm going to paint later on tonight [Music] I did two coats of the silver which used about four spray paint cans in total and then once I covered that up from any overspray I started with my red [Music] thank you I also painted all three of these Cedar solar panel frames as well as the frame for the trunk [Music] and I say this every time but it is insane what a simple coat of paint will do to make any build look a million times more professional well I was working away at that I also started priming our floor panels so I used a good primer to Prime all the edges of the panels and if you're a real Keen Observer here you'll notice I fiberglassed the one side I'm not going to go into a ton of detail on that because I did a horrible bubbly job and in the end I honestly don't think it was really necessary for this build anyway if you just prime your plywood and paint it with a good exterior grade paint it should be fine for what this thing is [Music] now I'm just going over top of all the primer with this exterior semi-gloss paint and I tried to get it in a somewhat close color to that aluminum spray paint color I painted the frame in [Music] now with all that stuff painted up as soon as it dries we can start our final assembly thank you [Music] foreign [Music] Wafer Head tapping screws to mount the floor into the frame [Music] and then I picked up this seat from Princess Auto and it was only like 125 bucks I think [Music] so I mounted it into the floor with some quarter inch bolts and some nylon lock nuts [Music] and this seat mounts on Rails which means you can move it forward and backwards without me having to build up any extra rigging which is super handy [Music] before I put the solar panels back in place I put a good thick bead of silicone caulking onto the frame and this is going to help adhere the panel to the frame and make it more of one solid piece [Music] [Applause] thank you [Applause] [Music] now it's time to get this thing on the road for batteries I bought two of these 24 volt 100 amp hour lithium iron phosphate batteries and the e-bike motors we're running our 48 volt so I'm gonna have to connect these two batteries in series but first I whipped up another little Cedar frame the exact same way as I did the solar panel frames to hold our batteries in place then I added our two batteries and I'm going to connect one of the negative terminals to the positive terminal of the second battery to connect these batteries in series and thus double our voltage so I used some 2 gauge wire to do that and now if I check this with a multimeter I'm sitting at just over 52 volts which is really just another way to say a 48 volt system but about 95 percent fully charged now I need a way to feed my solar panels into this 48 volt system so I have this 60 amp Rover solar charge controller that's going to convert our always changing voltage of the solar panels and do a consistent 48 volts that the batteries can use to charge [Music] so now I need to connect this into the battery to do that I'm going to use what's called a bus bar I don't have it right now because Amazon screwed up my order so I just have this fill in for now but basically I'm going to run a wire to this bus bar and then I'm going to run a big two gauge wire from the battery into the bus bars it's basically just a multi-terminal hub to distribute the load of the battery so for these wires I'm using some 10 gauge silicone wire and for the first wire I'm doing the battery positive [Music] so I just screwed that into the terminal and then ran the wires along the floor deck and then before I get to the bus bar I'm going to use this 30 amp ANL fuse this will just prevent any potential problems from happening like overworking the battery so to connect into these I use these 10 gauge ring Terminals and I just crimp these right onto the wires [Music] once I have the bus bar in place I'll connect it into that with some ring terminals as well [Music] then I added in two more of these ANL fuses this time they're 40 amp and these are for both of our motor controllers [Music] so this is the controller here and it controls all of the e-bike functions so I mounted it in place using some copper strapping and then I'm just soldering in the red wire and covering it up with some heat shrink I also soldered in the black wire and then I'm running this over to the negative bus bar foreign before I get to the bus bar I'm going to add in this disconnect switch and this will basically allow me to just shut off this one specific circuit so I wired that in with some more ring Terminals and then brought the wire over to the negative bus bar which will one day be there [Music] and then I wired in the controller for the other motor in the exact same way I also used some zip ties to run the wires from the motor over to the controller and plug them in all right then I added in a negative wire from the bus bar over to the charge controller and that's the basic setup of this wiring pretty much done I have a positive wire going from the charge controller into a 30 amp fuse and then into the bus bar and the negative wire going straight to the bus bar from the e-bike controllers I have the positive wire running over to a 40 amp fuse and then into a bus bar and the negative wire running over to a switch and then into the negative bus bar same for both sides now it's time to start hooking up the solar panels so I'm going to connect all of these panels in series so I could just connect these two positive and negative connections from two different panels but I want to shorten up these wires so I just cut them back and strip them and then I have these mc4 connectors and I took off this bottom portion and fed it over the wires [Music] and then I crimped on this terminal and fed the rest of the mc4 connector over top until it clicked into place and then screwed on the gasket I pretty much cut off all the connectors on these panels and made the wires to the exact lengths I needed them at then I connected the front solar panel back to the back ones [Music] and then on our positive end I ran a wire down this trunk frame onto the Mainframe and screwed it into the solar positive terminal on the charge controller and I ran the negative terminal of the solar panels all the way from the front of the car back to the negative terminal on the charge controller foreign ly came in so I can hook up all these loose wires then I use this two gauge tray cable to hook the positive terminal the battery into one of the terminals on the bus bar by the way I just want to say quick I don't really know what I'm doing do your own research if you want to do any of this who knows if this is right and then I did the same thing with a negative tray cable and I should probably add in a battery disconnect switch in the middle here but I'll do that in the future and as soon as that charge controller got power it fired right up and everything looks like it should for right now so into the last steps of this build I'm installing the monitors and switches for both of our controllers and then I need to run these wires back to each controller but one problem they're a little too short so I had to cut off this connector and then solder on an extension onto each one of these five wires foreign [Music] then I used some electrical tape to hold all these wires together in a harness and then I soldered the connector back on at the end [Music] and plugged it into its port in the controller [Music] and then I installed one of the throttles and did the same thing extending the wires to run it back to one of the controllers now I can turn on the power and see if this thing's actually going to move [Music] and that's a pretty good start we have the one side moving so right now I only have throttle control to the one side it's plugged into obviously and instead of adding the second throttle I'm going to play around with these wires and see if I can Bridge the control wire over to the second controller and have one throttle control both controllers so looking at the wire diagram I found which one was the control wire which is this white one and then I extended it over to the live throttle wires and soldered it into that same active control wire I don't see any reason why this shouldn't work but we'll see [Music] and there we go one throttle controlling two Motors [Music] one more thing for wiring I added on this one extra terminal of 10 gauge wire and then drilled it through the floor and screwed it into the frame below just to ground all the electronics to the chassis [Music] and then these e-bike kits came with these brake levers and pedal assist sensors that I'm not going to need instead I got these brake levers that have two poles meaning they can pull two brakes at the same time so I'm going to hook these up so that one lever will control both front brakes and one lever will control both back brakes [Music] with the front brakes installed and working good I did the same thing to run some cables back to the back brakes [Music] then I added on some bright red grips and this control station is looking pretty legit a couple last things I used some eye bolts to make some mounts for bungees to hold the batteries in place and I just sprayed some paint into a cup so I could use a brush to camouflage these zip ties which actually worked unbelievably well [Music] in the future I'll have to make some sort of a waterproof casein to go around all these Electronics but for what I need right now this is going to be just fine I'm also really glad I took the time to organize the wires nicely and kind of lay everything out that the electronics actually look pretty cool [Music] and that's it for this build let's see if this thing works [Music] oh foreign [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] bad all right this thing actually rips I am really impressed with it with just the batteries alone it has a range of around 100 kilometers but on the day I filmed this it was maybe about one third of the time sunny and that added about 20 or 30 kilometers onto the range even with this late September sun it's still generating about 400 watts of solar power at Peak Sun [Music] it was about 45 kilometers an hour but it feels way faster because it's kind of like rickety but solid and responsive it's hard to explain through video actually here's a clip of my brother driving it that sums it up pretty well [Applause] I thought I was gonna have to be pretty gentle on it for filming since it doesn't have any suspension or anything but it's actually really solid you can pretty much ride it as hard as you want if you've ever been on those newer electric race go-karts at K1 or wherever just try to imagine taking one of those loose on the road and that's pretty much how this feels the eagle has landed I love the way this thing looks I even took it out to this Rocky Lake Shore to drive it around and it looks like I'm driving around some Rover on another planet pretty cool [Music] and it must look pretty cool because on the day I filmed this I had not even kidding probably 30 people stopped me on the road and talked to me in a few hours I was out there I also hooked up a 48 volt to a 110 volt power inverter and I can basically use this as like a mobile generator either way I have lots of ideas on how to make this better but for right now this is a pretty cool proof of concept and it works way better than I thought it was gonna so we'll have to wait till next summer when we get some nicer weather again to make some updates [Music] thanks so much for watching my video I put a lot of time money and brain power into every single one so I'd really appreciate it if you hit the Subscribe button and see what I get up to next oh

Channel: Drew Builds Stuff

Views: 2,438,560

Keywords: solar car, solar powered car, electric car build, electric car, solar car build, diy solar

Id: qPENum9DFFA

Length: 41min 3sec (2463 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 03 2023