A Creative Solution to a Difficult Problem

Strangely, one of the most difficult things to work on are the cars. We can make a whole array of changes to the way the cars behave electronically but will always result in the question: “Have we actually improved anything?”

Ideally, we’d have a test track to run the cars through a known performance test (however even with our new-build school, that’s a bit of an ask) but that’s not very feasible.

We could lift the cars from the ground and let the motor spin, but that’s not a real-world test given it needs a load applied. One of the first suggestions was to repurpose an old bike turbo-trainer. We managed to source two – one from Facebook marketplace for £10, and one generously donated by Mr Seago!

Unfortunately we encountered one big problem – heat! The turbo-trainers are not designed to handle the torque output and this resulted in heat…and a lot of it. For fear of shredding tyres we decided that it wasn’t a feasible solution.

Ideally we need a rolling road solution – similar to how cars are tuned on a dynamometer. It was then that the most obvious solution appeared…a treadmill. Now this was a bit of a gamble, but after a fair amount of research we started looking for a manual treadmill for as little money as possible.

Mr Jesper once again struck gold on Facebook marketplace, finding the perfect example for a grand total of £0. Even better, it was just down the road!

And just like that, our rolling road was born. It is capable of sustaining the torque from the motor even at full speed. While the treadmill done not have any usable data output, it does have an easily connectable reed switch…watch this space…