Advice needed: Car with removable top or bottom

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Vitamin K
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Advice needed: Car with removable top or bottom

Post by Vitamin K »

Hey folks,

So my son's Pinewood Derby car is coming along. He got pretty excited when I showed him the 3D mockups that I wanted to recommend to him. We've gone and cut the chassis and have been testing electronics, but now we need to figure out how to put everything together.

What we'll have is the wooden chassis, a balsawood topper (hollowed out as much as possible -- also with a section removed to show the LED matrix) and a thin sheet of birch plywood as the underlayer. Somewhere inside of all of this is tungsten, the LED display, power pack, Arduino, etc...

I've attached a picture which shows a partially exploded diagram.

Image

My question is this: How can we make it so that the car can easily be opened up to adjust components and charge the internal power pack? I think, ideally, I'd like for the underlayer to be anchored to the chassis, and the balsawood top somehow be able to detach...but perhaps this isn't terribly realistic? Another option might be to attach the components to the underlayer, and affix that to the chassis with small screws, that I could then remove as needed.

Suggestions or ideas?
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ah8tk
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Re: Advice needed: Car with removable top or bottom

Post by ah8tk »

We use an aluminum plate on the bottom of our full fendered cars:
Image
Image

The image below shows the weight (in oz.) and the second image shows the dimensions of the plate:
Image
Image

It has a friction fit, but we usually secure it with double sided tape. If I need back in, I can pry it off.

On KITT we used screws to attach the plate to make it easier to change the battery.

Not sure if this idea would work with your plan, but this is what we use.
Last edited by ah8tk on Tue Nov 07, 2017 6:04 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Vitamin K
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Re: Advice needed: Car with removable top or bottom

Post by Vitamin K »

Thanks for the info, ah8tk!

BTW, I was heartbroken to see that the images in the KITT thread were broken. Is there anywhere I can go to view them?
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whodathunkit
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Re: Advice needed: Car with removable top or bottom

Post by whodathunkit »

VK,
Just and idea here!
If you have enough wood on the sides
Top and bottom.
You could use small dowel rods to hold the top and bottom together like a snap together model.


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What type of automobile can be spelled the same forwards & backwards?
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ah8tk
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Re: Advice needed: Car with removable top or bottom

Post by ah8tk »

The images have been restored, Comcast stopped doing their personal web pages a couple of years back, this killed all of my pictures. I have been slowly restoring the pictures to PhotoBucket. I'm glad i kept a backup of most of the online pictures.
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