Concept

Following 2006's fast-but-fragile approach with Hybrid Theory we decided to build a more solid car which would be reusable and developed further in future years. In the longer term this should allow us to revisit the superlight concept of Hybrid as a second car.

Specification

Materials and Construction

1 Aerobic Stepper + a pair of suspension forks + an old kart chassis + 5m of spandex
+ 6 weeks!

First Run

	The wheels turn!
	Mr. McCain puts his seat belt on and...
	...go go go! A successful first run. The belt drive performed excellently, steering, brakes and tyres all functioned correctly.

Disaster!

Subsequent running went well until disaster struck a week and 1 day before the race - our motor controller blew up. The manufacturers aren't able to supply at short notice so we were left with 3 options -

 1.  Run without a controller using an on/off relay. Although a lot of cars do run in this way it would be likely to lead to a premature failure of our belt drive and places a great deal of strain on the car.

2. Build a rudimentary motor controller - dabbling with a 555 timer driven circuit and a solid state relay showed this may have been possible but not within the timescale we had available.

3. Find a replacement controller from somewhere else.

Thanks to Paul Middleton of Ride on Railways Ltd (www.rideonrailways.co.uk) we were able to source a replacement controller with 3 days to spare.

The replacement wasn't identical to our original so a lot of work had to take place in order to fit it. As a result our testing time was cut short - in fact, Franc N. went to the Essex heat having only run on the bench. Would Franc run again for real? Essex Race Report