Summer Progress

August 11th, 2025

The first half of summer was the time for chopping, grinding, and removing; as the second half of summer has unfolded, we’ve focused on welding and adding to the car. We’ve added diagonal supports across the two compartments of the car, mounts on which to put a new floor later on, support bars on the side of the safety cell, support bars on the new crush zone, and more. Most of the metal we use has been recovered from previous years’ stock or from parts cut off of the car. Reuse is important, not only to save money but to keep up the spirit of sustainability that our team was founded around. Even the tiniest metal scraps can be reused for welding practice, or a weld that needs extra surface area added to it.

The completed set of front suspension.

A complete front suspension set is done for one of the wheels, which we’re working on duplicating and then preparing to mount. It’s likely that we’ll encounter issues after mounting to the frame, like a suboptimal damper geometry, which might mean backtracking and cutting off parts to reweld. That’s what the process of engineering is all about: making and breaking and remaking things to be better. The rear suspension, on the flip side, is on its way to being built. We’ve been working on creating a CAD model of a swingarm that will fit the new motorcycle hub motors (matching the front motorcycle wheels) we’ve ordered. Then, we will try to get the swingarm custom-made in an attempt to incorporate two dampers per rear wheel instead of the usual one (which has proven to be insufficient in the past).

Bye Alice!

In the coming month or so, we’ll finish what work we can at Maker Nexus before the start of school. This will also mean saying goodbye to our most senior team member, Alice Jambon (the writer of these blogs), who’s been on the team since its founding and under its three different names over the years. She’s going on to study mechanical engineering at Purdue University, and owes this to the Solar Car Challenge as well as everything the solar car project has taught her over the years. She might join Purdue’s Solar Racing team in the future, and hopes to continue being of assistance to PASCAR as an advisor.

Next up, we’ll be ramping up recruiting with the new school year. As usual, high school students from anywhere near Palo Alto are welcome to apply. We’d love to have recruits with initiative and a willingness to learn, regardless of prior experience. This project is a huge opportunity to work on something unique, learn to research and problem-solve, and do some cool metalwork. If you have any questions at all, contact us by email and we’ll get to you soon. Bye!