First Ever Engineering Competiton Today!

Local Motors first-ever engineering competition has launched Today!, July 2, 2009.

Click HERE to see the competition!

The competition is to design a Roof Mounted Light Bar for the Rally Fighter Race Edition.

What do you think of my design?


The competition will be CAD based, with each participant using their own CAD software skills to design a Roof Mounted Light Bar that will mount to the chassis of the Rally Fighter.

To reach this goal, and the ultimate goal of Local Motors, we are making the roof section of the Rally Fighter chassis available for everyone!

Click here to download the actual Rally Fighter chassis and light igs files. (pictured below)





All of us at Local Motors are extremely excited for this competition!

Tell us what you think!

The Rally Fighter's Clean Diesel Engine

In a continuation of the "Whats on The Table at Local Motors" we decided to explain the engine that will power the Rally Fighter.

As we have explained in previous entries the basic specs of the BMW 335d engine. But, in case you missed it:

• 3.0 Liter, Sequential Turbocharged Inline 6-Cylinder Engine
• 265 Horsepower @ 4200rpm
• 425 lbft @1750 RPM
• Clean Diesel

Here's Local Motors Lead Engineer David Riha speaking on the fine points of the clean diesel engine:


Tell us what you think!

Check out the Rally Fighter build story!

Whats on the Table at Local Motors?

The shop tables in the back of the Local Motors headquarters are packed with OEM parts that are going on the Rally Fighter. We have laid out the parts for a visual representation as to their general location on the Rally Fighter.



What's OEM?
OEM stands for original equipment manufacture. OEMs are the industry's brand name auto manufacturer suplyers, such as Bosch, BBS, NGK, Pagid, Ferodo, etc. And for Local Motors that's key. Quality, field proven components without the time or expense of building them ourselves.

Beyond being a useful way to visualize the components and their integration, this gives our community a great insight into how many of the components come from existing vehicles. And along with that, its easy to see how much work is necessary to get all these independent parts to become a complete Rally Fighter.
Their are all sorts of parts on this table...from key sets and window actuators to the engine and transmission and literally everything between. Their are actually over 75 parts! If you read the last post you'll even notice the rear axle and Watts Link we built. Check out the pictures:




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Whats a Watts Link anyways?

Last Thursday we hosted our first bi-weekly event called Burgers, Cars, and Welding or BCW. Their was a great turnout, and we hope for more at the next BCW on July 10, 2009. At the event we ate burgers, talked about cars, and most importantly welded.
Colby Whipple (LM's Master Welder) built and demonstrated the Rally Fighter's Watts Link as Jay Rogers (LM's CEO) explained everything to the crowd.

But, What's a Watts Link?

Watt's Links are used in the rear axle of some car suspensions as an improvement over the Panhard rod (existing in most vehicles), which was designed in the early twentieth century. Both a Panhard rod, and a Watts Link intend to prevent sideways motion between the axle and body of the car. The Watts Link however approximates a vertical straight line motion much better.
The Rally Fighter will employ the following Watts Link in its rear axle.
A Watts Link consists of two horizontal rods mounted at each side of the chassis. In between these two rods, a short vertical bar is connected. The center of this short vertical rod, the point which is constrained in a straight line motion, is mounted to the center of the axle. All pivoting points are free to rotate in a vertical plane of travel.
Click here for the Watts Link build story!

For a better understanding check out this video of a watts link on a vehicle:



Tell us what you think!

Hood Liner and Trunk Liner Approved

Over the last several weeks, we've been in daily contact with the team at ATG to complete the body engineering phase. Late last week, the Hood Liner and Trunk Liners were approved. Now that they've been completed, the tooling we'll use to make them in production can be designed. The gray lines you see in the images are where sections/holes will be cut out of the liner before bonding them to the hood/trunk.

Check out the Rally Fighter Build Page for pics and add/view comments!

Local Motors Vinyl Car Skins

After the completion of the Local Motors Custom Car Skins (CCS) competition we thought it was a good idea to explain these vinyl car skins. But first, take a look at the winning design:

This is Local Motors' CEO Jay Rogers' 1971 Mercedes 280SL with the winning design by André Costa, a.k.a. Lude.


Following the announcement of the CCS winner we decided to make a video explaining how designs like these actually make their way onto Local Motors vehicles. The following video stars Ariel Ferreira (Public Relations) and David Rhia (Lead Engineer), who explain the two different customizable vinyl coatings available for the Rally Fighter.



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Windshield Wiper Assembly

As stated in the last entry, the wiper assembly for the Rally Fighter's was one of the components worked on with ATG out in California.

At first glance windshield wipers seem to be extremely simple with few moving parts, but this is a misconception. Beyond the technical workings of the wiper assemblies their are strict FMVSS (Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards) as set by the U.S. Department of Transportation.

The windshield wipers on a car use two mechanical parts to move.

First, there is a combination of an electric motor and a worm gear reduction (shown below) which provides power to the wipers. This uses a standard electric motor which spins a worm gear. A worm gear reduction is used since it both reduces the speed of the motor and increases the torque by the same factor of about 45 . So when the wiper motor is spinning, the resulting speed after the worm gear is 45 times slower and the resulting torque 45 times greater. This high torque is necessary to move the wipers quickly and powerfully.

Second, their is a linkage (shown below) that converts the rotational output of the motor into the back-and-forth motion of the wipers. The linkage uses a cam attached to the worm gear reduction (A cam is a mechanism that translates movement from circular to reciprocating or oscillating. An example is the camshaft of an automobile, which takes the rotational motion of the engine and translates it into the reciprocating motion necessary to operate the intake and exhaust valves of the cylinders.). As the motor and gearing spins, the cam operates a long arm by moving it back and fourth. This long arm is connected to two smaller arms which attach to the right and left wiper blades. This linkage pushes and pulls with the converted force to move the wiper blades along their path.



Check out this video of the Rally Fighter wiper assembly:




Tell us what you think!