Dynamic scrutineering

Saturday was another big day for the UKZN solar car team, with dynamic scrutineering taking place. Dynamic scrutineering involved testing the car’s driven performance. We were a little unclear on exactly what time slot we had been given, and so most of the team were at Hidden Valley early Saturday morning to prepare the car for 8 am dynamic scrutineering if we, keeping with Tuesday’s static scrutineering, were first.

Exciting times at Hidden Valley!

A delicate balance exists between using the time available between testing and before the race to improve and finalise all aspects of the car, and not making changes that are not so big that they cannot be finalized. Saturday morning the team was testing the solar panels and seeing how they reacted to the first morning rays of sun, and as it rose. Luckily for us, we were not the first team to undergo dynamic scrutineering, we were in fact allowed to join the queue of cars waiting their turn at our leisure, as long as it was before 11am. Another aspect of pre-driving car preparation I had yet to see was the torqueing of the suspension. The body of the car was simultaneously pressed down on both front wheels a few times to settle the suspension, and then a graduated dowl was held against the wheel, and the body of the car either moved up or down to align with their chosen optimum suspension height.

As fate would have it, just as Shuvay (our driver for the scrutineering) climbed into the car and we prepared to join the line, the magnetic seal on the canopy over the driver had failed. So commenced a quick canopy change, but by the time we joined the queue there were quite a few cars lined up so we had a long wait in the hot sun. On a side note I need to express how hot it is here. We think, as Durbanites, that we know heat and humidity on a fairly intimate level – Durban can get quite hot and humid that’s for sure! But Darwin, Australia, is HOT! But I suppose it is not so much the heat that is the problem but the humidity. And Darwin, Australia, is HUMID! So by the time we were getting to the front of the queue all life and enthusiasm had been sweated out of our bodies, mostly. We were all standing a bit limply in the (almost) noonday sun but sent our car off with a good cheer and much vuvuzela-blowing!

About to enter the queue for dynamic scrutineering - keeping the driver cool!

It's hot out there - find shade where you can!

Go team!

And they're off - go Shuvay!

Dynamic scrutineering involved a few aspects:

Two track laps – the first lap was an untimed lap to get the drivers in the zone, and the second was a timed lap which would determine in which order the cars were released onto the road on Sunday morning at the start of the race.

Turning circle – as the name suggests, here the car needed to demonstrate that it could turn in a tight enough circle to be released onto public roads.

Emergency stop – again, as the name suggests, the car had to get up to a certain speed (35 km/h) and at the officials mark stop within a certain distance.

The timed lap went well, we completed it in just over 2 minutes. There is not much for me to say about the turning circle other than we made it! The emergency stop was pretty awesome. There were some mild concerns about the stopping power of the break system as they had not very long before been pulled wider to prevent scrubbing on the wheels, but we did better than expected! The car needed to be going at 35 km/h before performing the emergency stop, we were travelling at 45 km/h and still stopped well within the allotted distance, go team!

Dynamic scrutineering over the rest of the day was spent organizing boxes and packing vehicles – a job that took well into the night!

Hold thumbs for the start of the race tomorrow! Minke