If there was ever a blog entry that I have wanted to write more than this one, I certainly can’t think of it! At 1.10am 21st March, the SRZero drove under its own power for the very first time! However, soon after, we ran into problems with electromagnetic interference (EMI) and had to take the car back into the garage for more fixing.

Over the next few days we tried a variety of techniques to combat the EMI problems, with tests showing that we were slowly winning the battle against the EMI; a completely invisible problem which was causing havoc with our control system.

On 24th March (today) we completely nailed the problems! By using a combination of shielded cable, a variety of capacitors, and some ferrite rings located in strategic positions, the noise levels were reduced to negligible levels and our entire system worked. There was only one way to test this, and that was some more driving

Despite the test occurring in the rain (which also served to validate our waterproofing measures) the car performed flawlessly! This was also the first time we ran the motor (we are only running on one motor until next week) at full torque which gave us some nippy acceleration. However, with the second motor and controller coming next week, our acceleration time will be halved! And also, with the new springs and pushrods that we’ll be fitting up at Radical tomorrow, we won’t be bottoming out on the bumps anymore Check out the pics and The car is moving! video! Unfortunately the video doesn’t do the car justice, so you’ll have to wait until we get Claudio on the camera!

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