The school has had an electric car for several years but after Covid and a period of neglect by previous students it was no longer working. I wanted to make the car work again and so went about repairing the car during breaktimes during the 2023 Spring Term under the supervision of my D&T teacher Mr Hoad.

The car was originally supplied in kit form by greenpower.co.uk. The school still had some of the original documentation and instructions but I had to refer to the website to get missing diagrams and order some replacement parts.

The school is now hoping to enter the car into races next school year.

Summary of work done

Installed a new brake caliper on the front near-side wheel. The wheel wasn’t safe as the nuts and bolts were loose so these were tightened. The steering was realigned so the car didn’t keep pulling to one side.

I identified there was missing cabling between the two junction boxes. I referred to the exploded diagram in the documentation to identify the missing part and asked the D&T teacher to order a replacement part. Some soldering was also needed to complete this repair.

This junction box connects the ignition and the accelerator. I discovered the negative and positive wiring had been connected the wrong way.

The drive chain that connects the electric motor to the rear wheel was loose and therefore kept falling off. I fixed this by moving the motor back to increase the tension in the chain. I also had to resolder parts of the wiring.

More wiring was missing. I again read the exploded diagrams to identify which wires were missing and this time was able to fix this by upcycling some existing wiring that was in the D&T workshop.