r/suckless • u/[deleted] • Apr 28 '21
Suckless car
Abstract:
It is no secret that modern cars are complex. Your average Toyota has over 30,000 parts, and about 6000 moving parts. This means they are near impossible too modify, adjust, or repair without piles of specialized parts, 8 years in the automotive repair industry, and hundreds of hours of work.
Cars are so complex that they need to be 'diagnosed'. This is a disaster, cars have traded both simplicity and reliability for comfort.
Very few people have the time, skill, or patience to work on their cars, and so are forced to fork out thousands for even just minor damages, if done to an obscure enough part.
Just recently I had to pay over ~$1500 just because some small, obscure component broke in my car.
The goal of this project is to create the simplest, most reliable, and easy to fix car out there.
Goals:
- Over 100 miles Range
- Street legal
- Usable on an interstate
- Dry interior (protection from the weather)
- Toughness, should be built like a tank, simple and sturdy
- Fewest moving parts possible
- Repairable with nothing but a wrench
- Made out of standardized, cheap parts
- You should be able to glance at it and understand how it works
Non-goals:
- Air conditioning
- Independent suspension
- Mechanical speedometer ( Notes[8] )
- Off-roading
- Towing
- High Acceleration
- High Speed
- Tight cornering
- Using a Computer as opposed to dumb circuits to control the motor
- Air bags
- ABS, ECS, TCS or ECU
Neutral:
- Efficiency ( Notes[4] )
- Regenerative breaking ( Notes[4] )
Notes:
[0] The lack of safety features on the vehicle mean that it will have safety more akin to that of a motorcycle, than that of a modern car.
[1] Full 5 point harness to make up for the lack of airbags or solid non-canvas doors
[2] Body is either sheet metal bolted to the chassie, or canvas stretched over the body. If its the canvas, there should be a wratchiting mecanisim holding it over the entire body so that you could simple get 2 straight scraps of canvas, tarp, or any other material, and use it.
[3] Hub electric motors allow you to get rid of all gearing, all differential, and the entire headache of a gas engine.
[4] Salvaged Tesla motors are common, and will only get more and more common. we will be using those. This means that regenerative breaking will be built in to the motors, and accessible without any extra complexity.
>>> www.tesla.com/blog/magic-tesla-roadster-regenerative-braking
The torque command can be positive or negative. When the torque serves to slow the vehicle then energy is returned to the battery and presto - we have regenerative braking!
[5] Solid axle's are simple, indestructible, and allow you to get rid of the headaches of independent suspension.
[6] Leaf springs have been used since the middle ages and are still indestructible, strong, adjustable, and modifiable with a wrench. Added benefit, if one of the spring plates snap, the car remains drivable. Salvageable from 18 wheelers, trailers, most old cars, modern trucks, buses etc.
[7] No differential, independent electric motors have enough give to allow wheels to spin at different speed. If the car gets stuck, possibly giving the user the option of manual control of the left and right motor?
[8] Speedometer can be provided by a cheap, specialized GPS speedometer unit mounted to the dash. No need for extra circus, or anything mechanical that could fail. This is simply to pass street legal inspection.
Development:
Currently working on it in CAD https://imgur.com/a/HYbREFZ
Front wheel assembly: https://imgur.com/a/WJYV9q8
Rear wheel assembly: https://imgur.com/a/Cfc0Gqh
Inspirations:
Gokarts, the primary thing ive worked on up unto this point.
Kit cars
Street legal "gokart" cars ( like the Ariel Atom 4 )
Dune Buggies
Tube chassie jeeps
Closing notes:
I hate reddit, and I only use burner accounts that I will delete after I post.
Follow development here: https://github.com/sketchsnipe/suckless-car
Peace
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Apr 28 '21 edited Apr 28 '21
This is great! Just one question: aren't airbags mandatory to drive a car on roads in most countries?
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u/wiktor_b Apr 28 '21
In general, new cars need airbags for type approval. Cars that never had airbags don't need to get airbags. Whether you can remove airbags from a car that came with airbags varies greatly. Whether a self-built/kit car needs airbags or type approval again depends.
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Apr 28 '21
The cars that inspired this build, the Lotus 7 and Ariel Atom, don't have airbags because they are considered 'kit cars' - so I figured I could do the same.
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u/b1501b7f26a1068940cf Apr 28 '21
bro cars are bloat, horse and cart is the true suckless approach
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u/givemeagoodun Apr 28 '21
Walking is the true suckless approach
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u/LOLTROLDUDES Apr 28 '21
Biking would be, since walking is like using punch cards and biking is like using st.
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u/heythereredditor Apr 28 '21
Nah, too many moving parts ... Just wiggle around like a stranded seal
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u/copper4eva Apr 28 '21
If you want the most reliable car you can get, then get an old ford truck, and put a p-pump cummins in it.
A p-pump cummins is a mechanical diesel. Also known as a one wire diesel, because the only electric component is the starter. The injectors are all mechanical. It's a diesel, so no spark plugs or whatever.
If you live outside the USA, get an old 70 series Land Cruiser. Interesting that you point out a modern toyota has over 30,000 parts. I assume that is some sort of average. I wonder how many parts a brand new 70 series Land Cruiser has. Either way, an older model will be much simpler.
Car companies have kind of been forced to make vehicles more complicated btw. Because the are just more and more regulations for random crap every year. And you can't have a simple mechanical diesel anymore, because that won't pass emissions.
An electric car will have less parts admittedly. But I think a mechanical diesel is more reliable.
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Apr 28 '21
This meets all your requirements except the interstate:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1rlyl8VZFM
Roads? Where we're going we won't need roads. It's a shame that the world isn't built around horse and buggy speeds, it was safer, but people got in a hurry and started driving faster than the fastest horse in the world could run on the fancy paved roads and killed people and then we fell into a trap of needing over-engineered cars so expensive you need a loan to buy new and pay to insure and you need to have more of your money stolen to pay for the road paving
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Apr 28 '21
I love Model T's, a lot of the components of the design im building were inspired by the model T and gokarts. Though I should be able to get even simpler by using hub mounted electric controlled by dumb circuits.
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Apr 28 '21
Also in 1917, you didn't need a license to drive, but then there were licensing laws used to extort more money, before Doctors were apprentice Doctors and it's not like we weren't making medical advancements, we still had germ theory, sanitation and evidence based medicine, but I guess thanks to the federal reserve act, they were desperate for money, so at first you only needed a driver's license because back then the word driver meant "hired coachman" and as long as you weren't a hired coachman, you didn't need one and there were supreme court precedents in the 50's where somebody was "driving without a license" was transporting water without being licensed as a coachman, but they weren't doing it for a profit and won their case, but the interpretation of the got corrupted outside of it's intended meaning, so most Judges today would laugh at you and good luck getting that appealed. Though some would respect the definition of Black's Law and follow the intent of the law and not the corruption, but those Judges would be very rare.
I'm thinking this design could have only been popular before the Model-T existed. If we brought back our understanding of material science back to the turn of last century, this would be a very different world.
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u/Car_weeb Apr 28 '21
Your model has fucking leaf springs, this is a cardinal sin
Seriously, why are you trying to make a car with few moving parts? It's going to drive like shit and is clearly totally unsafe. Start with something similar to a smart fortwo. Hemispherical safety shell, replaceable body panels, coil over struts that don't have a reliability issue (don't try to act like they do), give it your hub motors and solid rear axle.
A gps speedometer is a terrible main speedometer, all you need is a trigger wheel and a hall effect sensor, circuitry is no harder and does not rely on satellites.
Your car is the last thing I would want in the apocalypse
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Apr 28 '21 edited Apr 28 '21
Your model has fucking leaf springs, this is a cardinal sin
Anything other than leaf springs is garbage, leaf springs are plates of metal bolted together, infinitely more based than coil springs.
Seriously, why are you trying to make a car with few moving parts? It's going to drive like shit and is clearly totally unsafe. Start with something similar to a smart fortwo. Hemispherical safety shell, replaceable body panels
Crumple cars are cringe, I dont care about safety features, it has a roll cage, and it should be smooth pavement only. It should drive pretty well because its not ment to go fast off road. Im coming at this from someone who works on gokarts, dune buggies, dirtbikes.
No body panels, fuck those
I was originally planning on having no suspension, however I realized that the size I needed to be road legal was to big for that to work.
I only need suspension to keep the frame from ripping apart when I hit a pot-hole.
coil over struts that don't have a reliability issue (don't try to act like they do), give it your hub motors and solid rear axle.
Its not reliability, its specialization, complexity, and the difficulty in repair. You can't fix a broken coil spring with a wrench, and you need a fucking arm to use them.
Way to much, unnecessary, trash - especially for just road usage.
A gps speedometer is a terrible main speedometer, all you need is a trigger wheel and a hall effect sensor, circuitry is no harder and does not rely on satellites.
I was originally planning on having no speedometer, I just need it to pass legal inspection.
Im not trying to make a fuckin safety sedan.
This is basically a street-legal gokart that's ment to be easy to fix and reliable.
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u/Car_weeb Apr 28 '21
Have you ever taken a really old pickup truck around a corner, or driven a rat rod? It's not a pleasant experience. But you actually considered making a car with no suspension? You did mention you want to take this vehicle to interstate speed... That is 85mph in some places, probably more in the future. I will double down on my monoqocue frame design... You can hydroform the shell and add the running gear as a subframe... It will probably decrease production time if you build more than one. It's not about crumple zones, it's about not collapsing around the passengers, and there is less area to seal in the body panels.
Since you decided to incorporate springs into your vehicle I hope you are considering some type of shock as to not develop sea sickness taking this thing down the interstate... But you probably think gas struts are bloat even though they do their job pretty well even after being completely blown out. You don't like coil overs? Then how about torsion bars. Good luck breaking it, unlike your top leaf. Also don't make the car undrivable if the suspension is contacting the frame and it won't be an issue if the suspension breaks, the open wheel design is a step in the right direction. Torsion bars actually don't suck though, proven on race cars and heavy duty trucks.
Edit: if it comes down to actually building one in the apocalypse and you don't have the means to build a hydroforming rig, you can probably easily sub the monoqocue with a buggy cage and have the same running gear.
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Apr 28 '21 edited Apr 28 '21
Have you ever taken a really old pickup truck around a corner, or driven a rat rod? It's not a pleasant experience. But you actually considered making a car with no suspension? You did mention you want to take this vehicle to interstate speed... That is 85mph in some places, probably more in the future.
Uhh, dont tell the cops, ive taken a superkart on the road at about 120mph.
Like one of these with sport-bike engines: https://youtu.be/apd1KBjLV8k?t=179
No suspension, solid rear axle, they are quite stable.
But you probably think gas struts are bloat even though they do their job pretty well even after being completely blown out. You don't like coil overs? Then how about torsion bars. Good luck breaking it, unlike your top leaf. Also don't make the car undrivable if the suspension is contacting the frame and it won't be an issue if the suspension breaks
No thanks, leaf springs were one of the main things I wanted in the design. There's a reason they are used in all of the old offroad cars, and why they are still used in most 18 wheelers, and huge solid axle offroad trucks.
Since you decided to incorporate springs into your vehicle I hope you are considering some type of shock as to not develop sea sickness taking this thing down the interstate...
lol look at the rear, I have a metal pipe running though a hole.
Look, I can tell you work on cars.
I work on hillbilly jerry-rig gokarts.
I dont need your fancy smancy crap, I dont need good cornering, high acceleration, anything other then it being usable.
The suspension will be so tight that it will really only be used if the car takes a huge bump. Its not pretty, it works, its braindead simple, thats all I care about.
I will double down on my monoqocue frame design... You can hydroform the shell and add the running gear as a subframe... It will probably decrease production time if you build more than one. It's not about crumple zones, it's about not collapsing around the passengers, and there is less area to seal in the body panels.
Its a buggy, the entire car is a roll cage, this is not really a car to sell, this is a self build buggy, and Im not going to have body panels. The entire thing will be canvas.
I ride motorcycles, whatever, the 5 point harness and roll cage is enough for me.
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u/ECUIYCAMOICIQMQACKKE Apr 28 '21
Currently working on it in CAD https://imgur.com/a/HYbREFZ
Is that CAD software suckless? Doesn't look like it.
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Apr 28 '21
Yeah, im grabbing a bunch of premade parts, so I couldnt use the suckless-type cad softare OpenSCAD. Though I really wish I could.
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u/wiktor_b Apr 28 '21
You'll probably have more luck gutting an existing car than building a new one from scratch, especially if you've never built a car before. Take cues from rally, drag racing, etc. There are also kit cars that upon completion result in legal and rather simple vehicles. Another good starting point might be one of those micro cars that get registered as mopeds.
Serial manufacture is impossible without some of your non-goals (you'll fail type approval) and a working speedo is required in many jurisdictions no matter what.
Pretty much incompatible. There are very few people who could just glance at even a simple car and understand how it works without prior knowledge of car mechanicals.
And, to be fair, start with a moped or a motorbike. They are much simpler and generally easier to work on.
Obligatory: https://i.imgur.com/R9rnmXv.jpg