Furze Platt Greenpower Racing

Super Snail was going to be built for the younger team members and would hopefully include some new ideas and maybe go faster and further than TT.

Super Snail was coming on nicely and looked like it would be ready for testing at the beginning of the summer holidays. 

How wrong we were, Miles was injured badly in a car accident in early June and this meant his  engineering know how was not available to the team for the next couple of months. So the planned testing was going to be missed as was some  new ideas we were hoping to try.

It was decided that the best thing to do was to keep the Super Snail the same as the tried and tested Turbo Tortoise. This meant that the TT drawings could be used to make parts at an outside machine shop.  

These delays and changes meant the team would have to work over the Summer break at Portaprompt to stand any chance of getting Super Snail going for Bedford.

 Blowing the bubble up with the compressed air line keeping a careful watch on how big it gets 

The Team set about the task with great enthusiasm and commitment with supervisory amount of input from Portaprompt staff for Health and Safety. After about 4 man weeks work, wiring, building circuit boards, making brake lights, fitting the seat, battery mountings, safety equipment, wrapping the motor in cooling pipes, making the new bubble cover, painting and decorating with sponsors names the car was ready for the rear axle. This was the one item that had not been drawn up because the wheel hubs had changed from TT. We now kept our fingers crossed that Miles could get in with his Zimmer frame and drive his CAD software.  He managed too but was relying on pain killers to do it. The drawings were sent of to Marberran Engineering in Weymouth to be made, hopefully in time for Bedford.

The parts came back just days before the race and were fitted in a flurry of activity. The car being finished at 10 pm the night before the race. It actually had not touched the ground until it got to Bedford. 

The bubble can just be seen rising in the oven if you look at the reflection from the lights on it.

[ Home ] [ Up ] [ Super Snail 2 ] [ SS @ Bedford ]

Send mail to info@portaprompt.co.uk with questions or comments about this web site.
Last modified: 08/06/09