Bobbin Steering And Other Interesting Things For The Wooden Cycle Car 

as an mechanical engineering student, its super fun to see your way of developing this cool wooden car :)

The rebuild is so beautiful. It's coming along nicely!

It's amazing to see how Tom basically made a drive by wire steering before Lexus did. 😂 Keep it up Tom!

Tim we think you are wonderful with all your inventions your so compassionate at what you do.And so kind we just love your channel and content.All the best.🐸🐸🐵🐴🐴🐴🦉🦉🦉🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐜🐜🐜🐌🐌🐌🐌🐢🦕🦖🦕🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐣🐣🐣🐥🐥🐥🐧🐔🐔🐧🐔🐗🐺🐺🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇

Im liking your 'Heath Robinson' approach to building a wooden cycle car 😁 👍

Tim this is just the best series on RU-vid. Bravo!

I can’t wait for this to be finished! One step closer to completion!

This wooden car project is so very interesting to watch. I am enjoying watching how you solve the various problems.

Beautiful design and work on your wooden cycle car!

I never knew there was a normal "main" channel until recently. I just love this side channel. I love today's technology and all that, but just seeing it cobbled together with very cheap/accessible parts and masterfully put together in something that is very function is just great.

Good work Tim , its like the 1920's again , love watching your film's 🙂

To make steering with rope / cable is absolutely brilliant idea!

Excellent work and the inclusion of the Armstrong power steering and Fred Flinstone power unit is great to see 👍

Absolutely brilliant! Love the solution to the steering.

Some of you Back Yard Tinker's are sure Fun to Watch! 😮

Love it. The creative journey is wonderful to watch. Cheers J

I love to see you driving this vehicle at the end of each episode.

It's shaping up lovely! I can't wait to see how it gets even better!

Your bit of tinkering is making a big difference on this project bro. Safe travels. Ken.

The front end is looking much neater and of course is working more efficiently. Well done,Tim . It's coming along just fine.

l quite like the relative simplicity of the bobbin design! Such a fun project to follow along with

Hi Tim, the new frontend looks really neat. Less parts, less friction. Looking forward to your inspirations for the rear side.

Starting to look quite elegant.

Love it without understanding it - as always. I really think my car crazy nephew (27) should see this. He actually works for a big dealership but also does dirt racing etc and he is pretty good mechanically. I’ll see if I can tempt him to watch this series

Excellent - I smile all the way through your videos, thank you.😀👍

It’s very interesting and you are doing a first class job on the building of it. I think it’s going to be a great car thanks

Being Ireland, I would have thought that the next thing would be mud guards. Excellent progress.

Fantastic. I love everything you do. It really inspires me in my own projects.

This project is so fun to watch

Of course bobbin steering! Yeah, I've actually seen these on go-carts and downhill racers before. Actually, we had an old boat with it too. Why didn't I remember that until now😅 Wow, those new parts look lovely too!

It's coming along very nicely

always love to see how you solve problems

Tim you are doing an outstanding job on that car. Looking forward to seeing what you come up with next for it.

You're an absolute nutcase Tim (10:15) .. I love it .. Pots. Australia.

I've been watching your videos for a while now and although your ideas have been good they have been specialised or your circumstances, this car plan could easily be sold to CNC companies and individuals as a kit form especially if you use off the shelf parts. You might be on a winner

this thing looks so fun. I would definitely buy it.

Fabulous project! Keep going.

Lawn tractors are also a good source for steering parts. It would be much easier to steer, with a ratio ~3x higher than you have. The use something like a rack & pinion (modern steering rack), except the rack is more like a gear sector & rotates instead of slides. I pulled one off a john deer, turned it 90°, changed the drag links into tie rods, and reattached to the mower ~14" ahead of where it was.

Looking alot better robust is always good especially with the roads your going to be on

Looking good & lightweight so far.

I just found your channel. Looking for ideas for a pedal cart of my own. Can't wait to see more.

i've made a project like this, i just make a traditional steering rack and attatches the steering column over the top of it at a 45 degree angle and wrapped two cables directly around the steering collumn (about 20mm thick). One for pulling left, one for pulling right. you have to keep the cables tensioned or else the steering will have play. my mechanism has been working perfectly for over a year now,

I like your idea. On the rear if you go to a more floatation tire and keep them mounted firmly you don't even need to put a rear suspension on because it's not going to be a high-speed vehicle this way you can get better traction with a more aggressive Tire and be much easier to build, that's why farm tractors have a solid rear differential and then just have a pivot in the front because it truly is unnecessary at the speeds most tractors run. How are you going to power it? A small gas or petrol motor would work but would be more interesting using a battery and a drive Motor and then if you want to then run a small engine to just run the generator to keep your hybrid running with the batteries charged.This to me is an ultimate hybrid where you mainly run on the batteries and then the engine kicks in and charges the batteries as needed. Thanks for sharing and as always with respect, Bob from Virginia USA

I wonder if you might be able to reduce the weight further by drilling some holes in the central spine in areas where the additional support isn't needed. Of course you probably won't want to do that just yet, best to wait until you've at least got the rear axle design sorted to figure out if there are any areas where you need material left in place for functionality. Just looking ahead for things that could shave off a few kilos in the final design. it's definitely coming along so far.

Coming together very nicely! Good work.

I love watching this develop. It’s a very relaxed and evolving. I am eager to see how the bicycle wheels are manipulated to change from both inside and outside support to an straight axel orientation.

Really taking shape!

I very much enjoy your clever videos and process. A couple differential bevel gears could also solve your steering woes. 😊

Great stuff.!..funnily enough I made an off road RC car may years ago that had a virtually identical suspension set up (but with much more travel.)

I like the IKEA feel of all this. Maybe they can sell it in a flat pack. 😄

I am impressed with the sophistication of the design of the front suspension and steering!

Wow! This little car's design is more and more elegant each video. Such a great job, this is so much fun to watch.

Need a bigger hill! Great fun, am enjoying developements.

It's brilliant. The refinements are really good and the steering and front suspension are ingenious, love the springs. I bet you wish you had a longer slope to 'test' it! 😊

I like your port and starboard bungee. ☺

Our just a amazing such a wise man I have learn so much since discovery you thanks for every thing you thought me keep up the good work

this prototype was literally just made of tennis balls and wood, Amazing!

Looking very good, Tim 😊

👍👌👏 Wonderful. Maaan, you are living every boys dream: Building a garden railway, using big old engines/machines, playing around with the construction of a pedal car, having a lot of pets and even dealing with elephant stuff (even it is only about tubers of elephant garlic)! 😁 ;-) Just kidding, ot course I know that all of this has a serious background/meaning.

I'm still absolutely loving this series(?) :)

independent tennis ball suspension yay! I bet the tennis balls would wear out but if you designed the car so it was easy to replace them, no problem. You could just drive near a place with a lot of tennis courts, grab the stray balls, use them until they wear out, then drive to the dog park and throw the used ones in for the pups

You know you're trying to "reinvent" the automobeele! 😱😁😝🤪🤣👍👍🇺🇲

This is so cool. It is all above my paygrade and I can only loosely follow. But great to see progress and an idea coming to life.

Great job! You could use the front chainring from a bicycle instead of the bobbin driving a rear bicycle sprocket. Perhaps chain drive would eliminate the chance of the steering slipping if the wheels hit a rock or bump while they're turned. Just a thought 🤔

It is already looking really cool 👌

Such an interesting project.

It's like if Leonardo Davinci made the car from the flintstones.

With your design, build, test, re-design, test, re-design, test developement process it is a good job you are not into rockets because you would have Elon worried, great work, I am absolutely loving it.

Very pedagogical video!

Great progress. Carry on !

Great progress. Good job

It looks' really promising as it rides 👍

Mudguards next 😂 Great work as usual. 👍

theres a few extra pounds in that bobbin, you could shorten it and make it more like a pulley or just drill holes in it around the main hole, also lightening holes in the spine. the front suspension arms could probably be lightened a little the same way. I think a plywood web truss could be made from 2x2" and 3/8 ply that would be significantly lighter and as strong or stronger than the dimensional board you are using.. another great video that had the old grey matter churning

Keep up the work, as strange as it sounds but this feels like the project every one of the crafting/engineering people wanted to make in its youth, thank you for waking up the inner child a bit again :)

Absolutely brilliant. This is such an enjoyable channel, what with the animals, the train track and now the wooden car, plus the audience of chickens at each testing. Such an idyllic lifestyle!

This is really amazing, Tim!

Very nice indeed.. !

brilliant, just brilliant.

Oh Tim you tickle me with this project. I like how you have worked through the front end issues and your results. I've thought lately about what springs to use and kept coming up with items like mountain bike ones, tractor seat ones and one day riding the bike I saw an old Indian seat and thought 200lbs static, maybe 350 dynamic and shaped for light and heavy response. Of course I didn't send this info and now, voila. The position and angle will greatly improve "road manners" once finished. The powered (by gypsies) rear end and suspension will be fun. Cheers to all at home. 🇨🇦

You should use wood glue and metal wedges to hold all the wood parts together. Also you could make some PVC fenders too.

looks smooth!

I think, now that you've got the front-end mostly together, it might be time for some brakes before high-speed testing.

Looks good. I have a design I was planning to use for a go-kart at some point for a rear suspension as well as power transmission to the wheels. Use a couple pillow blocks bolted to the main frame and a couple more pillow blocks bolted to the rear end axle frame or sub frame. Now with a shaft through both the main and sub frame you have a pivot point but not only do you have a pivot point that is on bearings but you have a pivot point that can spin so if you mount a pulley or gear to the shaft that passes through the main and sub frames and have a couple locking collars in place as well your pivot point is also a jack shaft. Now you can use a set of springs between the main frame and floating axle that is mounted to the subframe with a couple more pillow blocks. So you can then create a multi gear power transmission system from a power output shaft to the jack shaft and then simply have a 2 position lever that engages one pulley or another (obviously belts will be required vs gears if you want to have some gearing) in a similar fashion to your engine powering the jack shaft for your implements and such. 2 pulleys of different sizes can then spin from the engine to the jackshaft/subframe pivot point with a single pulley or chain running from that point to the rear axle. And since the pivot/jackshaft point never changes distance from the engine or from the main axle since it is in fact the pivot point once things are tensioned you only need to make adjustments every so often as a belt stretches. Anyway hopefully this helps you figure something out. And you could use this to create a kinda of "limited slip" live axle, use four pillow blocks on the rear axle (one on the outside of each side of the car and two mounted in the middle about an inch apart and slid a solid shaft through to align them. Mount 2 pulleys onto the jackshaft/pivot point as well as on the axle itself so that one is on one side between two blocks and one on the other between the other two blocks so that a belt can go from each side of the axle to the jack shaft. Then cut the axle in half. When you are moving the belt will apply power to each side unless there is more force on one side at which point the belt will tend to slip just a bit unless you have it super tight. For sure it's not needed but if it works it means when you hit the go pedal you will be less likely to go in a straight line instead of turning when you have the wheel cranked.

Great transformation and upgrade. I've only been a subscriber for about a month but enjoying seeing all of these engineering projects you undertake. They're of great interest!

Since you have a solid connection between the front wheels you could use a simple bellcrank setup for the steering, a setup like 30s ish cars with a steering draglink. A plate off 1 side of the steering column with a tierod to a bellcrank then another to one of the arms should be simple and effective and has plenty of points where you can fine tune the steerinr ratio

Wow, the rebuild really looks great! Amazing you were able to shed so much weight!

You have missed your calling....or maybe you have found it! Your design and fabrication skills, coupled with imagination and determination are a great combination. I am really enjoying this series as much as the wheel build & wood slicer. Your voice over is magnificent also. Thanks for posting.

Looking quite nice already 😅

We used 12 volt starters for the motor cutting the cone off and mounting and our rear ends were on a 2 link system with a mono spring width wise on our go karts .

True experimentation!

Getting to look something like now, the central spine design is an excellent one .

For the transmission I suggest a conical belt transmission like the ones you can see on old tractors

Nice work Tim. It. It's looking more and more car like with each iteration and we are all learning so much with each episode. Thanks for sharing the journey with us.

Watching your videos? You seem to be a sort of mechanical genius. ☮

Replace the wood link holding the springs with a trailer leaf spring, in transverse orientation. Increased travel & anti-roll!

Brilliant I’m really enjoying this build.

Really nice!

Brilliant!

Thank you very interesting