Friday, February 3, 2012

Razor Wind: Waterproof Scooter is not Waterproof (and other modes of failure)

6pm Wednesday I was in Van Leer wanting to return home and it was raining outside. Last post I had made my attempts to partially waterproof the scooter and was looking forward to a way to test them out. Rather than carefully submerging the body into a controlled volume of water, Aaron and I said screw it and jumped into the massive flooding that is Atlanta.

The verdict is that the scooter is water resistant but in the wrong way. The top is somehow water permeable yet the bottom retains it very well. Something to be said about the sealing job I did.



I actually had to pour my scooter over a sink to rid of the water. I suppose the takeaway from this is that if I want water resistance, I cannot have accessibility to the internals.

That night I lost ANOTHER HK cartroller and an arduino nano. This project is eating up electronics lately.

Now today, I was beasting it to my Heat Transfer class, traveling no less than 15 mph, when I curb jumped and splattered on the concrete.



Turns out that jump was the last straw on the threads holding the steering column to the base chassis and all of them fell to sheer. I expect the quickest fixes will be the rebuild the plate from steel (instead of Aluminum) or to use a countersink screw and locknut combination (both of which I have).

I'm going to sleep.