...
The Steering arm angle will be set to 17.1 degrees. This is found by creating a triangle that runs from the steering arm through the centre of the rear axle and then finding the angle between the hypotenuse and the centre line of the car. The greatest steering angle will be 26.6 degrees and will provide a turning radius of 6m. The steering arm length, tie rod lengths and rack travel will all depend on the rack chosen.
Component Selection
Sweet manufacturing is able to provide the team with a custom adjustable steering column and a rack and pinion. However the rack and pinion they are able to provide has only 4.25 inches (~ 108mm) of total rack travel, meaning our steering arms would have to be 3.4 inches. We will continue further discussion with sweet manufacturing on Monday to determine whether they would be able to provide the team with a custom rack and pinion. Sweet manufacturing also has deals for student teams but we are currently unsure to what extent. The following is a link to a steering column similar to what they can make us, https://sweetmfg.biz/product.php?productid=2836&cat=56&page=1. The following link is for a similar rack and pinion but is too quick for our purposes, https://sweetmfg.biz/product.php?productid=3301&cat=&page=1As of right now we will most likely purchase our rack from Stiletto as it meets all of our criteria and is a reasonable price, however no force analysis has been completed to ensure the rack is strong enough so a final decision cannot be made.
Other manufacturers and retailers including, Flaming River, Coleman Racing, Ididit, Summit Racing, Jegs and PitStop USA were contacted, however none were able to provide products close to our needs. The other retailers could only provide racks upwards of 12 lb, far too heavy for our purposes, and were unable to provide custom steering columns.
...