Basic design of mousetrap cars and step by step to build a mousetrap car can be found here. We shared the best of mousetrap cars information here. The design of mousetrap cars is simple and fun. It mainly consists of few major parts such as the car body (mouse trap), car wheel, tires, and it is a small car without braking system. We will explain in detail of what material can be use as the car accessories in this article.

A mousetrap car is powered by the energy of a wound-up mouse trap’s sprint. As we know spring is an arrangement that capable to apply force on the mouse trap, therefore the spring force is capable to force the mousetrap car to move forward in an amazing speed. The basic concept of using the spring to power the car move forward is to tie one end of a string to the tip of mousetrap’s snapper arm, and another end wound up and hook up to an axle (either a roll able stick or a pen rod) of the rear wheel. When the mousetrap’s spring is wind-up, the string that wound around the axle will turn the rear wheels and release the drive wheels. This will drive the car, isn’t it is easier than learning to drive a manual transmission car? If you still not clear, you can refer to the video below. Well, here we shared a clear image to explain the basic design of mousetrap cars.

Mousetrap car body

One and only material can consider using as the mousetrap car body is a mouse trap. Any brand will do, the stronger spring will indicates the power of the car that you going to build, which is well-known as horsepower! Some of the professional mousetrap car builder will use extra wood to form the body, the available wood are such as Balsa wood. Another item needed will be metal rods or pen case to act as the axles for the car.

Mousetrap car wheels

A wide range of wheels are available in the market base on your desire design. Round Pine wood, Balsa wood, normal CD, CDR, VCD, DVD, lego wheels, Dowell wheels, Knex wheels…etc The wheelbase also play an important part for the speed. Sometimes, the shorter wheelbase, the faster it can goes. The wheel size makes different on how car the car can go base on the ratio. A normal DVD layers as the car wheel will make the mousetrap car go 5 – 10 meters, a more professional set up will make the car go as far as 100 meters, do not believe it? Try it out and see!

How to fix the string to the axle of mousetrap cars?

You will just have to wind the string around the rear axle, make the wheel turned in the opposite position that will make the car go forward. The more tightly, the better it is as every turning makes the car speed go different.

How does a mousetrap car work?

The detail information are shared here, it is available in PDF format.

Mousetrap race cars

Mousetrap race cars require a higher performance which means higher power of the car. As explain in the post “step by step to build a mousetrap car”, the competition is to see whose cars go the most far in the fastest speed. Therefore, mousetrap car designs is important to create more powerful mechanism. Things to consider building mousetrap race cars are such as:

• The light material – light mouse trap, light material to build the wheel such as Pine wood or Balsa wood. It is said that to use DVD as the wheels are better than normal CD in terms of weight.
• More powerful – a more powerful mouse trap spring force or gravity is needed.
• More stretchy string – The string that wound up the rear axle did play an important part to determine the speed of the race cars, thus choose the best material is important. All you need is understand the basic design.