This is interesting to see on a Ranger forum. I have an AAS in Electronics Engineering Technology and am starting next week as a technician for the local HQ of a police/public safety electronics manufacturer.
When you talk about the DRLs why are you using a timer circuit? I picture DRLs as always on, so I'd just have used a straight LED circuit. We must be thinking about DRLs as being different things, so I'm curious to see what you've got.
That charge meter is actually a pretty neat, yet simple solution. I never actually got to work with OpAmps that much, so I never would have thought of that. I would have tried to make it way too complicated.
I've thought about making a solar powered "pummer" BEAM bot before, but never really could find anything that was visually good looking to use as a base or holder that also looked easy to build into. Back when I was still in school I did try to fully light up a 1:18 scale CVPI... the circuits were easy (I still have a few 555/4017 strobe pattern circuits solder up sitting in a drawer), but putting them into the model proved my downfall- I was never good at model making. Anyway, I'd be interested in seeing your solar circuit. Did you end up using batteries or caps as your storage device?