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I'm all for awesome engineering projects, in which this project is not deficient, however if this thing can be street legal then I don't understand why so many other cars are not allowed to be. Even when this thing is working as intended. it's shooting hot flames out the back.
Reminds me of the Darwin Award urban legend: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JATO_Rocket_Car
He (and a friend?) did in fact mount JATOs on a vehicle, but they were really rather mature about the whole process. It was a rocket sled, not a car. It ran on rails extending from an abandoned mine shaft. They aimed the sled toward the mineshaft so it had a hard stop, and they built gravity-fed brakes into the sled: Between the wheels they cemented tire treads to the frame, then hydraulically lifted the entire chassis. Dump the fluid, and the entire sled weight settles onto the rails.
The main things I don't recall are how the hydraulics get cut (dead man's switch?) and whether they managed to stop the sled before it slammed into the mine entrance.
I'm a little sad there's no video.
I'm all for awesome engineering projects, in which this project is not deficient, however if this thing can be street legal then I don't understand why so many other cars are not allowed to be. Even when this thing is working as intended. it's shooting hot flames out the back.
It's definitely not street legal... not with the jet engine running at least. You're not allowed to incinerate the guy behind you when the light turns green.
Thanks for the great laugh. The picture at night with the flames and fire shooting out of a beetle is just amazing. Registration up to date.
I'm all for awesome engineering projects, in which this project is not deficient, however if this thing can be street legal then I don't understand why so many other cars are not allowed to be. Even when this thing is working as intended. it's shooting hot flames out the back.
I think pretty much anything with lights, brakes, and seatbelts can be street legal as a one-off. The stricter regulations come into play for series production.
I'm all for awesome engineering projects, in which this project is not deficient, however if this thing can be street legal then I don't understand why so many other cars are not allowed to be. Even when this thing is working as intended. it's shooting hot flames out the back.
Most laws around street legality center around certification of the chassis, safety equipment, and emissions. Don't run the jet engine during a smog test, and prove that all the necessary safety equipment function (signals, airbags, seatbelts, etc), and you're going to pass. This is why most kit cars depend on a "donor" chassis that gets stripped down and have the new car built on top of.
I don't want to start another "SF vs Miami/Austin rest of the US" but! An awesome thing in the Bay-Area is all the insane stuff you get on eBay and Craigslist. I bought a Velodyne VLP-16 LIDAR for my mobile robot side project and met up with a guy in SF. He had a startup that ended up using vision only so they sold off their LIDARs.
When I read the headline, the first thing I thought was "definitely in California." Not even a question.