nice... does anyone remember a K Car with a supercar engine? that was not quite as crazy as this one, no jet engine, but it was nice. i can't seem to find it but i remember reading about this "sleeper car".
Ron Patrick's Street-Legal Jet Powered Volkswagen Beetle (2006)
31–40 of 146 posts
Re: Ron Patrick's Street-Legal Jet Powered Volkswagen Beetle (2006)
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
We live in a society where things are legal by default. Why would adding a jet engine to a car be a priori illegal? If he harms somebody or otherwise causes damage, that itself is what's illegal and he'd be liable regardless of motor vehicle regulations. If this mod became a larger trend, especially consumer-available, then regulations would be implemented to head it off. But for a few lone instances it's not particu…
20 years ago in Australia my car got canaried because I had LPG and a pod filter, which was illegal because you were only allowed 1 modification to the intake system. I am 100% confident that if I strapped a jet to the car, it would be illegal. As it should be. If you want to do extremely dangerous modifications, do it on your own property. Not a public road where you risk killing a family of 5.
You're speaking from an Australian perspective about what is, to make an otherwise unsupported argument about what should be in the US. I'll be one of the first to point out problems and blindspots from the American conception of "freedom", but in this case it seems highly appropriate. You yourself even got bit by overregulation for something seemingly reasonable and forward-looking, and yet you're still reflexively defending it!
In my estimation your example "family of 5" is at much more risk from widespread unnecessarily-high bro-dozer trucks than a single engineer personally adding a jet engine to his car while seemingly being very in touch with the dangers of operating it. In fact given the severe disparity in other vehicle crash survivability statistics between coupes and trucks, I've got to wonder if this car isn't still individually safer than a casually-driven pickup truck.
Re: Ron Patrick's Street-Legal Jet Powered Volkswagen Beetle (2006)
#33Awesome project, but are there any actual videos of it running the jet engine? He says the jet engine moves 11,000 CFM of air, but that air can only come through the windows and the sunroof. Pulling 183 cubic feet of air per second through those little openings while sitting in the drivers seat isn't going to work. Just try to do the math on how fast that air would have to be moving through those windows. Cool show p…
Yes, there's video online. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCqxWhKe_tA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zNdkXwFQ3c (Noise warning, for obvious reasons.)
I see
> I don't know how fast the car will go and probably never will. The car was built to thrill me, not kill me. That doesn't stop me from the occasional blast on the highway though.
but I am unsure if that means he has never driven it using the jet engine, or whether the engine even will power the car or just kinda runs on its own. I'm curious to see it go at all under jet engine power.
Edit: maybe this is it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-ipYAl3o40
Re: Ron Patrick's Street-Legal Jet Powered Volkswagen Beetle (2006)
#34Re: Ron Patrick's Street-Legal Jet Powered Volkswagen Beetle (2006)
#35nice... does anyone remember a K Car with a supercar engine? that was not quite as crazy as this one, no jet engine, but it was nice. i can't seem to find it but i remember reading about this "sleeper car".
Crazy engine swaps are not uncommon. There are some Fiat 500s and such with v8 double motorcycle engines, wankels or even v12s and racecar v6s:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A52W20Z38Bw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6SZuionhqQ
A turbine is relatively exotic, if only because they are even more impractical.
Re: Ron Patrick's Street-Legal Jet Powered Volkswagen Beetle (2006)
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Hmmm, the car has two engines making the car a hybrid so maybe we can drive in the commuter lanes along with the Toyota Priuses. "
Imagine being the cop who has to argue over the ticket with that guy ^^
There's a paragraph and photo of this very thing in the TFA
Re: Ron Patrick's Street-Legal Jet Powered Volkswagen Beetle (2006)
#37Apparently the post is from 2006. I wonder if this contraption is still street-legal.
It would be legal to run it on the factory engine, at which point the jet is just cargo. If you start the jet on a public road, it could be considered a public nuisance, reckless driving, etc. If a the vehicle presents a clear and present danger of any kind it is a-priory a ticketable offence at least. With the jet off, it poses no such danger.
I'm certain an officer could find all sorts of reasons to ticket that vehicle if inspired.
Re: Ron Patrick's Street-Legal Jet Powered Volkswagen Beetle (2006)
#38How on earth is it street legal to emit a high-pressure plume of jet exhaust behind you?
We live in a society where things are legal by default. Why would adding a jet engine to a car be a priori illegal? If he harms somebody or otherwise causes damage, that itself is what's illegal and he'd be liable regardless of motor vehicle regulations. If this mod became a larger trend, especially consumer-available, then regulations would be implemented to head it off. But for a few lone instances it's not particu…
In this case the law has already been written. It's not a CARB-approved, nor EPA compliant engine. You're not allowed to run it on the street. The law is written so that everything you do to a car's emission system is illegal by default. To make any engine modifications in California, the part must be CARB approved and have a compliance sticker on it. Engine swaps in California are legal, as long as the engine being swapped is at least as new as the engine in the vehicle and meets the same regulatory requirements. Which means you swap in another EPA/CARB approved engine, but not a jet engine.
Re: Ron Patrick's Street-Legal Jet Powered Volkswagen Beetle (2006)
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, there's video online. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCqxWhKe_tA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zNdkXwFQ3c (Noise warning, for obvious reasons.)
I see > I don't know how fast the car will go and probably never will. The car was built to thrill me, not kill me. That doesn't stop me from the occasional blast on the highway though. but I am unsure if that means he has never driven it using the jet engine, or whether the engine even will power the car or just kinda runs on its own. I'm curious to see it go at all under jet engine power. Edit: maybe this is it htt…
I think he means he's used it plenty, but hasn't tried to max out the speed.
Re: Ron Patrick's Street-Legal Jet Powered Volkswagen Beetle (2006)
#40Seems like a good time to ask this question that has been bugging me forever, since all the HN jet nerds will be drawn to this thread:
Why hasn't anyone made a hybrid car that uses a gasoline-powered turbine generator to charge its batteries instead of a piston engine?
I'd imagine that hooking up such an engine directly to the drivetrain like in a Prius would be difficult, but surely a small turbine with one hell of a muffler running a generator (similar to a natural gas power plant), both running only at their peak efficiency RPMs, would yield a very efficient car that could still use the extant gasoline infrastructure.
I'm sure there are very interesting reasons, either due cost, noise, reliability, or durability, that this idea hasn't taken off, and I'm very interested to hear y'all's thoughts on the subject. Or maybe there has been progress in this area, and I'd love to see some links!