VW Beetle Fitted with a Jet Engine 283
6031769 writes "Ron Patrick has decided to go that little bit further by souping up his VW beetle with a jet engine, as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle. Serious planning went into the project. Patrick said, 'We did (computerized) structural analysis and we did stability analysis. And by God, you know what happens? It works!' Contrast with the Rocket Boy to see how it should not be done." Yes, the Darwin award winner was found to be bogus, but unlike the myth, Ron still lives!
Here's his personal website w/pics (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.ecm-co.com.nyud.net:8090/jetbeetle/ [nyud.net]
Coralizing the link doesn't seem to work for me, but YMMV.
FYI - It's hosted on his business website, so try not to
A mirror wouldn't hurt.
-http://www.ecm-co.com/jetbeetle/
This is CARBAGE.. (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.topgear.com/content/timetoburn/section
Re:Military Equipment (Score:5, Informative)
For things like missiles & rockets, the process involves removing any fuel/propellant and then doing something to the outside that permanently fucks it's flight characteristics. Usually a big notch in the nose, fins &/or compromising the rocket nozzles/jet engine.
Any guidance electronics that come with your rocket or missile are another story. You might need a permit to own/buy/import them, assuming you can have them at all.
You can buy all kinds of fun stuff, but the caveat is that it'll never work again. Unless you're diligent, in which case you can build yourself a fully functional attack helicopter or various other things by digging around in supposedly demilitarized scrap. The Army improperly throws away a lot of stuff.
Nice reference to the spackle approach. (Score:4, Informative)
I have to agree with him regarding hot-rodders. A lot of people seem to think the way to solve a problem is to frob at it until you get something that works. All the Motorola phone hacking kids, Xbox homebrewers, and PSP kiddies seem to think that the spackle approach (throw things at the wall until something sticks) is the best way to solve problems. You know, rather than solving them by understanding them
That's Nothing (Score:3, Informative)
Re:how did he get permision to do this? (Score:3, Informative)
How about a missile silo? (Score:3, Informative)
I figure CHP pulling his volkswagon over will pale in comparison to the visitors he'll get about 10 minutes after the first satellite pass over his little display.
If I remember (and I may be wrong in detail), when the silo outside Green Valley was decommissioned and turned into a tourist attraction, the decommissioned missile was hauled out, laid on its side and had a big chunk cut out to demonstrate to passing satellites that it was clearly non-flyable. Then it was popped back down the hole, the lid half-opened and huge concrete buffers placed across the rails to prevent the lid from opening fully.
big deal (Score:1, Informative)
direct video link (Score:2, Informative)
http://cdn.sfgate.com/gate/av/movies/2006/04/30/j
Oy vey, the physics, economy, and safety sucks! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:hasn't this been done before? (Score:3, Informative)
They were JATO (Jet-Assisted Take-Off) rockets, not ICBMs (InterContinental Ballistic Missile).
A JATO rocket is used to give additional thrust to an airplane so it reaches its takeoff speed faster and can thus rise from shorter runway. An ICBM is used to lift an atomic bomb into space and drop it to another continent from there.
Just a little difference in size and engine power there ;).
Been done before on an old (Type 1) Beetle (Score:2, Informative)
Not very impressive. (Score:5, Informative)
Trouble is that that kind of engine isn't designed to do that. It's a T-58 engine, a turboshaft engine off of a helicopter. While the engine on a jet is designed to shoot lots of hot air out the back, producing thrust to drive the jet forward, turboshafts are designed to, well, turn a shaft, to turn a rotor blade. In other words, they're torquey, not thrusty, and helicopters don't go fast because of the engine exhaust, they go fast because of the rotor.
I was looking to buy a (ex-Soviet) MiG 15 or MiG 17 jet engine.
He'd have been far better off doing that. The engine off a MiG-17 develops 6,000 ft-lbs of thrust.
I mean, look what kind of performance he gets with his 1500-horsepower jet engine:
He said that a jet-boosted run will "pin the speedometer and that's at 140." He thinks that when it hits 160 mph -- he hasn't seen that
140? My 300-horsepower Mustang GT is perfectly capable of hitting 140, and would probably do 160 if a governor doesn't kick in. 1500-horsepower is the power of the gas turbine in an M-1 tank; if he had this thing hooked into the drive wheels, he'd go like a bat out of hell. But as it is, all he's doing is making a lot of noise.
Which I mean is fun and all, but fundamentally, he doesn't have a jet-powered car. He's got a car with a jet engine in the trunk.
Re:Oy vey, the physics, economy, and safety sucks! (Score:3, Informative)
It's a good thing you thought of all this stuff, and the Stanford Ph. D. holding owner of a firm called Engine Control and Monitoring didn't. Boy, you'd better call him before he goofs! Thank god for you!
Everyone's an armchair expert. Also, RTFA, it says when he kicks in the engine, he first gets the car up to 90 miles an hour using the conventional engine in the front of the car.
Re:Not very impressive. (Score:5, Informative)
In a more detailed article, they reported that he converted the engine to a turbojet by taking out the shaft turbine, the gearbox, and sticking in a nozzle. Since a turboshaft is just a turbojet with these extra components, it's quite a reasonable conversion.
Re:Not very impressive. (Score:4, Informative)
No, that's a gross oversimplification. The bypass ratio of a high-thrust jet engine and that of a high-torque helicopter engine are entirely different, and you don't change that significantly with the described modifications. He's still got an engine designed to produce a lot of shaft horsepower, and you don't get a lot of thrust out of that just because you remove the shaft.