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!
Prior art (Score:5, Funny)
Signed,
Batman
Re:Prior art (Score:3, Funny)
(OK, OK, OK, I know, Jetta's the name of a wind... but I couldn't resist.
Hmmm... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hmmm... (Score:4, Funny)
"Ho"
Cause that is all you can read.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:2, Funny)
At that speed it should say, 1-800-DRINK-SHIT
Reference (Score:2)
Is there a bumper sticker that says: How do you like my driving? Dial 1-800-EAT-SHIT.
For children posters who might not know, the this is a reference to the JATO urban legend [snopes.com]
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Funny)
VW Thunder (Score:5, Funny)
Re:VW Thunder (Score:5, Funny)
"Time to unpimp zee auto!"
Re:VW Thunder (Score:2)
"It's definitely sucking"
Re:VW Thunder (Score:2, Funny)
Zoom. (Score:3, Funny)
Is it me (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Is it me (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Is it me (Score:2, Offtopic)
I'm the most frequent slashdot poster at my jr high
Is very great.
Defensive driving (Score:5, Funny)
Patrick says that once in a while he puts on a crash helmet (mainly as a sound muffler), takes the car out on nearby Highway 237 in the wee hours of the morning and fires it up for a brief and hopefully cop-free run.
I frequently travel home from work on Hwy. 237 in Sunnyvale in the wee hours of the morning. I think I'd better watch out for this guy. I doubt my unmodfied Hyundai Accent could keep up, or even get out of the way for that matter.
Re:Defensive driving (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Defensive driving (Score:2)
Re:Defensive driving (Score:2)
-nB
Re:Defensive driving (Score:2)
Re:Defensive driving (Score:4, Funny)
Sure you can. After all, the speed of electromagnetic radiation in atmosphere is less than c. Now, a VW Beetle might not be able to outrun light even in an atmosphere, but it certainly is not impossible.
Another possibility would be to just jam the radio. Or perhaps use a color-changing car paint and a license plate switcher.
Re:Defensive driving (Score:5, Funny)
...
Or perhaps use a color-changing car paint
No need for the color changing paint - if you travel at that speed, you would be sufficiently red-shifted for the tailing cops. Just run, then park at the next lot - "No officer, I didn't see that red car speeding by."
Re:Defensive driving (Score:5, Funny)
You don't need color-changing car paint. At relativistic speeds, the officer you are moving away from will phone his buddies to watch out for a dark red car which is very long. His buddies down the road will only see an oncoming *blue* car which is short but has elongated sides. A police chopper overhead will see you arrive at the officers ahead at the same time as the officer you just left, and will have to conclude there are two separate cars. If any officers decide to enter pursuit, you just turn around for a split second, and bam! Eighty subjective years will have gone by for the offending officers.
If any of this is confusing, just give me a call and we'll drive to Vegas together in my relativistically modified VW Bug... none of this jet engine crap. All I demand is that you're female and sexy.
Solomon
Re:Defensive driving (Score:2)
Re:Defensive driving (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Defensive driving (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Defensive driving (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Defensive driving (Score:3, Funny)
Ouch.
Re:Defensive driving (Score:2)
Re:Defensive driving (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Defensive driving (Score:2)
If you've ever stood next to a running jet engine (F-15 at full AB) oyu'd understand why.
Re:Defensive driving (Score:5, Interesting)
If you've ever stood next to a running jet engine (F-15 at full AB) oyu'd understand why.
If you stood within 100 meters of an F-15 without hearing protection, you'd be deaf. Every once in a while at Langley AFB (no, not the CIA place) I'd drive toward the side gate next to the runway, and one would be taking off. If I had the unfortunate luck to do so while they're doing a vertical ascension takeoff, windows up in my truck or not, it HURT. FYI that's when they take off at full throttle, full afterburners, and as soon as they're a few feet above the runway, turn to go straight up. As if the afterburners aren't loud enough, once the ass end of the plane has that flat pavement 10 feet behind it, the noise scatters all over and even half a mile away you can't hear the person next to you.
So yes, to the GP poster, flashlights and a hairdryer have NOTHING on a fighter jet with a cocky bastard at the stick.
Useless trivia fact: while the F-15 can perform this maneuver, the F-16 lacks the thrust/mass ratio to sustain that climb for more than a second or two.
Re:Defensive driving (Score:3, Interesting)
Totally wrong.
F-15C max take off weight (MTOW): 68,000 lbs. F100-PW-220 engines max thrust in full AB: 23,830 lbs x 2 = 47,660 lbs.
F-16C MTOW: 37,500 lbs. GE F110-GE-129 max thrust in full AB: 29,000 lbs.
With a standard fuel/weapons load (which is lower than the MTOW) the F-15 and F-16 have about the same thurst to weight ratio, and both can pull s
Re:Defensive driving (Score:3, Interesting)
Very true. We were required to wear double. Plugs and earmuffs.
But as to your F-16 comment, actually some of them, depending on configuration, can continue to accellerate in the vertical. I got an incentive ride while in Germany, and we did in fact go vertical, gaining speed as we went up. But yes...the twin engine F-15 has a better thrust to weigt ratio than the single engine F-16.
Other useless trivia...the Langley airsho
the Volkswagon Irre (Score:5, Funny)
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/
Oops (Score:3, Funny)
"hopefully copfree run" (Score:5, Funny)
Re:"hopefully copfree run" (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:"hopefully copfree run" (Score:3, Interesting)
Thanks for the info. Some more (Score:5, Insightful)
So I am afraid this jet car is actually a bit pathetic. It's no more powerful than the (street legal, normally drivable) VW Bugatti, which costs about the same, and it is less powerful than a suitable modded tractor engine.
What I took away from that company was an in-dept knowledge of how to produce a hardened engine management system, and a lifelong passion for Diesels. As our Technical Director used to say, and history has proved him right, with the exception of power to weight ratio there is absolutely no measure on which a Diesel cannot be made to out-perform every other type of combustion engine.
Re:Thanks for the info. Some more (Score:3, Insightful)
The Bugatti Veyron retails for over a million dollars. This guy paid the cost of a VW Beetle and 250g more. So we're looking at under $300k for the whole deal. He could build three and still have enough cash left over for a more sensible car, like a Porsche, with the $$ it'd take to buy a
Re:"hopefully copfree run" (Score:2)
Of course that was 40 years ago, but still...
Re:"hopefully copfree run" (Score:3, Interesting)
The guys at Top Gear went to an airstrip to test the speed camera 'myth'.
Long story short: In their very unscientific test, the British version of the Speed Camera did not go off when you're going ~170MPH. No Flash, no picture, nothing.
I imagine a 1980's speed camera wasn't designed to capture very high speed objects.
Re:"hopefully copfree run" (Score:4, Funny)
Then what?
Re:"hopefully copfree run" (Score:3, Funny)
Shock and awe, dude, shock and awe. The cops will surrender peacefully and let him go about his business.
Re:It would NOT be a speeding ticket (Score:2)
Sigh (Score:2, Funny)
Painted on the Side (Score:5, Funny)
Compensating for something? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Compensating for something? (Score:2)
It is indeed a huge and purty penis extension, but he put it on the wrong end of the carfor that... or did he?
I actually have no idea what I'm insinuating here.
This is CARBAGE.. (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.topgear.com/content/timetoburn/section
Fill 'er up (Score:2, Funny)
the real question... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:the real question... (Score:2)
You've got it backwards. You mean GPM. Seriously.
Re:the real question... (Score:2)
160 mph? (Score:2)
Turbonique (Score:5, Interesting)
One of these gadgets pushed a VW Beetle (the old, cool kind, not those new toys) to a 9.36 ET at 168 mph in the quarter mile.
Later, someone built a rocket-powered go-kart which managed about 240 MPH...
Re:Turbonique (Score:2)
Turbonique history and old catalogs (Score:2)
Re:Turbonique (Score:2)
It was lots of fun
On the other hand, the rocket in this VW is a small one, at least compared to the one that Manau
He still needs.... (Score:5, Funny)
Time to pimp das Auto! Amerikan engineering in da Haus, ja.
This is what /. is really about (Score:5, Funny)
What a great article!
Re:This is what /. is really about (Score:2)
What about the SF Gate? (Score:2)
Sure, Slashdot lets us know about the articles, but if you got this link in an email, would you credit the guy who sent it to you with covering the story?!?
Sounds like some serious over-compensation... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Sounds like some serious over-compensation... (Score:2)
Ford Mustangs are chick cars.
Punch buggy jet blue! (Score:4, Funny)
gf "Oww! Where? I don't see it..."
me "Too slow!"
other way around (Score:5, Funny)
Shouldn't it be, "adding a VW-beetle to his jet engine"?
Bypass that stupid streaming for the video (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Bypass that stupid streaming for the video (Score:2)
Its all good and fun... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Its all good and fun... (Score:3, Funny)
Guide to life (Score:5, Funny)
You can pretty much fuck around with your youth however you want. Dress crazy, sleep around, be poor, be rich, whatever. There comes a point -- let's say 30 -- when you need to get serious and start thinking about the future. I'm not talking about a job or investing or anything, I mean, do that stuff, but we're not covering that here. We're talking about identity and personality... who you are. There comes a time when reinventions of self are just tedious to your friends and family, so you need to pick a target for middle/old age, and then work, slowly, on gracefully transitioning from whoever you were at 29 into that guy.
I think this is my guy.
(idea cribbed somewhat from Vice magazine)
Jet engine on the Back of a Volkswagon? (Score:2)
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
Re:Nice reference to the spackle approach. (Score:2)
People who "frob" around with fire and/or explosives without knowing what they're doing often end up dead, disfigured, or missing digits/limbs.
That's Nothing (Score:3, Informative)
Why not the 1967 Chevy Impala? (Score:3, Funny)
"But despite all these oversights, the story did specify that the car was a 1967 Chevy Impala. I think the reason this detail is always supplied is because it's critical to make the listener think the test pilot at least looked cool when he flew into the cliff. You'll never hear someone tell a story about a guy in a rocket-powered K-car or a Volkswagen Beetle. It has to be a car that deserves to have a rocket attached to it."
The Rocket Car Legend [rocketcarstory.com]
Re:Why not the 1967 Chevy Impala? (Score:2)
about the rocket car story.
Something about it just screams BS to me.
Nothing new (Score:2, Interesting)
Fully street legal...
Except that the Rovers had a transmission (Score:2)
As for the attitude of the rest of British industry, I'm reminded of the memo that went out around British Aerospace to the effect that nobody was to have anything to do with that madman Richard Noble.
_that_ Richard Noble. He of Thrusts 1 and 2, not apparently heard of by people who post on Slashdot.
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.
direct video link (Score:2, Informative)
http://cdn.sfgate.com/gate/av/movies/2006/04/30/j
Jet-ta? (Score:3, Funny)
Rocket Boy and G-Forces. (Score:2)
Consider a jet fighter designed to withstand afterburner forces and compare to any kind of car you care to consider, be it a 1967 Chevy Impala or not. If Rocket Boy weighted 175 pounds, which is more or less the average for a youngish adult US male, 8 G-Forces translates to the guy applying 1400 pounds of weight on the front seat.
When a car is engineered, including front seat and seatbelt de
Oy vey, the physics, economy, and safety sucks! (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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: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.
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.
Re:Military Equipment (Score:5, Interesting)
An ex-Lockheed test pilot, his goal was to set an absolute altitude record with it - zoom climb it to flame-out, and control the ballistic portion of the flight with reaction thrusters.
After setting a low altitude speed record with it, but before the altitude attempt, Greenamyer had to punch out when one landing gear failed to extend. (You'd never survivve a gear up landing in an F-104.)
I'd hoped to find a lot more info on it on google, but will have to settle for this: Greenamyer [russian.ee]
Re:Military Equipment (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Military Equipment (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:how did he get permision to do this? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:how did he get permision to do this? (Score:2)
If it's far enough out there (car + jet engine), the police won't know what to charge you with or they'll be impressed... and they won't even try to charge you.
Re:how did he get permision to do this? (Score:2)
Re:How many gallons to the mile does this get? (Score:2)
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 ;).