Ron is an old friend. He's a very sharp and funny guy too. Ron was on the David Letterman show and Dave was cracking up while interviewing Ron right before he ran his bug down the track at the old Altamont Dragstip https://youtu.be/XTzxptdvt3c
I always enjoyed visiting Ron's lab at Stanford and chatting him up. Between talking with him and Fritz Rinehart at the other engine lab down the hall in bldg 500 I always felt I learned something new about combustion.
Personally, I preferred his 572 hemi mid sixties Chrysler. Now that was a scary car!
During my undergrad and masters, I worked for Chris Edwards, who took over the IC engine lab from Fritz. It was a fun place to be -- running a single-cylinder research engine and a chevy LS1 on the dynos, setting up a miniature turbine engine and a hybrid rocket motor stand for the advanced undergrad thermo class. I arrived too late to meet Fritz, and I never had the pleasure of meeting Ron. I wish I had.
It was a DOS program, written in C. Fritz asked me to write it for Windows 2.1, but I said: "no thanks, all I need is a frame buffer and a GPIB IO Card". I made my own simple little graphics subsystem with fonts borrowed from X11.
Wow, what a blast from the past. When I first took the IC engines class, it was in that lab from your pictures. During grad school I helped move it over to the fancy new MERL building. I remember doing a project in undergrad to add closed-loop control of equivalence ratio via O2 sensors to the LS1.
I remember getting a wide band oxygen sensor and tuning the gain in the new ECU (and by tuning I mean eventually realizing turning it all the way up minimizes steady state error). When I worked with the setup, it had no supercharger and was a lab demo for the newly reintroduced engines class. (getting to be almost a decade ago, I should go visit) Did you guys do research with it?
No, I didn't do any research with the LS1. That was just an undergrad project for me, as a lab experiment for the engine class students to run.
Speaking of EtaGen (your third link), two of the founders, Shannon Miller and Matt Svrcek, are from Chris Edwards's group at Stanford. I worked with Matt quite a bit during undergrad. I knew Shannon but didn't work with her much directly. They are doing some very cool stuff. Their generator been in development a long time -- I hope it can go to production soon.
What a blast from the past. I actually worked in the same office park they did. Hearing an afterburner blast when working late one night was quite a suprise! I must say that it made my day to wonder out investigating only to find a Beetle with a jet engine doing afterburner blasts :)
Jealousy. Not for the jet engine, YMMV I guess, but for living in a country where you can do that. I've been doing some research for converting my old car to electric. Bureaucracy costs more than double what parts+work do... assuming it's possible at all.
Reading between the lines, I don't get the impression he filled out any paperwork for the ability to transport a fully functional jet engine on the back of his otherwise totally normal 4 cylinder production VW beetle.
The fact it turns on, is bolted to the vdub and so forth... mere details.
Converting a car is a completely different kettle of fish. As someone who's built a couple of personal electric vehicles I can attest, the US has plenty of regulations of what you can do on the highways and byways.
> As someone who's built a couple of personal electric vehicles I can attest, the US has plenty of regulations of what you can do on the highways and byways.
It depends. If you're starting with a rolling chassis that's already road legal 99% of the work is done for you.
In CA you can drive a death trap as long as it doesn't pollute.
In MI you can drive a vehicle that burns tires and is lubricated with whale oil as long as it has mud flaps.
It's not like some places in Europe where applying for a mortgage has less paperwork than installing aftermarket control arms.
I mean, I'm all for less regulation for DIYers but we do have it pretty good here.
-I happen to live in Norway. (Which is a very nice place to live overall, but can be somewhat challenging at times if you like to tinker with cars, for instance.)
I can apply for a mortgage online in thirty seconds. This is not an exaggeration.
If I wish to replace the original control arms on my Land Cruiser with something - anything - differing from OEM spec, I need to obtain paperwork from the control arm manufacturer as well as from Toyota stating that this will be fine, said papers will have to be brought to a control station where the vehicle will be inspected, documentation perused and the change hopefully being approved.
True, but much like other things in that category it's another reason I'd never want to live there.
He mentions using the afterburner on a highway. This is an accident waiting to happen. Who's to say he'll never make a mistake and put that massive fireball somewhere it'll cause harm.
Saw this linked in the comments yesterday, not surprised at all to see it hit the front page today :-)
Love the pic of the cop scratching his nose wondering what to charge them with!
The way this guy fucks around with jet engines really puts a B.S. CompSci degree in perspective (and not in a good way!). Admittedly he did get a PhD from Stanford.
Did he ever build his wife that jet-powered scooter?!
I didn't downvote you :( but I am guessing the reason people did (ugh) is that the last picture is just the initial setup, and they want "real" finished products, anyways, thanks for trying!
"We get this a lot. A police officer picking at his nose while trying to figure out what to charge me with. Notice the hopeful anticipation of us on the right. We're rooting for him and offer suggestions but unfortunately, the California Department of Motor Vehicles did not anticipate such a vehicle so he's out of luck. 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. "
So the 11,000 CFM that it draws comes through the windows and the sunroof? I'm sure they did the math, but it amazes me they didn't have to remove the windshield to keep it running.
Have to pick a small nit, not entirely correct to say that no one else has put a jet engine in a street legal car, there was in fact a "production" jet-engine based car 1962-64, the short-lived Chrysler Turbine (seen on "Jay Leno's Garage", CNBC)
To nitpick a bit more, these engines would have had a secondary power turbine added to produce mechanical power. This would have reduced the exhaust pressure, so they wouldn’t have used a jet for propulsion.
Rover actually produced the first car turbine engines back in the 40’s.
Of particular note "you drive the car up to about 90 miles an hour and you spool up the jet"--it will just slide at lower speeds, and you will have no control. So the 0-60 and 1/4 mile times are just whatever you get in a stock beetle carrying an extra 300 lbs.
Not only were the guys at the air base trying to sell Patrick an SA-2, "they were saying, 'you want a MiG 21 (fighter jet)? I'll sell you two tanks and a MiG.' " .
"So they wanted $2,000 for the missile," Patrick said, "and I had a bottle of ouzo and after a while I got them down to a grand." He still hasn't got the 35-foot-long missile, but he does know what he'll do with it once it clears U.S. customs. (Good luck.)
"I want to build a missile silo on my front lawn," he said. "It'll have those electric-opening silo doors and I'll have a set of lights for it. Then, at night, I open the silo doors and raise the missile up, with those lights on it."
This guy is a dream come true. He's like a version of Woz with a flair for surplus weaponry. It's fantastic.
Also, imagine having the connections to buy a Mach 3 missile that shot down Gary Powers for less than a Macbook. I wonder if a launcher is included.
The end of the article we're commenting on is literally: "here's my wife's Honda Metropolitan scooter. She wants it to go faster than 40 mph. So I have these two little JFS 100 jet engines and I am thinking how to put them on the scooter."
I have a '71 Super Beetle (and aa '71 Karmen Ghia). Doubling the horsepower in the car from the factory's original 38HP makes the car a bit scary ... I can't even imagine that extra push in the back!
The engine spins up to 26,000 RPM (idle is 13,000 RPM), draws air at 11,000 CFM, and is rated at 1350 hp. It weighs only 300 lbm.
This is a great example of why jet engines are used on planes - the power-to-weight ratio is far higher. The original flat-4 VW engine used in the "old" Beetle is already > 200lbs, and including the rest of the drivetrain is well over 300.
Nothing like the same scale, but for a chuckle, this reminds me of the New Zealand fellow who build a small jet engine in his shed to cool his beer (or, that's how I remember it...).
“It’s hard to say, because I just pin the speedo at 140 miles and hour, laugh hysterically, and then hope the cops don’t nail me.”
“Now, can you drive around the surface streets of California with that jet engine activated?”
“You could do it, but I don’t know what would happen. My runs are at night. I’ll leave the office late at night, and I’ll spool it up and nail it on a highway, and then sorta drive back on the gasoline engine and... go to bed.”
I always enjoyed visiting Ron's lab at Stanford and chatting him up. Between talking with him and Fritz Rinehart at the other engine lab down the hall in bldg 500 I always felt I learned something new about combustion.
Personally, I preferred his 572 hemi mid sixties Chrysler. Now that was a scary car!
edit: spelling.