jet van

[turbochris]

I forgot I was a member here. Check out my Nimbus powered van. The van is front wheel drive, the Nimbus will power the rear wheels. The Nimbus is on rails, it has 3 positions- service, park, and running. Here's the service position, when it's in the park position, the van looks like every other van. When it's in the running position, the turbine outlets will stick out the back window.

[turbochris]

Here's the turbine in the park position.

[turbochris]

here's the axle installed, it's a 9 inch ford with custom axle shafts. The housing was a kit I welded together donated by Flex Racing/Laserform Machine of Columbia, South Carolina.

The only problem I'm having is deciding on how to couple the turbine to the rear axle. I have most of the details worked out but the last problem is this- I have 2 parallel shafts about 750 mm apart, they have to be connected together with a 3:1 ratio. The Nimbus runs at 2100 rpm with almost 2000 ftlb of torque, I need to speed that up to about 6300 rpm. What would be a reliable and economical way to couple these shafts?

[leo]

I would put in a manual gearbox the wrong way around.
You could even shift the gears, of course also the wrong way, don’t know of this would go smoothly because its probably rotating the wrong way.
Also its cheap, there has to be many of them laying around on scrap yards.
Of course you still have that 750 mm gap to cross, maybe with two differentials?.

[Fricke]

I´d use a chain drive, if that don´t work - the next alternative would be a belt drive.

One idea: try to find a fat alternator, and a big electric motor...

Nice to see that Your up to your usual 'madness' =)

[Zippiot]

My neighbor has a 1000 pound thrust jet in the back of his VW beetle, google jet engine in beetle or something like that. It took him 3 years, it is very well mounted and everything!

[hagent]

What ever you do you must take into consideration the amount of torque.

You don't want a chain to break and go flying through the van. So make sure it can handle that amount of power.

Good luck,

And dude it looks awsome!

Just make sure you roll the windows down when you fire it up. And put your seat belt on, and remove any lose articles of clothing:)

[Jim Berquist]

So I don't see much room for the fishing poles and camp gear? Where do I sleep?


Jim

[Thedon]

how much did that thing cost ya?

[thecheat]

wow.


PS: that's pretty amazing! how much thrust is it rated at?