As a kind of inversion of JYW, give each team the same sort of car or light truck, and have them modify the machine to produce the most horsepower (as determined by a drag race or truck pull-off).

The teams must understand the principles of internal combustion engines (good teaching point for the show). There are all kinds of things they could make: positive displacement or centrificle superchargers, air to air or air to water intercoolers, water injection, nitrous oxide (salted in the yard, of course), turbochargers if they are really motivated.

If the vehicles are old enough, the teams could even do such things as build new manifolds and mount multiple carburators.

For visual appeal, the bodywork back to the windshild should be removed, so the viewers can have a wonderful vision of smoking, belching, fire breathing machinery. (Engine mounted fire extinguishers are compulsory in this episode).

Any takers?

-- Arthur Majoor (a_majoor@hotmail.com), February 13, 2001

Answers

This idea has been mentioned at least 10 times over the past month....Check the posts!

-- John Gap (mindthegap64@hotmail.com), February 13, 2001.

Not a brute horsepower contest.

-- Stephen A. Binion (Stephenbinion@hotmail.com), February 13, 2001.