Yes! Its entirely possible to construct a combustion chamber and exhaust nozzle on an ordinary car or truck turbocharger and convert it into a functional jet engine. :) Some of them have even been able to produce enough thrust that it would be possible to propel a small car or boat. So seed the junkyard with a fantastic assortment of old turbochargers, oilpumps, electric motors and steel pipe. :) So you can have jet powered junk without the need for expensive ready made jet engines. The two URLs below will get you started with ideas. I'm sure some of these builders would be delighted to appear on JYW as "experts" LOL! http://www.ip.co.za/people/kalle/dtt.htm http://www.gas-turbines.com/

-- Gregg Eshelman (gregg1@valint.net), February 23, 2001

Answers

Cool, they could mount them on dragracers. Heck if they were so easy to build I could have build one to put on my X, dang it would have made her go faster.

-- Richard James Retey (theswampie@cs.com), February 24, 2001.

Hell, I could have out one on my Ex and made her go faster too!

-- Dan Denney (Rustrenegades@hotmail.com), February 24, 2001.

Heh, how about some more constructive answers, eh?

-- Gregg Eshelman (gregg1@valint.net), February 24, 2001.

It would be really nice to build one so we could make their Ex'sa go fasters. We could strap it to them, and drag race them down the strip! First EX to actually do something useful wins!

(Sorry! Guess I woke up on the wrong side of the coffin this morning!)

BROADCAST JUNKIES WEBSITE http://www.angelfire.com/tv2/broadcastjunkies

-- Joey Falgout (Broadcast Junkies) (joeyinalexandria@hotmail.com), February 25, 2001.

Having helped some friends try to build a turbo-propelled creeper some 10 years ago, it ain't as easy as it looks, even when you have a functional turbo, and flame-outs, backfires, etc. are pretty dangerous - good thing we were using methanol and not something really explosive... Having said that, it would be a cool thing to have the teams build, but you'd have to have the yard seeded with some pretty specific pieces (like maybe some turbos that the experts had worked with before, so they'd know how to build the burner cans to get it to sorta-kinda work...) to get it done in 10 hours. How would you do the different-strategies angle? Different fuels (alcohol vs propane)? Small turbo with afterburner vs big turbo without? Let the flames begin 8)

-- Theo Smit (tsmit@home.com), February 26, 2001.

Different strategies - gas turbine jet engine vs pulsejet engine.

If you want to know the difference between the two kinds of jet engines, use google or altavista 8)

(To reply in email replace blort dot invalid with anime dot net)

Junkyard Wars Links

-- Dan Hollis (goemon@blort.invalid), February 28, 2001.