@vonskippy

It is street legal, but only as long as he doesn’t turn on the jet while on public property. It still has a regular gas engine.

They could get him with a noise citation, though.

Great hack. Nice to keep tailgaters at the right distance :P

If the picture is 1/20th the fireball, I want to see a video (zoomed out). Cool stuff. It is nice to have money.

I am guessing that “Tommy Faze” hasn’t had a look at the extensive aluminum frame attached to the body underneath the bumper skin.

The metalwork inside (did you mean bodywork? That is likely polyurathane), is pristine.

This is pretty old, I have seen it in Mags and David Letterman had it in a segment for his show (he said the visibility was “10 miles, or nearly infinite”, here in California’s great Valley that isn’t really a long distance, 30 miles would be a much clearer day.)

Oh my God! The dude could be sent to Gitmo to be water boarded, to reveal his terrorist connections. That or on BSer was BSin another BSer Anyway in many States any thing extends 3 feet past a vehicle taillights has to have a red flag during the day and a red cluster light at night. God dammit I forgot to take the cluster light off before lighting it up again, gotta buy a new one,again. Driving that thing down the road in cattle country ma set off a stampede.

This thing is great. His site is funny. You can really pick up on his humor as he describes some of the tech details.

I’d love to see that scooter with dual mounted jets.

A Honda Metropolitan with dual jet engines? Pardon me while I cringe, but that looks like an awfully good way to get oneself or one’s wife killed. It looks awesome, but many suicidal things look awesome until they’re removing you from the pavement with a spatula

Where else would the air intake reasonably be located except inside the vehicle? He could have used a longer jet engine and located it outside of the car but I think that is about the point where this mod (from like 1995) would have gone from extreme to bordering on pointless. Still, a fun exercise though.

Totally awesome, though he should channel the intake to some side scoops or something.

OK guys, this is a very old story (more than five years). However, back when it came out there was an interesting following. I live in California and do know that this car is street legal. It’s true, the DMV has tried to make it illegal, but due to the inconvenience of something called the US Constitution, they cannot do anything about it, except make rules for new cars.

It is illegal for any government in the USA to make a law that is retroactive (a legal term called “Ex Post Facto”). The laws that apply to this vehicle are the ones in effect at the time the car was manufactured. This means it qualifies as a hybrid and an alternative fueled vehicle.

This engineer was smart. He didn’t modify the original drive train at all and therefore cannot be used as an excuse to remove it from the road. It is smog legal, according to the law. It is a hybrid, according to the law. It qualifies as an alternative fuel vehicle, according to the law (although he doesn’t make any attempts to exploit the exceptions given to such vehicles). It is mechanically safe, according to the law, as it retains all of its factory safety features and has additional ones added to strengthen that requirement.

The fuel is expensive and he rarely fires it up, except in a controlled area. It’s mostly functional eye candy.

About the scooter — It isn’t done. Notice the milk crates? And yes, it is terrifying – I have a Metropolitan and going 40mph is scary, let alone what those engines could make it go. Still.. I clicked through excitedly when I heard them say it was done. Still not, though, after all these years.

“as cmholm mentioned, there is always the possiblity of an air scoop on the roof.”

That would have to be a huge air scoop though to meet the needs of this turbine!

I think the point is that there isn’t a law disallowing it, which is how many laws work. Look up selling babies in MI in around ’97

@Mattj – +1

It’s street legal for it to be there, not to be used, as with everyone else, I saw this a while back so I’m not checking this for clarity but I recall reading it and him saying it’s classed as a hybrid because of 2 engines, of course I’m sure that was tongue in cheek.

@Hacksaw
Wrong!
Chrysler built gas turbine powered cars. They used the same style turbines that Jet Engines wear, and in fact chose the ones that GE makes for powering navy ships, and geared them accordingly.

However they were lousy on milage, and ate fuel the way teenagers eat hamburgers. The ones that were built were largely museum pieces, I believe one might be owned by that dolt Jay Leno, and one other might be sitting in their museum.

That must be **SO** loud in the cabin… Jeez!

I’m the person who owns the van mentioned here.

http://www.youtube.com/krugtech

I challenge Mr.Patrick to a 1/4 mile grudge race.

Ron Patrick. I’m throwing down the glove. Grudge race. 1/4 mile. Heads up.

Jet Beetle vs Turbine Minivan

The first daily driver jet race.

It will be epic……