When it comes to children’s ride-on toys, the Star Wars Land Speeder is one of the cooler examples out there. However, with weedy 12-volt motors, they certainly don’t move quickly. [Joel Creates] decided to fix all that, hopping up his land speeder with a real jet engine.
First, the original drivetrain was removed, with new wheels installed underneath. Initially, it was set up with the front wheels steering, while the rear wheels were left to caster freely. A RC jet engine was installed in the center engine slot on the back of the land speeder, and was controlled via a standard 2-channel RC transmitter.
The jet engine worked, but the wheel configuration led to the speeder simply doing donuts. With the speeder reconfigured with rear wheels locked in place, the speeder handled much more predictably. Testing space was limited to a carpark, so high-speed running was out of the question. However, based on the limited testing achieved, it looks as though the speeder would be capable of a decent clip with the throttle maxed out.
It’s not a practical build, but it sure looks like a fun one. [Joel Creates] has big dreams of adding two more jet engines and taking it out to a runway for high-speed testing, and that’s something we’d love to see.
RC jet engines are a bit of a YouTube fad right now, showing up on everything from RC cars to Teslas. Video after the break.
I love it.
I. Want. One.
Mk II needs to be a bit bigger and with 3 engines, though.
Yeah, you differently couldn’t fit two droids and two full grown Jedi in this thing.
These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.
I’ll go along with Alysson Rowan’s comment. At first seeing the email message and thinking about that, I was under the impression someone had built a hover craft type copy and put a REAL Jet engine in it and made a dust buster of the project. I could just see driving that around the neighborhood. Makes me think back to the old Chrysler Turbine car that melted radiators at the street lights.
Okay Safety Nannies, start your comment engines!
Don’t touch the hot parts?
Headline photo displays _some_ thought about safety. The head is the most expensive part to replace, and he’s got a helmet on. So far so good. Priorities check out.
Knees, elbows are probably next… Elbows are very vulnerable, very painful, and very fiddly surgery. I’d have elbow and knee pads. But now we’re just arguing about thresholds, and everyone gets to set their own. At least when they’re not at work.
It looks like the front and possibly rear wheels may be solid rubber or similar. That will be very uncomforably jarring and potentially unsafe at higher speeds as he crosses over each of the expansion gaps in the runway.
If he’s going to be running more than a dozen km/hour then a braking system would also be appropriate.
As shown in the Title Photo, that is what the heels of his shoes are for…
Lose the wheels,give it a hovercraft skirt and move the steering link to aim the engine…
I am still convinced that a full-sized one could be made utilizing ground effect.
While I like the idea, that current landspeeder design has its center-of-gravity behind the center-of-pressure (from air resistance when it’s moving). The present design would likely go out of control as it rises into a ground-effect-assisted flight as soon as the rear wheels lose contact with the ground, yawing around the center of gravity from air pressure pushing on the lightweight front. Something more like a “podracer” design with the heavy engines and fuel up-in-front and a long light body trailing behind would be more stable, although getting hit in the face by the super hot high-velocity jet exhaust has its own downsides…