Transportation Hacks

1637 Articles

What One-Winged Squids Can Teach The Airship Renaissance

February 25, 2026 by 19 Comments

It’s a blustery January day outside Lakehurst, New Jersey. The East Coast of North America is experiencing its worst weather in decades, and all civilian aircraft have been grounded the past four days, from Florida to Maine. For the past two days, that order has included military aircraft, including those certified “all weather” – with one notable exception. A few miles offshore, rocking and bucking in the gales, a U.S. Navy airship braves the storm. Sleet pelts the plexiglass windscreen and ice sloughs off the gasbag in great sheets as the storm rages on, and churning airscrews keep the airship on station.

If you know history you might be a bit confused: the rigid airship USS Akron was lost off the coast of New Jersey, but in April, not January. Before jumping into the comments with your corrections, note the story I’ve begun is set not in 1933, but in 1957, a full generation later.

The airship caught in the storm is no experimental Zeppelin, but an N-class blimp, the workhorse of the cold-war fleet. Yes, there was a cold war fleet of airships; we’ll get to why further on. The most important distinction is that unlike the last flight of the Akron, this story doesn’t end in tragedy, but in triumph. Tasked to demonstrate their readiness, five blimps from Lakehurst’s Airship Airborne Early-Warning Squadron 1 remained on station with no gaps in coverage for the ten days from January 15th to 24th. The blimps were able to swap places, watch-on-watch, and provide continuous coverage, in spite of weather conditions that included 60 knot winds and grounded literally every other aircraft in existence at that time. Continue reading “What One-Winged Squids Can Teach The Airship Renaissance” →

Elongating A BMX For Drag Racing

February 24, 2026 by 8 Comments

BMX bikes are a unique frame geometry, essentially forgoing all travel efficiency for maneuverability and sturdiness. For how much abuse these bikes are designed to take, these are all good tradeoffs. But it turns out that these bikes also have an exceptionally low center of gravity, which could make them useful for drag racing, provided they’re given a suitably large electric motor and a few minor frame modifications.

The project began as a fun weekend project for friends [Sam Barker] and [Tom Stanton]. They had a 20″ BMX wheel with a massive integrated hub motor that seemed to be begging to be put onto a BMX bike that they had on hand. After hooking up a 72V, 20Ah battery to it they were quickly zipping around the driveway, but the short wheelbase on the bike was bottlenecking its maximum performace because the bike would wheelie under high throttle. To solve that, they broke out the welder and extended frame, which kept the wheelies to a minimum and allowed them to take it out and drag race.

Another benefit to the extended frame is that the bike has room to store its battery now as well; before the frame extension it was strapped to the side of the frame under the rider in a non-ergonomic fashion. The duo also had to figure out a braking solution since the BMX didn’t come with its own brakes, but a loaner caliper from a penny farthing was found for some basic stopping abilities. We might assume this bike is not street legal on many public roads, but not every ebike operates in the same legal jurisdictions you might be the most familiar with.

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Why Chains Are Still Better For Bicycles Than Belts

February 21, 2026 by 121 Comments

Theoretically a belt drive makes for a great upgrade to a bicycle, as it replaces the heavier, noisy and relatively maintenance-heavy roller chain with a zero-maintenance, whisper-quiet and extremely reliable belt that’s rated at an amazing 20-30,000 km before needing a replacement. Of course, that’s the glossy marketing brochure version of reality, which differed significantly from what [Tristan Ridley] experienced whilst cycling around the globe.

Although initially he was rather happy with his bike, its sealed car-like Pinion gearbox and Gates carbon belt drive system, while out in the wilds of Utah he had a breakdown when the belt snapped. When the spare belt that he had carried with him for the past months also snapped minutes later after fitting it on, it made him decide to switch back to the traditional bush roller chain.

Despite this type of chain drive tracing its roots all the way back to Leonardo da Vinci, they actually offer many advantages over the fancy carbon-fiber-reinforced polyurethane belt. Although with the Pinion gearbox the inability to use a derailleur gearing system is no big deal, [Tristan] found that the ‘zero maintenance’ part of the belt was not true for less hospitable roads

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Electric Jeep With Modified Prius Hardware

February 20, 2026 by 13 Comments

On the list of cars widely regarded as the most reliable vehicles ever built, up there with the Toyota Land Cruiser, the Honda Civic, and the Mercedes W123 diesels, is the unassuming Toyota Prius. Although it adds a bit of complexity with its hybrid drivetrain, its design eliminates a number of common wear items and also tunes it for extreme efficiency, lengthening its life and causing minimal mechanical stress. The Prius has a number of other tricks up its sleeve as well, which is why parts of its hybrid systems are often used in EV conversions like [Jeremy]’s electric CJ-5 Jeep.

Inside the Prius inverter is a buck/boost converter used for stepping up the battery voltage to power the inverter and supply power to the electric motor. [Jeremy]’s battery is much higher voltage than the stock Prius battery pack, though, which means he can bypass the converter and supply energy from his battery directly to the inverter. Since the buck/boost converter isn’t being used, he can put it to work doing other things. In this case, he’s using it as a charger. Sending the AC from a standard EV charging cord through a rectifier and then to this converter allows the Prius hardware to charge the Jeep’s battery, without adding much in the way of extra expensive electronics.

There are some other modifications to the Prius equipment in this Jeep, though, namely that [Jeremy] is using an open-source controller as the brain of this conversion. Although this video only goes into detail on some of the quirks of the Prius hardware, he has a number of other videos documenting his journey to convert this antique Jeep over to a useful electric farm vehicle which are worth checking out as well. There are plenty of other useful things that equipment from hybrid and electric vehicles can do beyond EV conversions as well, like being used for DIY powerwalls.

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Correlating Electric Cars With Better Air Quality

February 12, 2026 by 78 Comments

Although at its face the results seem obvious, a recent study by [Sandrah Eckel] et al. on the impact of electric cars in California is interesting from a quantitative perspective. What percentage of ICE-only cars do you need to replace with either full electric or hybrid cars before you start seeing an improvement in air quality?

A key part of the study was the use of the TROPOMI instrument, part of the European Sentinel-5 Precursor satellite. This can measure trace gases and aerosols in the atmosphere, both of which directly correlate with air quality. The researchers used historical TROPOMI data from 2019 to 2023 in the study, combining this data with vehicle registrations in California and accounting for confounding factors, such as a certain pandemic grinding things to a halt in 2020 and massively improving air quality.

Although establishing direct causality is hard using only this observational data, the researchers did show that the addition of 200 electric vehicles would seem to be correlated to an approximate 1.1% drop in measured atmospheric NO2. This nitrogen oxide is poisonous and fatal if inhaled in large quantities. It’s also one of the pollutants that result from combustion, when at high temperatures nitrogen from the air combines with oxygen molecules. Continue reading “Correlating Electric Cars With Better Air Quality” →

The Complex Engineering Of Runways

February 10, 2026 by 10 Comments

Airport runways seem pretty simple, just another strip of asphalt or concrete not unlike the roads that our cars drive upon every day. We can even use these same highways as landing strips in a pinch, so you’d assume that the engineering for either isn’t that dissimilar. Of course, you can use a highway for an occasional emergency, but a runway that sees the largest and heaviest airplanes taxi, take off and land on a constant basis is a whole other challenge, as detailed in a recent [Practical Engineering] video and its transcript.

When you consider that an Airbus A380 the take-off weight is up to 550 ton, it’s quite clear what the challenge is for larger airports. Another major issue is that of friction, or lack thereof, as the speeds and kinetic energy behind it are so much higher. One only has to look at not only runway overruns but also when one skids off sideways due issues like hydroplaning and uneven friction. Keeping the surface of a runway as high-friction as possible and intact after hundreds of take-offs, tail-strikes and other events is no small feat.

Of course, the other part of runway engineering is for when things do go wrong and an airplane enters the runway safety areas, or overrun zones. This usually provides some flat and clear space where an airplane can safely bleed off its kinetic energy, with the collapsing surface of the EMAS technology being one of the best demonstrations of how this can be safely and dramatically shortened.

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A small white work truck sitting on a faded road with trees in the background. In its bed is what looks like an enormous drill battery in an upside down position. The "battery" is black with red and yellow stripes. It has the words "125V, 500 Ah, 52 kWh" and "Mr. G's Workshop" emblazoned on the side.

Kei Truck Looks Like A Giant Power Tool

February 4, 2026 by 24 Comments

Kei trucks are very versatile vehicles, but their stock powerplant can leave a bit to be desired. If you need more power, why not try an electric conversion?

[Ron “Mr. G” Grosinger] is a high school auto shop and welding teacher who worked with his students to replace the 40 hp gas motor in this Daihatsu Hijet with the 127 hp of a Hyper 9 electric motor. The motor sits in the original engine bay under the cab and is mated to the stock transmission with a custom adapter plate made from plate steel for less than $150. We really appreciate how they left all the electronics exposed to see what makes the conversion tick.

The faux battery was made by a foam sculptor friend out of urethane foam shaped with a carving knife and then painted. It slides on a set of unistrut trolleys and reveals the 5 salvaged Tesla battery modules that power the vehicle. The fold down sides of the truck bed allow easy access to anything not already exposed if any tweaking is necessary.

We’ve seen a kei truck become a camper as well or an ebike powered with actual power tool batteries. If you’re thinking of your own electric conversion, which battery is best?

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