Transportation Hacks

1497 Articles

High-Speed Sled Adds Bicycle Suspension

January 19, 2023 by 3 Comments

While you might have bought the best pair of skis in the 90s or 00s, as parts on boots and bindings start to fail and safety standards for ski equipment improve, even the highest-quality skis more than 15 or 20 years old will eventually become unsafe or otherwise obsolete. There are plenty of things that can be done with a pair of old skis, but if you already have a shot ski and an Adirondack chair made of old skis, you can put another pair to use building one of the fastest sleds we’ve ever seen.

[Josh Charles], the creator of this project, took inspiration from his father, who screwed an old pair of skis to the bottom of an traditional runner sled when he was a kid. This dramatically increased the speed of the sled, but eliminated its ability to steer. For this build [Josh] built a completely custom frame rather than re-use an existing sled, which allowed him to not only build a more effective steering mechanism for the skis, but also to use bicycle suspension components to give this sled better control at high speeds.

This build is part of a series that [Josh] did a few years ago, and you can find additional videos about it documenting his design process and his initial prototypes and testing. The amount of work he put into this build is evident when it’s seen finally traversing some roads that had been closed for winter; he easily gets the sled up in the 30 mph range several times. If you’re looking to go uphill in the snow, though, take a look at this powered snowboard instead.

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A man sits in a chair atop a hexagonal platform. From the platform there are six hydraulically-actuated legs supporting the hexapod above a grassy field. The field is filled with fog, giving the shot a mysterious, otherworldly look.

Megahex Will Give You Robo-Arachnophobia

January 17, 2023 by 24 Comments

Some projects start with a relatively simple idea that quickly turns into a bit of a nightmare when you get to the actual implementation. [Hacksmith Industries] found this to be the case when they decided to build a giant rideable hexapod, Megahex. [YouTube]

After seeing a video of a small excavator that could move itself small distances with its bucket, the team thought they could simply weld six of them together and hook them to a controller. What started as a three month project quickly spiraled into a year and a half of incremental improvements that gave them just enough hope to keep going forward. Given how many parts had to be swapped out before they got the mech walking, one might be tempted to call this Theseus’ Hexapod.

Despite all the issues getting to the final product, the Megahex is an impressive build. Forward motion and rotation on something with legs this massive is a truly impressive feat. Does the machine last long in this workable, epic state? Spoilers: no. But, the crew learned a lot and sometimes that’s still a good outcome from a project.

If you’re looking for more hexapod fun, checkout Stompy, another rideable hexapod, or Megapod, a significantly smaller 3D-printed machine.

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The First Afghan Sports Car Has An Engine You Shouldn’t Mock

January 17, 2023 by 125 Comments

In the news today, Afghanistan has made its first sports car, and it’s a sleek and low-slung model with a throaty exhaust note that would get a second look on the Autobahn just as much as it does on the streets of Kabul. Making a modern sports car is an impressive achievement no matter where you do it, but it wouldn’t be something we’d share with you were it not for how the story is being reported. The general tone of Western reporting is focused not upon the car itself, but instead poking fun of it for using a Toyota engine also found in a Corolla.

Anyone who grew up during the Cold War will remember the rhetoric of the era with respect to technology. To paraphrase a little, our planes or rockets were based on the finest and latest high technology, we were told, while theirs were held together with string and sealing wax from the 1940s. This neglected the fairly obvious fact that Soviet probes were visiting all the planets, something they must have had some pretty good tech at their disposal to achieve. This was then explained as the product of their having stolen all our super-advanced Western tech, something we now know that our lot weren’t averse to either when the opportunity arose.

It’s this which is brought to mind by the mirth of the Western commentators at the Afghan car’s supposedly humble engine. It doesn’t matter what you think of the Afghan regime (and there’s plenty there to criticize), the car should be assessed on its merits. After all, it’s hardly as though the engine in question didn’t find its way into more than one sports car that Western commentators might find appealing.

Building A Homemade Ambient Pressure Submarine

January 11, 2023 by 27 Comments

About two years ago, [Hyperspace Pirate] set to work on building his own two-seater submarine, because who doesn’t want to have a submarine when you have just moved to Florida? In the linked video (also attached below), he describes the reasoning behind the submarine design. Rather than going with a fully sealed submarine with ambient pressure inside and a hull that resists the crushing forces from the water, he opted to go for a semi-wet ambient pressure design.

What this essentially entails is a fancy equivalent of an old-school diving bell: much as the name suggests, these are sealed except for the bottom, which allows for water to enter and thus equalize the pressure. Although this has the distinct disadvantage of being not dry inside (hence the semi-wet), it does mean that going for a dive is as easy as letting the water in via the bottom hole, and to resurface only a small amount of air injected into two ballast tanks and a pump are all that are required.

So far this submarine has survived a few test runs, which uncovered a number of issues, but diving and resurfacing seems to be going pretty smoothly now, which is definitely a massive plus with a submarine.

(Thanks to [Drew] for the tip!)

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TV personality and maker, Adam Savage, sits on a chair attached to a milk crate on wheels. It is situated inside an assortment of steel tubes forming the legs and body of a strandbeest walking machine.

Human-Powered Strandbeest

January 10, 2023 by 6 Comments

Once you’ve seen a strandbeest, it’s hard to forget the mesmerizing movement of its mechanical limbs. [Adam Savage] built a pedal-powered strandbeest in (more than) one day in full view of the public at the San Francisco Exploratorium.

One of the biggest challenges with building strandbeests is the sheer number of parts required to build a walking machine. It becomes clear rather quickly how big of an advantage the wheel is for part count on a device. Add in a few seemingly small design errors, and you might not have any forward motion at all.

[Savage]’s build takes us through all the ups and downs of this process, including lots of wrenching, welding, and more sneakers than Squitter the Spider could wear. The final product is unwieldy, impractical, and beautiful. What more could a maker ask for?

If you need more strandbeest goodness, check out this more practical strandbeest bicycle, this strandbeest Venus rover concept, or Jeremy Cook’s talk about designing strandbeest bots.

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A blue Mercedes SLS AMG sports car body with bicycle wheels. The gull wing is open to reveal the spartan interior and the hood is open to reveal an empty engine compartment since this is actually a bike.

SLS AMG Velomobile

January 9, 2023 by 14 Comments

Many gearheads dream of owning a supercar, but their exorbitant prices make them unattainable for all but the most affluent. [Andrzej Burek] decided to make his dreams come true by building his own supercar with a human-powered twist. [YouTube]

At first glance, [Burek]’s SLS AMG looks like the real thing. Pop the hood, and you’ll find this “car” is missing it’s V8 which has been replaced by a beefy speaker pumping out engine sounds from any car you choose. Both driver and passenger can provide propulsion for the sociable tandem, and the power is routed through a differential to the rear wheels. [Burek] decided to install the differential to make installing power assist motors simpler in future revisions of this quadracycle.

[Burek] said it’s taken him four years from buying the first component to the bike’s status in the video after the break. Other than the front and rear bumpers, he built the body himself out of fiberglass to learn how to work with the material. He welded the frame himself as well, and, in a testament to good measurements, the two parts fit together when united despite being built in separate locations. You can checkout more pictures on his Instagram.

If you want some more bike hacks, check out this Open Source Bike Computer or this Exercise Bike Game Controller.

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Building A Giant Remote Controlled Model Airbus A380 In A Year

January 8, 2023 by 21 Comments

A year ago [Ramy RC] set out on a momentous challenge: to build a 1:21 scale Airbus A380-800 RC model with functional engines, landing gear and all other details. Recently he finished the project and published a video with a summary of the whole build process (also linked below). The full video series can be found on the Ramy RC channel. The final RC airplane came out at a massive wingspan of 3.9 meters (12.7′), a length of 3.6 meters (11.8′) and a weight of 25 kg. This weight is carried by the full landing gear of multiple bogeys that can retract much like on the real airplane.

A range of materials were used for the body, including carbon fiber and wood, with each part carefully modeled with CAD software and 3D-printed or cut on a CNC cutter. Four ducted fans provide the propulsive power that lift this enormous model airplane into the skies, which is the only part where the noise profile doesn’t quite match that of the real A380. Even so, seeing the airplane taxing, taking off and flying through the skies makes you look twice to realize that it is in fact a scale model and not a real Emirates A380-800, also courtesy of the excruciating amount of detail to the model’s final look, down from the logos to the silver-grey lines.

We’re also quite convinced that the maiden flight of such an exquisite model has to be one of the most terrifying experiences imaginable.

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