Real Fiero Tech

Very cool, I love old school innovations if you haven't noticed haha.
http://www.tunersgroup.com/TunerWire_Li ... nique.html

A galaxy equipped with the turbonique diff
http://jalopnik.com/373531/for-sale-tur ... alaxie-500

Turbomachinery is pretty fuckin' amazing.

There's a Russian rocket engine currently in use on the Zenit launch vehicles called the RD-171. It's the largest liquid rocket engine ever built. It develops 1.8M lbs of thrust. It uses a single turbopump to feed four chambers and nozzles. That pump develops 257,000 HP... just to push the fuel and oxidizer into the chambers.

The engine bay in the Tobacco King is pretty freaking sweet. Gotta love the blower with the carbs hanging off both sides.

Turbopumps, espicially the rocket-powered variety, are simply amazing in terms of shaft work output and power to weight. The reliability obtained is pretty amazing too, considering the work environment of freezing on one end and melting on the other end of the pump.

The company I work for on the civilian side is adapting the old Russian NK-33 engine from the Russian moon effort.

The engine uses a single shaft turbo pump. On one end is a two stage kerosene pump that develops 5,000 psi, in the middle is a two stage liquid oxygen pump that develops 6,000 psi and on the other end is the turbine. There's a pre-burner which turns the liquid oxygen into gaseous oxygen to drive the turbine (almost pure O2 at 1700 degrees and 5000 psi... that's a nice metallurgical trick). The engine runs a chamber pressure of 2400 psi. Since the entire flow through the turbine goes into the main chamber, that's the OUTLET pressure of the turbine. The total mass flow through the engine is 1200 lbs per SECOND and it develops 390,000 lbs of thrust.

The RD-171 mentioned above has the same operating principle, but runs 3500 psi of chamber pressure.

The Russians have *PERFECTED* the kerosene/liquid oxygen rocket engine. Their engines are reliable, powerful, economical and almost perfectly efficient.

Can we fit one of those into the bed of my Sierra?

Actually... you'd have a lot of room for bigger fuel tanks... and diff itself seems like a pretty easy fit... that'd be pretty sick.

But the recipient isn't intended for it. Better to install a 2500 horse BBC V8. I would like to see this tech used in a dedicated chassis fitted with at least 4 tires.

It looks like it's setup to bolt on to any old Quick-Change. It would cost a few dollars, but I'm sure there's somebody out there who will fit full floating tubes onto a QC center section and allow you to run duallie drag slicks on some crazy chassis.

Or even add one to your mid-engine monstrosity via one of these:
http://realfierotech.com/phpBB/viewtopi ... =9&t=16696

Just gotta be careful. Could end up doing the quarter mile in every direction at one time.

For some reason I'm really drawn to the whole rocket powered car idea.

Seems to me that you could make a kerosene and N2O rocket with a few thousand pounds of thrust for pretty cheap. Safe too. Problem with nitrous (IMHO) is that it stresses the engine. With a rocket, it's a separate entity. Could probably build it with $1000 worth of parts. Almost unlimited bolt-on horsepower potential!

I think the largest engine I've built is ~200lbs of thrust. Granted, that was solid fuel, but....

http://www.desert-motors.com/cpg/thumbn ... p?album=16

Check out the Eclipse.