LocostUSA.com

WTF?



An Olds Quad 4 with two intake manifolds?



What are those gears on the oil pan?



Whuh? Another Quad 4 head and two more intake manifolds where the oil pan should be.



Are those big tubes coming out the side of the block the exhaust?



Wait, that Long EZ over there has the same exhaust coming out the back and no propeller.



Drier duct tubing? Seriously? This thing must have been built by a guy with a 4" chrome muffler on his Honda Civic.



Wait a second. What's that sign over there say?



So it's a Pulse Detonation Engine, made by some really smart Aviation Engineers that uses off-the-shelf Quad 4 cylinder heads and intake manifolds (4 of them), has very few moving parts, and looks like something I could make in my garage in a couple of weekends with a few hundred dollars worth of junkyard parts and a big chunk of aluminum and some tubing - which will one day make Jet engines obsolete?

Here is the wikipedia page about the engine and plane.

I was dumbfounded. I thought you guys would appreciate this as much as I did.


Now if I were to build this big go-kart with an engine with two Mazda BP cylinder heads and...

If it's anything like a Pulse Jet, they're LOUD AS HELL, and that's an understatement.

_________________
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That is interesting, thanks for posting it.

For applications that move at those speeds and altitudes, a turbine is much more practical, given all the "baggage" that comes with a pulse jet.

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For those around my age, pulse jet engines propelled the "Buzz Bombs".

_________________
RacerDan
+442 Chevy 2.8
Never be afraid to try something new. Remember, amateurs built the
Ark, professionals built the Titanic.

I would love to hear a pulse detonation engine running...with ear protection of course.

and the noise is half the fun!


very cool find!

_________________
Georgia Tech
Ride and Handling Engineer for a major car company
Locost finished - book frame, IRS, '84 celica GTS donor, '99 tacoma 2rz motor with a turbo, megasquirt DIYPNP. Getting rebuilt with new IRS, F20C
"the all-consuming time-sucking car, which I really enjoy working on" -KB

Here's a guy in New Zealand starting his home made no moving parts jet engine.

His website shows it mounted and running on a go kart chassis. Very loud but not much thrust. He has a lot of other interesting jet/pulse type engines on the site.

http://www.aardvark.co.nz/pjet/

He's got videos on the site too.

_________________
"My junk is organized. At least is was when I put it wherever it is." -olrowdy
Completed building GSXR1000 CMC7, "Locouki"
Website: http://projekt.com/locouki/

An English friend of mine who lived through the blitz said they called them "Fart bombs" because that's pretty much what it sounded like. When one quite making the noise your ran for cover if it was still coming towards you.

_________________
"My junk is organized. At least is was when I put it wherever it is." -olrowdy
Completed building GSXR1000 CMC7, "Locouki"
Website: http://projekt.com/locouki/

Im in the center...that was homecoming 3 years ago i believe. After starting a pulse jet a few times, you learn some new skills- such as butt clenching. The really scary part was that it ran on liquid propane, which had a nasty habit of freezing the dead-man's valve wide open. The noise isn't bad if you're prepared for it. Unluckily (for them) the men, women, children, and babies, that lined the street that day for the parade we're not prepared. It was amusing.


The only thing louder that I've done while in college is filling up rubber gloves with stoich oxygen-acetylene mixtures and igniting them. Just thinking about it again gets my heart going. I managed to (unknowingly) explode one as a cop was leaving our property after checking to see if we were lighting off fireworks one night- whoops!

_________________
Georgia Tech
Ride and Handling Engineer for a major car company
Locost finished - book frame, IRS, '84 celica GTS donor, '99 tacoma 2rz motor with a turbo, megasquirt DIYPNP. Getting rebuilt with new IRS, F20C
"the all-consuming time-sucking car, which I really enjoy working on" -KB