Jet powered trucks

[McColm]

Hi,
I've been working over the Christmas holidays covering various main receptions in and around the London area. After my patrols I started playing Earn to Die on Fogames website. Although the game is basic using the arrows on your keyboard for direction and acceleration an idea sprang to mind.
In the real world there are trucks that have been beefed up for racing and in the states they have added fighter jet engines to some of them for shows.
I know you can get 1/24 truck kits but the price is a little too much for me at the moment and the aftermarket kits have moved into the larger scales when it comes to aircraft engines. So it's either 1/48 or 1/76 scale for the moment. I might have to raid my nephew's diecast toy car collection for a suitable donor.

[Hobbes]

There's also the Leyland Turbine concept:

[PR19_Kit]

AFAIK there's no kit of the Leyland Turbine Truck, rather sadly, but just one of the real one's still exists, owned by a guy who has a trucking company in March, Cambridgshire. Not only that, the thing still runs, although the DVLC won't let him take it on the roads (spoilsports...) so he only runs it at shows.

As the same engine was used, in multiple, in the APT-E train that I was involved with in the '70s, he's interested in swapping his older turbine for one of our 'zero hour' engines, of which we have two, to enable him to give the truck a new lease of life.

While it's pretty powerful, 300 bhp and OODLES of torque from a standing start, the direct jet thrust racing trucks would probably blow its doors off, literally........... 

[kitnut617]

Any helicopter turbine would be ideal for this project.  I think that was used in an experimental truck that was running around this part of the world some years ago (80's IIRC), it looked like a regular International or a Kenworth when it was spotted.  There was a segment on the news about it too.  Mainly the only way the public could recognize it was when it went up a hill, it just didn't slow down like all the other big rigs

[tigercat]

Knightwingdo several trucks

http://www.knightwing.co.uk/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?product=OO-HO_Road_Transport_Kits&cart_id=1325370382.327

[jcf]

Boeing and Kenworth road tested a turbine-powered truck in 1950:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOOfBU6Cz0c

Dark Roasted Blend page on trucks and jet engines:
http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2009/08/jet-engines-on-trucks-for-fun-and.html

[McColm]

Thank you for your ideas.

[PR19_Kit]

Here's Tony Knowles Leyland Turbine truck driving around the Gaydon car park. Looks almost brand new and it's over 30 years old!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTSvwwsmTYM&feature=relmfu

[McColm]

Thanks PR_19Kit

[kitnut617]

Here's Tony Knowles Leyland Turbine truck driving around the Gaydon car park. Looks almost brand new and it's over 30 years old!

Many years ago my Dad had taken me to the British Grand Prix at Silverstone (sometime in the 60's), and during an interlude between two of the feature races, these three cars came 'whistling' around --literally.  Two of them looked like a Rover 90/100 but without their roofs, and the third one had like a Spyder type body, all were turbine powered and made by Rover and they did a couple of laps that day.  Really fascinating stuff at the time ---

[McColm]

Jools Holland had a replica built of the Rover turbine prototype car.

[PR19_Kit]

Rover were quite big in the turbine car area, they built Jet 1, which sounds like one of the ones you mention Robert as it looked like a 2 seat open Rover 90/100. Beware of photos of a 'Jet 1' without the central headlamp, that car is a replica 'Jet 1' owned by Jools Holland, but it's powered by a Jaguar 4.2 litre piston engine.....

The coupe was the T3, a lovely looking car, a pity it never made production. Much more likely to have made production was the T4, which was effectively a jet powered Rover 2000 as it used the same frame structure and most of the body panels aft of the A posts, only the very front of the car looked all that different.

Rover also co-operated with BRM to build two Le Mans cars, one of which ran au concours in the 1963 event and had race number 'OO' and was driven by Graham Hill and Richie Ginther. If it had actually been in the race it would have come 8th! The same chassis was used in 1965 with a modified engine and driven by Graham Hill and Jackie Stewart this time but it was a proper entrant and finished 10th overall after some turbine damage had slowed it.

The biggest turbine car experiment was that carried out by Chrylser, who built 55 cars for use by selected customers in the early 60s, but the fuel consumption spoilt all the plans they had for doing a proper job.



Rover Jet 1




Rover T3




Rover T4




Rover-BRM 1963




Rover-BRM 1965




Chrysler Turbine Car


Sorry for the MONSTER thread drift, turbine cars of a bit of a hobby horse of mine. 

[kitnut617]

Definitely two of the 'Jet 1' that were running that day Kit, but I'm not sure if I saw the Rover-BRM '00' or '31'.  I'm leaning towards the '31' though because it's got that Spyder look to it.  I was either 9 or 11 years old when I saw them so memory has dimmed a bit.

[McColm]

Thanks again for the pics Kit.

[PR19_Kit]

In the '60s I worked on the Austin gas turbine truck, which was axed the very day that Leyland bought out BMH (British Motor Holdings...) I was glueing strain gauges to its transmission shaft when the Project leader came in and told us to stop work as it was all cancelled.

The Austin truck was nowhere near as sophisticated as the Leyland version, with only about 180 bhp as I recall. The engine was mounted directly behind and below the cab and had a MONSTER exhaust pipe that ran vertically up behind the cab. It looked just like the stack of a US wood burning locomotive and was about the same size! The looks we got when doing test runs up through the Lickey Hills were worth noting 

Austin had put a turbine under the hood of a Sheerline saloon earlier on, but try as I might I could not get anywhere near it, and believe me I DID try! 

On automotive gas turbines this page is worth reading, dating from 1955 it gives you the 'state of the art' at the time.

http://www.turbinecar.com/mags/trueauto55/trueauto55.htm