Hydrogen Peroxide Kart

There's got to be a "blond joke" in this somewhere!

...or maybe it's an "alternate energy fuel" vehicle (but not in any kind of a way that's environmentally friendly). Check the horsepower figures!

https://www.meditech.ch/exoticthermoengineering/ete05.html

This reminds me of the dragsters that used jet engine starter motors back in the sixties.

I wonder if they've actually measured the output or if it's theoretical. In any case, it appears that some work on throttle modulation is in order.

John:

The company you may be thinking of is Turbonique. They built rocket and turbine-powered cars, karts and dragsters in the 60s. Many of the turbines were military surplus "APU" units (auxillary power units) from the gen-sets of military aircraft.
Nowadays much of this neat stuff is destroyed rather than sold (due to a combination of fun-spoiling legalists and terrorists).
The Turbonique Black Widow VW was a favorite of mine when I was a high school kid. They ran ads in Popular Science magazine.

Here's a Turbonique link:

https://www.almar.easynet.be/turbonique.htm

One of the guys who built one of these things was Bob Rapp. I knew Bob in the 70s and he was quite a character. His kart is here:

https://www.the-rocketman.com/turbonique.html

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The company you may be thinking of is Turbonique. They built rocket and turbine-powered cars, karts and dragsters in the 60s. Many of the turbines were military surplus "APU" units (auxiliary power units) from the gen-sets of military aircraft.

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Nial, close - but I remember that someone had a front-engined dragster with 2 or 4 of these units. I thought they were starter units for jet engines but could be wrong about that, of course.

We had a couple at one time. There's one shown in the picture below way over at the right - it's the black thing.



It's sitting "shaft-up" on the floor. You might be able to make out an air inlet or outlet on the side - it has a rag in it and was about 4 inches in diameter. The "impeller" was very much like half a turbocharger. There was another inlet or outlet on the bottom, about 7 inches in diameter. There were planetary gears connecting the wheel to the splined shaft. I'd guess it was about a 30-1 ratio.

Do you recognize this as an APU?

Like so many things in those days we ended up tossing it. I removed the fasteners for possible future use & still have quite a few bolts - all drilled for safety wire and very light. I'll need 'em someday....

The black thing looks like the turbine part of an APU to me. You can see the general shape in the picture linked below. As you say, it could also be a jet-engine starter, often called a "GTS" (gas turbine starter).

Looks like a Climax there in the middle.

I do the same thing as you when it comes to saving drilled AN fastners (I also have 3 aircraft engines in my basement...you can never have too much junk).

These turbine can have an amazing power to weight ratio. The turbine in Jay Leno's Motorcycle weighs 130 lbs and has 350 HP. The unit in your picture probably makes more power than a Sprite engine...4 of them in a dragster would move along nicely.


None of these turbines are very economical. Leno's bike gets about 4 MPG and the kart above burns one liter per second (of hydrogen peroxide) at full throttle. Not recommended for thrifty New Englanders!

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The black thing looks like the turbine part of an APU to me. You can see the general shape in the picture linked below. As you say, it could also be a jet-engine starter, often called a "GTS" (gas turbine starter).



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I looked around the net and I think you're right - it's a GTS. It looks similar to one used in a TU-134 (which I assume is/was Russian) but it was an American made unit.

(I hope you have a great trip.)

Thats one of the most insane vechicles I have ever seen anyone build.