Go-Fast Truck

Have a Need for Speed? One solution, from Iowahawk:

As a longtime reader of iowahawk, I felt that you might appreciate a recent project that we recently put together and tested. When you’re from Alabama, rockets and pickup trucks just go together like cole slaw and barbeque, firearms and cornmash, sisters and wives. I’ve attached a few pics of a rocket truck we’ve developed, mainly for our own amusement.

Basically, we designed, built, and tested a hybrid rocket motor that fits into the bed of a pickup truck. The hybrid rocket motor features nitrous oxide as the oxidizer. For the fuel we use roofing tar. The motor makes about 2750 lbf thrust at static conditions, and burns for about 10 seconds. During this short period of time, the motor generates around 14,000 thrust hp. (power = thrust*exit velocity = 2750 lbf * 4000 ft/sec). Note, this is thrust hp, not shaft hp to the wheels.

The truck is a standard 2004 chevy ss. The only real modifications we made were to beef up the underframe which supports the truck bed. There are four ½” grade 5 bolts that pass through the rocket box frame and into the underframe. We operate the motor using a modified XBOX game controller (ergonomics, ya’ know).

We demonstrated this unit recently at the x-prize cup in Las Cruces. After several successful demos, the “negras modelos” flowed abundantly. Within the next few weeks, we’ll move past the static testing, and take the truck out to the drag strip to see how it’ll do down the road. I’ll keep you posted.

The cultural information on Alabama will be of interest to John Kerry.

Pix available on the linked post.