Found a few in Tennessee. Less than $500 a piece at the moment.
Will it fit in a Miata?
In reply to rustybugkiller :
May need a few more sawzall blades and some extra welding wire, but yes
Does anyone not need a cheap jet engine?
Push up to the autocross start box at the Challenge and then fire up your turbine powered whatever ( 1973 Corolla in my case). It would probably do well in the concourse part of the competition.
Wait, what day is it....and its wagons at challenge, right? I dont really need a dd, do I?
Wally said:Does anyone not need a cheap jet engine?
Exactly what I thought when I saw the title of this thread!
I wonder how hard it would be to fit BOTH of the Viper Mk II's in the back of a full-size wagon? 
Dammit... Just when I thought my big, new yard was anywhere near big enough...
I know an a and p at the Murfreesboro airport . If you're serious about getting one I can give him a call .
Of course the coolest thing to do with one would be to build a jet airplane, some sort of old fighter replica or similar.
The cost of which would make the cheapness of the initial engine purchase immaterial. Heck, I suspect getting the engine up to spec for flight would be eye-watering (or just flatly bankrupting)...
OTOH, if I had a sprawling, giant house, having one on static display would be pretty dang cool.
If you blow over cones on the Autocross with your jet engine is there a penalty?
In reply to APEowner :
Yes
In reply to SVreX :
...but if you vaporize them...
And you led me to finding this:
https://www.govdeals.com/index.cfm?fa=Main.Item&itemid=234&acctid=7921
Ugh! That is so cool and there are two of them. It's kind of heartbreaking to see someone's project sold off in a non-completed state, but I suppose a lot of those BD5s were sold off uncompleted. But they would make really cool road going vehicles!
dculberson said:And you led me to finding this:
https://www.govdeals.com/index.cfm?fa=Main.Item&itemid=234&acctid=7921
Ugh! That is so cool and there are two of them. It's kind of heartbreaking to see someone's project sold off in a non-completed state, but I suppose a lot of those BD5s were sold off uncompleted. But they would make really cool road going vehicles!
Hi dculberson,
The BD-5 probably has one of the absolute worst completion ratios in kit plane history. Jim Bede (designer, company owner) was notoriously late on component deliveries and he popped in and out of bankruptcy multiple times.
As I understand it, the BD-5 is a highly unforgiving aircraft to fly mostly due to its stabilator (no fixed horizontal stabilizer…just one big articulated elevator) coupled with a super short pitch moment (distance between the CG and the stabilator's center of pressure). There are multiple stories of high time / high performance pilots lasting just minutes in the things before pile driving them into the ground due to PIO (pilot induced oscillation).
They’re super cool looking and the prospect of doing almost 200 knots is very alluring but let’s be thankful that Mr. Bead sucked as a business man…had more BD-5’s gotten into the air, there’d certainly be more flaming lawn darts to mop up.
wae said:In reply to SVreX :
...but if you vaporize them...
Can't have a cone penalty if there's no cone!
Dihatsu Hijet...jet
Les Shockley approves of this thread
Wasn’t Art Arfon’s one of the first to get his hands on a surplus military jet engine? If I recall correctly he found a loophole at the time where the military did not know exactly who their surplus equipment was being made available to.
edit: found an interesting pic of his jet.
wae said:In reply to SVreX :
...but if you vaporize them...
Right now, in my head, I'm picturing two dudes with floppy hats and cargo shorts arguing about whether the orange puddle is touching the chalk box or not.
How would you score, if you aced concours and won the drags, but DNF (just don't run) the autocross?
Driven5 said:I wonder how hard it would be to fit BOTH of the Viper Mk II's in the back of a full-size wagon?
I vote for zero budget hit, if someone does this.
So, Buy the Jet engine, Buy the BD5. Figure some sort of full cage and make a land speed car.
What could go wrong?
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