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dragonshiprider

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Someones "Rocket Derby" post while ago made me think of a question that I had asked several months ago on Yahoo.I never got an answer so i'll try it here.

Whatever happened to the whole rocket car thing?Does anyone still get into it?It seems as if the whole thing came and went before I even knew what to make of it.
 
The national rocket car group is defunct as far as I can tell. You could email Brent McNeely (at Extreme Rocketry) to see what he knows. He sold rocket car parts at one time.
 
estes makes a rocket car. its alright....it runs on A10 mini engines and has a 90ft tether line. i didnt like it much. i've made an E rocket car, that hit a pole at like...150mph and didnt survive. lol.
 
This is the Estes Rocket car we modified for Estes E motors: runs a 400' tether in less than 4-sec....awesome and scary at the same time!!!:eek:
 
you should throw an E30 in there....for top speed. lol. it'd probably get to that 400' mark in less than 1.5 seconds. i can only imagine that.
 
A slow motion video that we made with the Estes E motor shows that if you loosen the tether line slightly, the car pulls 3 WHEELIES before it gets to the end of the 400' at just under 100 mph! :eek: It tries very hard to get AIRBORNE!!! Here is a Mattel HOT WHEEL that we moded for 18mm rocket power!
 
alright...i've had it...im making a G car....i'll post pics in a week or two. hmmm, a G80 sounds about right...wait...how are you supposed to stop it once it reaches the end of the tether?
 
We have a nylon chute connected to the tether approx. 380' down the line that the car snags and deploys after the motor burns out....it took many trial runs starting with 18mm motors to estimate the distance that we would need for the 24mm E motor. This can only be attempted out in the "country" since we need a LOT of space and a road that is NO TRAFFIC on it! This can be very dangerous if the outmost precautions are not taken. A G-powered car would be very large and I would try to find some information about such a vehicle....please do not go off half-cocked!!!;) A rocket car is a MISSILE traveling at GREAT SPEED along the ground in the same plane as PEOPLE!!!;)
 
i've made a dual 18mm rocket car before, and an E powered car that hit a pole...i have a HUGE parking lot to do this in, and i plan on way overbuilding. the car im using is a barbie mustang, i will weigh it up to 1-2lbs, and it should accomodate a G fine. i have an RC bumper that i'll throw on the front, and some really strong wax braided line. or i have 500yds of remington braided 50lb test fishing line. i'll probably use some type of launch lug system instead of a through the car passage. i might incorporate the chute into the car, so the eject charge blows the chute out the top or something. then i'll put a few sandbags at the end of the line, just in-case. my first run would probably be on an Fsomething, maybe a 20. 3 second burn. i'll post pics when completed.
 
A Deuce's Wild engine arrangement would be cool!!!
 
I'd like to take a moment to thank everyone who responded.Both of those rocket cars look pretty neat.I think I will have to grab me one of those new Estes rocket car sets.The trouble is finding a place to run it.Living here in the mountains I don't have a lot of options.Heck,if it wasn't for Battlepark and NOVAAR I wouldn't even have a place to fly.
BTW,Kyle(Rocketman) Michealson used to be into rocket cars and he still has some info on his site.It is,I believe,"old news",however.The pic on his homepage is a rally cool lookin car also.
Now as for my own custom concoction I have some of those "Indy type" fireworks cars left over from a few years ago.I've had a hankerin' to do a mini motor conversion on one of those ever since I bought them.
https://www.the-rocketman.com/content12.html
Also,if anyone here is in the Norther Va. area and would like to revive the rocket cars then I'm all ears.
 
yeah, deuces wild could be cool. but definately only in 18mm...2G's would need a half mile track. lol. i ran a dual 18mm with two B6's and it really took off. rocket car loaded weighed in at 6oz. motors were jerry rigged on top with hot glue and moving tape. seemed to work pretty well. my E car was made from a 2x4 piece of wood, and some wheels off of an old plastic model police car. i lit it on an E9 and it went fine for half the trip, (no tether...DOH) until the right front plastic wheel basically melted away and the car took a skidding path at best estimates about 60-80mph into a huge steel parkinglot light pole. snapped with the grain and both pieces exploded into dust. lol.
 
There was some coverage of a rocket car event in an old HPR mag. If I remember right, Ky Michaelson's 'L' rocket car exceeded the speed of materials :)

Then there was the steam powered go-cart in a later mag...a real rocket car :)
 
There was some coverage of a rocket car event in an old HPR mag. If I remember right, Ky Michaelson's 'L' rocket car exceeded the speed of materials

I have that mag still. Really cool!!!
 
an L rocket car....now thats a rocket car....
they used to have rocket car drag races. i forget what the motors used were, probably extremely large. over a P. they would do a 1/4 mile in like 2.5 seconds at 450-500mph. people who rode those were NUTS.
i think that im going to throw some RC car ball bearing sets into my barbie rocket car. and replace the rims with nylon racing rims and foam tires....a G80 is definately going to be in order. i would never want this baby burning for 4 seconds on a G35. that would be TOO insane.
 
well, after reconsideration and talking to a physics major, i've decided to scrap my barbi G rocket car. it was determined that on a G80 it would go so fast that the downforce on the plastic car would break it apart. oh well. maybe a different design in the future will be in order.
 
how about rocket boats

https://www.monsterboat.com/

I'll try to find annother site with all the videos on it ,,I posted it somewhere on this forum.. sometimes they will catch a wake dive under and reverse direction.hilarious

some are even multi staged
 
well, i'd like it to have some sort of crumple zone...if it flies off the lugs and hits a house going a cuople hundred mph weighing a couple lbs and made of fiberglass of CF, its going to do some damage...or if it hits a dog or a kid...its not going to be pretty. i made my megatech carribean cruiser run on a rocket. i threw in a B6 but it didnt make much performance difference. the drag of the water is a lot compared to the thrust of a small motor.
 
this applies to the USA only:

Rocket Cars are subject to the Consumer Product Safety Commission because they are a consumer product and they need to be safe. Estes applied for exemption from the banned hazardous substance designation. Read the results:

https://www.epa.gov/fedrgstr/EPA-IMPACT/2003/January/Day-30/i2205.htm



Originally posted by dragonshiprider
Someones "Rocket Derby" post while ago made me think of a question that I had asked several months ago on Yahoo.I never got an answer so i'll try it here.

Whatever happened to the whole rocket car thing?Does anyone still get into it?It seems as if the whole thing came and went before I even knew what to make of it.
 
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