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I live near a river and often need to cross it. If I had a
small boat, it wouldn't help, I need a car on both sides of
the river.
So I would always carry in the car an inflatable platform,
that I place partially on the water, connect to car's exhaust
and inflate in 2 minutes. Then I park the
car on the
platform, rear wheels fit into holes in floor that fix the
whole car, front wheels go over rotating cylinders that are
connected to a small propeller. These cylinders can also be
tilted by the car's steering wheel, this tilt is transferred to
the platform's rudder.
Now you have a comfortable air conditioned 5 seat boat
that you can take inside your car wherever you go.
Floating your mobile home
Floating_20Your_20Mobile_20Home
[mitxela, Jul 14 2012]
Car flotation airbag system
Car_20flotation_20airbag_20system
Ten years ago ... [8th of 7, Jul 15 2012]
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I think i could just barely fit such a device, sturdy and floaty enough to carry my car-weight but longbed 2 seater pickup, uninflated in the bed itself... covered by the camping cap. |
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No idea how you're going to pull it off in a passenger automobile. |
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Beter to permanently mount it to the underbody of the car with the base made out of an an unclampable skid plate. You unclamp the plate, inflate, and go. |
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I also suspect the exhaust wouldn't work to inflate it, the engine may not take the back pressure. Installing a small electrically driven pump is fairly simple. |
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As far as the math... Let's take a car weighing 3000 lbs, that is 6' x 13'. With water at 64.4 lb/ft^3, you would need to displace about .6 feet (7") under the car to provide neutral buyoancy. |
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If you allow the raft to extend 1 foot each side of the car (recommended for stability), about 5" will do it. Admittedly, you want better than neutral bouyancy, but this can be accomplised by allowing the raft to wrap up the side of the car a little bit, which will help with minor waves/turbulence. |
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An 8 inch thick inflatable air-mattress will collapse into a layer less than an inch thick, which would fit easily underneath most cars. The propeller and steering mechanism would be a little more bulky, but hardly prohibitively so, since a similarly sized outboard will fit into most car trunks. (And if you are going to say an air mattress is to flimsy, a similarly sized, multi-chamber white water raft still collapses into less than an inch.) |
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Ah, but imagine chancing upon a sparkling ribbon
of emerald water, in the midst of gently rolling
hills. Across the water, a leaf-strewn ribbon of
road winds through the trees, caressing the gentle
curves of hills kissed by the golden evening sun. |
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Curious to see what pleasures await you across the
river, you slide your raft onto the warm grassy
bank, casually slip the inflation hose over your
exhaust pipe, then sit back in the driver's seat
admiring the view. A sudden glint of metallic
turquoise flashes past as a kingfisher makes his
rounds. |
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Hearing the gentle hiss of the pressure relief
valve, you ease yourself out of the car, disconnect
the hose, and drive gently down onto the ramp.
You sit for a while, letting the water bob you idly
up and down, before putting the car into first and
cruising, like a steamboat captain, across the
waters to see what awaits you on the other side. |
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There - see? It all depends how well you imagine
things. |
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Convenience? This is the 'bakery. The more complex the better - convenience has to take a back seat to...well, to the inflatable thingy in the front seat, back seat, and trunk. |
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//a similarly sized, multi-chamber white water raft still collapses into less than an inch// |
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Is that built to hold 2 tons ?, ie: 10-15 people. |
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//bridge// you can buy a bailey for about 50c/lb. Not that I'm necessarily on the "build a bridge" side here, I just can't imagine an inflatable raft as being that robust. |
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Eight to twelve, but the limitation is that people
are essentially vertical cylinders, whereas the
base of a car is essentially a flat plate. The outer
walls of the raft (multi chamber, about 18" in
diameter) are more than thick enough and
collapse to the inch I mentioned. Start with
those and make the center section the width of
the car and about 12" thick (rather than the 4" for
people to sit in) and you have more than enough
flotation, in something with construction durable
enough to bounce off rocks and down waterfalls. |
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Not that I'd recommended waterfalls with your
car, but it should be more than good enough for
flat water. |
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hmm... okay [+] it was the "inflatable platform" (like an air mattress) that threw me. An inflatable-like-a-kiddies-pool sounds better. |
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21 Quest, suggesting a bridge is like suggesting
pouring asphalt in the woods instead of driving an
offroad car :) Much different environmental impact
and price. |
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Exhaust for inflating is used for quite some time,
see e.g. http://news.cnet.com/ 8301-17938_105-
10029912-1.html |
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Convenience is something to work on for version
2.0. Owning a boat is not much more comfortable,
you have to take care of it separately, fill with gas,
clean the submerged parts, servicing is a pain... |
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I really like the idea of mounting it under the car,
solves the problem with drying, but creates many
more hard to solve problems - where do you inflate
it? On the ground? Then you jump inside the car
until it slowly jumps into the water :) |
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To solve the getting-into-the-water problem, you
could inflate the front and rear sections
consecutively. Park with the front wheels as deep in
the water as the car will stand, then inflate the
front section until the front of the car is floating.
Then drive forward until the rear wheels are likewise
submerged as far as allowable, before inflating the
rear section. |
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Further to what [MechE] said, cars are much
lighter than an equivalent volume of water. The
main thing that stops them acting as boats is that
they leak. And I really can't imagine driving onto a
rubber raft, unless it is rather oversized and has a
fully rigid floor (like a Zodiac). |
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So the best bet might be something that wraps
around, and waterproofs, the bottom of the car,
exploiting the car's own structural rigidity and
volume. Getting into the water would still be
tricky, unless you can form a seal around the axles
with the wheels on the outside. |
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Ooh ooh! I know! A carzorb! |
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Unzip the zorb, lay it in front of the vehicle, drive
on to it, zip it shut over the car's roof. Then inflate
using the exhaust and... |
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... taken from this place and hanged by the neck until you be dead ... |
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