My friend recently came up with the idea to replace all the bolts and other fasteners holding the body panels to the chassis of his car with explosive bolts, the kind that NASA uses to quickly separate sections of spacecraft.
I've also heard that Hollywood often uses small pyrotechnic charges to blow body panels off of cars.
A slightly smaller system would have countless practical uses on your average car. For example, a small low-powered blast would be perfect for fixing dents from the inside. If the damage is too extensive for that, just blow off the whole fender rather than wasting precious minutes loosening bolts or drilling out rivets. When combined with airbags, it would offer another layer of protection in the event of a crash.
This system could also be used to startle other motorists, impress your friends or members of the opposite sex, or cause these people to swear at you and fine you for littering. And having a built-in self- destruct mechanism would be far more entertaining than selling the car for scrap, leaving it to rust, or pushing it into a river.
Of course, it could be used for special effects, but that would too ordinary. Car insurance fraud would be a far better use of your time.-- discontinuuity, Oct 05 2006 Reactive armour http://en.wikipedia...our#Reactive_armour [BJS, Oct 09 2006] Close To Home comic http://www.gocomics...ull_date=&campid=0&today's comics had a very similar idea [discontinuuity, Jan 22 2008] Count me in [gets bumped from behind at low speed, pushes button to fire all rear panels].-- normzone, Oct 05 2006 For some reason, I saw this as Explosive Body Parts.-- DrCurry, Oct 05 2006 Active armor for cars? I know some car freaks who would consider this to teach people to not touch the exquisite finish on thier "babies."-- James Newton, Oct 05 2006 + I like it as much as I like my car...-- xandram, Oct 05 2006 [DrCurry] I did too. LOL-- MoreCowbell, Oct 05 2006 I think that explosions would be worse than someone touching your car.-- discontinuuity, Oct 05 2006 I suggest adding an ejector seat and a set of large speakers blasting some apocalyptic music to accompany the car's flying to pieces. Now imagine driving out and having a minor car accident in that thing. One minor dent in the parking lot, you are ejected fifty feet into the air, and the entire car explodes to the soundtrack of Terminator 2.-- Veho, Oct 06 2006 Bun for it. It would suck though if you were driving down the highway and all of sudden, a passenger pushs a button thinking it is the radio. From great car to "curb art" in seconds...
What happpens if the accident is in a parking garage or other enlosed parking facility? Do you eject into the ceiling? (this would be vehicular homicide where the vehicle commits the homicide on the driver...)
P.S. are the panels reattachable? (i.e. a child accidentally detonates the bolts and blows the body off of the car...Bolts not included)-- wolstech, Oct 06 2006 reattachable? probably if you get new bolts and the explosion isnt strong enough to damage the panels or the chassis-- vmaldia, Oct 07 2006 If you measured and timed everything right, you could make the explosive bolts fire before the lift charge so that the body panel would fly away relatively unharmed, but I'm not sure how likely this is. I imagine the exploding bolts would tend to destroy the mounting holes in the body panel, and the body panel would probably land on something hard and abrasive.-- discontinuuity, Oct 07 2006 This idea reminded me of reactive body armour for military tanks.-- BJS, Oct 09 2006 One might use this for effect, sort of an augmented horn honk. There should be a part of the car which one could blow off and then easily reattach. Maybe a muffler.-- bungston, Jan 22 2008 We had an ice storm here today, and I had helped a guy over a bridge by nudging his car with mine - I don't want to get all asplody trying to be the nice guy. Count me out.
Of course, if he could selectively trigger a panel at will, he could have blasted himself over the hump at any time.-- elhigh, Jan 22 2008 random, halfbakery