Ladies and gentlemen! Please do me the favour of lending me your most esteemed attention!
How many times have you bewailed the interminable inefficiencies of your autocar? I can see that you all know the tremendulous agreivancy of the most solicitous deminishment of petroleum fluid due to the machinations of you machine! Well, now your problems, all your problems, will be solved with the advent of a brand new, patent pended, scientifically tested AND proven, fabulous, trabulous, pompanpabulous invention of the utmost order!
Ladies, try not to faint, gentlemen, try not to cry out to the heavens when you see this contraption that I am imminently going to divulge visually upon you! Behold! *swoosh* the Automotive Zeppelator! Hard to believe isn't it friends, but believe you shall! Testify! What you see before you is a miniature, but never diminished, version of the celebrated zepplin of bygone eras! But behold, it is affixed, adhered if you will, to the uppermost roof of an automobile! What is this madness, I hear you ask! Well, fear not for this is not the work of a deranged scientist, the product of his opium fuelled nocturnal visions! No! It is a breakthrough in automotive technologies the likes of which has not been seen since the days of Henry Ford himself! How does it work? Allow me to demonstrate!
As you can see, two tubes protude from the bonnet of the car! These tubes, assisted most beneficiently by small but highly efficient fans (much like the ones in your hair dryer madam only moreso!) take the place of your cars cooling systems, suctioning all of the heat in air form and maneuvering it into the gaseous container that abides upon the highest surface of the car! This allows enlightenment of the vehicle making for easier propulsion with minimalised expendication of gasolonium! When the alembic reaches full amplitude the pressure will disgorge the contained air through this pipe here which in turn gives rise to turn this propeller here which gives the automotive expediator increased velocity completely free of surplus expenditure on your part! Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you, the Automotive Zeppelator! Available in all good motor shops soon!-- harderthanjesus, Dec 16 2004 You don't need to prove it works with that spiel. I'll take two.
Fantastically well written +-- rambling_sid, Dec 16 2004 The air drag would cost you bigtime. + anyways.-- RayfordSteele, Dec 16 2004 I'm going to hop mine up with an aftermarket kit:
Paddlewheels for the rear tires, for motive power, and steering vanes on the front tires.-- normzone, Dec 17 2004 Had we been Victorian, you'd be a millionaire by now, do you work in marketting?
I do like the 'recycled heat hot air baloon' idea, but not for a car! Once you're at 60, the aero drag on the car is the dominant restrictor, and more than doubling it by adding another car sized blockage in the flow (I assume the baloon is about the size of the original car) isn't going to help you really! Even if you are optimistic, if the original drag is 1 and you halve the friction drag by doubling the aero drag, you have as follows:
1/2 * 1/4 + 2 * 3/4 = 1/8 + 6/4 = 13/8 = 1 and 5/8 times your original drag (more than half again).
If you were to produce a heavy lift hot air zepplin, heated by the coolant and exhaust heat from the drive engines, that would be cool (or hot, or something good!).
Gets a bun anyway.-- Skrewloose, Nov 10 2008 random, halfbakery