00:00 We had this crazy idea, people thought we were nuts.
00:04 The worst thing that could happen is I have a fuel leak or a wheel explodes going down the track.
00:08 That would be a bad day.
00:10 They're having a big rock and racing event here, so we showed up and kind of crashed their party and it seems to be a hit so far.
00:25 The vehicle being shown today at the rock and race event is definitely one of a kind.
00:30 My name is Chad Clark.
00:35 I'm Mike Monter and this is the Thunder Buggy.
00:54 When people see the Thunder Buggy they just can't believe their eyes and the first question is does it really move?
00:59 And yes, it does.
01:00 It does move, but not in the traditional sense, which would have been with the help of a horse or two.
01:08 Nostalgic race weekend, what's more nostalgic than an Amish buggy?
01:11 Yeah, we go way back.
01:13 Helping this buggy up the racetrack is not a regular engine either.
01:24 It's like oil and water, they should not go together.
01:27 No earthly business having an Amish buggy and a jet engine together.
01:30 But how did this jet-powered buggy come into existence?
01:35 Mike and I were at our local county fair watching a truck and tractor pull.
01:39 I mentioned to him it would be a really cool idea to build a turbine-powered four-wheel-drive pulling truck.
01:44 So I went home that night and found an engine online, bought it.
01:48 Didn't realize it was not turbo shaft, it was turbo jet only.
01:53 So I had to come up with a different concept than a pulling truck.
01:57 So a lightweight vehicle, we live in the Amish capital of the world, so I figured an Amish buggy would be perfect.
02:03 He called me up and said we're not doing a pulling truck anymore, we're doing an Amish buggy.
02:08 Seemed natural.
02:13 The buggy was not designed to take 100 feet of electrical wiring and fuel tanks and a jet engine.
02:20 It's a really simple engine design.
02:24 It's some pretty awesome engineering from back in the 40s.
02:28 We built a steel subframe to carry the extra weight.
02:31 That's about the only thing that we did chassis-wise to strengthen the buggy other than airbags.
02:38 We got a mix of aircraft gauges and car gauges.
02:43 This red handle is for emergency fuel shut-off in the event of an accident.
02:47 With a jet engine, this buggy must have some serious speed in it.
02:51 Top speed so far has been 55 to 60 miles an hour.
02:58 Or maybe not.
03:00 This particular setup, that's probably max because we kept the buggy as original as possible.
03:07 There's no safety cage. I've got a driver's seat and seatbelts, but it's still a wood vehicle.
03:13 Today, the team have brought the Thunder Buggy to rock and race.
03:20 I'll be doing all the crew chief work, making sure he's safe, making sure there's no fuel leaks,
03:33 all the electrical, towing the vehicle up to the starting line.
03:36 With Mike on technical support, Chad will be...
03:39 Holding on for dear life.
03:41 And that's not surprising, as there's not a lot of protection for the driver of this vehicle.
03:46 The worst thing that could happen is I have a fuel leak and the engine runs away,
03:52 or a wheel explodes going down the track. Yeah, that would be a bad day.
03:57 Buggy wheels aren't speed rated.
03:59 Not yet.
04:00 Not yet.
04:01 It's time for this Amish automobile to show the audience what it can do.
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04:41 It's fun to come to the track or an air show and see the reactions of people
04:47 when they drive by it, they almost break their neck, like, "Is that really real?"
04:51 We've had mechanical engineers and people come up and, you know, it's kind of nice when you're
04:56 sitting in your garage thinking about building things and you actually have an engineer come up
05:00 and go, "Okay, you did that all right. You weren't a complete idiot."
05:03 We made it!
05:04 People thought we were nuts, and I think that was maybe, might have been part of the motivation
05:08 behind of it to get this thing done.
05:10 We're showing you.
05:11 Yeah. Yeah, hold my beer moment and watch this.
05:14 It's something that's unconventional. You don't see it every day, and people seem to love it.
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