Recreational Vehicles
April 11, 2014 8:46 PM Subscribe
Older RVs aren't that hard to come by, and when you look past the rotting polyboard, aluminum and melmac 'home' really all you're left with is a motor. Usually a big motor, one that's attached to a gigantic sturdy frame and heavy-duty axles. No surprise then that it's crossed the minds of mechanics and/or the slightly insane to do something crazy with a crappy old motorhome.
Roadkill Previously
Roadkill Previously
"Wouldn't it be great if you could build a stronger, more reliable go-kart?"
Don't you mean "let's build a car without all the bulky body parts"?
And the Poly Goats are from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, if you anyone was wondering.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:44 PM on April 11, 2014
Don't you mean "let's build a car without all the bulky body parts"?
And the Poly Goats are from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, if you anyone was wondering.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:44 PM on April 11, 2014
Mod note: Couple comments deleted; homelessness is kind of a derail right out of the gate.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 9:48 PM on April 11, 2014 [5 favorites]
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 9:48 PM on April 11, 2014 [5 favorites]
bet that thing can carry a lot of red shells
posted by infinitewindow at 9:56 PM on April 11, 2014 [2 favorites]
posted by infinitewindow at 9:56 PM on April 11, 2014 [2 favorites]
Things don't always work out so well when you combine an RV and a video crew. There's the files, the random outbreaks of 'verbal diarrhea,' epic levels of profanity, and sometimes it just makes you sit alone in an RV with the A/C off, and wonder if its worth it anymore.
posted by chambers at 10:48 PM on April 11, 2014 [5 favorites]
posted by chambers at 10:48 PM on April 11, 2014 [5 favorites]
That RV go kart is straight up Red Green Show style. It's just missing some duct tape.
posted by TheJoven at 11:20 PM on April 11, 2014 [2 favorites]
posted by TheJoven at 11:20 PM on April 11, 2014 [2 favorites]
Back when I lived in San Francisco in the nineties they used to have these events they called "rodeos" in the delete industrial neighborhoods where it's flat, property values are low and where law enforcement wasn't likely to notice. They were sort of a hush hush event that you had to know a guy [in my case Joe, via Bob] to know about.
They were a bunch of gearheads and welders and energetic idiots who built things so they could break them.
You can cut two Audi front wheel drive cars in half and weld them together so you have four wheels, two engines and two drivers. The resulting combat between the drivers is interesting.
You would be suprised how long it takes an inverted Volkswagen Beetle, with it's throttle maxed, to explode.
The sonic canon was scary, that thing that shot molten metal was terrifying.
I love things like this.
posted by vapidave at 11:33 PM on April 11, 2014 [7 favorites]
They were a bunch of gearheads and welders and energetic idiots who built things so they could break them.
You can cut two Audi front wheel drive cars in half and weld them together so you have four wheels, two engines and two drivers. The resulting combat between the drivers is interesting.
You would be suprised how long it takes an inverted Volkswagen Beetle, with it's throttle maxed, to explode.
The sonic canon was scary, that thing that shot molten metal was terrifying.
I love things like this.
posted by vapidave at 11:33 PM on April 11, 2014 [7 favorites]
Late in Jack London's The Sea Wolf, Wolf Larson, sea captain, seal killer, explains to his effete, intellectual passenger the how and why behind a reality that places such a body as Larson's, so fit in body and mind, so superior in fitness and thought, so wasted at the helm of a sealing ship (although Larson would argue that the sealing ship was an apex rather than a crevasse), but in fact, he, Larson, is an example of the hard and serious math of being, the Nietzschean hot coolness of the universe, a representation of the chance of it all that we all face, always and forever, moment by moment; "I am what happens when good seed is blown onto bad soil."
I see the genius of Larson's vision when I see a motor home rendered into a giant, windup toy wagon.
posted by notyou at 11:52 PM on April 11, 2014 [5 favorites]
I see the genius of Larson's vision when I see a motor home rendered into a giant, windup toy wagon.
posted by notyou at 11:52 PM on April 11, 2014 [5 favorites]
The roll bars are not laterally triangulated, and seem to me to be untrustworthy.
posted by Tube at 12:09 AM on April 12, 2014 [3 favorites]
posted by Tube at 12:09 AM on April 12, 2014 [3 favorites]
My family owned a 32' motorhome in the 80s and 90s - and let me tell you, those things are not easy to keep running if you put a lot of miles on them. That frame may look sturdy, but I can tell you 40 different ways it can break on a 20 hour drive. And the axels? Oh gods, they break like twigs. Not to mention, seeing one of those tires blow at speed, especially an inner one is not something I ever want to experience again.
posted by strixus at 12:58 AM on April 12, 2014 [2 favorites]
posted by strixus at 12:58 AM on April 12, 2014 [2 favorites]
vapidave: I love things like this.
Where I live they used to run amateur races where you could show up with whatever car you could get your hands on and race on a real track. (this was in the 60s and 70s) Industrious racers soon figured out that a local car rental had cars available with really big engines in them. They'd rent them for the weekend, work all friday night to pull the engine and put it in their clunker, go race on saturday, and then put the engine back in on sunday to return the rental monday.
posted by readyfreddy at 3:16 AM on April 12, 2014 [5 favorites]
Where I live they used to run amateur races where you could show up with whatever car you could get your hands on and race on a real track. (this was in the 60s and 70s) Industrious racers soon figured out that a local car rental had cars available with really big engines in them. They'd rent them for the weekend, work all friday night to pull the engine and put it in their clunker, go race on saturday, and then put the engine back in on sunday to return the rental monday.
posted by readyfreddy at 3:16 AM on April 12, 2014 [5 favorites]
They'd rent them for the weekend, work all friday night to pull the engine and put it in their clunker, go race on saturday, and then put the engine back in on sunday to return the rental monday.
Someone once told me a story of using a rental car (unlimited mileage!) as a chase vehicle for the Baja 1000. I pity the poor person who thought they were getting a killer deal at the used car lot when that car was sold.
and let me tell you, those things are not easy to keep running if you put a lot of miles on them.
I suspect that RVs are like boats -- something you want a family member to own, so you can use it and they can deal with the maintenance issues.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:48 AM on April 12, 2014 [3 favorites]
Someone once told me a story of using a rental car (unlimited mileage!) as a chase vehicle for the Baja 1000. I pity the poor person who thought they were getting a killer deal at the used car lot when that car was sold.
and let me tell you, those things are not easy to keep running if you put a lot of miles on them.
I suspect that RVs are like boats -- something you want a family member to own, so you can use it and they can deal with the maintenance issues.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:48 AM on April 12, 2014 [3 favorites]
That Roadkill episode where they stuck a RV engine in an old Dodge Charger was hilarious. The entire time they were on the freeway I was wondering if they do safety inspections in California. Don't you have to pass an smog test or something? I believe they also joked about dumping motor oil and transmission fluid in the guy's front yard.
Please do not let these guys near any old nuclear reactors or my neighborhood.
posted by bukvich at 6:58 AM on April 12, 2014 [2 favorites]
Please do not let these guys near any old nuclear reactors or my neighborhood.
posted by bukvich at 6:58 AM on April 12, 2014 [2 favorites]
Given all that real estate, drivin that MHGK would beat launching model rockets all to hell.
posted by Twang at 7:11 AM on April 12, 2014
posted by Twang at 7:11 AM on April 12, 2014
These guys spill a lot of hazardous chemicals on the ground. Not to mention all the pieces flying off the vehicles as they move them around from place to place.
posted by Roger Dodger at 8:58 AM on April 12, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by Roger Dodger at 8:58 AM on April 12, 2014 [1 favorite]
I had no idea that Melmac was anything other than Alf's home planet.
posted by XMLicious at 2:17 PM on April 12, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by XMLicious at 2:17 PM on April 12, 2014 [1 favorite]
XMLicious, no Scandinavian Americans in your social circle?
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 12:41 PM on April 13, 2014
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 12:41 PM on April 13, 2014
Where I live they used to run amateur races where you could show up with whatever car you could get your hands on and race on a real track. (this was in the 60s and 70s) Industrious racers soon figured out that a local car rental had cars available with really big engines in them. They'd rent them for the weekend, work all friday night to pull the engine and put it in their clunker, go race on saturday, and then put the engine back in on sunday to return the rental monday.
I believe you are mis-remembering the legendary 1966 Shelby GT350-H, the "Hertz Rent-a-Racer." In 1966 Hertz purchased Shelby GT350s for general rental. People would rent them on a Friday, tune the engine for the track, and then weld in a temporary roll bar. After a weekend at the races, they'd cut out the roll bars and return the rental on Monday.
posted by charlie don't surf at 8:13 PM on April 13, 2014 [2 favorites]
I believe you are mis-remembering the legendary 1966 Shelby GT350-H, the "Hertz Rent-a-Racer." In 1966 Hertz purchased Shelby GT350s for general rental. People would rent them on a Friday, tune the engine for the track, and then weld in a temporary roll bar. After a weekend at the races, they'd cut out the roll bars and return the rental on Monday.
posted by charlie don't surf at 8:13 PM on April 13, 2014 [2 favorites]
There's the (in-)famous Nitro Neon rental refit from the dark days of the internet (a.k.a. 1998).
posted by flyingfox at 3:10 PM on April 14, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by flyingfox at 3:10 PM on April 14, 2014 [1 favorite]
They'd rent them for the weekend, work all friday night to pull the engine and put it in their clunker, go race on saturday, and then put the engine back in on sunday to return the rental monday.
When I was in college, one spring my older brother rented a car in Minnesota on an unlimited-mileage deal. When he went to pick it up, he was pleased to be given a new car, but mildly disappointed that it was a super-cheap, flimsy, no-options sedan.
He drove it alone to Boston to pick me up -- 1300-some miles -- in two days. We made it home in two days, too, after we discovered the gas gauge was *cough* untrustworthy, and the radio only picked up a few very bad FM stations, and we agreed that driving 18 hours straight beat a third day on the road.
He returned the car to the rental place on the fifth day, otherwise fresh, with an odometer that read almost 3000 miles. The guy behind the counter was mildly surprised.
posted by wenestvedt at 10:54 AM on April 17, 2014 [2 favorites]
When I was in college, one spring my older brother rented a car in Minnesota on an unlimited-mileage deal. When he went to pick it up, he was pleased to be given a new car, but mildly disappointed that it was a super-cheap, flimsy, no-options sedan.
He drove it alone to Boston to pick me up -- 1300-some miles -- in two days. We made it home in two days, too, after we discovered the gas gauge was *cough* untrustworthy, and the radio only picked up a few very bad FM stations, and we agreed that driving 18 hours straight beat a third day on the road.
He returned the car to the rental place on the fifth day, otherwise fresh, with an odometer that read almost 3000 miles. The guy behind the counter was mildly surprised.
posted by wenestvedt at 10:54 AM on April 17, 2014 [2 favorites]
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posted by HuronBob at 9:34 PM on April 11, 2014