14 ms·

Surviving the desert by building a motorcycle from a broken car? (2017)

212 points by kenneth 5y ago

s1artibartfast 5y ago
Great story and amazing engineering. I got curious and found this article which has more details and a bit more sceptical take. https://sahara-overland.com/tag/emile-leray/ https://sahara-overland.com/tag/emile-leray/
- s_gourichon 5y ago
  From the photos and videos, the guy is indeed a 2CV hacker. I think the contraption is real. Source: my father owned several cars of the 2CV family and we rode in them for years. Did he actually build it in the desert? Without tools it seems rather difficult. Here's the central point of https://sahara-overland.com/tag/emile-leray/ https://sahara-overland.com/tag/emile-leray/ > I believe the 2CV bike was indeed built in the desert, much as Leray claims, but he set out from France with the explicit intention of performing this task. Otherwise he’d have walked out like any normal person in a similar situation. > His claimed unease about leaving his stricken car doesn’t ring true, let alone the spontaneous idea of making it into a two-wheeler. Tellingly, in 2006 Leray went on to build a ‘2CV boat’ in Mali. He clearly likes mucking about with 2CVs. Fair play to him!
daveslash 5y ago
This reminds me of the fictional story The Flight of the Phoenix, a 1964 novel turned into a 1965 film. The plot is that a group of men crash their Fairchild C-82 aircraft in the Libyan desert and build a make-shift aircraft out of its pieces to fly to rescue. [1] I did not find it to be a very remarkable film in-and-of itself (personal opinion only), but what I do find remarkable (and tragic) was that for purposes of the movie, a flying, FAA certified, "one off" aircraft was built - the Tallmantz Phoenix P-1 [2]. Tragic because one of the stuntmen was killed then the aircraft came apart during a practice touch-and-go [3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Flight_of_the_Phoenix_(1965_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Flight_of_the_Phoenix_(196... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tallmantz_Phoenix_P-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tallmantz_Phoenix_P-1 [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n82nN_lqn58 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n82nN_lqn58
- zh3 5y ago
  The twist in that film is the guy who designs the escape plane turns out to be a model plane designer. Ok, but all the people on the wing are going to have a hard time (quite apart from messing up the aerodynamics). Movie stuntmen getting hurt - even dead - has been happening long after that movie. Even non-stuntmen can have close shaves on-set (I've had three, just as an SFX tech, safety is probably much better these days since the '80s); always seemed to be the cameramen who ran the highest risks.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    I once went into the woods with a logging crew. The amount of unsafe stuff I saw was mind boggling. Then, my turn came. A skidder had gotten a tree stuck. Instead of backup they just floored it, and predictably a tree trunk came shooting out of the bush. If not for some pretty good reflexes (better than I thought I had) I'd surely be dead, I dropped to the floor and the tree flew over me still attached to the steel cable that had tensioned. Very, very scary. After that I did all the work myself. Slowly, deliberately and without taking chances, not a single issue in more than a years' worth of cleanup. They say that logging is one of the most dangerous jobs. I am not surprised but I think a good factor in that equation is the loggers themselves. (And some of the trees, which can be downright treacherous.) In comparison what I've seen on film sets has always been pretty mild.
    - kwhitefoot 5y ago
      I think logging in the US is probably much more dangerous than in other developed countries. At least that's the impression I have from watching a few television programmes and YouTube videos. US loggers seem to take more risks and have less sophisticated equipment. Is my impression correct?
      - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
        Television isn't real life. It's an entire career's worth of shenanigans compressed into one season because nobody is going to watch them drive heavy equipment back and forth all day with nothing interesting happening. If it were even close to that eventful people would live-stream it. Note the release schedule of all the <insert workplace more dangerous than an office> youtubers and how little of their content is sketchy stuff.
barrkel 5y ago
I don't believe this. Colour me extremely skeptical; if he had 10 days worth of water he could have walked to the coast, and he'd hit a road sooner or later. Morocco is not that wide. What are the chances you have enough tools to tear down and rebuild a car in a different format like this, and you choose to do so instead of hiking? You'd have to have done it, or something like it, before.
- throw1234651234 5y ago
  I am in the same boat as you - you can't even cut an exhaust pipe off without specialized tools - getting a wheel on something even without any suspension components seem next to impossible. Maybe I am just mad because swapping out shocks and springs would take me several weekends with full tools and a jack.
  - lostlogin 5y ago
    Working on a (relatively modern) Japanese car after only having dealt with ‘60s and 70’s British vehicles was a revelation. Standardised sizes and parts that actually fitted together. So great.
    - throw1234651234 5y ago
      That's my experience of going from a German car to a Honda. I can take the Honda apart with a screw driver and a 6-19 wrench set and very little else. I required one hex wrench when taking off the whole front of the car. German cars tend to have a bunch of hex and star wrench requirements, in addition to specialized tools for certain parts. On the other hand, older cars did mostly have way more space in the engine bay.
      - cafard 5y ago
        Space and Hondas: I took some skin off my right hand and fingers the last time I replaced a headlight on one--I had to get in behind the gravel shield.
      - 5y ago
smm11 5y ago
Should have walked nights, could have done this easily in two, possibly even one.
- LorenPechtel 5y ago
  Where do we have an indication of how far he had to go?
  - jimnotgym 5y ago
    I notice the article suggests he was 20 miles from a village. That sounds walkable in a couple of nights to me, as a fat middle aged man. I am pretty sure someone used to the terrain and climate could do it in a single leg.
    - xwdv 5y ago
      I reckon if you know exactly the direction you have to go and have some good hard ground to run on, the distance can be covered in a night at a decent pace. 20 miles is really not that far.
    - LorenPechtel 5y ago
      But did he know? My read is that he thought it was beyond hoofing it. 20 miles of decent terrain with my normal hiking gear I would have no problem with. Survival situation, I'd do it with a GPS and water.
CapitalistCartr 5y ago
On mentioning Mythbusters failed to recreate this, he concludes Emile is amazing, still without doubting any of the story. "The insanity of this creation couldn’t be better expressed than in the episode of Mythbusters, where they tried to recreate his process." "Without following a manual, the hosts disassembled a 2CV, which they found easy, then set about making their bike. That part was not so easy. They failed twice." "The first, was when they tried to make a better version, requiring two to operate it. Fail." "Then, they tried to recreate Leray’s machine from the images they’d seen. They couldn’t balance it long enough to save their lives. Fail again." "Considering the boys had two good brains, intelligent, experienced, and endless time to make something, they failed two-times-twice."
- jandrese 5y ago
  The original report states that Emile had a lot of trouble staying balanced on his bike as well. It is possible the Mythbusters version didn't work very well because the design was fundamentally flawed. From what I understand he didn't even get out of civilization with it, being picked up by the army not far from where he built the thing.
  - ansible 5y ago
    Steering geometry on a motorcycle is very important, and getting it slightly wrong will make it hard / impossible to balance and steer. Actually, this is true for a bicycle as well.
kbelder 5y ago
I don't know firsthand whether this is true, but this is an old family story about my Grandfather. He was a logger in the Pacific Northwest. At one point he was hauling logs up the Oregon Coast, and his truck broke down in the middle of nowhere, stranding him. (Probably an old Gary truck, which was practically made from cast iron.) I don't remember the exact part, but it was something to do with a wheel... the rim, or part of the axle or mounting. He happened to have some ingots in his truck (a soft metal, I forget the term). So he built up a large fire, melted the ingots, and sand-cast a replacement part using the broken piece as a template. Once it cooled and was cleaned up, it worked well enough to get him to civilization, or whatever passed for civilization in Oregon in the 30s. Seeing all the logging hacks I've seen when growing up, I completely believe this story.
- netizen-936824 5y ago
  Honestly that's super impressive. Sand casting can be difficult to get right. The metal was likely aluminum? Did he use motor oil to wet the sand?
  - wikidani 5y ago
    I don't think it was aluminum because he mentioned it was during the '30s. I believe it wasn't as widespread as it is nowadays
  - PeterisP 5y ago
    For 1930s, I'd assume that lead is much common than aluminum, and it's also much easier to melt.
    - dugditches 5y ago
      Most likely it was Babbit. Which is... possibly feasible for someone to be carrying back then. As it could have been used(in a pinch) to repour bearings in the field. Or maybe he was simply just carrying lead for weights used for getting lines up into trees. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babbitt_(alloy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babbitt_(alloy)
progman32 5y ago
My armchair take is that if I really wanted to drive out (as opposed to walking - I don't know if I'd be confident enough in my walking pace & distances to make the call to abandon the vehicle) I'd try to rig the 2CV in car form. Fewer unknowns, I think. A broken drive axle (there are 2) could be wedged up to restore drive to the other wheel, and a wheel with a broken swingarm could be replaced by a makeshift skid made from a bumper. A diagram of the 2CV drive system can be found here: http://www.lightauto.com/fwd8.html http://www.lightauto.com/fwd8.html I wasn't there of course.
- dntrkv 5y ago
  Agreed. This story is bullshit. It would have been way easier to figure out a way to make the 2CV drivable.
  - mkhpalm 5y ago
    It would have been far easier to just walk the 20 miles (maybe half a day... being generous) back to the nearest civilized area. Especially since the area around there runs an average high of 82F during its hottest months. And we aren't even talking about the fact that you can just walk at night. If anything of this story is actually true it might make sense to put yourself in his shoes. You broke down trying to sneak around a military outpost. What are you going to tell people when they find your car or you go get help to recover it? You are only 20 miles out so just throwing a match on it draws a little too much attention to yourself and you have 12 days of water and supplies. The way I figure it, you have at least 11 days to destroy the evidence and any fun you can have in the process is a bonus.
marcodiego 5y ago
In the 90's, my father had a Ford Pampa. We lived in Rondônia, close the extreme west of the Amazon rainforest. One day, while raining and riding through difficult terrain, the car stopped just by the top of a slope. My father quickly diagnosed the fuel hose had ruptured. By luck and opportunity, he was a physicist, the trunk was full of material from experiments and research he was running at the time. He got a hose from one of his experiments on the trunk, connected it directly to the engine fuel inlet, the other point of the hose came directly to the cabin inside a bottle we filled with alcohol from the fuel tank. That was it, the bottle was now our fuel tank. Dangerous, but worked perfectly. We had to stop at every gas station we found and refill without stopping the engine to prevent air entering the hose. It was a fun day.
- mountainboy 5y ago
  alcohol in the fuel tank?
  - CapitalistCartr 5y ago
    Sugar (and hence alcohol fuel) is cheap and plentiful in Brazil. It competes with gasoline. So dual fuel vehicles are common.
  - marcodiego 5y ago
    Yes. Cars powered by alcohol were common in Brazil. There was a government program with tax incentives, this helped us to become less dependent on external prices for petrol helping control inflation. Also, on less developed regions, utility cars - Pampa was a pickup - also had tax incentives as a way to promote development of the region. Of course, there was a law that prevented you from selling your utility car to other regions of the country. This made an alcohol powered utility vehicle very attractive for the region at the time. It was probably the cheapest pickup one could buy.
    - 01acheru 5y ago
      What a memory, my grandfather’s Santana! If it was a little cold it would never start on the first try… Thanks for bringing this back :)
thecrumb 5y ago
Didn't Mythbusters do this one already?
- acrump 5y ago
  Busted https://www.kissmovies.io/movies/mythbusters-season-15-episode-5-transformers https://www.kissmovies.io/movies/mythbusters-season-15-episo...
giardini 5y ago
When I read the headline I said to myself "I won't believe this unless the car was a 2CV!" Surprise! Another 2CV story. But seeing the contraption I still don't believe it. Nonetheless this remains a good yarn and can only add to the 2CV's charisma.
14 5y ago
My dad one time got stranded in the desert with 2 friends a long way from civilization. He had a blown tire but had a spare. When he went to put the spare on it was an incorrect rim for the car and he didn’t know that since he bought it used and never had to use it. He tried to ride the bare rim but was spinning out and getting stuck. His solution he took the spare tire and his 30-06 gun and shot a hole in the rim which allowed it to barely fit on the car. It did not ride smooth and was a lumpy ride but he drove slow and got to a service station. The guy working was very impressed how it got it to work. Another time he got stuck in the desert he overheated and had no water to fill the radiator. There was a tiny leak somewhere causing it to run out and overheat. His solution this time was to get himself and his friends to Lee into the radiation filling it up enough to keep the engine cool. He again pulled into a service station but this time the guy working there was not impressed because it was now still leaking but this time the pee was burning off the hot engine and the guy could smell and wanted it nowhere near his shop.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  The overheating stories always start with "in the desert" because people who live where you run coolant that doesn't freeze don't tend to run cooling systems that leak out something that costs $5-$10/gal.
andai 5y ago
I found some videos featuring this man and his bike: (3 min) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFMWgSgB4sg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFMWgSgB4sg (20 min) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_m_a4iRZIk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_m_a4iRZIk
- Muromec 5y ago
  and neither of those two videos shows this motorcycle driving.
ncmncm 5y ago
Batman turned his car into a motorcycle in literally seconds.

212 points by kenneth 5y ago

Great story and amazing engineering. I got curious and found this article which has more details and a bit more sceptical take. https://sahara-overland.com/tag/emile-leray/ https://sahara-overland.com/tag/emile-leray/

s_gourichon 5y ago
From the photos and videos, the guy is indeed a 2CV hacker. I think the contraption is real. Source: my father owned several cars of the 2CV family and we rode in them for years. Did he actually build it in the desert? Without tools it seems rather difficult. Here's the central point of https://sahara-overland.com/tag/emile-leray/ https://sahara-overland.com/tag/emile-leray/ > I believe the 2CV bike was indeed built in the desert, much as Leray claims, but he set out from France with the explicit intention of performing this task. Otherwise he’d have walked out like any normal person in a similar situation. > His claimed unease about leaving his stricken car doesn’t ring true, let alone the spontaneous idea of making it into a two-wheeler. Tellingly, in 2006 Leray went on to build a ‘2CV boat’ in Mali. He clearly likes mucking about with 2CVs. Fair play to him!

daveslash 5y ago

This reminds me of the fictional story The Flight of the Phoenix, a 1964 novel turned into a 1965 film. The plot is that a group of men crash their Fairchild C-82 aircraft in the Libyan desert and build a make-shift aircraft out of its pieces to fly to rescue. [1] I did not find it to be a very remarkable film in-and-of itself (personal opinion only), but what I do find remarkable (and tragic) was that for purposes of the movie, a flying, FAA certified, "one off" aircraft was built - the Tallmantz Phoenix P-1 [2]. Tragic because one of the stuntmen was killed then the aircraft came apart during a practice touch-and-go [3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Flight_of_the_Phoenix_(1965_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Flight_of_the_Phoenix_(196... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tallmantz_Phoenix_P-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tallmantz_Phoenix_P-1 [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n82nN_lqn58 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n82nN_lqn58

zh3 5y ago
The twist in that film is the guy who designs the escape plane turns out to be a model plane designer. Ok, but all the people on the wing are going to have a hard time (quite apart from messing up the aerodynamics). Movie stuntmen getting hurt - even dead - has been happening long after that movie. Even non-stuntmen can have close shaves on-set (I've had three, just as an SFX tech, safety is probably much better these days since the '80s); always seemed to be the cameramen who ran the highest risks.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  I once went into the woods with a logging crew. The amount of unsafe stuff I saw was mind boggling. Then, my turn came. A skidder had gotten a tree stuck. Instead of backup they just floored it, and predictably a tree trunk came shooting out of the bush. If not for some pretty good reflexes (better than I thought I had) I'd surely be dead, I dropped to the floor and the tree flew over me still attached to the steel cable that had tensioned. Very, very scary. After that I did all the work myself. Slowly, deliberately and without taking chances, not a single issue in more than a years' worth of cleanup. They say that logging is one of the most dangerous jobs. I am not surprised but I think a good factor in that equation is the loggers themselves. (And some of the trees, which can be downright treacherous.) In comparison what I've seen on film sets has always been pretty mild.
  - kwhitefoot 5y ago
    I think logging in the US is probably much more dangerous than in other developed countries. At least that's the impression I have from watching a few television programmes and YouTube videos. US loggers seem to take more risks and have less sophisticated equipment. Is my impression correct?
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      Television isn't real life. It's an entire career's worth of shenanigans compressed into one season because nobody is going to watch them drive heavy equipment back and forth all day with nothing interesting happening. If it were even close to that eventful people would live-stream it. Note the release schedule of all the <insert workplace more dangerous than an office> youtubers and how little of their content is sketchy stuff.

barrkel 5y ago

I don't believe this. Colour me extremely skeptical; if he had 10 days worth of water he could have walked to the coast, and he'd hit a road sooner or later. Morocco is not that wide. What are the chances you have enough tools to tear down and rebuild a car in a different format like this, and you choose to do so instead of hiking? You'd have to have done it, or something like it, before.

throw1234651234 5y ago
I am in the same boat as you - you can't even cut an exhaust pipe off without specialized tools - getting a wheel on something even without any suspension components seem next to impossible. Maybe I am just mad because swapping out shocks and springs would take me several weekends with full tools and a jack.
- lostlogin 5y ago
  Working on a (relatively modern) Japanese car after only having dealt with ‘60s and 70’s British vehicles was a revelation. Standardised sizes and parts that actually fitted together. So great.
  - throw1234651234 5y ago
    That's my experience of going from a German car to a Honda. I can take the Honda apart with a screw driver and a 6-19 wrench set and very little else. I required one hex wrench when taking off the whole front of the car. German cars tend to have a bunch of hex and star wrench requirements, in addition to specialized tools for certain parts. On the other hand, older cars did mostly have way more space in the engine bay.
    - cafard 5y ago
      Space and Hondas: I took some skin off my right hand and fingers the last time I replaced a headlight on one--I had to get in behind the gravel shield.
    - 5y ago

smm11 5y ago

Should have walked nights, could have done this easily in two, possibly even one.

LorenPechtel 5y ago
Where do we have an indication of how far he had to go?
- jimnotgym 5y ago
  I notice the article suggests he was 20 miles from a village. That sounds walkable in a couple of nights to me, as a fat middle aged man. I am pretty sure someone used to the terrain and climate could do it in a single leg.
  - xwdv 5y ago
    I reckon if you know exactly the direction you have to go and have some good hard ground to run on, the distance can be covered in a night at a decent pace. 20 miles is really not that far.
  - LorenPechtel 5y ago
    But did he know? My read is that he thought it was beyond hoofing it. 20 miles of decent terrain with my normal hiking gear I would have no problem with. Survival situation, I'd do it with a GPS and water.

CapitalistCartr 5y ago

On mentioning Mythbusters failed to recreate this, he concludes Emile is amazing, still without doubting any of the story. "The insanity of this creation couldn’t be better expressed than in the episode of Mythbusters, where they tried to recreate his process." "Without following a manual, the hosts disassembled a 2CV, which they found easy, then set about making their bike. That part was not so easy. They failed twice." "The first, was when they tried to make a better version, requiring two to operate it. Fail." "Then, they tried to recreate Leray’s machine from the images they’d seen. They couldn’t balance it long enough to save their lives. Fail again." "Considering the boys had two good brains, intelligent, experienced, and endless time to make something, they failed two-times-twice."

jandrese 5y ago
The original report states that Emile had a lot of trouble staying balanced on his bike as well. It is possible the Mythbusters version didn't work very well because the design was fundamentally flawed. From what I understand he didn't even get out of civilization with it, being picked up by the army not far from where he built the thing.
- ansible 5y ago
  Steering geometry on a motorcycle is very important, and getting it slightly wrong will make it hard / impossible to balance and steer. Actually, this is true for a bicycle as well.

kbelder 5y ago

I don't know firsthand whether this is true, but this is an old family story about my Grandfather. He was a logger in the Pacific Northwest. At one point he was hauling logs up the Oregon Coast, and his truck broke down in the middle of nowhere, stranding him. (Probably an old Gary truck, which was practically made from cast iron.) I don't remember the exact part, but it was something to do with a wheel... the rim, or part of the axle or mounting. He happened to have some ingots in his truck (a soft metal, I forget the term). So he built up a large fire, melted the ingots, and sand-cast a replacement part using the broken piece as a template. Once it cooled and was cleaned up, it worked well enough to get him to civilization, or whatever passed for civilization in Oregon in the 30s. Seeing all the logging hacks I've seen when growing up, I completely believe this story.

netizen-936824 5y ago
Honestly that's super impressive. Sand casting can be difficult to get right. The metal was likely aluminum? Did he use motor oil to wet the sand?
- wikidani 5y ago
  I don't think it was aluminum because he mentioned it was during the '30s. I believe it wasn't as widespread as it is nowadays
- PeterisP 5y ago
  For 1930s, I'd assume that lead is much common than aluminum, and it's also much easier to melt.
  - dugditches 5y ago
    Most likely it was Babbit. Which is... possibly feasible for someone to be carrying back then. As it could have been used(in a pinch) to repour bearings in the field. Or maybe he was simply just carrying lead for weights used for getting lines up into trees. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babbitt_(alloy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babbitt_(alloy)

progman32 5y ago

My armchair take is that if I really wanted to drive out (as opposed to walking - I don't know if I'd be confident enough in my walking pace & distances to make the call to abandon the vehicle) I'd try to rig the 2CV in car form. Fewer unknowns, I think. A broken drive axle (there are 2) could be wedged up to restore drive to the other wheel, and a wheel with a broken swingarm could be replaced by a makeshift skid made from a bumper. A diagram of the 2CV drive system can be found here: http://www.lightauto.com/fwd8.html http://www.lightauto.com/fwd8.html I wasn't there of course.

dntrkv 5y ago
Agreed. This story is bullshit. It would have been way easier to figure out a way to make the 2CV drivable.
- mkhpalm 5y ago
  It would have been far easier to just walk the 20 miles (maybe half a day... being generous) back to the nearest civilized area. Especially since the area around there runs an average high of 82F during its hottest months. And we aren't even talking about the fact that you can just walk at night. If anything of this story is actually true it might make sense to put yourself in his shoes. You broke down trying to sneak around a military outpost. What are you going to tell people when they find your car or you go get help to recover it? You are only 20 miles out so just throwing a match on it draws a little too much attention to yourself and you have 12 days of water and supplies. The way I figure it, you have at least 11 days to destroy the evidence and any fun you can have in the process is a bonus.

marcodiego 5y ago

In the 90's, my father had a Ford Pampa. We lived in Rondônia, close the extreme west of the Amazon rainforest. One day, while raining and riding through difficult terrain, the car stopped just by the top of a slope. My father quickly diagnosed the fuel hose had ruptured. By luck and opportunity, he was a physicist, the trunk was full of material from experiments and research he was running at the time. He got a hose from one of his experiments on the trunk, connected it directly to the engine fuel inlet, the other point of the hose came directly to the cabin inside a bottle we filled with alcohol from the fuel tank. That was it, the bottle was now our fuel tank. Dangerous, but worked perfectly. We had to stop at every gas station we found and refill without stopping the engine to prevent air entering the hose. It was a fun day.

mountainboy 5y ago
alcohol in the fuel tank?
- CapitalistCartr 5y ago
  Sugar (and hence alcohol fuel) is cheap and plentiful in Brazil. It competes with gasoline. So dual fuel vehicles are common.
- marcodiego 5y ago
  Yes. Cars powered by alcohol were common in Brazil. There was a government program with tax incentives, this helped us to become less dependent on external prices for petrol helping control inflation. Also, on less developed regions, utility cars - Pampa was a pickup - also had tax incentives as a way to promote development of the region. Of course, there was a law that prevented you from selling your utility car to other regions of the country. This made an alcohol powered utility vehicle very attractive for the region at the time. It was probably the cheapest pickup one could buy.
  - 01acheru 5y ago
    What a memory, my grandfather’s Santana! If it was a little cold it would never start on the first try… Thanks for bringing this back :)

thecrumb 5y ago

Didn't Mythbusters do this one already?

acrump 5y ago
Busted https://www.kissmovies.io/movies/mythbusters-season-15-episode-5-transformers https://www.kissmovies.io/movies/mythbusters-season-15-episo...

giardini 5y ago

When I read the headline I said to myself "I won't believe this unless the car was a 2CV!" Surprise! Another 2CV story. But seeing the contraption I still don't believe it. Nonetheless this remains a good yarn and can only add to the 2CV's charisma.

14 5y ago

My dad one time got stranded in the desert with 2 friends a long way from civilization. He had a blown tire but had a spare. When he went to put the spare on it was an incorrect rim for the car and he didn’t know that since he bought it used and never had to use it. He tried to ride the bare rim but was spinning out and getting stuck. His solution he took the spare tire and his 30-06 gun and shot a hole in the rim which allowed it to barely fit on the car. It did not ride smooth and was a lumpy ride but he drove slow and got to a service station. The guy working was very impressed how it got it to work. Another time he got stuck in the desert he overheated and had no water to fill the radiator. There was a tiny leak somewhere causing it to run out and overheat. His solution this time was to get himself and his friends to Lee into the radiation filling it up enough to keep the engine cool. He again pulled into a service station but this time the guy working there was not impressed because it was now still leaking but this time the pee was burning off the hot engine and the guy could smell and wanted it nowhere near his shop.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago
The overheating stories always start with "in the desert" because people who live where you run coolant that doesn't freeze don't tend to run cooling systems that leak out something that costs $5-$10/gal.

andai 5y ago

I found some videos featuring this man and his bike: (3 min) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFMWgSgB4sg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFMWgSgB4sg (20 min) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_m_a4iRZIk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_m_a4iRZIk

Muromec 5y ago
and neither of those two videos shows this motorcycle driving.

ncmncm 5y ago

Batman turned his car into a motorcycle in literally seconds.