Waaaay back when, while in college I had an Energy Systems class. We all had to do projects that dealt with energy. It was a lower level semi-general class and I knew that most people were going to do typical half-assed college student projects. So, I built a jet engine...
It started life as a Buick Grand National turbocharger. I used a Harley bagger muffler as the combustion chamber housing, with some stainless tubing inside to serve as the mixing chamber. It runs off propane(almost a pound a minute), and a neon sign transformer provide the initial energy to a spark plug to get the mixture lit. Throttle is controlled by varying the amount of fuel.
Both this videos are of poor quality, they're dubbed from VHS tapes that I finally got transferred to the computer(I said it was a long time ago
). Here's a good overview from a UW-Stout Auto Club Christmas party(also one of the very, very rare times you'll see me on camera ) :http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2WVELXp0vI
Here's the very first time I fired it up, not knowing if it would even work(I made it pretty too just in case it didn't work
). I didn't even have the exhaust cone made yet when this video was filmed:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_zEAU9WazE
)