The Quest for Turbo Axle: A Revolutionary Approach to Harnessing Power
In a bid to revolutionize the world of automotive power, engineer Gene Middlebrook founded Turbonique in 1962. With a background as a defense contractor, where he designed ballistic missiles, Middlebrook applied his expertise to create innovative solutions for cars. One such invention was the Turbo Axle, which has sparked curiosity and debate among enthusiasts. To understand the allure of this concept, let's delve into its history and functionality.
The Birth of Turbo Axle
Turbo Axle is a mechanical device designed by Middlebrook to solve the inherent problem of parasitic load in traditional turbochargers. A turbocharger is a turbine-driven supercharger that uses exhaust gas to power an impeller, which in turn pushes more air into the engine, allowing for increased horsepower. However, this process comes with a catch - the engine has to work harder to push gas through the exhaust, resulting in a parasitic load. This means that at low RPMs, the turbocharger is drawing more power than it's adding, which can negatively impact engine performance.
Middlebrook's Vision
Middlebrook saw an opportunity to address this issue by designing a Turbo Axle that bypasses the losses associated with traditional turbo setups. By harnessing the energy from the exhaust gases directly at the wheels, Middlebrook aimed to deliver 1300 horsepower directly to the wheels, eliminating the need for intermediate mechanical devices. This approach eliminates the parasitic load, allowing the engine to perform better at low RPMs.
The Concept Takes Shape
In a bold move, Turbo Axle aims to provide an alternative to traditional turbochargers by leveraging the power of the exhaust gases to generate torque directly at the wheels. By doing so, the engine can maintain its optimal performance across a wider range of RPMs. This innovative approach has sparked excitement among enthusiasts, who are eager to experience the benefits of this revolutionary technology.
The Future of Turbo Axle
As we embark on this journey to explore the world of Turbo Axle, it's essential to acknowledge the potential challenges and limitations associated with this concept. While Middlebrook's vision is ambitious, it remains to be seen whether this technology can overcome the complexities of engine design, aerodynamics, and materials science.
A New Era in Automotive Power
The emergence of Turbo Axle represents a significant departure from traditional turbocharger designs. By harnessing the energy from exhaust gases directly at the wheels, Middlebrook's innovation has the potential to redefine the relationship between power and efficiency. As we continue to explore this technology, it will be fascinating to witness how manufacturers and engineers adapt and refine this concept to bring it to market.
The Engineer Behind Turbo Axle
Gene Middlebrook's journey into turbocharger design was not an overnight success. With a background in defense contracting, Middlebrook brought his expertise to the automotive world, applying his knowledge of ballistic missiles to create innovative solutions for cars. His passion for engineering and problem-solving led him to develop the Turbo Axle concept, which has now sparked interest among enthusiasts worldwide.
The Benefits of Turbo Axle
The benefits of Turbo Axle are multifaceted. By eliminating the parasitic load associated with traditional turbochargers, this technology can deliver improved engine performance across a wider range of RPMs. This means that drivers can expect enhanced acceleration, smoother power delivery, and improved fuel efficiency. Furthermore, the elimination of intermediate mechanical devices reduces complexity and weight, potentially leading to increased reliability and reduced maintenance costs.
A Word from the Expert
In our conversation with Gene Middlebrook, he shared his vision for Turbo Axle and its potential to revolutionize the world of automotive power. As we explored this concept further, it became clear that Middlebrook's passion for engineering and problem-solving is matched only by his dedication to innovation. With Turbo Axle, Middlebrook has opened up new possibilities for manufacturers and engineers, challenging traditional thinking and pushing the boundaries of what is possible.
The Zebra: A Game-Changer in Car Insurance
As we take a break from exploring Turbo Axle, let's shift our attention to The Zebra, a car insurance comparison site that has been making waves in the industry. Founded by enthusiasts who were frustrated with the long wait times and high costs associated with traditional car insurance, The Zebra aims to provide a hassle-free and quick experience for drivers. With over 100 insurance companies compared side-by-side, The Zebra's innovative platform is changing the game for drivers worldwide.
A New Way to Find Coverage
The Zebra's approach to car insurance is built around one simple premise: to make it easier for drivers to find the best coverage at a fair price. By comparing multiple insurers and policies, drivers can access a wider range of options and negotiate with ease. The Zebra's platform also includes features such as real-time quotes, policy analysis, and customer support, making it an indispensable resource for anyone looking to purchase car insurance.
The Benefits of The Zebra
So, what sets The Zebra apart from traditional car insurance providers? For starters, the site offers a comprehensive comparison engine that allows drivers to compare policies and prices in real-time. This feature is particularly useful for those who are new to car insurance or are looking to switch providers. Additionally, The Zebra's platform includes tools such as policy analysis and customer support, providing drivers with peace of mind and confidence in their decision-making.
A New Era in Car Insurance
The emergence of The Zebra represents a significant shift in the way car insurance is bought and sold. By democratizing access to insurance quotes and policies, this innovative platform is making it easier for drivers to find coverage at a fair price. As we look to the future, it's exciting to think about the potential impact that The Zebra could have on the car insurance industry as a whole.
The Future of Turbo Axle and Car Insurance
As we conclude our exploration of Turbo Axle and The Zebra, it's clear that both concepts are pushing the boundaries of innovation in their respective fields. While Turbo Axle has the potential to revolutionize the world of automotive power, The Zebra is redefining the car insurance landscape. By combining these two technologies, manufacturers and engineers may be able to create cars that not only deliver exceptional performance but also provide drivers with a hassle-free and affordable way to purchase coverage.
The Quest for Perfection
As we look to the future, it's essential to recognize that both Turbo Axle and The Zebra are still in their early stages of development. While they have already shown promise, there is much work to be done before these technologies can be fully realized. Nevertheless, by embracing innovation and pushing the boundaries of what is possible, we may soon see cars that not only deliver exceptional performance but also provide drivers with a safer, more affordable, and more enjoyable driving experience.
In conclusion, Turbo Axle and The Zebra represent two sides of an innovative coin, each pushing the boundaries of what is possible in their respective fields. By exploring these concepts further, we can gain a deeper understanding of the potential benefits and challenges associated with each technology. As we look to the future, it's exciting to think about the possibilities that these innovations may hold for drivers and manufacturers alike.
WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: en- In my never ending search to find moreand unique ways to bump uppower on the old cat dish,I came across a company thatmakes turbos for your axle.Claiming to deliver 1300horsepower directly to your wheels,bypassing the losses you getfrom a traditional turbo setup.(crying)But as you might expect,Turbo Axle is a wild fricking idea,an engineers, fever dream brought to life.And today we're gonna dive into the brainof one horsepower hungry engineerand see how Turbo Axlescame to be, how they workand more importantly,why Job needs to put one on the Miata.Job we're giving you more work, baby.Woo hoo. Let's go!(bright upbeat music)- Thank you to The Zebra forsponsoring today's video.Namaste.Lately, I've been spendinga lot of time meditating,learning how to diffusethe stress, anxiety,and worry of being put onhold for what seems like hourswhen shopping for a newcar insurance policy.But, once I started using the nation'sleading car insurancecomparison site, The Zebra,that's when everythingaligned.(mellow music)You see, there's no such thingas long wait times at The Zebra.They make the stressfultask of securing coveragecompletely hassle-free and quickby comparing over 100plus insurance companiessideby sidein minutes.So don't waste another secondlistening to that Bossa Nova hold music,just go to TheZebra.comand let their experts do allthe work while you relax.Like all these people.Plane!- Plane, (indistinct)- Heads up!As I was saying, no matterwho you are or what you drive,The Zebra saves their driversan average of $440 a year.To find serenity in yoursearch for coverage,start comparing quotesand see how much you could save todayby going to TheZebra.com/bump...Plane!- plane, watch out,plane!- /bumper.(mellow music)- Back in 1962, an engineernamed Gene Middlebrookstarted a company calledTurbonique to sell his inventions.Applying what he learneddesigning ballistic missilesas a defense contractor,he built and sold poweradding equipment for cars.One of those invention was a Turbo Axle,but that wasn't a turbocharger for your axle.There's a difference, let me explain.Ordinarily, we use the word turboto describe that under hoods Benny boythat uses exhaust gasesto power a turbine,a fan that's rotated by the exhaust flow.That turbine is attached toan impeller, it's another fan,that pushes more air into your engine.That extra air means it can burn more fueland more horsepower.But the word turbo is also usedwith lots of other mechanical devices.To an engineer like Middlebrook's,turbo means anything thatmakes use of a turbine.Stuff like a turboprop airplane engine,which uses a turbine to spin a propelleror the GM Turbo-Hydromatic transmissionwhich uses a turbine tobuild hydraulic pressure.Of course, marketers,they don't always see eyeto eye with us, engineers.And sometime turbo gets usedwhen there's no turbine.That's how we ended up withPorsche's Taycan Turbo,which is an EV.It couldn't use a turbo,even if it had one.Porsche's marketing peoplesay turbo just meansthe fastest top of theline version of their cars.Because apparently,words mean whatever Porsche says they do.If only there were some sort of bookthat could help us tell what words mean.Now that we know that marketers are liarsand getting back to some engineering,what is the appeal to designingand fabricating a Turbo Axle?Well, it's to solve an inherent problemthat all turbochargers have,that parasitic load.- Oh, you suck.- Looking at a turbo onthe Miata, for example,that engine has to do work to push gasesthrough the exhaust.If you put something inthe path of those gases,like a turbine, theengine has to work harder.Now, here's a good example.Have you ever been on a missionto run into the grocery storeto pick up a bag of HawaiianSweet Maui Kettle Chips.And as you're walking down the aisle,an old lady comes out of nowhereand steps right in front of you?It takes more work to pushold Ethel out of the way.Perfect analogy.Similarly, a mechanical superchargerconnected to the engines crank,consume some of the engine's power.Alternator, the airconditioning compressorand power steering pump are all doing thiswhen you drive your car too.But this means at low RPMs,a turbo or a superchargeris drawing more powerthan it's adding.That's parasitic load.And at low RPMs, the enginewould perform better without it.It's only when the charge airreaches a high enough density,is there more than enough additional powerto make up for that loss.(car engine roaring)Middlebrook saw this problem and he said,"There's gotta be another way."What he came up with was a superchargerthat had its own power source,but he didn't nail that on its first try.He developed a batterypowered electric supercharger.We did an episode on B2Babout electric superchargersand their big problem is thatthe batteries to makesignificant horsepowerare simply too heavy for themto be viable in most cases.Middlebrook's electric superchargerhad the same problem as electric turbos.It just didn't add enoughpower to be worth it,but he wasn't ready to give up.And because of his background in missiles,he tried a different power source.Rocket fuel.Whoa!(rock music playing)(cheering)And this led to the inventionsthat may Turbonique infamous.All of which were powered bysomething called thermolene.Thermolene was just a brandname for isopropyl nitrate,a rocket fuel that Turboniquewould send you in the mail.If you think that's dangerous.Yeah, you'd be right.I can't even send... well, now you can't.And you can't send poop it at mail now.But this was 1960s, a timebefore safety ever existed.Seat belts weren't evenmandatory in cars until 1968.And you could buy a child'sstory that contained radioactiveand reachable uranium 238,in case you wanted the kids togrow up to be the next X-Men.A part of what makesisopropyl nitrate dangerousis that it's a mono propellant.That means it contains everything you needfor combustion, unlike gasoline.Gasoline is composed of hydrocarbons,molecules containing hydrogen and carbon.And to make combustion happenthat requires oxygen.Oxygen is over here, they're like,"Yeah, you need me.You need me, (beeping)"Gasoline in an airtightcontainer simply can't burn.Thermolene has oxygen built into it,meaning all you need to setoff a combustion is a catalystlike a spark, pressure,or high temperature.But it also means you can't suffocatean isopropyl nitrate fire bycutting off its oxygen supply,it's already built in, it won't happen.Isopropyl nitrate isn'treally used anymore,partially because itreleases more toxic gasesthan other rocker fuelsand it's highly dangerous.But thermolene also has another problem.It doesn't contain quite enough oxygenfor complete combustionof its hydrocarbonsinside an engine.The unburned hydrocarbons get very hotfrom the combustion happening around themand can ignite when theyexit through the exhaustand come into contact with air.The flame this producesis nearly invisibleand it burns around 1100°C.Can't even see a hot, hot flame.So Middlebrook saw the drag stripas a place to use his invention,a liquid driven superchargerand it mounted on the enginein between the carburetorand intake manifold.Like a turbo, it used animpeller to increase the pressureand density of the charged air.How that impeller was drivenis what made the device super special.Attached to the otherend of the impeller shaftwith a turbine and combustion chamber,the combustion and exhaust gasesfrom burning isopropyl nitrate insidethat would spin theturbine and the impellerup to a hundred thousand RPM.To make that possible,the combustion chamberhad two injector ports.One was used for the fuel thermoleneand the second was use for liquid oxygen.That extra oxygen helpedthe isopropyl nitrate ignitefor more complete, morepowerful combustion.But it also meant that you had to havethree high pressure canistersmounted somewhere in your car.One for liquid oxygen, one for thermoleneand one for nitrogen, whichwas used as a propellantto rapidly move thatthermolene from its canisterinto the combustion chamber.All that sounds a bitcomplicated and it was,but it's hard to argue with the results.In one of the few documented tests,a liquid driven superchargerboosted a Chevy 409 cubic inch enginefrom its stock 405horsepower to 835 horsepower.One of the biggestchallenges at that pointwas having a carburetorthat could flow enough fuelto use all that extra air.The device also took up alot of space under the hoodand that increased charge pressureput a lot of strain on the engine.So Middlebrook's next ideawas to just take the engineentirely out of the equation.And for that he designeda rocket fueled rocket.This is the Turbonique Thrust Engine,and it wasn't exactly subtle.It was a rocket that you strapto the back of a vehicle,you hit the ignitionswitch and you held on.It was basically somethingfrom an ACME Catalog.But in one test where thrust enginewas attached to a go-kart,it ran the quarter mile and five secondsat 240 miles an hour,a record for rocket powered go-kartsthat remains to this day.Of course it is, who the(beeping) else would do that?So the rocket fueled,liquid-driven supercharger,took up space under the hood,it drank fuel and it wore out your motor.The rocket fueled thrust enginehad all the sophistication in safetyof something out of aWile E Coyote cartoon.But the Turbonique Turbo Drag Axlewas the rocket fueledsweet spot between them.The Goldilocks turbo axle,like the thrust engineleft the cars regularmotor completely alone.You could drive to the dragstrip in a quiet, comfortable,otherwise totally normal road car.In fact, according to theTurbo Axle's instructions,when the Drag Axle was activated,the transmission had to be in neutral,maintaining no connection betweenthe engine and the wheels.It's pretty sick.See the Turbo Axle employedthe same sort of fuel systemwith liquid oxygen, isopropyl nitrateand nitrogen as the liquiddriven supercharger had.And it had the same sortof combustion chamberand turbine set up withone notable exception,it was a lot bigger.(whistling)Because the device was attacheddirectly to the real axle,it didn't have to fit in an engine bay.So everything was scaled up.And because of that, that turbinegenerated 1300 horsepower.Instead of using all thatpower to spin an impellerand push more air into the engine,the output shaft ofthe Drag Axle's turbinewas connected directlyto the rear differential.Rocket fuel combustion power(car engine roaring)was sent straight to the wheels.If you left the car in drive,that means some of the powerwould also be sent back up to the engine,probably spinning it fasterthan it was ever designed to go.And that's why the carhad to be left in neutral.But there were a coupleproblems with this setup.First was a fuel, whichwas tremendously dangerousand costs around 25 bucksa gallon in today's money.That paled in comparisonto the cost of the TurboAxle itself, $4,695 bucksin 1960s dollarsor $42 grand today.Another downsideis that none of the Turboniquedevices had a throttle.The Turbo Axle's fuel flowrate was controlled by a valvethat was pretty much a gardenspigot underneath the car.(spraying sound)The Turbo Axle wasactivated or deactivatedby a simple on off switch.And if your finger felloff the ignition buttonduring a run, you can't just re-ignitebecause thermolene would poolinside the combastion chamberand explode if a spark was re-introduced.(piano playing)Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!But if you had money and atotal lack of self-preservation,there were a few ways thatmade it so easy to go fast.A Volkswagen Beetlecalled The Black Widow,used the Turbo Axleto complete a 9.36 second quarter mile runat 168 miles per hour.It had more to give,but unfortunately we'llnever know how much more.On a second attempt,just 200 feet from the finishand traveling at 183 miles per hour,the Beetle decided it was an actual rocketand went airborne. (laughs)The driver was somehow completely unharmedand alongside the wreck car appearedin Turbonique advertisements.So the Turbo Axle wasexpensive, ridiculous,completely unsafe.And we didn't even have timeto talk about the lawsuitsbetween Middlebrook, his customers,and even the US governmentover the poor qualitymanufacturing of his devices.In spite of all that,I think Turbo Axlesdeserve a second chance.There's not a single documented instance,not even an anecdote that I could findabout someone being killedor seriously injured.And if you think about it,a turbine driving the axle of a carisn't inherently any more dangerousthan what an internalcombustion engine does.With a better fuel source,proper throttle control,modern manufacturing techniques,and a team of engineersinstead of just one guy,Turbo Axles could likely bemade safe and reasonably priced.And that's why me and Jobare going into a Turbo Axle business.So if you wanna be on thefirst set of Turbo Axles,send us your deposit,just 5, 5, 5, 5, $555,48 payments of that and we'llsend you on a vigil. (laughs)(trumpet playing)(birds chirping)(birds chirping)(car engine roaring)- A flag isn't just a decoration.A flag represents an idea,a community of peopleand the qualities for which they stand.- And if you believe in Donut's messagethat everyone can like cars,then what better way to show itthan with a bad-ass Donut flag.Hanging in your garage,hanging in your bedroom,or watch it wave proudlyon your at-home flagpole.- I'd say they'reavailable for only $19.98,which is so much cheaper than $20.- So get your Donut flagright now@donutmedia.comand let the world know that you believethat cars are for everybody.(upbeat music)- Let me know in thecomments, what do you think?You want us to design, engineer,fricking build a Turbo Axleand throw it on the old Miata?Let me Job know, we need a new project.And I think that could be the one.Thank you guys so much forwatching this episode to B2B.If you could like this videothat really helps us out.Subscribe if you'renot already subscribed.If you wanna see more doughnut content,you just need more, got to get your fix.Hit that join button, takeyou to the Donut Underground.We've got a bunch ofsick videos over therethat we can't post on this channel.You can hit me up in thediscord, we can chat it up.You wanna see what life islike on a day-to-day basis,follow us here on Instagram @donutmedia.Follow me on Instagram @JeremiahBurton.Hit me up on Tik Tok,Silence of the Lambda.What up! I'm Tik talking now.Until next week.Bye for now.
