How's it in anyway useful?
Have you ever seen anybody try to rob somebody in a flame throwing wheelchair?
It ain't gonna happen.
There's a girl.
See, is it safe? It's safe. (laughs)
My name is Lance Greathouse. I'm located in Glendale Arizona. This is my workshop.
I'm a dental repairmen during the day. I'm a mad scientist at night
and what I really love to do is build all kinds of wild and crazy machines.
Okay, this is Robo bust. What he does, he has 12 movements.
His eyes moves, his head moves, his mouth moves.
But he'll mock anything we put in him as far as sound system.
We take this to the zoo at Halloween time. We put a machete in the one arm here
instead of the pincers. We chase the kids around the machete and they go nuts.
Why do I love building? Look at my arms. I just love to get my hands on stuff.
Everything nowadays is on computer. I like the hands-on part of it.
I like the idea of having a thought my head and I if I work hard enough
a couple days later it's sitting there working.
Electric scooter for my boys.
Yeah when other kids were into scooters,
my boys take this out and kick their butt.
They're building at 50,000 square foot underground Batcave here in Arizona
for children with terminal diseases
and we're building this project for them I'm gonna gift it.
Basically it's the Batman and Robin decontamination console.
Kids will be able to hit buttons here.
This arm will swing into place. A rush of bubblegum air smell will come down on the children.
Lights will come on. Kids like to interact with things so it's always good
to have buttons and sounds that they can do.
As a kid I was a real sick kid I was an asthmatic, I spent most of my childhood in the hospital.
My dad built custom cars and buggies so while kids were playing baseball and football
I was out in the backyard fabricating stuff. My dad basically taught me that anything
I can come up with my head I can build my hands.
This sucker is called the secret Soviet grill of World War two.
It's a propane barbecue. You can do charcoal here propane here and you have a warm holding tank
and then you got your stereo system here.
The term was it should grill not kill.
This is the remote-controlled ice chest. Basically we have a remote control.
We can drive it around. The top opens up.
We can offer people beverages at events.
We have a tip jar. If they don't give us a tip
there's a water cannon here that shoots them in the crotch.
so they have to walk around the whole day with a crotch wet and embarrasses them.
so next time they give a tip.
This is where I keep all my wheelchair parts in here. These are my controllers and parts.
What the wheelchair labs does is basically take in wheelchairs and scooters that no
one are using. We refurbish them and get them out to people that don't have resources.
Then we also build special one-of-a-kind projects like four-wheel drive chairs.
We do it free of charge. We try to help everybody we can.
This is for the people that need it every day I mean that's their life
Not only people that are disabled. I have old people that are stuck in their apartments that don't go anywhere
and I find then a chair and they got their life back.
The kids are the most fun these are the chairs for because they're they're just
so appreciative anything you do. Reactions, all kinds of reactions.
Most of them are... they think it's a joke they can't believe it's actually happening to them.
Because like... a lot of people don't understand. Some of these chairs,
some of the ones we're giving away are worth 30 to $80,000.
I've had some men cry just saying that this is the first decent thing
that someone's ever done for them in their life, which I can't believe.
So it makes you feel good at the end of the day.
I'm just basically the grunt work. My wife's the brains and I have my volunteers.
I don't know if you guys want me to talk as much Lance does. (cameraman: It's okay)
I have City Council people. I have machinists, house moms, everybody volunteers over here.
Who funds it right now is just donations we get in.
A lot of people I got chairs to send us money.
I'm always looking for donations...always look for donations.
Everybody asks me: "how did the wheelchair project start? How did I get involved wheelchairs?"
I used to do big fire machines for Burning Man, Robot Wars and all that.
Well anyway how it happened is my brother and I worked together in a small company side-by-side for 20 years.
One day he started limping, kind of dragging his foot we couldn't figure out what's going on.
Long story short, he ended up with a form of Parkinson's disease like Michael J Fox.
Double brain implants, nothing working, he ended up in a wheelchair.
Seeing what he went to trying to get a wheelchair, and how people treated him in the wheelchair,
that's what started the Wheelchair Labs.
Since he's passed I do this in his honour. He's gone but his spirit lives on through my work.
This chair here was for my brother
It was a tank track wheelchair converted into my office chair here.
When people would see him in the regular wheelchair,
they'd ask him: "What's wrong with you? What happened?"
...you know and they would talk to me, like they wouldn't even talk to him like he was even there.
But once I built these custom chairs and put him in the chairs,
everything changed. It's like: "Oh dude, tell us about the chair!"
The majority what we do is just your standard regular wheelchairs and scooters.
But what we really like is the really wild chairs because it gets people interested what we're doing.
This is gonna be a Batman wheelchair for a small child.
These are wingtips off a plane.
This is our four wheel drive chair.
It's made for kids that want to go to camp where there's like trails and stuff and they can't get out in a regular wheelchair.
And it's got lights and siren on it *beep beep*
They do sell some four-wheel drive chairs. They're about 18 to 20 thousand
and I can build one like this I think I got about 600 bucks in this one with the batteries so...
and the batteries are probably 300 of that.
Basically what we need the donations for is batteries. Batteries kill us.
Each wheelchair that goes out of here it's 150 to 500 bucks in batteries.
Just trying to maintain that is very difficult.
One of the first chairs we built. Trainer jet seat.
And people say: "Well why is this thing so high here?"
It's because in the trainer jets you used to sit on your parachute.
So when you sat on your parachute, it would bring your head to the right level.
You would get in the wheelchair like this.
You sit down and you pull it in like this and you drive it like this.
and little storage area for your treats.
This is a B-52 Bomber ejection seat.
It's the only one in the world that ejects
that I know of that ejects downwards out of the plane instead of upwards.
When you gotta ejected out of the plane these things would come out and lock your legs in
place so your legs wouldn't flop around and break your legs.
I bought this at a yard sale. The guy actually ejected out of this chair and kept it for all those years and survived.
He donated to Wheelchair Labs for project.
It's a totally functional wheelchair, but what's different about it it has 50
caliber simulated machine guns. These sound and look just like a real machine gun when it's going off.
This whole thing is on a turret so you can spin it either way like a tank.
People say: "You guys are out of your mind. What are you doing this stuff for?"
And I say "The people in the wheelchairs love it." They say : "Keep doing it, we love it." you know.
This is the Dr. Evil chair and what's special about this you can put your
computer on here. It has a backup camera so you can see what's behind you.
A lot of people in wheelchairs they're always worried what's behind them this way you can see what you have.
It's got several sets of horns.
Everything we have has a drink cup holder in case for your beverage.
It's a totally functional wheelchai,r but it's more like for going to special events.
Say you're going tailgating or going to town you can take this chair out.
I mean it's just a regular wheelchair but it looks different.
I mean would you rather be in a regular wheelchair or this going to an event?
You'll have a lot more fun in this I guarantee you.
*Alarm sounds*
Hello people get out of the way!
But the Coolest Thing I've Ever Made...
is my flame throwing wheelchair.
I have two types neighbours.Only two. The ones that love me and the ones that hate me.
The purpose of this thing was to get people interested in what WheelchairLabs is doing,
and no better way to get people interested then to start shooting fire.
We do different events we is as Maker Faire. We do Burning Man events. A lot of disabled events and veteran events.
If I just came out in brought a wheelchair out sat in a parking lot no one is gonna show up.
But I shoot this off a couple times in the air and I'll have everybody there to ask what's going on.
It's not the most practical thing in the world but it serves its purpose
to people find out what we're about.
... and if there's actually any evil villains out there I'm sure they'll want to put in order in. *laughs* (not evil laugh)
I had a golf cart, a lawnmower and some x-ray dental brackets and that's how it evolved.
so I put all those together and came up with the "Lord Humungus" wheelchair.
I worked on it on and off took about a month and a half.
I always figured I don't worry about the time. Like what else would I be doing watch TV, so?
I've got less than 500 bucks in this thing
and probably like 200 of it's the batteries but it's all either
stuff that's donated or stuff we found or scraps you know.
Basic flamethrower, Volkswagen exhaust, fire extinguisher, schedule 60 pipe.
We have our propane tank which feeds the propane to the main flamethrower.
That's what fires. We hand it to people in the crowd, anybody can fire it.
This will shoot about 15-20 foot flames, depending on which flamethrower we put on it.
It also has the golf ball attachment that will shoot golf balls
and it also has the water cannon that will go on there.
The front end is the rear end of a golf cart.
The rear end is actually the front end of a lawn mower.
This is a rescue helicopter seat out of a marine rescue helicopter.
And basically the guy would be in the chair and we would swing out
and he was the guy that did the cable on the basket
And then we have different switches for lights.
You can manually pull this break here which is off a Model A.
These are bicycle pegs of a bicycle.
You can steer the back wheels with this or you put your feet in these stirrups here
and wherever you push your feet is which way it goes.
The the future of this? This is it. It's basically, it is what it is.
The future is to get more people interesting what we're doing and keep evolving
and making other chairs for people, custom chairs. What they like instead of what I like.
My flame flowing wheelchair is the Coolest Thing I've Ever Made.
*robot voice* "I thought I was the Coolest Thing Lance Ever Made"
Hey everybody my name is Guy, I'm the creator of the show. A big thank you to Lance from Wheelchair Labs for having us there. wheelchair labs for having us there and
And if you want to donate to this really good cause I'll put his website in the description below.
If you have any ideas for shows or things you want to see just email us.
I'll put that in the description below as well. Don't forget to Subscribe, Like,
do all those things to keep this channel alive and yeah thanks again!