Chad: We had this crazy idea, people thought we were nuts.
The worst thing that could happen is I have a fuel leak
or a wheel explodes down the track.
That would be a bad day.
They're having a big Rock and Race event here.
So we showed up and kind of crashed their party
and seems to be a hit so far.
The vehicle being shown today at the Rock and Race event
is definitely one of a kind.
Chad: My name is Chad Clark.
Mike: I'm Mike Montor Chad: And this is a thunder buggy.
When people see the thunder buggy, they just can't believe their eyes.
And the first question is does it really move? And yes it does.
It does move, but not in the traditional sense,
which would have been with the help of a horse or two.
Mike: The nostalgic race weekend. What's more nostalgic than an Amish buggy?
Chad: We go way back.
Helping this buggy up the racetrack is not a regular engine either.
Chad: It's like oil and water. They should not go together.
Mike: They have no earthly business having an Amish buggy
and a jet engine together.
But how did this jet powered buggy come into existence?
Chad: Mike and I were at our local county fair watching a truck and tractor pulll.
I mentioned to him that it would be a really cool idea to build a turbo powered
four wheel drive pulling truck. So I went home that night
and found an engine online.
Bought it, didn't realize it was not turbo shaft it was
turbo jet only. So I had to come up with a different concept
than a pulling truck. So the lightweight vehicle
we live in the Amish capital of the world so I figured Amish buggy will be perfect.
Mike: Called me up and said we're not doing a pulling truck anymore.
We're doing an Amish buggy, seemed natural.
Chad: The buggy was not designed to take you know 100 feet of electrical wiring
and fuel tanks and a jet engine.
It's a really simple engine design.
Some pretty awesome engineering for back in the 40s.
We built a steel sub frame to carry the extra weight.
That's about the only thing that we did chassis-wise
to strengthen the buggy other than airbags.
We got a mix of aircraft gauges and car gauges.
This red handle is for emergency fuel shut off in the event of an accident.
With a jet engine, this buggy must have some serious speed in it.
Chad: Top speed so far, it's been 55 to 60 miles an hour.
Chad: This particular setup that's probably max,
because you know we kept the buggy as original as possible.
There's no safety cage, you know, I've got a driver seat,
seat belts but it's still a wood vehicle.
Today the team have brought the thunder buggy to Rock and Race.
Mike: I'll be doing all the crew chief work making sure he's safe.
Making sure there's no fuel leaks, all the electrical, towing
the vehicle up to starting line.
With Mike on technical support Chad will be …
Chad: Holding on for dear life.
And that's not surprising, as there's not a lot
of protection for the driver of this vehicle.
Chad: The worst thing that could happen is I have a fuel leak
and the engine runs away.
Or a wheel explodes down the track.
Yeah, that would be a bad day.
Mike: Buggy wheels aren't speed rated. Chad: Well not yet.
Mike: Not yet.
It’s time for this Amish automobile to show the audience what it can do.
Chad: It's fun to come to the track and enter a show
and, you know, see the reactions of people when they drop by.
And you know, they almost break their neck like is that really real?
Mike: We've had mechanical engineers and people come up.
You know, it's kind of nice when you're sitting in your garage
thinking about building things and you actually have an engineer come up
and go okay you did that all right. Chad: Yeah.
Mike: You did, you weren’t complete idiots. Chad: Right.
We made it. People thought we were nuts.
And I think that might have been part of the motivation
behind of it to get this thing done. Yeah.
Yeah, hold my beer moment. Watch this.
That's something that's unconventional, you don't see it every day
and people seem to love it.