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Ever Wanted Your Own Land Speeder?
An anonymous reader writes "Be the first on your block to drive on of these! a StarWars Land Speeder. This used to be a 1988 Ford Escort and only has 880 miles since built." This is a surprisingly impressive conversion.
I mean, come on, odds are he got the escort with 100k miles on it for next to nothing (say, a thousand bucks), he spent maybe another thousand bucks in supplies and spent a month (fulltime) tops working on it.
If he gets 7K (I think he's gonna get at least 20K anyways, star wars, word of mouth and all that) by this quick seat-of-the-pants calculation, he could have made a good 5K with a month of work, which while not good enough to retire, is not exactly bad pay either, also considering the fun he had while making it (and driving the 880 miles to show it off).
-- the cake is a lie
This thing... Needs some work. The dimensions appear a bit off. Nose too long, pods not quite the right size. Others have mentioned the obviously Ford dash. A trip to Dakota Digital could have quickly solved that. And a Grant steering wheel would have been nice. After spending this much money, they could have at least grabbed the seats out of an Escort GT.
And what's with the nose? There is no reason to have those huge cutouts for the headlights. Either put them behind the grill, or let the grill roll up when needed ('69 Camaro among others). Please tell me it has this feature, and they were just rolled up for the pictures.
Finding a competent glass shop isn't always easy. If you can find a Corvette specialty shop, you might be okay. Otherwise, you are stuck with boat shops. And most of them are more worried about the structural repair than the appearance.
Still, a fun link for a Saturday afternoon.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Look at the Oscar Meyer Weiner Mobile. That thing is as odd as having a land speeder as a car. I don't doubt the US just says "lights, breaks, bumper, mirrors? Ok, give us money it's legal."
In most states in the US if you have the right lights, a mirror on the drivers side, and one either on the passenger or windshield you can get it registered and inspected. If the mod looks like it might weigh to much it might not pass inspection, or if you had that flagpole or whatever.
You probably could get insurance to cover damage to your car but you could get liability as long as it passed inspection. In NJ, the only state I've had an inspection done, you need seatbelts and to pass emission. Even that could be gotten around by having it inspected at your local garage for a fee. The funny thing is if it's a classic car (over 20 yrs old) the emission standards are very low, and you even get registration and insurance for less. It's a sort of "Sunday Driver" clause, since they don't expect you do drive the thing everyday.
Parts will come flying off on any car on some of the roads in the states. I lost a my muffler on a bridge that was being refurbished because my car couldn't clear the uneven road surface(NJ). It only cost a $1000 to have the undercarage repaired and the muffler reattached so I didn't bother filing for any kind of reimbursement. 10ft deep potholes are not uncommon in NYC, I just saw a brand new one on my way to work yesterday(4ft). It happens when there is a flood underneath the road surface. There congrete under the blacktop is 3ft thick in places but it isn't steel reinforced so if the earth beneath it is gone, the road eventually fails. A few months ago a delivery truck fell completely underground when the intersection collapsed. That one took 3 days to repair, a watermain had broken at least a week before underneath. My neighboorhood used to be a marsh 200 years ago, so it's not surprising when an buried river goes amuck.
(* it used to be a frigging Ford Escort. How much more could he fuck it up? *)
I had a Ford Escort once. It indeed was a P.O.S. I had to write "NOT TO CLOSE" on the back because it would stall if I stopped on a hill and roll backward. It had an aluminum head-block that cracked every six months.
If Richard Petty sins too much, an Escort is what God and/or Satan will give him to drive around in the afterlife.
I hear that the *only* reason Ford sold Escorts is that by law the average gas milage on *all* cars a vendor sold had to average a certain gas milage. Ford sold Escorts to simply keep the average down so that they could sell more fat trucks. (This is why they had wimpy engines). They practically gave the things away and people *still* did not take them often enough.
People would rather pay the same for a used Toyata with 55K than a new Escort. The post 55K is better in a Toyota than the first 55K on an Escort.
They should make something that is half mini and half go-cart, then the engine would have decent pull. Don't try to dress it up as a real car, because Escorts ain't real cars. I hated renting the damned things too. It is a lawnmower in car body.
Table-ized A.I.