Home » Man Tests Whether You Can Drive An Electric Car Upside Down By Mounting 10-Foot Wheels Onto A Tesla

Man Tests Whether You Can Drive An Electric Car Upside Down By Mounting 10-Foot Wheels Onto A Tesla

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You know what’s a lot of fun? Watching someone do wonderfully stupid and destructive things with something expensive that you don’t own. I don’t know exactly why its so much fun, but it sure as hell is, and this video of from the popular YouTube channel WhistlinDiesel absolutely delivers, with a Tesla Model 3 getting hilariously abused and mistreated, culminating with the car being mounted on massive custom-built ten-foot-diameter wagon wheels, for the purpose of demonstrating that it can be driven upside-down. It’s a blast, and I would love to do stupid shit like this. How does the host pull this off? How does this guy get a Tesla to so wantonly debase? I suppose that’s his whole business. It’s important work. I respect it.

Goodideas

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Do you have a bit of time? Of course you do. Tell your boss you’re busy and need 13 minutes to review some important information. This is that information:

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A hell of a ride, right? There’s a certain loose, careless, almost delirious quality about the whole thing that makes it even better. The recklessness, when combined with something that gets so much reverence and is as accepted as a Thing of Value like a Tesla, really is satisfying.

So much is going on here; the video starts with some pretty cutting jokes at Tesla’s expense, but somehow free of the irritating self-righteousness that often comes with that. It’s not subtle, exactly, but it’s loose and fun. The host drives with a  parking boot on the car, he engages in some Autopilot silly shenanigans, he charges it with a diesel generator, he generally debases everything about the car, the culture around it — all of it — in a deceptively silly and deeply entertaining way.

Also, those tow hooks integrated into the Tesla are pretty well done.

Tesla Wagonwheels1

I remember David and I talking about how you could, technically, drive an EV upside-down, and we even worked on plans to try it with a Nissan Leaf or something, and now boom, this guy Cody comes along and pulls it off masterfully with a Tesla Model 3. It’s fantastic to see.

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It’s a big deal, I suppose, because a conventional combustion car simply couldn’t work, or at least not work long, inverted. All the fluids expect gravity to be going in a specific direction, and if you reverse that, on most cars at least, everything gets weird. Oil will drain out of the sump to the top end, for example. Maybe modern fuel injection is high-pressure enough to compensate (with a full tank)? Dammit, maybe we need to try this with a combustion car now.

Of course, things don’t go well for various garage doors or gates or even the Model 3, but that can’t really be surprising to you, can it?

What remarkable times we inhabit.

 

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Vishnuisgod, a Gawd, not thee Gawd
Vishnuisgod, a Gawd, not thee Gawd
1 year ago

what the heck did I just watch?

Austin Vail
Austin Vail
1 year ago

I’m still waiting for the day SpaceX sends a Tesla to the moon. And for another company to do the same… and for them to race. Basically I just really want lunar rallycross to be a thing. It’d be the ultimate PR stunt!

Vishnuisgod, a Gawd, not thee Gawd
Vishnuisgod, a Gawd, not thee Gawd
1 year ago
Reply to  Austin Vail

you had to say it out loud didnt ya????

I dont think Ol Muskie had thought of that yet….

Dsa Lkjh
Dsa Lkjh
1 year ago

Powertrain design engineer problems with inverting an ICE car:

Fuel pumps pick up at the bottom of the tank. Fuel tanks even when “full” have an air gap at the top. So you won’t pick up any fuel to pump. You’ll also flood the breather system, which is fine, unless you fix the pickup problem in which case weird things will happen as you empty the tank. Maybe the vacuum causes weird fuel vapour issues, dunno.

That’s fine though because the roll-over switch will turn off the fuel system anyway.

The oil pickup is at the bottom of the sump, so you have no oil pressure, and soon, no bearings. So it won’t matter that the head of full of oil and the drains don’t work, but if you had a dry sump engine and turned the tank upside down/right way up you’d end up effectively running out of oil pretty quickly.

The cooling system might start getting bubbles in it depending on how it’s designed to bleed itself. The head coolant flow is critical, but your air bubbles will be in the block, so that’s OK.

Nothing you couldn’t fix with a few hours work (invert the fuel tank, dry sump with an oil drain in the cam cover, maybe move the header tank) and then it would work just fine.

Petter hjalmarsson
Petter hjalmarsson
1 year ago

I dont like him or this kind of things, destroying R32’s for likes is fucking stupid.

Griznant
Griznant
1 year ago

THAT is when I decided he was a douche and not content I wanted to watch.

Harvey Park
Harvey Park
1 year ago

> Dammit, maybe we need to try this with a combustion car now.

I know a guy with a few jeeps that are already not in the best of shapes. Maybe he could help?

Mark Tucker
Mark Tucker
1 year ago

(groucho) I’ve hoyd of being upside-down on a car, but this is ridiculous! (/groucho)

MikeInCO
MikeInCO
1 year ago

Makes me think of the RC cars you crash into the wall, and then they flip and keep going. Bonus points if he can pull that off!

Mantis Toboggan, MD
Mantis Toboggan, MD
1 year ago

This guy is fantastic. He bought the smallest helicopter he could find, something extremely sketchy and unsafe. Not having a pilot’s license and being told that flying it outside is illegal by the FAA he decides to fly it in his garage. So him and his buddies rigged it to keep going with no one at the controls and did just that. It got off the ground, sheared off a rotor within seconds and then started hurling it self around on the stump, smashing everything in the garage and endangering everyone present. It was awesome, great content.

JMJR
JMJR
1 year ago

Counterpoint: I hate this guy (Whistlin’ Diesel) because he’s just being wasteful and the internet lets him make money off ruining things and being unsafe.

Jim Stock
Jim Stock
1 year ago

“Watching someone do wonderfully stupid and destructive things with something expensive that you don’t own.” is literally a weekend at an off road park.

Neil Borucki
Neil Borucki
1 year ago

This guy gets my views ever since he started destroying squatted trucks. Not all heroes wear capes.

Chris with bad opinions
Chris with bad opinions
1 year ago

Fair warning: I’m about to go all get off my lawn and old man yells at cloud here. What an extraordinary waste of money this all is. The fact that this person can afford to do this from running a YouTube channel is fucking ludicrous. Meanwhile, thousands upon thousands of people doing honest work (whatever that is) can’t afford a decent vehicle or housing. Our society is fucked. End of rant. Sorry (kind of).

Steve
Steve
1 year ago

You feel this way about Blues Brothers ruining hundreds of Dodge Monacos too? It’s just entertainment.

Chris with bad opinions
Chris with bad opinions
1 year ago
Reply to  Steve

Yes, yes I do. Now get off my lawn.

Dolsh
Dolsh
1 year ago

I’m with you. It’s pretty much a stupid waste of everything.

Just because you can doesn’t make it interesting or entertaining.

Toecutter
Toecutter
1 year ago

That thing looks utterly hilarious. It’s funnier than a clownshoe.

Canopysaurus
Canopysaurus
1 year ago

I’d rather flip off a Tesla.

Mr. Asa
Mr. Asa
1 year ago

The single redeeming thing about this guy is he doesn’t give a shit what he tears up, so he tears up everything.

Conspicuous consumerism at its worst.

Iwannadrive637
Iwannadrive637
1 year ago

I never thought a Tesla video could make me so happy! For years I’ve been hearing that an F1 car generates so much downforce it could run inverted. Prove it. Put an electric motor in one, build an inverted track, and go for the glory. You have my $100 so money shouldn’t be an issue.

Toecutter
Toecutter
1 year ago
Reply to  Iwannadrive637

It can be proven mathematically that it is possible. I’d love to see a real-world demonstration.

Granted, there is a minimum speed requirement to generate enough downforce to keep the car planted if it is upside down. Then there’s the issue of the engine. A F1 engine will become hydrolocked in short order, so the engine and its related systems would need to be designed specifically to allow the car to operate upside down as well as rightside up. The car would have to be designed for this application.

A normal F1 car could generate the downforce to do it, but the rest of the car isn’t up to the task.

An electric motor is the ideal solution to demonstrate this.

OpposedPiston
OpposedPiston
1 year ago
Reply to  Iwannadrive637

This sounds exactly like something Red Bull would do. And they should.

Data
Data
1 year ago

I am fairly certain this is from the new Back to the Future remake where they use a Tesla to travel back to the old west.

Rad Barchetta
Rad Barchetta
1 year ago
Reply to  Data

1.21 gigawatt lightning bolt would make one hell of a fast charger.

A. Barth
A. Barth
1 year ago

“and f you reverse that”

Fine, fine, I”ll reverse it. No need to be rude. 😛

The modern fuel injection – any FI, really, I think – will not care about inversion. The pressure in the line is generated by the fuel pump and will be sufficient to pump fuel uphill; actually it’s doing that already, since the fuel tank is located lower than the injectors. However, that probably won’t matter: the path from the tank to the injectors is more or less horizontal and will remain so even if the vehicle is flipped upside-down.

The oil problem would probably be more noticeable with a wet-sump engine; a dry-sump approach would work better.

Now that I think about it, how did the manufacturers of radial aircraft [piston] engines address those issues? Hmm.

Thomas Metcalf
Thomas Metcalf
1 year ago
Reply to  A. Barth

The fuel injection system should work BUT, the pickup for the sending unit in the tank will most likely not be submerged in fuel therefore it won’t be able to get any fuel to the hpfp.

Mr. Asa
Mr. Asa
1 year ago
Reply to  Thomas Metcalf

F1 uses fuel bladders, IIRC, with some minor tweaking it should handle it with no problems.

JKcycletramp
JKcycletramp
1 year ago
Reply to  A. Barth

Radial engines amaze and confound me, especially the multi-row ones with sleeve valves.

Phil Layshio
Phil Layshio
1 year ago
Reply to  A. Barth

it’s going to require a lot of modifications across the whole car I suppose you could probably flip the pickup unit as well.

1961ford
1961ford
1 year ago
Reply to  A. Barth

Think 2 stroke and air-cooled. Can’t be too difficult.
I’ve got a weedwhacker that runs in any postion.

Austin Vail
Austin Vail
1 year ago
Reply to  A. Barth

As I understand it, oil doesn’t leak past the piston rings in a radial engine fast enough that it becomes a problem if you run the engine regularly. However, if you let a radial engine sit for too long, you do want to pull the plugs on the lower cylinders and turn it over to remove any oil that seeped past the rings before you try starting it, because the starter motor or even turning the prop by hand to see if it’s hydro locked has enough force to bend the rods.

When the engine is running, the oil seepage is slow enough that it just gets burned up before it can lock the cylinder.

So in short, radial engines don’t have a solution for oil seeping past the rings, but there are enough major benefits with the design that people use them anyway.

SteamTroller45
SteamTroller45
1 year ago
Reply to  A. Barth

Radial engines are durable, and that’s about it.
Compared to modern engines, they are heavy, dirty, highly problematic and the aerodynamics speak for themselves. When they were used, oil was cheap and soap was cheap.
My father grew up on my grandfather’s airport with a 2100 foot grass landing strip. My grandfather (a lifetime aircraft mechanic) always pointed out how when he converted a crop duster from radial to turbine you added bigger batteries, bigger radios, A/C, and hung the engine a good 3 feet further off the nose. Even with all that, the cropdusters were about twice as capable with both load and airspeed.

Andy Individual
Andy Individual
1 year ago

Would this be considered a Tesla donk or a stonk?

10001010
10001010
1 year ago

I think it’s White and Strunk

Sid Bridge
Sid Bridge
1 year ago

Amazing feet of engineering but the bank assures me this is not the first guy to end up upside-down in a Tesla.

Harvey Park
Harvey Park
1 year ago
Reply to  Sid Bridge

As does NHTSA.

Rust Buckets
Rust Buckets
1 year ago

“Man” is an interesting noun there. I would think that a goodly majority of the car obsessed audience here has at least heard of whistlindiesel.

Oiling is the main issue with running a car upside down. The fuel system would be fine, on my cars the fuel pressure would probably actually increase(marginally) because it’s now downhill from the tank to the fuel rail. You’d most likely start losing a lot of transmission fluid through the vent too.

People have tried running automotive engines upside down, usually the pcv dumps a lot of oil in the intake and it floods.

Millermatic
Millermatic
1 year ago
Reply to  Rust Buckets

I had no idea who “whistlindiesel” was. I do now. He seems like a tool…

Ian Cox
Ian Cox
1 year ago
Reply to  Millermatic

He’s actually not.. go watch his tractor protest video. He’s been through it in life and figuring shit out after his JW family dismissed him.

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