Drunken ideas we've had in the garage

A buddy of mine and I used to drink profusely and work on cars in our garage. Nothing ever got done but we always had the coolest ideas and no money, ability, or fabrication skills so they all just ended up being whispers in the wind.

Some ideas were awful

• Lets run superchargers off the back wheels of a FWD car. They're not doing anything productive...

• We need a single cam car that can switch cams in the middle of its RPM range. One low end cam, one high end cam. We can have a shifter in the cockpit. We'll call it the "switcharoonie".

Some ideas ended up actually being done

• Dude. What's to stop us from taking out the cam completely and running these valves electrically... we could use a computer to infinitely change the cam grinds to constantly keep the engine at its peak potential

Unfortunately those were done by other people... article

So, short story long: My buddy Zsolt who lives on the 7th floor of his apartment. He has a bottle of windshield washing fluid but always forgets he needs it because his car doesn't remind him he's low on washer fluid until he starts it. By then it's not worth going back up 7 floors to go get it.

What's to stop someone from making a key that's able to sense when it's picked up? Once it's picked up it cues the car to run its on-board diagnostic. Any problems could be texted to the owners phone. That way my forgetful Hungarian friend would be reminded BEFORE he left his apartment.

That's all. If you're in a position to make this happen, please do. Just put my name in the credits or something

(and yes, we were drinking and playing under the hoods of our cars when we came up with this)

Good times

Where did you get the hooch?

A gentleman never asks, a lady never tells

Keys are already capable of holding that kind of memory. Most dealers (German at least) have a key reader on the service counter. Pulls up all the cars information, including fault codes.

Variable valve timing and lift is in mass production too

My sober ideas are bad enough.

For example a hybrid Tahoe drivetrain being combined with a turbo LS to make a ghetto P1.

You know those subscription food services like blue apron?

We had that discussion in a bar one night about 11 years ago. Same thing with ubereats/grub hub.

Paint that acts as solar panels? About 7 years back.

Wheel chairs that could climb steps? My 21st birthday party. (Ok they existed at the time but we didn't know)

I really wish we'd have saved our old bar napkins we drew up all our plans on, would be worth a fortune these days.

I have always wanted to put a garage door spring on the rear axle of a FWD car, engaged with a one-way sprocket.

That way you could backup 50-60 ft to wind up the spring, and then when you launch forward you get all that energy driving the rear wheels for the launch when the FWD suffers most.

In normal driving the sprocket would just slip and the spring would be disconnected, in backing up out of a parking spot, you would engage the spring, but you don't backup far so it wouldn't really wind up much.

just remember, since they changed patent law from first-to-invent to first-to-patent you're all screwed. Carry on.

I was sober when i decided to rip apart 2 perfectly good cars to build one i drove twice then parted out. After that i decided to stay away from cars anytime i touch alcohol.

I'm just gonna leave this right here. I can't remember if there's "colorful language" on this one but watch it with the sound down just in case.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/bRhCZOoHxvU

That's part 1 of 3. We did this for hours.

Why doesn't the car text you what it needs? Our dryer texts us that it is done....

My best idea drunk in a garage was realizing that, while underneath a car, the garage floor was nice and cool, inviting me to take a nap under said car.

I have the MyBuick app on my phone. Basically reads the codes to me whenever I want. Or lets me start the car or unlock it with my phone.

And a coworker saw an Oldsmobile back in the '80's being driven by a GM engineer. No camshaft.

RevRico wrote: You know those subscription food services like blue apron? We had that discussion in a bar one night about 11 years ago. Same thing with ubereats/grub hub. Paint that acts as solar panels? About 7 years back. Wheel chairs that could climb steps? My 21st birthday party. (Ok they existed at the time but we didn't know) I really wish we'd have saved our old bar napkins we drew up all our plans on, would be worth a fortune these days.

My grandparents still complain that they didn't sell their TV dinner idea way back in "the day". Basically, Grandma was a nurse and Grandpa worked as a line repair man for the phone company. Neither knew if they'd be home for dinner and they had 4-kids to feed.

So grandma would do the weeks cooking on her days off on some old metal trays, seal em, and freeze em. The kids could snag a tray, pop it in the oven, and Bob's your uncle

Me? I'd like to open a brewery but I think I'd get bored making the same thing the same way over and over again. So, my brewer would be called "Random ass brewery" and you'd grab a "Random ass beer". No idea what it's gonna be, but it'd save me the headache of vatting, or being consistent in my brewing

(The caveat to the brewery. We'd put a question (trivia, joke, etc) under the bottle cap, and the answer would be written inside on the bottom of the bottle. Keep drinking, the answer's in there somewhere!)

In reply to Hungary Bill:

I would go to your brewery.

I always thought a pick a genre movie theater would be a good idea. Cheap tickets cuz you run old movies, but you don't know what you will see. Just pick comedy or horror or action etc and you see a random old movie from the genre.

Also, i think a restaurant could work too. Your only decision is are you eating or not. Chef picks the meal each night, and sommelier does the wine pairing.

Not automotive, but while intoxicated, I questioned why there aren't stands at baseball games that sell root beer floats made with hard root beer. I prefer real craft root beer and beer for that matter, but I can't help but think that they'd make money hand over fist for 81 games a year.

After seeing Michael Jordan play with black knee pads and black elbow guards I figured black colored bandaids would sell well. In theory bandaids are for white people.

Around 1979-1981 all my buddies were into four wheeling and mudding and massive 12" lift kits. I was into sports cars and back in the day I had thoughts of lowering a K5 Blazer and making it perform and handle well on the street 4x4 style. Bad idea as the transfer case would never hold up my buddies said you need slippage.

Many years later we got the Typhoon, Cyclone, WRX, Evo, RS.......I was ahead of my time? I would still like to see a K5 perform on a track.

Tony Sestito wrote: I'm just gonna leave this right here. I can't remember if there's "colorful language" on this one but watch it with the sound down just in case. https://www.youtube.com/embed/bRhCZOoHxvU That's part 1 of 3. We did this for hours.

Stop

You had me at your profile pic

Long time ago thought of multiple keys for different engine tunes. Video cameras instead of side mirrors for the aero crowd.

We pulled an old wrecked Honda 750A out for an air wrench party (basically take out all the bolts and screws to scrap it or just have fun with the parts) and it was sitting near an old mobility scooter. We noted how the rear wheels/drivetrain was removable with 2 hairpin clips and measured almost exactly the same width as the tubes under the engine of the Honda.

Inkjet printable OLED technology was coming on 15+ years ago and I thought a car's heads up display would work better as a transparent "tv screen" actually printed on the car glass.

Looking back, that would either make an expensive replacement windshield or an awesome custom accessory to stick in your car. Drive in movie without the screen. "Enhanced reality driving". Side glass made into 4K screens for kids movies and games. Rear glass custom messages , "hang up and drive" etc.