How to flip a car

While most people don’t ever want to flip a car... and would surely never PLAN on doing so, for me it’s a regular enough occurrence. As with any other cat, there’s different ways to skin this one, here’s mine:



As I understand it, this “car flipper” concept is credited to John Frazier, Chuck Gaspar and Clay Pinney for a design they introduced filming “Armageddon”. All three men received a technical achievement award at the following years Academy Awards, Gaspar’s being posthumous.

Since then, some have gone bigger and bigger, my interpretations are the lightest and most compact I’m aware of. The inherent disadvantage of the design as a whole is slightly worse with my design, but I have the advantage of a smaller package overall and the actual filmmakers don’t have to work nearly as hard to hide my rigs. Some of the bigger units leave even vehicles with LOTS of ground clearance teetering comically off the ground. And subsequently force more work to hide their existence. The Acura TL on the lift in the background if the latest victim, it sits low, but the tires should still touch the ground while it’s on the units.

The unit has a high pressure side and a low pressure side. Here’s the low pressure actuation and the high pressure valve in its closed position:


Open position:


Here’s some stills from a test using 100 psi shop air on both sides:






Only the near unit is actually firing.

Despite inherent mechanical disadvantage of the original design which my design makes even worse, 1800 psi has pretty spectacular results, even with a heavier vehicle:






And from the other side:








Obviously there’s no truly SAFE way to fling a car through the air, but compressed gas is far safer and much more repeatable than the pyrotechnic solutions that were most commonly used prior to options like this.

In any case, I wanted to share some fun pictures of a project I’m proud of. I’ll update with pics of the Acura when it goes next Tuesday.


Be safe and stay healthy




Jeremy

That is awesome to see. Stuff like this has always been more interesting to me to see in the Extras of movies rather than some director prattling on about their "vision".

On a related note, has a movie ever approached you about having a rig to flip a jacked up truck that might be behind the vehicle. One that might just be tailgating and have it's halogen beams on high? And if so how much would such a unit cost?

I know of a few people's POS vehicles I would love to try that devise on.

Cool.....except your title is going to cause this post to get locked and deleted. Read the rules on titles.

CAMasochism said:

That is awesome to see. Stuff like this has always been more interesting to me to see in the Extras of movies rather than some director prattling on about their "vision".

On a related note, has a movie ever approached you about having a rig to flip a jacked up truck that might be behind the vehicle. One that might just be tailgating and have it's halogen beams on high? And if so how much would such a unit cost?

Click to expand...

I’ve never been approached for something like that... moving stuff is always more difficult. In your application you’re not likely worried about the safety of the other driver so the cost would come WAY down. Roll-cages and stuntmen are expensive.

Cheapest solution is likely a couple handfuls of roofing nails...

My preferred solution is an LED light bar. Wire it to a momentary switch and flash them same as you’d flash your high beams at an oncoming car not being courteous with their highs.

You could drop a pipe ramp in front of the following vehicle, but as simple as those ramps are, they’re too expensive to be viewed as a consumable, even for Hollywood producers.

My vote is for roofing nails by the hundred pound box.




Be safe and stay healthy




Jeremy

Pretty sure having OT in the header isn’t really gonna change the calculus. Have fun until the lock.

CAMasochism said:

That is awesome to see. Stuff like this has always been more interesting to me to see in the Extras of movies rather than some director prattling on about their "vision".

On a related note, has a movie ever approached you about having a rig to flip a jacked up truck that might be behind the vehicle. One that might just be tailgating and have it's halogen beams on high? And if so how much would such a unit cost?

Click to expand...

People here love to drive with their brights on 24-7 and don't dim them until they are passing you, they also rarely pull over for emergency vehicles running code 3. I used to live in the SoCal mountains where people were good about dimming their high beams as soon as they see approaching lights.

Is that truck "as driven" ?
Or has the engine and other parts been removed to make it lighter ?

Pretty cool. I read a lot about people flipping homes. Do you have any plans for something like that?

The truck was minus engine and transmission and gas tank. Still around three thousand pounds as it sat though.



Be safe and stay healthy



Jeremy

Work as a car salesman and steal all your trades, sell them yourself

That is pretty dang neat! I always enjoy seeing what someone comes up with that works!

Hmm... Now if I apply that to my little dump trailer, could I flip all my grass clippings over the fence into my neighbors yard...???

"How to flip cars....For fun and profit"....

A little bit of profit doing it again tonight:





















2000 psi this time, window were set to blow off a runaway trailer brake release. At the time of writing the car is still where it landed, so no telling what, if any damage, my machines incurred. Hopefully nothing major as I’ll be coming out to do this to a Jeep next week.




Be safe and stay healthy




Jeremy

From the archives...:










^Pneumatic^ again. Driven. Even in an Econoline we had to make room for the stunt guys massive balls... This one carries the arm in the vehicle, almost the same as the static rig I show above, except the arm retracts. Not my design and I don’t currently have any pictures, but it’s another low pressure cylinder actuating high pressure ball valves. Think five-way, double-acting cylinder solenoid shuttle valve. The low pressure cylinder replaces the shuttle and opens ball valves instead of ports. That system predates me, but one of the coolest bits is that the return stroke not only sends pressure to the ram, retracting the cylinder, it also dumps whatever is left in the accumulator so the system is inherently safe, once it’s done its job.

^More air^. Low pressure. Same firing system basically as the flipper arms from above, but dumping 35 gallons of air at 125 (or so) psi as opposed to 2-5 gallons at 1.8K-3.4K psi. I like this one because the lighting was really pretty and the fridge just spreads it’s wings and FLIES!

^This one^ used a pyrotechnic cannon. I don’t recall exactly, but probably 10-14 ounces of black powder. Problem with black powder is the smoke, so the rest of the pyrotechnics were propane “poppers” to hide the smoke as much as possible.

Two cars, one driver... blue car towed the black car into the crash. We also used a trailer brake release here, to cut the tow line so the blue car could pull away clean. First bad guy, black, European car down...

Cue second nondescript, black euro car:








Second bad guy car is driven. Stuntie did good work, with several assists. The jet of flame is the special effects crew blowing his tire, and the vapor above the trucks sideview mirror is our cannon doing its job. If memory serves the stunt department was nowhere near when the car was fully caged and converted to right-hand-drive either.




Be safe and stay healthy




Jeremy

Nice rigs! Nice work, thanks for sharing jer.

From my casual observations Co2 (and air?) straight shot cannons have been used for decades also. (they were using that with ramps if I recall...... ok, so maybe that’s a different beast!)

Yeah, we still use “cannons”, both pyro and pneumatic. Typically pneumatic are nitrogen, not CO2... you can get hugger pressures and nitrogen is typically the cheapest compressed gas to purchase. Nice and dry as well, which is good when you only take these devices out of mothballs every so often.

The biggest problem with any cannon is that there HAS to be a projectile. Most guys these days use plywood discs instead of the whittled down telephone poles they used to use. Doing so makes the system lose some energy, but doesn’t carry the risk of sending 40 pounds of wood chunk into the wild blue yonder. The discs tend to fan out behind the vehicle with much less energy where a solid pusher bounces around with more than enough energy to cause damage.

In most cases, most people would rather use an air cannon than a powder cannon because compressed gases aren’t as affected by atmospheric changes than powder is. Powder gets used when carnage is the primary objective and there’s no testing done beforehand. Anything that needs a test or needs to hit, or avoid, a particular object typically gets done with air in the hopes that results are repeatable.




Be safe and stay healthy



Jeremy