Feasibility of 'wind up' engines?

plug in to regular AC socket to spool instead of fuel?

Because a small car to scale maybe goes half a km if that.

Build it. Figure out the problems, solve them. Once you have it perfected, then the real issues begin......

How do you convince people to spend their time winding to run their vehicle when they can buy one with an ICE or even electric?

Ok, how about inventing a type of alternator to spool while vehicle is in motion, thereby increasing range?

fuck it, strap a couple of ox to your ride, zero emission vehicle.

that alternator should rotate with the cars wheels, and free spin when the wheels stop.

My goodness, zero emission? Have you ever been being an animal powered vehicle? Lol.

I like it, but how do you store such energy?

maybe we can rig it so the animals are pushing?

Its not a bad idea but the range is severely limited and the size of spring and danger it would pose would never be allowed on the road.
I personally think gasifiers are the answer if you dont know what a gasifier is look up fema gasifier there was a report in the 70s during the fuel shortage that explained how to make one for trucks and tractors.
A slightly different configuration can be used with materials other than wood with any material that contains hydrogen bonds.
Plastics, old tires, cardboard, wood, cooking oil, used motor oil, pretty much anything that is flammable can be used in a properly set up gasifier.

The main byproducts of a gasifier are charcoal and bio-crude which can be processed into green gasoline and a biodiesel.
I built a small gasifier last year that was able to produce hydrocarbon gas with similar properties to natural gas "clean blue flame" with $15 of supplies from lowes.

battery technology needs to advance, then it would be feasible to go all electric

Perhaps, but think of all of the wasted energy. I thought the idea was to capture and store energy for later use.

The spring you would need to propel a 2000lb car would be so massive you'd never be able to tension it without a very heavy duty piece of equipment.

If a mechanical potential energy device ever failed of the size to propel tons of weight, it would go off like a bomb.

Dangerous to say the least.

I think controlling the stored energy would be the bigger issue, no?
If you are interested in building a gasifier, then by all means, build it and sell it.

always wanted to try using a spring motor for an open water submersible, bike pedals to wind up spring, a simple version of caterpillar drive, and awat we go!!

You'd be better off rigging up an electric trolling motor and a deep cycle battery.

I'm curious, why would such a vehicle weigh in at 2k lbs? A majority of the weight is in the engine or batteries in the current paradigm. Correct?

excellent point!! could weigh as little as 800 lbs

Controlling the stored energy is fairly simple its a mater of heat and pressure you can regulate either way.
The trick is getting the efficiency of the heating process high enough to sustain gasification without wasting too much fuel, and efficiently unloading and reloading the main chamber and the oil trap.

Another thing to consider is it has to pass collision testing, and not kill everything in sight.

Consider the spring as an engine. Try to picture how massive it would have to be to make the car go any further than 10 or 20 feet. One ton was probably generous.

nah, put a smaller spring in and make the fools work for it!!! two miles per wind-up

Sure, I think everyone understands that it has problems to overcome. You seem to have a handle on the mechanics/physics involved, how about spitballing ideas to solve them?

Just make a peddle car and be done with it, you know the kind of old peddle cars kids drove. They are interesting and less parts.

Of course I'd like a small personal blimp, just big enough for a mini van type vehicle.

I've played around with gassifiers myself and they are pretty cool, but in their current form I don't believe they are a soluation for everyone. They were used extensively by civilians in Germany in WWII as they simpy had no access to gasoline. They ran fine, but were incredibily hard on the engines, having to be rebuilt after only 5000 miles. I have not seen current studies on this, but from my experience they are very hard on the motors so I don't doubt that figure at all.

However, in a SHTF scenario they would be perfect because their would be cars and engines everywhere but no gas to drive them.

Can't you connect the spring to the wheels? That way, as the wheels go round, they wind the spring back up.

I invented a brake system that uses a wind up tension spring. As the vehicle needs to slow, more momentum is wound up into the spring. When the vehicle needs to resume speed, the stored energy is released (controlled) into the wheels.

Since MOST fuel is used to accelerate the vehicle, the energy used to slow it down can equally speed it up again.

Ultimately the engine only needs to run at "cruise" fuel usage amounts. As 10mph lost can be 10 mph gained again mechanically. Of course, a long drive uphill will need more fuel like a regular car, the eventual downhill drive will compensate.

As most people drive the same locations daily, a balance of capture/release will GREATLY improve upon mpg.



BUT, it was shot down so fast.....I can't even discuss why, legally.

i was thinking gyroscopic precision spooling. As one spool unwinds the other winds. The spools could be the entire length of the axels, but this would make gyroscopic spooling a very difficult hurdle. This would allow the longest possible piece of tensile cording, which of course would be related to how far one could drive without having to 'respool'. To respool simply plug the vehicle in and it power a special wench which unspools and respools to ensure maximum efficiency and necessary tension. It would require a very special tensile material with specific properties to make it work.

more thoughts.