- Have you ever taken a
road trip to the mountains or somewhere high up and noticed that your little city car
isn't putting down the power like it usually does back home? Well, that makes sense, right? There's less oxygen higher up, which means less power. But how high is too high for a car? With the right parts, can a car keep driving to
the highest peak of Everest? I mean, what if we had an infinite road, could it go all the way up to space? Well, today we are going
to find the answers to all those questions by drawing up what mods
my Camaro would need to make this theoretical journey to space. A journey that no man or
woman has done before. Let's go. (upbeat music) Thanks again to our friends at Omaze for sponsoring today's
episode of "Bumper to Bumper." It's no secret that the
Germans have nearly perfected luxury and performance, and that's never been more apparent with the 2020 Audi RS Q8. Now, this car isn't just fast,
it's an engineering marvel. I mean, it's a big SUV, with all the luxury bells and whistles, yet it does 0 to 60 in 3.7 seconds. That's crazy. And what's even crazier is
that this car could be yours. With taxes and shipping
included and $20,000 big ones. And what's even better is
that every donation supports the Ronald Reagan Medical Center at UCLA. That's the same place that
saved our dear buddy and friend Jane Pumphrey's life. So go over to omaze.com/donut and enter for your chance to win. Now, let's get back to B2B, baby. (laughing) We all know an engine needs
oxygen to mix with fuel that then gets ignited
to create combustion. And we get that oxygen component from air, and the air around us right
now is 21% oxygen at sea level. And for proper combustion, an engine needs three parts oxygen for every one part of fuel. And with the oxygen content of air, that ends up being about 14.7 to one. But at high altitudes, the
air begins to get less dense. The oxygen percentage stays the same, but there's less air in a given volume. So the engine can't take in as much oxygen and starts losing power. No, no, we don't like that. So how high can a car actually
get before it totally runs out of power? Well, the world record
was actually just set in 2019 with some Mercedes Unimogs climbing the world's tallest
active volcano in Chile. Now they reached an altitude of 21,962 feet above sea level, but they were really
only limited by terrain. They were less than
700 feet from the peak. So close to 22,000 feet is pretty high, but what if they had
been on an infinite road leading to space? Now, before we can put a
car on our infinite road, we got to make the road, let's
call it the Jerry Turnpike. There's gonna be some tolls, sorry, it costs money to go to space, people. Now this road, essentially, just going to be a straight road going all the way up from Los
Angeles, straight up to space. But the interstate system can
only have a max incline of 7%, but this is the Jerry Turnpike and we don't gotta follow those rules. So I'm gonna make it a steep 20% incline, San Francisco style, like
my favorite type of bread, where my sourdough fans at? Jerry's French toast.
Check out the recipe. Now that we have our road, what vehicle are we gonna
use as our starting point to take us on this journey? Since this is my road, we're gonna run this
experiment with my car as well. The old Catfish Camaro. Now this car weighs about 3,500 pounds. It's a beefy boy. So when I'm driving
straight like this on a road that's relatively flat,
doesn't have any inclination, I don't really need that much
torque to propel forward. All I need is enough torque to resist the frictional force of the tires to the road. And that's probably around
10 foot pounds of torque. But on a 20% incline, we got gravity, and it's trying to get me
to go back down the hill. I need 685 pounds of
force just to prevent me to stop rolling. But luckily, I got 340 foot pounds of torque in this Catfish, and some gearing to help me out. (engine revs) Now this is how much power
we need the engine to make to keep going. If air gets too thin to make
this much power, we're stuck. So knowing that, we need as much oxygen to at least give us 25% power, otherwise we can't go forward. So if I tried to take my
car up this imaginary road, the air would be getting
thinner and thinner. And by only about 20,000 feet,
I'd be down to half power. And just before 40,000 feet, my LS1 would be making just enough power to not roll back and I would have to have been in first gear for like the last 20 miles. So clearly this isn't gonna work. We're gonna need more torque. So why don't we try to give the catfish a little more torque. Let's give it a diesel engine. One that produces the most
torque from the factory today. The 6.7 liter Powerstroke V8 Turbo Diesel found in the F-350 Super Duty. And it makes 1050 pounds of torque. Now I know I probably should
be using a Duramax engine in my Camaro. So Chevy, Ford guys, you
guys are just gonna have to deal with it. We're gonna have to come together to create this magic machine. We'll call it the Chord. So by factoring in the weight
of that Powerstroke engine, and the new gearing we have, we now need 93 foot pounds of
torque just to stand still, but that's okay because
that's less than a 10th of our new peak torque. We've got so much torque that
we wouldn't run out of air until 60,000 feet. That is twice the height of Mount Everest. But oh how I wish it was just as simple as just having enough torque. Now as you may know, the
higher you get in altitude, the more the temperature drops. That's why there's snow
on the mountains, Tyler. Our new engine, as torquey as it may be, is a diesel engine. And diesel's go through a weird
process when it gets cold. It's called diesel jelly. Meaning as the temperature drops, diesel fuel begins to thicken,
it becomes more viscous. So we put some diesel in the freezer to show you exactly what happens. Now, diesel jelling can start as high as 17 degrees Fahrenheit. And as the fuel thickens up, it gets harder and harder to
spray it through the injectors. So this spray bottle is
representing a fuel injector and inside it, we have
diesel at room temperature, and as you can see, it sprays out nice. It's a nice, fine mist. But as the diesel starts to gel up, you can see that it doesn't
mist through our spray bottle. It actually gets clogged up
and doesn't spray out at all, which makes it pretty much useless. So for our space car build,
we could use winterize diesel, or we could use a block heater. So our diesel doesn't gel
like this is right now. But, by 30,000 feet, our temperatures reached
-50 degrees Fahrenheit, and we know that we're eventually
gonna run out of oxygen. That's gonna be our limiting factor. Therefore our diesel engine,
it's not gonna cut it. So I think we're gonna need
another engine transplant. So, let's chuck out the old Powerstroke and drop in a powertrain
that isn't oxygen limited, a Tesla battery pack and motor. So now we've got a Tesla
in a Camaro, a Tamaro. Our Tesla motors, they
make plenty of torque. The equivalent of 900 foot pounds. And that torque doesn't
decrease as we travel higher and higher, but, and there's always a fricking but, the colder temperatures
increase a battery's internal resistance, making
it harder to pass energy to the motors. So by zero degrees Fahrenheit, most batteries are operating
at only 50% capacity and air temperature can get
to zero degrees Fahrenheit as low as 15,000 feet. But hold on. There's no way that this
is where our car stops. I mean, we've had working
cars on the moon for 50 years and the moon gets like
-238 degrees Fahrenheit. So how did NASA managed to
overcome this temperature issue? Let's look at the Mars Rover, Curiosity. Curiosity has to stand up to
martian surface temperatures as low as -146 degrees Fahrenheit. And the Mars Rover keeps its
battery warm with two things. The first is a special layer of insulation called silica aero gel. I'm sure YouTube has
recommended Derek's video on veritasium, it's really
cool, you should check it out. But this substance is super, super unique. It's a silicone based
substance a thousand times less dense than glass and it's made of 99.8% air. Now this powerful material blocks heat from leaving the Rover. And the second thing
Curiosity Rover has is eight radio isotope heater units. And those are one watt
heaters made from a decane, low grade isotope. The sucker is literally radioactive. Okay, so if we know that,
let's get back to the Camaro. With its new Tesla
motors and Tesla battery, we're adding the air gel
insulation around the whole car to keep both the battery
and the cabin warm. We got oxygen tanks for
me and my girl Blanche. She's riding up there with me. And we're also adding in the RHU heaters near the battery and
maybe some lead shielding, 'cause I don't want to grow a third arm from these radioactive heaters. And since we've got an electric motor, we don't need to worry
about losing torque, so we can add some weight without issue. Now the Catfish is kitted out for high altitude travel and the battery should
be able to withstand over 100 degrees below operating temperatures. So that gets us well past
the 15,000 foot mark, where our batteries would have
only been about 50% capacity. But again, pretty soon we're
going to hit a new problem. Wind speed. So as we go further from
the Earth's surface, the wind speed increases. You might've watched a video
of ours where we talked about the laminar air and boundary
layer air on an F1 car. And this is a similar effect,
but on a massive scale. Basically, air closer to
the surface gets slowed down by the presence of the ground itself. While air higher up can move more freely. And the result of which is
that at about 20,000 feet, wind speeds can reach 150 miles an hour, about the speed of a
category three tornado. Luckily, our Camaro is weighed
down a bit with the batteries and lead shielding, but by 35,000 feet, even the modified Catfish
would be struggling to stay on the road. But we've just barely made
it to the stratosphere, the cruising altitude of most jetliners. So at this height, we're gonna want to make
a few more modifications. We need to pressurize
the cabin so that Blanche and I don't lose oxygen. We need to deflate the
tires from the inside to make sure they don't pop. And actually Humvees and Unimogs, they have a system like
this to lower tire pressure for tougher off-roading. So let's fit some Humvee wheels and axles on our little red sports car. Now that'll add some weight
which will help us avoid getting blown off the road, which is good, but let's add some more batteries, some external oxygen
tanks and solar panels, just to make sure we
make the whole journey. Now we've got a car that
can go the distance. And as we set off again
for a little while, it's gonna be smooth
sailing, we'll be fine. But as we drive through the stratosphere, we'll cross the ozone layer. And beyond that, temperatures
will begin to rise again. And the effects of wind
speed would also drop as the air keeps getting
thinner and thinner. Now at the upper part of the stratosphere, air is a thousand times
thinner than at sea level. It's so thin that no plane
wing could generate enough lift to keep itself aloft here. At 127,000 feet, we'd
be passing the height Felix Baumgartner set
the sky dive record from. Even weather balloons would
be maxing out at 160,000 feet. But as long as we've still got power, we're gonna keep on going
into the mesosphere. And at about 62 miles
above the Earth's surface, we'd reach what's known
as the Karman line. This is the boundary to outer space and the end of the mesosphere. This is where the last bits
of air pressure are gone and we truly reach the vacuum of space. Now gravity, it would
still be very much in play, but without any atmosphere, temperatures up here would
drop below what the Mars Rover was designed to withstand, about -150 degrees Fahrenheit. This is probably the limit
of what our battery heater can handle, but guys, we did it. We got the space. Woo! Where my Catfish boys at? Thank you guys so much
for watching this episode of "Bumper to Bumper." If you want to know more
about real cars dealing with performance at high altitudes and not just me making
up this crazy scenario, you should go check out this episode of the Donut podcast on the history of the Pikes Peak Hill climb. Hit me up on Instagram @JeremiahBurton, hit frickin Donut up on
Instagram @donutmedia. Till next week, bye for now.
