04x23 - Panoz Flying Car (Pt. 1)

[bunniefuu]

- [Narrator] Hi monster pilots.

What's Jesse James have in mind for this week's show?

- Life would be a hell of a lot easier,

if everybody had a flying car.

- [Narrator] Some builders come from a strange leg.

- [foreign language]

- [Narrator] Jesse knows how to make things happen.

- That's just a world of airplane design.

- [Narrator] Seats in the upright position,

tray table stowed, we're ready for takeoff.

- Welcome to the Twilight Zone.

- [Narrator] Look out.

Join us now

as Jesse and his g*ng of Maverick Mechanics,

rip, grind and burn,

transforming ordinary street vehicles,

into monster machines in the Monster Garage.

[upbeat music]

♪ Monster, Monster Garage

♪ Monster, Monster Garage

♪ Monster, Monster Garage

♪ Monster, Monster Garage

♪ Monster, Monster Garage

♪ Monster Garage

- [Narrator] Flight,

Man's Ageless Dream.

- Here we go.

- [Narrator] Once realized by the Wright Brothers in 1903,

it was only a matter of time

before thoughts of a flying car inspired

mechanics everywhere.

In 1957, popular Mechanics magazine predicted

that by the year 2000

flying cars would be the most common form of transportation.

Many attempts have been made to reach this goal,

but have yet to bring the flying car into everyone's home,

until now

because it's never been attempted by Monster Garage.

This week's challenge,

transform of Panoz Esperante,

into a flying car.

The rules,

the monster must appear to be air worthy.

They'll get 5,000 bucks for parts.

The crew has seven days and nights.

The first day they design,

the next five day build

and on the seventh day they fly.

It's that simple.

If successful, the team gets a $4,000 set of Matt tools.

[g*nshots]

And the clock starts now.

Before the design,

Jesse test drives the car that will sprout wings and fly.

The Panoz Esperante.

[engine revving]

- This thing runs all right man.

[car revving sounds continue]

- Based just outside of Atlanta, Georgia,

Panos Auto Development manufactures luxury sports cars

that are hand built using 100% American parts.

[upbeat music]

Weighing only 3,300 pounds,

this a hundred thousand dollars sports car packs 320 horses,

can do zero to 60 in four seconds

and goes great with donuts.

[tire screeching]

Jesse flies into the garage and makes a perfect landing.

Making a car fly is an ambitious project.

So the design team picked to engineer this feat

was chosen because they're the best in their field.

Flying car expert, Ed Sweeney.

President of Panos Auto Development, Dan Panos.

Automotive designer, Fireball Tim.

and from Cessna Aviation engineer Neil Wilford.

- How you doing man?

- Hey Jesse.

- Hi there. - How you doing there?

- So this is gonna be super easy.

- Oh yeah, a piece of cake.

- I think a good goal is probably just to get a car to do

what the Wright brothers did,

which was only six feet off the ground for what?

A hundred yards or a couple hundred yards

or something like that.

I think it should look as stock as possible.

- Well, is the car ever going to drive again

as a car after we're done with it?

- Yeah, it's Monster Garage man,

it's got a transform into something else.

- Oh cool, okay.

Okay.

- And it's gotta still look like a Panos.

- Why are we gonna just do such damage

to such a gorgeous car?

- Because it was free, man.

- I like that. - That's right.

You can't get better than that.

- How much does that car weigh stock now?

- Just over 3000 pounds.

- That's what I figured about 3000 pounds.

That's what it feels like.

I mean let's, let's completely gut that thing,

doors, windows, glass, every possible thing

and we can probably shave...

what does a Cessna weigh loaded out's about 2,400.

Well let's look at the math.

We say if we get it





- You are gonna need at least



wingspan.

- Can we get wings? That would save time.

- If we make our own wings and tails,

we've got a lot more opportunity to make it

do what you want.

If we start chop and sawing up existing parts,

sometimes this is much more trying to cobble something up.

- I agree with that, we'll spend twice the amount of time

trying to make it fit and work right,

and not just make it like how we want it

right from the get go.

- And then as far as motor,

does anybody have a line on a motor?

- If we use an airplane engine or some sort

driving a prop and don't break up the drive train,

we can certainly get it up to speed you need

to get off the ground.

- Then we're gonna have some problems with the fact

that we've got a drive train that is both drag as far

as accelerating the vehicle after you take it outta gear

and we've got a drive train that has to accelerate up

to the runway speed, the instant we land again,

- Dude, that's the last of my worry,

we should worry about getting it

to take off landing is whatever,

we're gonna land no matter what.

- But we don't want it to destroy itself on land.

- I guarantee you if we fly this thing,

it's gonna land one way or another.

- It's coming down.

- Yeah, should we put a roll cage in it?

- Talking about where you gotta put the wings,

that's probably a good idea if you have some kind of

a roll cage and you can have wings mounted to that and then

a welded booms back to a tail.

- What's it got for frame in the back?

- Around the rear suspension,

that's a solid steel space frame,

so it's fairly easy to get in there

and add structures to it.

You got some good structure to put a cage

or something onto.

- Jesse. - What?

- Can we use a jet?

- No.

- For flying?

- No. - I already did a jet car.

- What color do you want this beast?

- Can we paint it red like the red baron?

- Yeah. - Oh absolutely.

- I've thought about this for a few years,

I don't think there's any reason why we can't do it.

- [Narrator] To make a sports car fly in five days,

all non-essential items will be torn out

to lighten the load.

In case of a crash landing,

a roll cage will provide protection.

A propeller engine will be mounted over the trunk.

A 20 foot fuselage will support the tail.



and a yoke assembly will be wired

to control the elevator and ailerons.

- All right, let's go start on it. I'm cool.

[upbeat music]

[crack whip]

- [Narrator] The easy part is over,

now it's time to put their monster plan into action.

Please remain in your seats folks,

we're flying right back to meet the build team.

Stick around.

♪ Monster, Monster Garage

[airplane passing overhead]

- [Narrator] Day two.

To build a flying car in five days,

the garage has called upon a nine man team

of fabricators and aviators.

Neil Wilford, aircraft engineer.

Jason Barnes, Panos vehicle engineer.

Mark Palmer, aircraft design engineer.

Andre Stowe, welder.

Ronnie Powers, airplane builder.

Chris Rush, fabricator.

Ed Sweeney, flying car designer.

JD Terry, avionics engineer

and Johann Ragnarsson,

custom car builder, all the way from Alvsered Sweden.

[upbeat music]

- Hey Jess.

- What's up man?

- How you doing?

- So since there's so many of us,

we can break up into a couple different groups.

Take on the rear fuselage, wings, the front wing,

the engine, then the engine mounts

and then we'll start getting this car light.

I think cut all that trunk and everything out

and behind the seats and all that,

that's all our free space.

Basically make it into like a pickup truck

and that'll be our free space to work with.

And if we have to chat your sub-frame to go out the back,

which we will, so the rear fuselage is held on

and stuff like that.

- What kind of safety cage are you after?

- Well you figure, it's not like a race car.

where you can, you know the

different ways you're gonna hit

- So you're going a hundred miles an hour to-

- Yeah, I mean if I land upside down or like on the side

or something like that, I think just like a

single or a double loop, something pretty simple.

Discovery didn't want us to do this at first

because they thought it was too dangerous.

We've got enough talent here, that there's no reason

why we shouldn't be able to do it and do it cool.

I mean we could do all tried and tested safety way but

that wouldn't be Monster Garage.

Let's do it, make it cool looking and take a chance

and then when it works then it'll be that much better.

Let's break in the groups,

we'll start getting this thing taken apart

and see what we have to work with.

Cool?

[upbeat music]

- Take it over.

- [Narrator] The interior of the car needs to be

stripped down to make the body as light as possible.

[upbeat music continues]

- Hold it - Ta-DA.

- Another big giant piece for the Monster Garage.

- [Narrator] Before Dan Panos

rips the guts out of his baby,

like any proud parent, he'll take a moment to show of

as pride and joy.

- What a lot of people don't know is every one of these

engines is hand built by a two man engine team.

So you can see their initials and their signatures

right there on every engine that they hand built.

But these are all the people in the plant,

everybody engraves their name on a car.

It's hand built so it's not that much trouble.

And then every guy in the plant, it rotates around,

he gets to dedicate a name to a car.

So we've got Amy Christine here.

You wanna break it, go ahead. - And now we're breaking it.

- Go break it. - No, no, no, no, no, no.

- Take your frustration out.

- [Narrator] Because these guys customize cars,

they have a hard time busting them up.

- Is he gonna be upset if I break it?

[glass breaking]

- I don't think we barely got into the really

expensive parts yet.

- [Narrator] Andre wants in on the fun.

- [Narrator] Behold the sound of breaking glass.

Oh.

- [Narrator] But it's not that easy.

- Behold the sound of breaking glass.

[glass breaking] [laughter]

- Behold the sound of breaking glass.

That glass is not gonna defeat me.

[glass breaking] Yeah.

- [Narrator] As the car is being gutted,

the engineers take measurements

so they can start crunching numbers to come up

with the design for the wings.

- You wanna have the engine higher than the wings?

- I think that's better because

I'm not gonna have super structure that high to hold on to.

- So we'll have the wings and booms four feet above the axle

and the prop five feet up to give us a little...

for starters.

Just working it up right now,

we took some of the stuff we knew beforehand and

push and shove things around based on what we

talked about earlier and getting things worked out.

- This is gonna be an exercise in applied mathematics

like no one's ever seen before.

Alright, I'm not kidding you,

we're gonna be doing math as fast as we can do it here.

- [Narrator] Mark Palmer knows that

a true aviation expert isn't made, he's born.

- I've been fascinated with the stuff since I was a kid.

Everything I ever had, I took apart to figure out

what was inside.

- [Narrator] But Mark took a roundabout route

to get to Cessna.

- I really hate busting my knuckles on cars

All right and

I thought, gosh, there's gotta be something better than this

and working at a service station, it kind of...

I used to feel like everyone thought

I was either an idiot or a thief or both.

I thought airplanes, you know, airplanes.

And so I got a good 22 years of design

on the business jet fleet and it was quite a good time.

You know what it would cost to hire a group engineers

to come in and do this conversion for you?

A bunch.

A bunch. - We're getting a good deal.

- [Narrator] While the engineers continue

to crunch numbers.

- Looks like, what'd you get, a 40 degree angle?

- [Narrator] Ronnie gets to work

cutting out a template for the wings.

He's not shy about pointing out the difficulties ahead.

- We wanna make sure that Jesse gets airborne.

The problem is this is more complex than anything

that I've seen that's been done on the show before.

It's gonna take a little bit more planning,

it's a lot more critical aspects to it

other than just making mechanical things.

Definitely we've got the talent, it's just whether

we can get it all into the amount of time we've got.

- [Narrator] In his 15 years of running

an aviation salvage yard,

Ronnie Powers knows the nuts and bolts of building planes.

- That one ought to do it right there.

- [Narrator] But his love of constructing them

takes a backseat to his love of flying them.

- I've flown since I was in high school,

actually before I could drive.

I just can't describe the feeling that I had.

- [Narrator] Though flying second nature for Ronnie,

he is well aware of the risks involved for new pilots.

- I'm gonna advise Jesse to have his life insurance

and his will up to date.

So who knows.

[metal cutting sounds]

- The template that Ronnie's making will be the pattern used

to shape all 26 wing ribs.

Wing ribs make up the inner structure of a wing

and give the wing its shape once it's skinned.

To ensure that every wing rib is the same,

Ronnie and JD use the wing template to make a shaping mold.

[cutting sounds]

Tomorrow this wooden mold will be used

to shape all the wing ribs.

[upbeat music]

The tear out gets serious as internal organs are tossed.

The gas tank is removed and saved for later.

- That's the most important button in a flying car.

- [Narrator] The majority of the car has been stripped out

and as the day ends it's time for a new weigh in.

- We got scales.

- This gives us accurate wheel weights.

We can plot where the center gravity is in the car

as we're taking stuff off.

- Ready?

Let it down slowly.

- We need a 200 pound person to sit in the car.

- Hey Neil, see some weight?

- Yeah.

- What do you got for weight with him in there?

- A total three oh 3017 pounds.

- That's gonna help, we got a lot of weight out.

I'd say we're gonna weigh about with one person in there,



- Yeah, I think it's going weigh more

than that with the wings, I didn't think about that.

That's way better.

- [Narrator] Jesse gathers the build team together

to wrap up the day.

- So you guys cool on everything, I think we're all right.

We got a plan?

- We should be able to start cutting metal tomorrow,

we get aluminum, get a shear,

we can start making wing parts.

- Cool, did we find a motor yet?

- We got a motor, it'll be here Wednesday.

- Okay, cool.

Well we got a lot of work to do before then.

- Well I'm gonna have the engine mount here tomorrow

so we can start building to the mount

and then when the engine gets here, we can mount it up.

- We'll get tubing first thing in the morning

and start making the roll cage tying that into the frame

and then everything's gonna come off of that.

So I think that's it.

- [Narrator] It's a long way to lift off,

but they're headed in the right direction.

Monster Garage factoid.

Orville Wright is not the only

famous inventor named Orville.

Orville Redenbacher invented a hybrid corn

for better popping.

And Orville Gibson invented a guitar design

that is still made and played today.

♪ Monster, Monster Garage.

- [Narrator] Day three.

The team enters the garage ready to get to work

and the focus is on the biggest project of the build,

the wings.

Ronnie cuts the sheet metal

so they can start building wing ribs.

The rib mold needs to be cut into sections

before it can be used to shape the metal.

- This is gonna be the nose rib,

this will be the form block for the nose ribs.

- [Narrator] Each wing rib is separated into three pieces

and will attach to a set of spars.

Then the sheet metal that covers the wings will be riveted

to each rib.

To mold the wing ribs,

sheet metal is placed between the wood,

then hammered into shape.

The engineer's wing design,

has JD worried about finishing on time.

- Well, even tooling every one of these,

first cutting out the piece,

tooling every one

and then going ahead and making the cuts

before we even start hammering it.

Even if each one takes us,

well there's no way we'll get it down to 30 minutes a piece.

So I mean we're looking at a long time just in tooling.

A long time.

- Basically, it's just being over-engineered,

I think for a one flight ground effect type flight.

- As the wing ribs start to take shape,

the guys from Panos continue to strip down the car.

[cutting sounds]

[upbeat music continues]

The air conditioner is aired out

and the trunk gets introduced to the trash.

- Fire in the hole.

- [Narrator] The windshield is removed,

to allow air to travel through the car

and hit the rear propeller.

The Esperante is picked clean,

they can now build the inside of the car out.

Andre cuts out a scale shape of the wing.

- It's a template for a wing.

They're gonna make some type of

something out of it, I don't know.

- [Narrator] Thankfully someone knows what's going on.

Mark positions the wing pattern,

so the team will have a reference point to build around.

- Oh yeah, this is like an old time flying machine,

lots and lots of incidents.

- Well everything is based off that wing placement,

so wherever that wing sits

is where we gotta make the cage fit too.

- [Narrator] A roll cage must be built

in case the flying car has a crash landing.

- I designed this machine about four years ago.

I needed a notcher at one time

and everything out there didn't do what I wanted it to do,

so I made my own.

- Chris Rush's company RMD makes many of the machines

used in the garage.

The tubing bender, the notcher, the cut-off saws

and many grinders.

- I know the tubing bender gets used all the time

here in Monster Garage.

Yeah, we got you guys set up pretty good.

- [Narrator] Chris not only makes the machines,

he uses them.

- I like to make stuff.

Whether it's machines, cars, motorcycles, airplanes.

- Just make sure that we line up.

[welding sounds]

[welding sounds continue]

[hammer sounds]

- That's basically the form of the rib

and what we're gonna have to do is we're gonna have

to shrink this right in here to get that form smoother.

- [Narrator] Jesse shows up

and reaches into his toolbox of tricks

for something special to attack the wrinkle problem.

- Just the old hardwood slapping hammer.

It's like the antique, but it's

harder than the hinges of hell.

I mean it's like,

for wood.

Every place that you got a ripple like that,

that just means there's too much material.

So we'll get our edge real crisp

and then we just lightly go through there with the shrinker

and gather back in and it'll-

- Fix it.

- [Narrator] Once Jesse goes to work on the wrinkles,

he comes up with a better plan.

- Do you think we can do this in sections,

so we can rivet it to here?

- Absolutely.

- Why don't we do that? - Okay.

- Just to save time. - Okay.

- [Narrator] Jesse's idea is to

cut away the portions of metal

that are causing the wrinkles.

This will cut down their amount of work and save time.

But just as Jesse's plan takes off it's shot down.

[airplane sounds]

- We're gonna have to modify, the rib design.

The design that Jesse came up with is a good idea

to help get rid of the wrinkling

but we're gonna need this part of the flange also

because if we leave this big of a gap, we won't have rooms

to put rivets for the wing skin

and we won't have the strength we need.

We're gonna use the tool to put a big V notch in there

and then we'll bend those over

and that will help with the wrinkles that we're having.

- They've changed the rib design now

for the third time after I cut a bunch out,

so we've had to go back and redo those.

So it's just k*lling us on time.

- We don't wanna make any more changes.

- Well, we shouldn't have to.

- Changes?

Nah, nah, never happened.

Keep 'em from away from over here and let us work.

- We scared 'em off pretty quick, didn't we?

They didn't wanna have anything to do with the mallet.

Let 'em go back over there, there'll be some change but-

- Only because what we tried the first

three times wasn't working.

- When things have to change,

it's the engineers that change it.

So it's always our fault, that's all right,

that's just part of the game, that's just how things go.

That's just the world of airplane design.

- I get a pretty good take on engineers.

These guys, they still know more than I do,

so I gotta listen to 'em just for a minute.

I gotta tolerate 'em.

- [Narrator] Although the engineer's last minute changes

are necessary,

they're slowing down the construction of the ribs

and a project of this scale, can't afford to get

too far behind.

- We're really trying something

that has not been done before.

Build a set of wings from scratch in a week in an airplane

out of a car,

in a week.

So,

almost mission impossible, but we're gonna get it done.

- Monster Garage factoid.

The infamous black box was invented in 1958

by Australian David Warren.

The electronics are protected by layers of foam, plastic,

Kevlar, and carbon.

Today's version of the box is no longer black, it's orange.

♪ Monster, Monster Garage.

- [Narrator] Day 3,



The garage is buzzing with activity.

The wings are being made.

The roll cage is nearing completion

and as they pass the midday mark,

the first of the airplane parts begins to arrive.

Starting with this bad boy from Sensenich Propeller.

- Look at this.

- Oh,

carbon fiber.

- Hey Mark, hey come have a glance at this beautiful piece.

Wow.

- Fabulous.

- It looks cool. - Positive.

- [Narrator] Nothing can be done with the prop

until the engine arrives.

So their attention turns to the engine mount,

Ronnie donated from his shop Atlanta Air Salvage.

Jesse wants the car to look stock,

so Ed and Andre need to design a lift mechanism

that will raise the engine when in flight mode

and lower it while driving.

- So there's some kind of a cage that's up here.

- [Narrator] Ed consults with Mark on the design

of the engine lift to make sure it will be flight worthy.

- Engineers,

they over analyzing.

[upbeat music]

- [Narrator] Work on the roll cage continues.

- Look at that cut.

- Oh yeah, perfect.

- Fire in the hole.

[upbeat music continues]

[welding sounds]

- [Narrator] The last piece of tubing is welded on

and the cage is complete.

- Okay, well we're just discussing how the cage looks

and we all think it's ugly,

but it has to be ugly to mount the wings.

- [Narrator] But with the amount of work

Ronnie and JD have to do,

the wings may never reach the finish.

So they turn to the Swedish.

[playful music]

Nicholas Jansick is a car customizer from Sweden

who came along with Johann just in case the team

needed an extra hand.

- Hey Nicholas, welcome man.

[foreign language]

- [Narrator] Johann Ragnarsson and Nicholas Gensick

grew up in Sweden and shared a dream.

- I'm going to America,

I'm gonna build cars for the rich and famous.

- [Narrator] That dream came true when

Johann started JRD tuning and he and Nicholas

started customizing sports cars for high-end clients

such as Panos.

- I already am bigger than Alpha.

- [Narrator] The boys of speed have a need for Swed..

[singing in foreign language]

- I don't know,

something about having a couple Swedes on the build team

makes me feel really confident.

- [indistinct]

- There it is.

[hammer sounds]

- [Narrator] Now that Nicholas is on board,

the rib shaping process is speeding up.

- Okay,

here he goes.

[hammer sounds]

- He's going to town over here. He's going to town.

[hammer sounds continue]

It is number 26, done.

- [Narrator] The wing ribs are done.

Nicholas signals Johann and Neil to start the next stage

of the wing build, making the spars.

Spars are the pieces of metal running the length of the wing

that the wing ribs are attached to.

The sheet metal for the spars is taken to a shop

to be bent into shape.

- I need a C-bend, one inch flange

and then I need a Z shape bend right back here, this tall.

- [Narrator] A test piece is made

and Neil inspects it for approval.

- That's looking pretty good.

- Yeah, that'll be fine if we can get 'em like that.

Man, that's good.

- [Narrator] The spars won't be ready until tomorrow.

So they head back to the garage

where Ed is designing the engine lift.

- Okay, what we're trying to make here is a mock-up

in wood before we make the real thing in steel.

So the best way I can think of doing this is

you get the idea on paper, make a piece of wood or cardboard

or something and simulate it.

And when you get the mechanics correct,

then you commit it to making it in the steel.

- Ed Sweeney is not only a flying car designer,

he also owns the very first flying car built in 1954.

- My business is Aero Car

and I'm convinced we can build

a public use flying automobile.

- [Narrator] Ed believes that a commercial flying car

will not only change the way we travel,

but the way we see the world.

- It's not a thrill, it's a sensation of freedom.

- And then your view of what's below you,

you're looking down on Los Angeles,

you're looking down on the mountains,

you're seeing America.

- I like that. - Nice design.

- I'd like that Much better if it works.

- Engineers.

- That looks better.

- They wanna make it all out of cardboard

and the thumbtacks

and we don't have that much time to do it.

I'm my hands on man, I get the stuff, I put it together

and I make it work.

- [Narrator] Andre Stowe is an industrial welder

for the United States Navy.

- We do secret outfitting of ships and stuff,

installation of equipment.

I can't say anymore about that, okay.

- [Narrator] After 20 years behind a welding mask,

Andre has taken his trade to a new level.

- I like laying down the perfect weld.

It's just like, it's so serene.

It's just, real clean and just beautiful

and molten metal is just, I don't know,

it's like butter or something.

- [Narrator] It's been a successful build day

in the garage.

They've rocked the roll cage,

designed an engine lift,

cranked out the wing ribs

and welcomed a foreign fabricator.

But before they head out they weigh the car in.

- What do we got? We're still under 2,800.

- Where were we yesterday?

- We were actually 28 something yesterday.

They just finished weighing the car and the roll cage.

And the good news is the weight's

going down, which will help.

It means we'll...

the lighter the car is

the easier it is for it to fly.

So that's good news, I'm gonna go run the numbers on that

and we'll see where things are at.

- We're waiting for a lot of material

that's supposed to come in tomorrow.

I guess they call it, they're spurs.

- Well right now this is pretty much done.

It can be final welded as soon as we get,

as we know that the wings are gonna mount okay

and everything we can weld it up tight.

Tomorrow we're gonna work on,

starting to mount the fuselage.

- [Narrator] The second build day comes to an end

and this team takes off into the night.

Coming up, there's gonna be some turbulence in the garage.

- You want to do it your way then I'm out of it.

- Okay, then I'm gonna start cutting material.

- [Narrator] Buckle up and stay tuned.

♪ Monster, Monster Garage.

[airplane flying overhead]

[lighthearted music]

- [Narrator] Day four, the team enters the garage

geared up to get the car off the ground.

Even though the engine lift is a cool idea,

Mark thinks it's a waste of time.

- We got the cart in front of the horse on this

project here in the back.

There's no analysis,

there's no plan to hook it up to anything.

We don't have time to screw with that crap.

- [Narrator] Jesse rolls up in his Regal,

ready to assume the throne.

Jesse has chosen a heavy duty racing seat

to keep him safe in case of a crash landing.

- This one doesn't have a floatable seat cushion though.

In case of a water landing.

- Well, we gotta have a big day today.

Get the motor on and up and

start putting some wings together,

because there's two full days of work

and one in the big wing, so,

it's time to get it done.

- [Narrator] The spars are back from the shop

so the builders can start fabricating the wings.

- What we're gonna do now is put the reinforcing strips in

where all the integrity of the spars are gonna come from.

Right here these,

pieces of aluminum.

So we're gonna start riving them up.

- [Narrator] At the other side of the garage,

something unusual is happening.

The engineers are working

and there's not a computer in sight.

- Don't you love that smell? Yeah, occasionally I get dirty.

- Looks like both of you guys are getting dirty,

- This is just from the camera.

- Okay? Which one of you wants to be

the chief engineer on this project?

- I need a red rag that goes with that.

- I need to wear that, if you're gonna engineer stuff.

- For that music, I gotta put it on backwards okay.

[upbeat music]

- [Narrator] The wing fabrication is a tedious chore.

Each spar needs to be drilled and riveted hundreds of times.

- Well, it's just time consuming.

It's gonna be extremely...

I mean we're talking probably a day and a half

to build the spars.

- [Narrator] But the engineers have a

different attitude about physical labor.

- Tell you this feels a lot better than

trying to do numbers for days on end.

- [Narrator] With fresh enthusiasm,

Mark and Neil turned the spar building process

into a competition.

- Ronnie and JD have been doing a great job building

that spar over there and they were not too happy

with all the rivets in the spar.

So we're gonna show 'em that we can do it too.

- We want to beat Ronnie. Woo.

- We just glad they're contributing something,

that's a good thing.

- A couple engineers are gonna beat Ronnie in building...

well Ronnie's good with sheet metal

but we're gonna catch up with him.

- Hee-ha.

- Hell, we've already done two compared to their,

they're not even riveting yet.

- They said you guys suck.

- Well, we said they sucked two days ago.

- [Narrator] Jason has spent the morning

building the yoke assembly,

the steering wheel for the airplane.

- Cool.

- That looks good, that looks good, thank you.

- [Narrator] But the Panos engineer is in over his head.

- To be honest, I'm not an aircraft person,

I really don't know.

I'm going off of Mark's sketch

of how to put it together.

- [Narrator] Jason Barnes loves his job as an engineer

at Panos so much

that he works on them even in his free time.

- It's made up entirely of

unusable damaged parts

from about

eight years of Panos production cars.

- [Narrator] But his obsession with vehicles

doesn't stop with high-end sports cars.

- If it's got an engine, I'm into it.

It's controlled explosions making horsepower, that's cool.

- [Narrator] Time is flying by in the garage

and the bandit DI crashes in

to sing OC Life.

♪ Let's go

♪ Listen to the media present it as a fact ♪

♪ Fall in your orders 'cause you don't know how to act ♪

♪ Travel on estranged 'cause you don't know your own way ♪

♪ They'll get you in the end then you'll pay ♪

♪ Because O.C. life is not the life for me ♪

♪ Stupid little girls

♪ Trapped society

♪ O.C. life is not the life for free ♪

♪ Pressures on your back,

♪ They don't have a choice

♪ O.C. life is not the life for me ♪

♪ Stupid little girls

♪ Trapped society

♪ O.C. life is not the life for free ♪

♪ Pressures on your back,

♪ You don't have a choice

- Quite monstrous.

Quite monstrous I might say.

- [Narrator] As the day wears on,

Ed's lift mechanism is nowhere near finished.

The engine will arrive in a few hours

and the team begins to question Ed's design.

- A lot of guys are asking if we can make it a fixed mounted

engine.

- A lot of guys meaning what? The aircraft guys over there?

- The engineers.

- What's wrong?

- Well, it's not what's wrong,

it's the scope of the project.

There's a whole long list of reasons why,

but I think bottom line is if you want this thing to fly

that clap trap's gotta go.

Like I say, we can watch-

- Are you afraid of it getting up there and moving?

- No. It's a non-essential feature to fly now right?

You say the critical mission is to fly,

we still have a chance of making this thing fly,

but we gotta take out the stuff we don't need

to fly in order to make it on time.

Okay, if it's my call, if you're the boss

and I'm the chief engineer,

I'm saying the clap trap's gotta go.

And we put a fixed engine mount.

- If you said it's okay though.

- If you're the boss and I'm the chief engineer,

the clap trap's gotta go, okay.

I've been doing airplanes longer than it,

a lot longer.

- I'm on the engineering team too.

- You guys should fight to the death, see what we should do?

- This is doable.

- You don't trust him?

- Well let's just do it like this,

if they can get it done by the end of the day today,

then we'll do it.

- Okay.

- If it's not done by today, then we'll just do it fixed.

- Okay.

- Is that cool?

- That sounds good. - All right.

- If you want a car to get to the Indy 500 and go racing,

okay,

but the boss wants a cigarette lighter and a stereo too,

and you got a choice of sitting in a car with the radio on

or racing, what do you take outta the project?

You take out the radio and the cigarette lighter

and you go race.

- We're not building a Cessna,

we're building Jesse's flying car.

And if I were Cessna building at Brick Cessna,

I wouldn't have an up down motor.

I think it's gotta be cool.

I want to be in your audience watching my TV with my family,

the wings are on and Jesse announces he's gonna fly.

He pushes a button and here goes this, the motor up.

Everybody out there says that's cool, wow.

That's Monster Garage, that's not a Cessna.

- Ed's not an engineer, okay?

You have a choice of sitting in your lawn chair

and watching the engine go up and down

and smoking cigarettes or go flying.

But you can't do both.

♪ Monster, Monster Garage

- [Narrator] Day 4.



The flying monster team is hard at work

when they get a special delivery.

[upbeat rock music]

- Motor-motor,

- A fricking motor.

Check it out, a fricking motor.

- That's a 03 28H2AD,



Came out of a hurricane damaged airplane down in Florida.

- I think it's good that it came out of a wrecked plane

because the likeliness of something wrecking twice.

- Oh this is good thing. - I'll take those odds.

Looks like a damn Corver.

The most breaking down car in the whole world ever

The Corver and we're using a motor that looks like that.

- [Narrator] As soon as the beast is out of the box,

Ed and Andre make a brutal discovery.

- 28 inches.

no go.

- That changes the whole dimensions of everything.

- [Narrator] The engine measurements that Ronnie gave them

are five inches off.

- Unless somebody can make inches go away,

we're gonna have to make new.

- [Narrator] The motor is too big for their engine lift

and they don't know what to do.

So Jesse gives them a solution.

- I mean, you're only talking an inch on either side right?

[indistinct]

We have a width

of a little over 28 and we've got an engine that is

- 33. - Right at 33.

- If it was like 10 inches too wide I could see it,

- Again, it's your call.

We can make a motor mount,

but I think we're gonna be go beyond our five days.

- No, we're not,

you guys can do it.

Just make it wider.

Or you can do it the easy way, I'll leave it up to you.

- I don't like easy way. - Me neither.

- That's the first right thing you've said all week.

- Thank you. I'm glad.

- Alright.

- Alright.

- [Narrator] Jesse's idea is to make a custom motor mount

that fits the engine to the lift.

- This is a go.

- [Narrator] Back to the drawing board for Ed and Andre.

Ronnie and JD have defeated the engineers

in the spar challenge.

Now it's time to attach the ribs.

- I think we're ready to start laying these up,

start riveting 'em in.

We still got a lot of riveting to do.

- We'll have to put the nose rib on at the same time,

the rivets will pass through this rib

into the rib in front of it.

- Like that.

- Makes it even that much more difficult.

- And then we got a tail.

- As progress is being made on the wings,

Chris brings in the material for the fuselage

that will connect the rear tail to the rear end of the car.

[upbeat rock music]

The first wing skeleton is assembled,

a testament to solid engineering and technical skill.

- Showing every one of these two holes

are perfectly in line.

- Did you see it?

- That tells us it's straight. - We've built a straight wing.

- That mean all the ribs are in line.

I mean, especially to go through a hole this size.

And as far down on these just two holes that we made,

all the way through.

- That's straight. - So that is amazing.

- Mark, do you all see that?

- Hey, did you see that?

That laser went through every one of these two holes.

- All the way through. - All the way.

And shined and through here

and hit the wall on the other side.

- [Narrator] The builders are working together

like a well-oiled machine, except for Ed and Andre.

- Slow down, slow down.

- [Narrator] Who are still designing the engine mount.

Each one has their own idea.

- That's not gonna work. - It has to work.

- This whole thing's gonna flop like this.

You have a square box that goes up and down like this,

that's what we need to make.

You need strength in there

that's holding a fricking motor with,



What is wrong with a square platform up here?

- And I'm telling you, what you're making is wimpy.

It isn't gonna work.

- I disagree with your triangular formula.

- My background is engineering and I think that'll work.

What you're doing isn't gonna work.

- Okay but do you wanna help me?

- I'm not gonna help you do something wrong.

- You're doing something wrong.

- We have to do something, anything.

- You're not listening to me,

you're going off on your own.

- I have it formulated in my mind, it's no problem for me.

- You wanna do it your way, than I'm out of it.

- Okay, that's your prerogative.

- That's my prerogative.

- Then I'm gonna start cutting material.

I need to get this done.

- Go do your thing.

He refuses to listen to my explanation

of the physics involved so he's not a partner.

Leave it at that.

If it works, more power to him, if it doesn't work well...

I'll leave it at that.

[echo]

- [Narrator] Day four ends in a stalemate.

As the clock ticks a welder is engineering a

crucial engine lift.

An engineer is out the door

and the wings are still up in the air.

The fate of the flying car hangs in the balance.

It wouldn't be the first monster vehicle

to end in total destruction.

But this build has a chance to join the ranks of some

of the most spectacular successes in the history

of Monster Garage.

- I could picture both.

I could picture crashing

and then I could totally picture myself,

standing on it after I flew.

- [Narrator] For the answer Monster Passengers,

That's right, there's a whole other episode to this

epic show.

- This build's making my head crazy.

- [Narrator] This is the Promise Land,

the birthplace of Powered Flight Kittyhawk, North Carolina.

- I can't think of a better spot to fly a flying car.

- [Narrator] Where's the usual garage antics?

- Give me the f*ck spark plugs man.

- Where's the f*ck spark plugs at?

- [Narrator] And one builder who thinks the whole thing

just may be a death trap.

It's a k*ller. This will...

it'll k*ll.

- [Narrator] You've gotta come back next week, folks,

to find out

because the rest of this Monster Garage is just around the

bend.

[upbeat music]