When Anders Johansson got the idea of building a land speed racer powered by a TV94 turboshaft engine, he did what many dreamers don’t, he went out to his shop and got to work. This was back in 2010. He just took his project out for its first test run and from the looks of it, he’s definitely on the right track. The turbo was running at high idle and he just rolled in a bit of throttle a couple of times to see what it would do and it’s very impressive and the engine isn’t working hard at all.

He has a very long build thread on JATO, the Jet And Turbine Owner’s forum with a lot of photos showing everything from the initial sketch to where he is now. There’s no CNC equipment involved, all of the machining is done manually on a lathe and milling machine and he’s done quite a bit of it, plus there’s the aluminum compressor housing which was cast by Anders. (I never knew there were so many guys doing their own casting!)

Anders says the current record in his class is 349km/h which is about 217 mph so that’s his target. Will he get there? Only one way to find out.

This is another one of those really cool garage builds pretty much under the radar. It sounds like a jet and goes really fast, what’s not to like?

Thanks for the tip, Andy!

Links: Hackaday and JATO