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OUR SOLUTION
The biggest problem is the dead battery. You
might think you could replace a 12V car battery
with eight 1.5V batteries (like a combination of D
cells and AA batteries).Well, you can’t.Although
8 of these batteries would indeed make 12 volts,
these smaller batteries are not able to deliver an
electric current of 50 amperes or more to turn
the starter motor.
But as Miracle Max would say: “It just so
happens that your battery here is only mostly
dead. There’s a big difference between mostly
dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive.”
That means that it’s possible to use these
smaller alkaline batteries to recharge the car
battery. If you connect 8 of them in series and
then to the positive and negative terminal of the
battery, they will indeed charge it — at least a
little bit.Even with just 10 minutes you should be
able to get enough energy in the battery to start
up that car and get out of there.Hopefully that fire
isn’t spreading too fast.
MOST CREATIVE SOLUTION
Submitting his comments on the Make: blog,
Bob West provides not only a creative solution,
but an excellent narrative to fully describe the
situation.His method of starting the car involves
the weed trimmer connected to the serpentine
belt in the car (likely a difficult task).But here’s
the most creative part — he uses the scuba tank
to turn the two-stroke engine into a compressed
air motor.This still might not work, but it seems
like something MacGyver would do!
HONORABLE MENTION
Three readers submitted a version of this
solution: Michael Beaveridge (blog), Scott
Monaghan (Twitter) and Douglas Coleman
(Facebook).Their solution is to charge the car
battery with the electric drill and the weed
trimmer.The idea is to use the trimmer motor to
rotate the motor of the drill to make it an electric
generator.
It’s a brilliant idea — but it might not always
work.There are different kinds of motors in
electric drills:
• A corded drill, as in our challenge, most likely
has an AC motor — you probably can’t use this
(without serious modification) to charge your
battery.Sorry, guys.
• Older cordless drills will have a DC motor.This
is what you want.Remove the battery and
connect the terminals from the drill to the
battery (check positive and negative).Now
connect the weed trimmer to the drill shaft and
get it to rotate. There’s your generator.
• The last kind of motor is the modern DC
brushless motor.These are quite awesome
motors — but they can’t be used as a
generator.
Read all the entries at:
• makezine.com/article/maker-news/
macgyver-wildfire-escape
• twitter.com/make/
status/1569795396724989952
• facebook.com/makemagazine/photos
/a.389005918189/10159721300928190/
MacGyver Chalenge: WILDFIRE ESCAPE!
M83_007-8_MacGyverChallenge_F1.indd 8M83_007-8_MacGyverChallenge_F1.indd 8 10/10/22 9:53 AM10/10/22 9:53 AM
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