I got this forwarded to me in an email and immediately knew that we had to post this here on Joe Welder!

Ron Patrick’s Street-Legal Jet Powered Volkswagen Beetle

This is my street-legal jet car on full afterburner.

The car has two engines: the production gasoline engine in the front driving the front wheels and the jet engine in the back.

The idea is that you drive around legally on the gasoline engine and when you want to have some fun, you spin up the jet and get on the burner (you can start the jet while driving along on the gasoline engine).

The car was built because I wanted the wildest street-legal ride possible.

With this project, I was able to use some stuff I learned while getting my fancy engineering degree (I have a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University) to design a street-legal jet car without the distraction of how other people have done it in the past – because no one has.

I don’t know how fast the car will go and probably never will. The car was built to thrill me, not kill me. That doesn’t stop me from the occasional blast on the highway though.

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If this class was offered at my old high school, who knows – I might actually consider going back!  Automotive restoration?  Welding, painting, and metal fabrication?  Sponsored by the local car museum?  Wait – are you sure this is for high school?

Gilmore Car Museum starts high school auto restoration program

READER SUBMITTED • OCTOBER 15, 2009

An innovative pilot program that matches adult mentors with high school students interested in the automotive arts is the newest educational step being taken by the Gilmore Car Museum, near Kalamazoo, MI to fulfill its mission of becoming a resource to the community.

(Gilmore Car Museum)

Beginning its first full week as an after-school course in automotive preservation, conservation, and restoration, the “Gilmore Garage Works” project selected eight seniors from Hastings High and Delton-Kellogg High, the two high schools in its home Barry Intermediate School District, to be part of the initial class.

Students and their adult mentors, primarily Museum members with long histories in the auto restoration hobby, will use a 1931 Willys-Knight donated to the Museum in 2005 as their first restoration project.

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100 miles.  1 gallon.  Go! That’s the premise behind the upcoming One Gallon Challenge – a contest for alternative fuel vehicles to see who can get to Boston from Greenfield the fastest on one gallon of gas, if at all.

Contestants hope to drive the future into Boston

By Laura A. Bennett, Globe Correspondent

(Aram Boghosian for The Boston Globe)

Roo Trimble has been holed up in his backyard shed for months. Hunched amid whirring saws and jagged metal scraps, he has been welding the aluminum skeleton of a small car, smoothing the joints between the latticed pipes, aligning the wheels, and climbing in and out of the metal hull to make sure he can fit snugly – but not too snugly – inside.

Trimble hopes the three-wheeled, almond-shaped contraption will carry him to victory Thursday in a first-time event called the One Gallon Challenge. As part of the second Boston GreenFest, Trimble and six others will attempt to drive their homemade cars from Greenfield to Boston City Hall Plaza, a distance of 100 miles, using just 1 gallon of gasoline.

“These days,’’ Trimble said, wiping his brow with the back of one hand, “we need to think about taking the snail shells off our cars – not dragging our house with us everywhere we go.’’

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I have always been an outlaw. When I was a chief mechanic on a winning World of Outlaw Sprint car team my huge silver belt buckle was inlaid with turquoise letters – O U T L A W .

Even when I started Arc-Zone.com I was a bit of an outlaw, and a bit of a pioneer. We were the first to sell welding accessories online– I started with an eBay store, then we moved to a customized webstore built on open source code. We sell direct to consumers, and we sell to distributors. We have some items manufactured for us, to our specifications. And we don’t just sell product in California, or even some pre-defined western region, we sell worldwide. That really confuses manufacturers that have a regulated, pre-defined distribution system– a system that is sometimes hard to break into. In other words, some of the vendors we have dealt with have not really known which box to put us in.

Whether you’re an outlaw or a pioneer, or a little bit of both, one thing you’ll need when you have a business is a lawyer. Now I know everybody throws down on lawyers – but like it or not, if you plan on starting a business, or you are in business now, you will eventually need one.

I was lucky to find a good law firm early– Branfman and Associates. Before I even launched the company I asked advice on trademark and domain name issues, learned where I needed to start with preliminary name searches, what the difference is between a ( TM) and ( R) in terms of trademark, and how to protect your intellectual property.

And they are not just your stuffed shirt attorneys either. We had lunch the other day, and I discovered that Mark has a custom chopper. “It’s pretty fun and loud as all get out,” Mark says… and it should be fun, it’s a 2003 Bourget Pro-Gets Classic. A highly engineered bike with no oil tank! The oil for the entire bike circulates through the frame. It’s an awesome idea that improves performance by adding more oil and utilizing the surface area of the frame to dissipate the heat, keeping the engine running cool and efficient.

I have been with Branfman for 10 years and they have helped me in many ways. The more your business grows, the more people (vendors, customers, employees etc.) you deal with — the more you will need a GOOD Lawyer, one you have a solid relationship with.

Recently we were jacked around by a vendor…. This company has a reputation in the industry for being jerks but when we were just starting out, trying to establish resources for quality product we put up with their shenanigans. We were trying to build a reputation for ourselves as a company that puts customers first. I’m not saying we haven’t made mistakes, but hopefully we’ve handled them with integrity. And so we put up with this vendor for longer than we should have, but we documented each incident along the long road.

Recently they not only cut us off (after we have spent thousands of dollars with them), they had some rinky dink lawyer of theirs send us a childish letter. When we didn’t respond, they got their big guns fancy Beverly Hills attorney involved and made all kinds of ridiculous accusations trying to scare us. The fact is, they are jealous of the reputation we have built, the customer loyalty and the solid relationships we now have with quality manufacturers and our position in the market.

Now if we hadn’t already had a good solid relationship with a reputable and knowledgeable law firm, we would have been in a panic. As it stands, we’re able to let the attorneys deal with it and we can get on with the business we are in– delivering precision welding products, value-added services and technical solutions to customers worldwide.

If you have a business, make sure you have a good attorney on your side. Start early and build a relationship with him/her so they get an understanding of who you are and what you are trying to do. A good lawyer can direct you away from potential landmines that can derail your business and waste time and money – and in business both are very valuable!

Document your business dealings – and most importantly – don’t let people push you around – Push back and if you’re prepared – push back hard, then move on to growing your business!