It’s been over a week since we’ve brought you shenanigans from one of the Jalop-est channels on YouTube, Garage 54. So, to quench your thirst for goofy wrenching, here are the Russian Automotive “Scientists” driving a Lada with wheels made of chains. Yes, the team welded each individual link together into the shape of a circle, and put the weight of the car on the resulting chain-wheel.
My own welding skills, and my $100 welder, would never have managed this feat, but the Garage 54 team aren’t amateurs like me, so just watch how they create a rock-solid wheel out of chains:
They wrap the chain around a wheel to get a perfect circle, then tack weld the links together before reinforcing the welds with the chain pulled away from the rubber (presumably because it’d melt and small nasty). Doing this twice, Garage 54 ends up with two circular, stiff chain wheels, which the team connects using cross-wheel chains, whose links have also been welded together.
To hook the contraption to the yellow Lada’s rear wheel hubs, the team simply welds some chains — whose links have been welded together, of course — from the centre of a steel wheel to the makeshift chain-wheel.
The result is actually rather impressive, in that the welds seem to hold up to the weight of the car and the stresses associated with the host Vlad’s heavy foot trying to push the vehicle through deep snow. The cross-wheel chains do yield a rather bumpy ride, and the wheels are a bit loud. Plus, the chain wheels seem to want to slide sideways and dig into the snow. But still, Vlad seems impressed. “The grip actually ain’t too bad!” he declares.
Yes, this video is extremely silly and pointless, but those terms can be used to describe some of the great joys in motoring.