I Built a Car That Drives on Water

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]Okay, the first step for the amphibious mod is something called buoyancy. And boy are we going to need a lot of it.

[00:00:15]Okay, first up, we're cutting this roof off.

[00:00:23]You're probably wondering why we're taking the roof off of this thing. For starters, it was really low and I hit my head super hard this one time. And the solar panels aren't even doing anything this time of year. And we're saving a lot of weight.

[00:00:49]Oh And this one is beaten up, you guys.

[00:00:54]it's been outside in the rain since we built it and basically every single plywood panel is now disintegrating or at least warped. So, the idea with the roof gone is that it's going to be easier to store it somewhere. Okay, what we need to do first though is flip this over and make sure that we have enough insulation to make this entire car buoyant once we drive it in the water.

[00:01:27]We're looking at 300 kg of buoyancy.

[00:01:31]Now, clearly the tires are going to do some of that lifting as well. However, we have sacrificed a lot of ground clearance to have the buoyancy so far up. We have that for a reason, though.

[00:01:40]I'm not sure the the hub motors in each tire if they're waterproof. I don't want them to be submerged. So, we're going to have the buoyancy start as early as possible. sacrificing well a lot of ground clearance. So that's the idea.

[00:01:53]Now we're going to glass fiber this to make it a little tougher and uh we're going to have some plywood plates to connect to the metal frame of the car and that's going to be it. So let's start with the polyester and the glass fiber.

[00:02:06]This went about as bad as you can imagine. Slowing down the footage, you can see the foam split after I cut the glass fiber cloth incorrectly. I decided to come back the next day and only reinforce the plywood that connects the frame instead of the entire hole. It looks like absolute crap right now.

[00:02:23]We're going to paint it later on. But I I threw together this foam cutter to hopefully make it a bit more uniform.

[00:02:28]It's just a canful wire that heats up with alligator clips to my power supply and hopefully we can shape the foam a little better. This too went absolutely horribly. There wasn't enough tension on the canthul wire to make straight cuts.

[00:02:43]kind of tired of breathing toxic fumes.

[00:02:45]So, saw makes a comeback.

[00:02:49]This paint makes an incredibly hard surface, which hopefully is going to protect the foam and hold it together, so not small bits and pieces can end up in the water. I then started working on the motor mount for the boat motor, which is an old e- foil motor. This is where the major mess up was made. I 3D printed this extension to have the motor not so close to the foam to have clean, undisrupted water. The wooden dowels, however, were simply there to have a strong connection with the phone.

[00:03:20]It was right at this point after actually seeing the motor in the very back of the car extended so far out, I realized the propeller wouldn't even be in the water. I started working on a said axis gantry pretty much immediately. The motor was going to be lowered into the water using this aluminum extrusion and these roller wheels.

[00:03:49]This I thought was really going to work.

[00:03:51]After screwing it in place though, I I noticed the 8 mm plywood was flexing pretty bad.

[00:04:18]But how do I know when this is fully up or fully down? And how do I reverse it?

[00:04:22]>> Yes, >> it's all within the drill. I haven't done anything special to this system whatsoever. So, this momentum adjuster, I set it very low. So, whenever it hits an end stop, as I'll show you right now, it just shakes and it can't go anymore.

[00:04:42]And as you know, you can have the drill spin clockwise and counterclockwise. I did the same thing here. So, I simply have to push this little switch to make it go down again, and I can adjust the speed.

[00:04:56]Pretty nice. Now, it actually hit the wires, which wasn't very good. There we go.

[00:05:02]So, that's how far down it can go. Now, all we got to do is cut out the section for the motor and we should be good to go.

[00:05:21]This was followed by a lot of wiring, a lot of figuring out and testing some of the electronic components so they are compatible, making sure the contraption wouldn't snap when the prop was spinning. I 3D printed a little mount for the power drill not to spin around.

[00:05:35]Just something to hold it in place. And I did all the cable management under the car, making sure none of the brake lines or wires was going to be pinched when the foam comes on.

[00:05:49]And just like that, our amphibious car that should be able to go on both land and water should be all prepped and ready to go for its maiden voyage. But I have so many things to show you guys, it's insane. So check this out. Now, how do I control the boat motor? I have a twist throttle on the left hand side of the handlebar that I have to push away from me in order to engage the motor underneath.

[00:06:12]So that's it. Now the twist throttle on the right side is for all four motors.

[00:06:18]It's four-wheel drive. Awesome. Now the Ryobi mod that I did, I just click this button. I can reverse the direction. I have an arrow that says up and down. So that means this motor goes up and down.

[00:06:31]As I showed you before, it's nothing new. Now, if we lift the hood, very nice. Check this out, you guys.

[00:06:40]Lipo batteries for the boat motor. That is that's going to a flyer 400 amp EC coupled with a servo tester and a BC with a 12vt lipo battery over there.

[00:06:52]Now, that was over an oversight. Don't have to do it that way, but it works.

[00:06:55]So, that's how I do it. Now, these four are simply the speed controllers for all the hub motors. So, that's what that is.

[00:07:03]Now, here are the batteries for the hub motors as well. You know all about the Ryobi system here that's going to the motor underneath to make it go up and down. And that is everything that's here. It isn't more complicated than that. Well, in the water, how are we going to turn? Well, patent pending these plywood pieces. Hopefully, as the water rushes over them and we steer it just as we normally would do on the road, it will catch the water and actually force us into that direction. I don't see how it couldn't fail. I don't see how it could fail.

[00:07:52]We're closing in on the first obstacle, the bump. All right.

[00:07:58]I know the ground clearance isn't the best, but it worked.

[00:08:05]We got it. I thought the ground clearance was going to be horrible, but it's actually fine. Check this out.

[00:08:10]Here's another one.

[00:08:16]No problem. I haven't I haven't even touched the bottom once.

[00:08:25]Oh, before we can head out on the water, we got to plug everything in. Twisting the throttle, you should see the propeller move.

[00:08:33]Sounds like it's moving. Oh, this might be the final boss. Oh, that doesn't doesn't sound too good. Okay, guys. It all comes down to this.

[00:08:49]Feels feels so wrong.

[00:09:05]All right. All right.

[00:09:07]It's a little uh Well, of course I'm sitting to the side.

[00:09:12]Okay, we got to sit in the middle.

[00:09:15]Let's give it some throttle and see if it works.

[00:09:20]Of course it works. Of course it works.

[00:09:25]Giving some throttle to the wheels.

[00:09:28]Okay, motor is up.

[00:09:32]No way. No way, you guys. That worked fantastically.

[00:09:39]No way.

[00:09:48]Since that worked, I think what we're going to do is there is another beach about 300 m away from here. Let's pack everything and that's going to be the first challenge for this amphibious car.

[00:09:56]Let's go. Okay, a short break in the video to let you know about PCB way.

[00:10:00]Mainly I've used their CNC and 3D printing service as you probably have seen in a lot of my videos. Stainless steel adapters, motor mounts, even propellers. All you have to do is upload your file and it will provide you with materials to choose from. PCB Way also offers PCB manufacturing. It's in their name. And with their instant quote feature, you will get the pricing up front, which is really appreciated. PCB Way made stainless steel motor mounts for this drone. So check them out in the description below to see what parts they can make for you. Okay, here we go, you guys. Stupid enough, I only brought one micro SD card, so we only have the drone. I don't have the GoPro.

[00:10:38]It's still pretty scary to do this.

[00:10:44]And there we go. Okay, bringing down the motor.

[00:10:50]You can hear it.

[00:10:54]There we go. That's how easy it is.

[00:11:06]I absolutely wouldn't call it very fast, but it's it's not overly slow. It's sucking down a lot of water. But in relation to land, I don't think we're doing terrible.

[00:11:18]Okay, we're going up on land. In just a second, I'll get some speed to bring the motor up, you know. Let's not forget about it. There we go. Start the motors.

[00:11:31]And we are up. We have touchdown.

[00:11:36]Jesus Christ. This is just awesome, dude. How cool is that, you guys? That were way better than expected.

[00:11:49]All right, you guys. The objective for today, drive across the entire lake. All right, guys.

[00:11:58]Going in the water.

[00:12:08]Holy I've done it a couple of times. Still scary.

[00:12:40]We're closing in on the halfway point.

[00:12:44]It's uh not working very well. The boat motor is sucking a lot of air.

[00:12:50]We're not very fast. Although we probably done about 600 m in 5 minutes or so. So, it's not it's about the speed of the raft, but the boat function of this definitely uh needs some work. See what happens. You see what happens when I give it some throttle. It's just viewing out there all the time. The boat motor would have to go way further down for this to work, I think.

[00:13:20]Okay, motor up.

[00:13:25]Okay, now give it some throttle.

[00:13:29]Oh no.

[00:13:32]Ah, that could have worked. Came in at an angle.

[00:13:42]Oh yeah, I can't believe that worked.

[00:13:45]Eventually, I was able to get the hang of having the right speed, get that motor up and power on the wheels smoothly without stopping.

[00:13:55]Leaning probably did more than those plywood pieces to turn the boat. But the concept worked, and for that, I'm really happy. The boat batteries were far from depleted, so rough estimation would be about 3 km on water and 50 km on land.

[00:14:12]Now, with that being said, all I would ask for is a moment of your Well, there's the blooper. The only thing I would ask for is for a thumbs up if you did enjoy the video, and I will see you again in the next one. Bye.