On a day of solo crusading, Scootaloo finds an abandoned pickup truck. Being a brave little filly, she decides she should drive it back to Ponyville. But can she figure out how to make it work?
Chapters (3)
- Member Since 2nd Nov, 2012
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Admiral Biscuit
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Admiral Biscuit
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That was fun. You could change some of the sentences around though and add variety. There are a great deal too many that start with the word 'she'.
3030013
Yeah, I should've.
I didn't really notice when I was proofing....
take all of my yes
OH GOD WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!?!?!?
Dis gun be gud.
Sootaloo is mechanically inclined.
Finds machine.
Makes the weirdest amount of sense.
Pls continue.
Scoot's gonna be such a badass rollin' into town in that thing! Even Rainbow Dash is gonna be jealous!
Interesting. Wait where's the rest?
J/K Can't wait to see where this goes. 
This is just awesome, I'm saying that mostly because of your writing not the concept, I'm really looking forward to more of this.
You mean cottage.
3101196
Yup.
I guess I should have looked at a picture of it before I typed that. The sod roof threw me off; I was picturing it as a stumpy little tree.
Good catch
Correction made.
Oh is it 4 wheel drive? I love 4x4s
3101248
I hadn't actually decided yet. I'm not sure how long it would take Scootaloo to figure out locking hubs.
3031049derpicdn.net/media/W1siZiIsIjIwMTMvMDQvMjAvMDVfNDlfMDhfNTQ5XzMwMzEwOV9fVU5PUFRfX3NhZmVfc2Nvb3RhbG9vLnBuZyJdXQ/303109__safe_scootaloo_mouth-hold_wrench_artist-acuario1602_dirty.png
I've got no idea why, but this story is incredibly funny. I guess it is because of the mental image of Scootaloo hooning about in a rather powerful vehicle as if it were a toy.
3101284I think it would be a good thing to have since there are no proper roads in Equestria.
3102893
That's quite true.
On hard ground, a 2wd truck would do all right, and in the show the skinny-wheeled wagons the ponies use don't seem to get stuck much. Scootaloo usually doesn't have trouble with her scooter, either.
I suppose that the truck might have had the hubs locked already. Some people did that when going into iffy terrain.
I quite like the premise and the story itself. I can see her doing donuts under Rainbow's house like a townie showing off for his girl, but I do hope you continue it, the suspense of having Scoots yanked out of the truck with it in gear and moving is almost too much to take.
I hope the wheels were cut so it'll just idle in circles, otherwise, run away truck!
Am I the only one who worries in a similar way?
3146818
To slightly alleviate your worries, I got the "Scootaloo runs over somepony with the truck" in my not-well-thought-out Scootaloo Finds a Truck in the Everfree Forest and Runs Over a Red-Maned Black-Coated Alicorn in Front of the Ponyville Hospital (which I wish had a shorter title every time I type it). Link's on my blog.
As soon as I finish the next chapter of Celestia Sleeps In, (or when I get stuck), I'll work on this one.
3101284You know, I just thought of this. For her to truly understand how the truck works, all she would have to do was to explore the truck a little more and find the owner's manual in the glove box. Nine times out of ten the owners manual stays in the glove box and hardly ever gets removed. I suppose that could help her out with the 4x4 and locking front hubs.
3151541
In my own personal experience, only about 50% of the vehicles I've owned have come with owner's manuals (and I've owned over 30 vehicles at this point). Of the vehicles which I currently own, 4 have owners manuals, and 7 do not.
I'm also assuming for this story (as I have in many HiEs) the ponies do not speak or read English, and owner's manuals in older cars were far less detailed than they are now. The manual for my 78 Chevy truck covers all 78 pickups, Blazers and Suburbans with all engines and is maybe 80 pages thick; whereas the manual for my 01 Grand Caravan is about 400 pages and only covers Grand Caravans (and presumably Voyagers and Town & Countries).
That having been said, I'd assume that there might be a picture of the four-wheel-drive lever, as well as of the locking hubs, and a mechanically-competent pony could probably figure out--with some experimentation--what they do.
3153243 Oh, wow I guess I stand corrected. But anyway, yeah I think she would have to experiment with the advanced controls if you're going down the "ponies' language isn't english" path. I have seen that put into maby three HiE stories that I have read.
Breaks? Where we're going we don't need... breaks.
And on that day, a filly learned that houses do make an effective way to stop a wagon.
Scoots drives better without knowing anything at all about vehicles, than I ever did after an hour of teaching on farmland, caravan site and public roads by a relative, who ran a maintenance and repair garage and after I read the entire Highway code and users manual and tech manual for fun 8}
Basically I came to the belief that when overtaking, the guy coming the Other way is more likely to move if I dont.
Im wondering what kind of enviroment would stop a Landrover. Well, apart from its regular breakdowns.
Gasoline engines can run on alcohol, Diesels can run on parrafin, keroscene, sunflower oil etc. Plenty of fuel.
I still can't figure out how to drive a stick shift without obliterating the gears each time I have to let off the brake.
Clutches don't like me.
And yet I can operate an X-ray irradiator... go fig.
1. fixed
Would put Yay! in parentheses or "Locomotive engineers yay!" in quotes, and add a colon before "Always."
What's a sallion?
...Which reminds me, that emote may have been all too accurate if she wasn't yanked out.
3498878
Much cooler fixed, thank you.
Left the ".. . . yay! Always . . . " as it was. I know it's not right, but heck, I just like it like that.
Fixed the "allionsay." It originally read "Ixnay on the exsay," but I thought that was kinda pushing an "everyone" tag.
Cuti Mark Crusader Stunt Drivers?
Do a Barrel Roll.
3498970
There was a moment where "Cutie Mark Crusaders Race Car Drivers" crossed my mind.
But it's too silly.
3498974
Not for the Cutie Mark crusaders, as taught by Discord.
3499006
They've only got one truck and the remains of a parade float. Not enough for a race, yet.
Now, can Quick Fix and Pinkie and maybe Twilight reverse-engineer a Chevy truck? If so. . . .
3499017
You are thinking of only the one example of origional unique non Equestrian build. How quickly could the various artificers of magical constructs scan that thing down to the nuts and bolts, pointing out the extreme similarity to the steam locomotive, in that you could say the coal is thrown into the cylinders, bypassing the firebox boiler loop entirely. Others would try to build the compact piston block then try and add a blacksmiths blown forge fire and boiler etc. that gets your turbines, and everything that goes with it.
Others can look at the battery and starter motor, and try and make electric vehicles. Others will point out Tanks magic flying harness and try and go direct for magic drive hubs, etc etc.
Theres lots of messy fun to be done with something just to start giving you ideas.
3499047
Quite true. The Equestrians already have the concept of the steam engine down, and the Flim Flam brothers have their self-powered cider machine, so the internal combustion engine is marginally reverse-engineerable by the ponies. There's some metallurgy that's probably beyond them (although for all we know Phillydelphia is home to the largest Basic Oxygen Furnace in all of Equestria). I doubt the ponies are advanced enough to build a duplicate of a '69 Chevy truck, but they'd likely be able to build a functional equivalent.
And you're right; there's no reason why a pony tinkerer couldn't look at a single part of the truck, scoff, and say, "I can do that better." With some magitech . . they might really have something.
I can't think of a specific example right now, but I'm sure history is full of examples where someone built something, and then someone else built a much better version of the same thing--and that's just using examples of existing tech; imagine how we might be able to adapt a piece of alien tech.
3499116
As far as I can tell, an awful lot of the Chevy isnt all that advanced in material science. I thought large portions were mild steel, the gearbox isnt that far off cast iron, maybe the crank and con rods would give them pause for a few minutes, but nothing a minerological assey spell couldnt sort given the material is bulk, and shaped by standard drop hammer. They have optical lenses, so the idea of polishing to a finish for bearings, well, the steam locos either use white metal or pressure fed oil filled sintered bronze. The carburetta is essentially a pipe carrying hydrocarbon fuel into the larger pipe carrying air, of which only the geometry really counts, etc.
Ok.. time for me to go sit in the corner with the traffic cone on my head so I dont seriously annoy the people who Actually know how these things work any further.
Sorry bout that.
3499147
You're essentially right, honestly. Still, there was a fair bit of advancement from teens metallurgy to sixties. Bushing and seal technology advanced; the carb is slightly more complicated than a tube, valve, and venturi. The epoxy in the coil is better, there are plastics used in the interior. Bushings have improved, and the coil springs are progressive windings rather than simple coil springs. All the bearings are likely made of better quality steel, and the gears are helical cut rather than straight-cut. There's probably a zillion things I'm not thinking of.
All that having been said, since they have a steam locomotive, the engine of the truck is not beyond their understanding, and while they might not have the industrial techology required to exactly replicate it, a bunch of pony scientists could probably come up with a duplicate that was 3/4 as good as the original on a first try . . . and then use the lessons they learned from the first attempt to quickly improve to nearly 100%. I'd figure it would take them a decade or two of R&D to make an exact copy.
3499247
I dunno about a decade. then again, depends how desperate they were. After all, the best example for technology advancement from nothing in a decade, is Sputnik, or I cant remember the US version, Vanguard? to Apollo. What is even more intresting is that given an existing F1 engine, apparently its going to take modern technology to reverse engineer it to create a duplicate, if not an improvement.
Sometimes something already existing slows down innovation, creation?
3499267
It wasn't nothing, though. True, there wasn't a space program and then there was. The underlying developments across all fields of technology were firmly in place, though. It was a matter of application. Based on the show, the ponies are unlikely to have developed an efficient process for extracting aluminum from bauxite (to give just one example), making a Ford Tri-motor out of their reach even if somebody gave them a complete set of blueprints accompanied with a functioning engine, a sufficient fuel supply, and a complete avionics package.
3499387
I actually had a look up on the origional method of Aluminum extraction, just for space use, to avoid the need for the horribly low efficincy of solar PV compared to solar sail mirror concentrators and freefall smelting. Carbon, Silicon, Magnesium, Sodium, Aluminium. Fortunately all fairly available in rock, though the carbon is the trick. Things I havent got yet is the various yields at each stage etc, such as Alumina plus Sodium gives Aluminium and Soda.
Seems a recent advancement of Magnesium extraction is to boil it off in vaccuum, low pressure, and condense on sheets.
3499410
And that gets to the heart of the matter: some industrial processes are heavily reliant on other technology (like extracting aluminum) that in the space of only two centuries, aluminum has gone from a higher value than gold to being disposable. Just the manufacturing technology to make fuel and brake lines is probably out of reach for the ponies.
3499494
Heh, the flexible pipes I can get my head round, but Ive prodded at some of the rigid parts off a Landrover and I can see how you would have fun drawing high tensile tube without it splintering etc.
Im going to have to dig out my encyclopedias again, its been a couple decades at least and so theres a shed load of modern stuff I know little to nothing about. Im just glad I did at least the first two years on that Polymer degree at the time Buckyballs and Plant Gel was discovered, so I can follow some of the names if not all the new chemistry since.
3499525
For what it's worth, here's a link to a PDF that covers verious pipe-making processes:
Pipe Making My experience in metal manufacturing has been limited; but I've worked in an extrusion-molding plastics plant.
In the automotive world, besides the obvious computer integration, there's been a large upsurge of more exotic metals used for weight-savings, many more plastics are used (intakes and fuel tanks, to name a few), and gaskets have improved from cork to neoprene.
You know, this chapter and the fire truck pic reminds me of the song "The Truck Got Stuck"
Damn! My story Drive is no longer one of a kind! Ah well the more the merrier
3845909
Well, they say great minds think alike.
Yeah, this was funny!
If they refine their lamp oil from crude oil pumped from the ground, they'll probably have gasoline available. If I recall this correctly... Gasoline was originally an unwanted byproduct from refining kerosene, back when kerosene became a popular substitute for whale oil. It was too dangerous and volatile for any practical use, until someone designed an engine to run on it. Funny how that went.
3872833
I'm not sure where they'd be getting their lamp oil from. You're right about gasoline initially being an unwanted byproduct, though.
If they can't get gasoline, they could tweak the carb to handle other fuels, alcohol being the most obvious. An internal combustion engine of that era can fairly easily be modified to run propane, methane, or even carbon monoxide.
In Pilot's Story by Jersey Lightning (which I think has been taken down for major revisions), Twilight was able to use a spell to copy the avgas that the plane had, and--given what we've seen on the show--it'd say it's feasible. After all, if she can turn a frog into an orange and mice into horses, water to gasoline shouldn't be all that hard.
3499247 wrote : "All that having been said, since they have a steam locomotive, the engine of the truck is not beyond their understanding, and while they might not have the industrial techology required to exactly replicate it, a bunch of pony scientists could probably come up with a duplicate that was 3/4 as good as the original on a first try . . . and then use the lessons they learned from the first attempt to quickly improve to nearly 100%. I'd figure it would take them a decade or two of R&D to make an exact copy."
Ah.
But you're forgetting their game breaker, magic.
Why would they need an exact copy when they can use magical substitutes for it.
3919687
The original discussion was about them building an exact duplicate of the truck, and I stand by my statement, magic or no. I don't believe that the ponies could use magic to make an entire functioning engine in one go, for example. I'd think they'd have to disassemble it, and then figure out how to cast, hone, and polish all the major parts. The idea of a unicorn being able to shape a pile of hematite into a functioning engine block--never mind a whole engine--seems outside what a spell ought to be able to do. As for their technology, I haven't seen enough complex machines to make me believe that they have much in the way of the advanced technology to build a truck--even one from the sixties--on their own.
Before you use the example of the Crystal Empire locomotive to say I'm wrong, let me remind you that these two locomotives are essentially the same; the top one is just covered in sheeting which makes it streamlined.
steamlocomotive.com/streamlined/scrapped/hiawatha-3.jpg
wheelsmuseum.org/images/00000470.jpg
Now, I have no trouble believing that they could yank the powertrain out of the truck and make it move with a come-to-life spell. I suspect that's what they used to make the parade floats go, and to make Tank's propeller work.
My first thought:
It do, it do...