Adam Savage is one of my favorite lunatic engineers, so I was a little surprised when he took on a project as basic as putting an inflatable movie screen in the back of a pickup. But damn that is one seriously sweet chair-holding cargo box.
You probably remember Savage from Mythbusters, where he built smashed things and shot pumpkins out of a cannon with that time-traveling bar tender Jamie Hyneman. On his new show Tested, Savage and his crew basically run with the same themes of creative engineering and destruction.
I guess he’s helping Honda hawk the new Ridgeline pickup too, but this project and video are interesting enough that I figured it merited a story.
What you need is the SawZall, Savage. And some really big tires. But there’s probably a line prohibiting that in Honda’s rental agreement.
The Ridgeline’s onboard inverter and bed-mounted power outlet is apparently strong enough to run the air pump inflating the movie screen, but I noticed there’s no mention of where the projector itself is getting electricity.
Honda says the truck’s inverter spits out 115 volts/400 watts, which should be enough to operate some home theatre projectors. You might need to have the truck running for the battery to survive that kind of usage for the length of a movie though, and sitting around the exhaust pipe all that time might make you a little woozy.
Anyway Savage’s custom mounting system for this blow-up movie screen is actually pretty awesome. Tidy design, easy operation. And here I can barely make a shoe rack from Target stand straight. I’m not even trying to mess with IKEA.
It’s cool to see somebody messing around with truck modifications besides lift kits and big tires. That said, if you ever camp next to me with a giant-ass inflatable TV, I will fashion an atlatl from sticks and pop that shit.