Quote Originally Posted by Timebender View Post
Regarding the worm hole emitter, has anyone asked Kevin Pike directly where he may have found it? I know VB did a "parts safari" video where he met Kevin and they went to the surplus store to find most of the original screen used stuff.

Btw, great thread. As a replica prop builder (I have an R2), this is something that I'm interested in doing someday on my own as well.

Kevin Pike was asked probably a decade ago and he thought the WHE might be an aircraft engine ignitor, but that theory was disproved. Kevin was not always directly involved with actually sourcing the parts on the car...often times it was his guys from the shop that were out digging for parts that matched that conceptual design drawings.

The "parts safari" video was shot at APEX electronics, a well known source for a lot of the original parts. It has been pretty much picked over at this point, but I'm sure there are still a few random parts there that would be accurate matches to the screen used cars. Over the many years of hunting through APEX "sister" parts were discovered that literally came from the same cardboard box as the parts used on the screen used car. Most of that stuff is all gone at this point. Inventory gets turned over and recycled at APEX on a regular basis as well, and a cast aluminum part such as the wormhole emitter would have been a good candidate for recycling and melting down for scrap.

A few of the parts on the time machine have also been confirmed as low production or prototype parts from military applications. In the 60's if some prototype vehicle contract was cancelled by the government the supplier of these prototype parts would scrap out any inventory on hand. A lot of that that stuff made it to APEX and then 25 years later Pike's guys picked up the only 3 ever made. Now tack on another 30 years after that it's basically impossible to find more, or even details about what the part was.