MythBusters (2015 season)

Jamie built a wrecking ball by pouring concrete around two hemispherical steel frameworks, letting them cure for several days, and then gluing the two halves together. The finished ball was 5 feet (150 cm) in diameter^{[lower-alpha 1]} and weighed 5,000 pounds (2,300 kg), matching the one used on the show.

Adam and Jamie built two house end walls with structural bracing to meet local building codes. With the ball pulled back 12 feet (3.7 m) to avoid tipping the crane to which it was attached, they swung it at one wall to evaluate the damage without Homer hanging on. The impact caused severe buckling and knocked a section of the chimney loose; when they attached Homer and repeated the test on the other wall, it flexed but exhibited much less visible damage, and Homer remained intact. Adam and Jamie classified the myth as plausible.

For a full-scale test, Adam and Jamie set a platform at the bomb range and mounted three toilets on it with common piping. To see if the fuse would have kept burning after the flush, they made a bomb of their own with a long fuse, placed it in a bucket of water, and lit the fuse. The gunpowder in the fuse allowed it to keep burning underwater, and the bomb exploded and shattered the bucket.

With the pipes clogged, Adam and Jamie placed a bomb at the midpoint of the initial shared outlet pipe for the system and set it off. The explosion blew all three toilets off their mountings, which were not strong enough to withstand the force of the blast. A second test, with the toilets bolted directly to the piping and the bomb repositioned to the lowest point in the system, led to the same result and partially/completely destroyed them. Since they could not match the geysers of water seen in the episode, Adam and Jamie judged the myth busted.

Adam and Jamie then constructed a mockup of the temple chamber and adjusted the time delay between triggering the plate and firing the gun to match that seen in the film (1 second). After further troubleshooting, Adam donned protective padding and ran across the chamber, matching Indy's running posture and speed. He was able to stay well ahead of the shots with the 1-second delay; when it was reduced to almost zero, he did take one hit. He and Jamie judged the myth to be plausible due to the fictionalized nature of the scenario.

Realizing that the space between the plank and the barrel wall allowed the combustion gases to escape, Adam machined a plastic plug to fit onto the end and seal the breech. The next test barely pushed the plank free of the cannon. Jamie then pumped oxygen into the breech along with the propane in an attempt to raise the explosion pressure. The first test with this mixture launched the plank across the workshop at high speed, but also split the cannon along its length. After patching it together, they tried several other propane/oxygen ratios but were unable to get a satisfactory launch.

Declaring the myth busted at this point, they traveled to an abandoned lumber yard and gave themselves one hour to build a workable board launcher from tools and supplies on hand. They built a device similar to a baseball pitching machine, using an air-powered torque wrench to spin a trailer wheel at high speed and hurl boards fed to it from an ammunition hopper. With the rig mounted on a swiveling/tilting carriage carried by a forklift, they were able to hit a group of pop-up targets arranged as they were in the scene and achieve projectile speeds near 60 miles per hour (97 km/h).

They then dug a trench and covered it with metal plates and dirt to create a sewer with a manhole. One end was left open to the atmosphere in order to replicate an actual sewer system with areas for gases to expand. They set the dynamite just below the surface of the open manhole, put the cover in place, and placed a second car directly above it, with Buster and the bystanders positioned as before. This time, the blast briefly lifted the car into the air and inflicted much less damage than in the control test. Buster and the bystanders experienced pressures of 9 pounds per square inch (62 kPa) and 11 pounds per square inch (76 kPa), respectively, both survivable with minor injuries. Adam and Jamie decided that the myth was plausible.

Adam and Jamie each ran the level twice, stopping to pick up all items along the way and attacking the enemies. For the first run, they discarded the weapon they were carrying once they found a new one; for the second, they had to carry everything they picked up throughout the level. Jamie went first, achieving a time of 5:53 for his first run, while Adam did the same in 5:38. Their respective times on the second run were 11:59 and 10:17, with the increased weight and bulk of the items slowing them down greatly through the latter part of the level.

Adam and Jamie then brought in professional mixed martial arts fighter Brendan Schaub to run the level, as they considered him to be a better real-world analog of the character controlled by the player in the game. His run times showed little difference (4:00 when discarding weapons, 4:03 while carrying them all), prompting them to declare the myth plausible as long as the person involved is in excellent physical shape.

Adam achieved 30 hits in 60 seconds on his first try. However, Jamie observed that the jugglers failed to match the game's throw rate and also sent some of their throws outside Adam's effective range. A second trial closer to the in-game conditions yielded 55 hits. The myth was declared busted at this point, due to the real fruit being smaller and accelerating faster due to gravity than the in-game ones. In addition, only the edge of the katana could inflict a slice; when Jamie repeated the test with a chainsaw, he was able to score many more hits than Adam.

MythBusters 2CV motocycle

Adam and Jamie found a 1967 Citroën 2CV, the car at the center of the story, and drove it to a landfill in Kirby Canyon, California. Within 60 minutes, they had stripped it down to its wheels and undercarriage with little effort. They removed the wheels, mounted one directly to the engine's output shaft, and attached the other one to the center of the rear end. Since this arrangement would cause the engine wheel to rotate backwards, the rear end became the motorcycle's front end.

They added steering and suspension systems and fitted the engine with controls, including a hand-operated throttle. In preliminary tests, Jamie drove while Adam jogged alongside to shift gears and apply the brakes. They were unable to travel any significant distance, leading them to decide that their design was not suited for traveling long distances due to difficult steering and poor weight distribution.

At the shop, they studied a set of photographs that purported to show the actual design used by the man in the story and set out to replicate it. This second design incorporated a tiller for steering and turned the engine around, placing it between the front and rear wheels; however, this configuration only allowed the use of reverse gear to move forward. Using power tools to speed up the work, they completed the vehicle and took it to a runway for testing. Both Adam and Jamie found that the reverse gear ran so slowly that the vehicle could barely stay upright, and they could not drive more than 150 feet (46 m) before tipping over. They deemed the myth busted, commenting that a loss of balance or a snagged body part or article of clothing could lead to severe injury.

The Aqua Bike made by Jamie

After examining the photographs, Adam attached paddles to the rear wheel of a bicycle and built a frame to hold eight jugs as pontoons. He also added a locking mechanism to keep the jugs clear of the ground when riding on land. At a swimming pool, he was able to steer the bike on the water and achieve a satisfactory speed, even repairing a slipped chain without dismounting, but a sudden flip left him unable to right himself.

Jamie then built a bicycle of his own, with more paddles on the rear wheel, an electric crankshaft to lower it into the water, and steel pontoons designed to reduce water resistance and increase stability. An initial test failed due to a leaking pontoon; after fixing this problem, he and Adam held a race on a lake. Starting from the shore, they had to set their bicycles up for water travel, then pedal out to a buoy and back. The race showed that the original design could be converted for use in the water more quickly, but Jamie's design moved through the water far more effectively and Jamie won handily. However, he and Adam considered the myth to be confirmed since the original design still worked as depicted.

At a different location, Adam and Jamie set up a course to test their time in 90-degree and 180-degree turns. Driving at 45 miles per hour (72 km/h), they were to make each turn as quickly as possible using both drifting and non-drifting techniques. Adam hit the barricades on his first several attempts, but eventually achieved a time of 4 seconds for both drift and non-drift. Jamie recorded 4 seconds on his non-drift run, but repeatedly hit barricades on his drift runs and caused increasing amounts of damage to the car. From this point on, he performed only the non-drift trials while Adam carried out the drifting. In a 180-degree turn, their best times were 8 seconds (Jamie) and 9 seconds (Adam).

Next they set up a road driving course with assorted twists and turns, and each drove several laps to achieve the best time possible. Jamie's fastest time was 1:54.50; after several laps with mistakes, Adam posted an identical error-free time. Finally, Conrad ran the course in 2:00, leading Adam and Jamie to call the myth busted, with Adam commenting that Conrad's time was longer than his owing to Conrad's more refined technique (thus demonstrating the real effect that safe drifting would actually have).

They then replaced the cones with actual cars and shortened the space to 18 feet (5.5 m) to simulate a real-world scenario. Adam, outfitted in racing protective equipment, repeatedly hit one or both cars when he tried to drift into the space. He failed again with a limousine, hitting and eventually destroying the foam cutouts that were put in place of the cars to avoid any damage. Conrad then drifted the limousine into the space without hitting the curb or the cutouts, prompting Adam and Jamie to classify the myth as plausible.