MBS question

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MBS question

Post by WittgenTT5/Rstein » Mon Dec 19, 2016 5:32 pm

How tough is it exactly? I know most if not all firearms can't harm it, and so do most explosives, but it is harmed by lasers, strong acids and seawater?

Anything else that can damage it? Some backstory might be in it's place I guess: i'm writing a story that includes a Volvo 850 T5-R (which my KRO name is based on) that should be even tougher than KI2T, KI3T or Goliath.
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Re: MBS question

Post by jup » Mon Dec 19, 2016 10:58 pm

An interesting question, indeed.

Thanks to one particular episode about a super laser, we do know that it has a heat limit. Because the episode made it extremely important to know about a counter measure that had to be added. One that could resist for exactly 10 seconds. Plus, this laser was so hot, it sliced apart an MBS coated tire on contact. To be fair, this was one super hot laser. After all, Kitt also plowed through an active volcano's lava flow, twice, and the shell survived with little more then an alarm going off.

Standard firearms could not penetrate it. However, high explosives (military grade) were treated as a potential risk. As for acid, we do have that one episode concerning the chemical pit (of death) that ate through almost everything but the frame. It's probably safe to say that pit was acidic. What I'm struggling to remember is if the shell was pulled out of there as white or black. At one point, we did have a white Kitt during the rebuild. And the MBS (thanks to Garthe) is known to be a spray on additive. So, I'm pretty sure the MBS was either extremely weakened by or completely destroyed by extremely strong acids. It's also weak to a specialized countering set of chemicals. I dare say that the only thing that chemical mix couldn't destroy (at least rapidly) was the base metal frame. Give it a week, month or year and there'd probably be nothing left.

Seawater is destructive to all metals. While it probably wouldn't undo the spray applied MBS, Kitt was never airtight. One particular episode even shows how rocks from the road could get up into exposed circuit boards. (They don't care to explain how that one was at all possible.) Prolonged exposure without Bonnie's constant TLC would slow and surely erode at any bit of unprotected metal. Meaning Kitt would eventually rust away into nothing but a paint job held together by the MBS.

Also bear in mind that all sequel material in which KI2T and KI3T AND the TKR vehicles had partially or totally lost that miracle recipe that made up the MBS. Throughout the series, it is hinted as to why. Being a secret recipe that was split apart. The people who knew each part were dying off. OR conveniently forgotten about. After all, Garthe had his own team of scientists whom probably didn't just forget about this amazing discovery.

I also have a theory that Kitt must have also known it. After all, the car had a super analyzer on board that knew when the shell was suddenly gone. So, it must have also been able to formulate what made that shell in the first place. Probably some kind of minor program in place to keep him from speaking it. But, still...the sensors knew.

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Re: MBS question

Post by WittgenTT5/Rstein » Mon Dec 19, 2016 11:17 pm

Definitely intresting info jup!

That laser theory reminds me of KR: The Game 2, early on in the game KITT gets damaged by a powerful laser. (I actually just started playing the first game in the series on a emu)
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Re: MBS question

Post by Knight Racer » Wed Dec 21, 2016 3:15 pm

Season 3 episode Knight vs knerd, Michael.mentions that the tire is truflex coated with Bonnie.

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Re: MBS question

Post by Assasinge » Wed Dec 21, 2016 8:01 pm

Don't forget the time KITT was sprayed with that substance that caused his MBS to disappear, or I guess break down, if you will.

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Re: MBS question

Post by WittgenTT5/Rstein » Wed Dec 21, 2016 8:35 pm

Assasinge wrote:Don't forget the time KITT was sprayed with that substance that caused his MBS to disappear, or I guess break down, if you will.
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Intresting stuff everyone.
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Re: MBS question

Post by WittgenTT5/Rstein » Wed Dec 28, 2016 5:24 pm

Will nuclear weapons possibly damage the MBS?
Last edited by WittgenTT5/Rstein on Wed Dec 28, 2016 5:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: MBS question

Post by Assasinge » Wed Dec 28, 2016 5:33 pm

WittgenTT5/Rstein wrote:Will nuclear weapons posibly damage the MBS?
*laughs*

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Re: MBS question

Post by jup » Wed Dec 28, 2016 6:27 pm

If they did take mortar rounds and ground mines seriously, then I imagine that only an outdated refrigerator was ever built to survive a nuclear weapon. (Nod to ole Indy.)

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Re: MBS question

Post by Assasinge » Wed Dec 28, 2016 9:35 pm

jup wrote:If they did take mortar rounds and ground mines seriously, then I imagine that only an outdated refrigerator was ever built to survive a nuclear weapon. (Nod to ole Indy.)
I was just about to mention Indy dammit. XD

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Re: MBS question

Post by Matthew » Wed Dec 28, 2016 10:34 pm

Assasinge wrote:
WittgenTT5/Rstein wrote:Will nuclear weapons posibly damage the MBS?
*laughs*
Actually, I don't believe simply laughing off the question does justice to the fours years of information at our disposal. Various factors have to be considered when weighing up such a scenario, such as the type of weapon being deployed, warhead yield, delivery system and location relative to the Knight 2000 at the time of detonation. Each of these factors could present the opportunity for survival under the right circumstances, as could the likely application of hardened electronic shielding following the incident at the beginning of Lost Knight.

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Re: MBS question

Post by Assasinge » Thu Dec 29, 2016 9:55 am

Let's sit and think about it. Some random ass spray of chemical substance took away KITT's MBS, so I wonder what a nuclear weapns could possibly do. And, this is considering the fact that this MBS is still the one from the 80's, we don't know abiut any upgrades really.

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Re: MBS question

Post by Matthew » Thu Dec 29, 2016 2:09 pm

Obviously, if you're assuming KITT is at the hypocentre of a nuclear explosion, then of course the MBS wouldn't withstand the blast. But if the Knight 2000 was on the periphery of such an explosion, the MBS would only have to allow the Knight 2000 to survive the expanding and ultimately dissipating shockwave, leaving KITT's survival down to whether the computer components could withstand the EMP element of the blast. Since we saw two different protective coatings added atop the MBS when exposure to extreme heat revealed weaknesses in the Knight 2000's capabilities, it's not unreasonable to assume that KITT's internal electronics would have added protection after that particular weakness was exposed as well.

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P.S. The "random ass" chemical substance was specifically developed from Devon's part of the formula, using the molecular bonded shell's own base elements against it to create a neutralizer. :good:
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Re: MBS question

Post by Assasinge » Thu Dec 29, 2016 3:20 pm

It's been a while since I watched Knight of the Juggernaut Matthew. And of course, Wittgen did not provide adequate information regarding what setting and location we're talking about during which KITT is able to withstand the nuclear blast. :)

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Re: MBS question

Post by Matthew » Thu Dec 29, 2016 9:21 pm

The idea of the Knight 2000 being able to survive some form of nuclear blast has fascinated me for years if I'm honest. The fact the car was designed and built during the Cold War has always resonated with me given the geopolitical landscape at the time. However, even if the vehicle itself could survive whatever scenario we dreamed up, the evidence suggests that KITT's electronics wouldn't given what happened when he was exposed to those live powerlines.

So yeah, the Knight 2000 being a car so fantastical it can leap over great bounds and crash through six feet of reinforced concrete without sustaining any damage whatsoever, suggests to me that maybe, just maybe, it could survive. I just wouldn't be expecting to live long enough to find out if I was right if I was the one in the driver's seat. :lol:

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Re: MBS question

Post by Assasinge » Thu Dec 29, 2016 10:28 pm

Matthew wrote: I just wouldn't be expecting to live long enough to find out if I was right if I was the one in the driver's seat.
Lol, well in a sense, point made. Let's not forget the time KITT was hit with a missile or two to his exhaust and that put him out of action for a while until Bonnie showed up and repaired him. Isn't it odd, that sometimes KITT can survive this and that but be disabled to some things you wouldn't expect him to be disabled by? Fascinating, no doubt.

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Re: MBS question

Post by Matthew » Fri Dec 30, 2016 12:03 am

You know, what happened with the exhaust explosion is an interesting one. In the pilot, Devon implies that the colour is down to the alloy rather than the applied finish we know as the MBS. But then, first in Goliath, then Knight of the Drones, Junkyard Dog and to a lesser extent, Knight of the Juggernaut, the damage sustained in each case shows the colour to be part of the bonded finish since the alloy gets exposed each time. Then again, Juggernaut also ignores the fact that the Knight 2000 is built from a material that RC3's crew would have never seen before, and in all likelihood, couldn't restore to an as new condition with nothing but hammers and wrenches, soooo... :shifty:

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P.S. Remember when Michael decided to tow the lady army officer's car in the second episode, and damaged KITT's alpha circuit doing it? I swear, one week he was as brittle as an old lady, and the next, as strong as an ox. It's almost as if the writers just did their own thing from one week to the next with little regard for all us knerds and our in depth analysis. :lol:
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Re: MBS question

Post by Assasinge » Fri Dec 30, 2016 8:37 am

Haha, I do remember that odd incident. Well, it's the 80's and they didn't have the production means or time to possibly keep a proper continuity going in every single episode, so that is one thing. Aside from the bloopers, of course. Some things in the show however were just left to questioning on their own. Remember the SPM and EBS button for KITT? Where was it really located? I don't think there's a real answer because: *waves hands* Magic!

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Re: MBS question

Post by jup » Wed Jan 04, 2017 4:28 am

Assasinge wrote:Lol, well in a sense, point made. Let's not forget the time KITT was hit with a missile or two to his exhaust and that put him out of action for a while until Bonnie showed up and repaired him. Isn't it odd, that sometimes KITT can survive this and that but be disabled to some things you wouldn't expect him to be disabled by? Fascinating, no doubt.
Well, now...if Garthe's episode shows us anything, it's that the MBS is spray applied to the shell of the car. They most certainly did not go dipping the whole chassis AND the engine AND muffler's interior into a swimming pool full of the MBS formula. In a sense, the muffler pipe was kind of like the Death Star's fatal weakness of having a route that gets past all the defenses and goes after the heart of the whole creation.

Kitt does get a bomb disposed of inside his fabric covered trunk. So...it seems theoretically possible that the MBS was coated in more places then just the outside shell & tires. But, inside the motor and those parts does seem to have gone too far.

Wasn't even thinking about the EMP wave properties. Have to look to KR '08 on that one. Where they did explore a military grade EMP generator. At low output, it did disable KIT3T. At full output, KIT3T was undoubtedly at danger of complete destruction of all circuits. From that,I'd say that classic KITT would lose ever circuit...even the black box brain. Not sure what amazing surge suppression saved most of Kitt from the high voltage power lines. But, they wouldn't pull off suppressing an EMP wave.

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Re: MBS question

Post by snafu » Wed Jan 04, 2017 9:03 pm

jup wrote:[ Not sure what amazing surge suppression saved most of Kitt from the high voltage power lines.
There's actually a phenomena called the Faraday Cage where the current travels along the outside of the car and to the ground, and doesn't affect the driver, so I wonder if Kitt's CPU got a minimal jolt compared to the outside of the car:
https://weather.com/storms/tornado/news ... r-20140625

It's the reason why you're (relatively) safe in a car during a lightning storm. It's also what I need to keep in mind, say, if I hit the low hanging power lines with the tractor bucket on our property: I'm actually SAFER on the machine than the ground, because the current goes through the outside of tractor and grounds itself.
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Re: MBS question

Post by Assasinge » Wed Jan 04, 2017 9:40 pm

Even then, considering today's day and age and electronics, unless classic KITT was upgraded, he probably wouldn't stand a freakin' chance today!

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Re: MBS question

Post by jup » Thu Jan 05, 2017 5:17 am

I think you are on to something there, Snafu. After all, the show pretty much isolated the circuit damage to RAM. Now, classic information about building computer towers states that the RAM chips are incredibly sensitive. While you shouldn't directly handle any computer components with your bare hands, handling the CPU or audio card is far safer then any RAM boards. (Because the Human body can carry small charges of static electricity that can fry RAM rather easily.) So, in Kitt's case, most of that high voltage was contained to the frame. Yet still got enough shock through to blow the ultra sensitive RAM. (The rest of what happened is bound to be a blending of real life facts, total fictional conclusions and plot movement. I tend to think that if Kitt had no RAM memory for instructions and such, Kitt wouldn't have randomly concluded to go on an aimless country drive and probably would have just sat there, doing nothing at all.) Because, it doesn't matter how buff the circuits are. If all that power had been channeled into the computer, there'd be hundreds of fried components and thousands of vaporized traces, curling away to nothing like a wire inside a fuse. For that fact, even Kitt probably has a fuse box for protecting the computer components. And even that didn't blow upon the high volt shock.

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Re: MBS question

Post by snafu » Thu Jan 05, 2017 9:16 am

Yeah, the "no RAM for further instructions" was probably the base for the pointless Y2K pandemonium that never happened: computers were supposed to just tap out due to an existential crisis.
We're also supposed to ground ourselves before touching lab instruments. I'm kind of glad I picked up this degree program down here, because in the last place I lived, relative humidity averaged 10% and I never got off a chair without zapping my finger on a conductive surface.

Now that I have a better grasp of industrial accidents with electricity, I'm examining the Kitt/power lines incident from several different angles: the power lines tend to keep frying until a transformer blows or the power company shuts them off; there's enough current to weld things together; they leave scald marks on surfaces; etc... but the show wasn't designed for hyper-examining types.
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Re: MBS question

Post by Assasinge » Thu Jan 05, 2017 2:19 pm

Funny, seeing the Y2K thing. Have you seen what happen when you change the date to the year 99 on a Windows XP machine? Legit just glitches out and freezes certain applications and fries the CPU I think.

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Re: MBS question

Post by snafu » Thu Jan 05, 2017 6:27 pm

Never messed with XP. Never want to.
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