I have an idea for a chalange, find a big hill preferably muddy. Then build a vehcle to get as far up as possible. It could be 2 or 4 wheels or even tracks fast or slow any thing goes.

-- Andy Chaos crew captain (andy@middleton.demon.co.uk), August 30, 2000

Answers

i think they should have to build a tank to race over a 2 mile tank coures and then have three shots two hit the target and all the team have to fit in the tank and it has to have tracks!!!!!!

-- ben reynolds (phyco_reynolds@hotmail.com), November 05, 2000.

Dudes I have the awesome idea for a challenge. You may think this very hard but I would be propared to do it when I'm on the show. I know it can be done. Get the teams to build a Helicoptor, thats right a Helicoptor. The creation must be caperable of carrying all the team members or a desided waight over a bus or something and possibly a distence of a few meters. A hot air ballon type of design would be exceptable as long as it has a rotor blade on it, verticaly or horizontaly. Cool huh?

-- Blaze Nostrodarmus Glory (blaze_n_glory@hotmail.com), November 06, 2000.

re the hero who wants to build a helicopter; the idea sounds abstract, & dangerous in the least, but, yes there is a but, how in the hell do you let loose a budding scrapper that doesn't know how to use a spell check.

-- Steve Martin (steve@martine.screaming.net), November 08, 2000.

A helicopter? Are you f****n' serious? It takes 45 hours to be able to fly one of those things safely, and there is so much more to them than what meets the eye - the rotors themselfs - there is no way you could knock one of those up in ten hours - yet alone 2. And all the systems you need to keep the thing in the air is not the sort of thing you will find on a scrap heap. The challenge is not safe enough to be considered in my oppinion.

Miles

-- Miles Bailey (sky_high30@hotmail.com), November 12, 2000.

Re Helicopters: I think the guy with the spelling has something here, but real copters would be too dangerous. Something rotor-propelled would be excellent, though. A zepplin with a rotor, or a light land vehicle with a rotor, or maybe a boat?

Did they already do a air propeller-powered boat?

-- Laurence Timms (laurence.timms@eu.joneslanglasalle.com), November 24, 2000.

They didn't explicitly do a propeller-driven boat, but that was the approach that the navy guys used on "Amphibious Vehicles". I have a couple of ideas:

Excavator: For each team, bury a car 4 ft. underground in a marked area. The challenge is to build a machine which can get it out the fastest; you could dig it out, drag-hook it out, etc. You can make it harder by marking a bigger area (i.e. they have to find the car as well as get it out) or putting the car in an unknown orientation (i.e. on its side, etc).

Shredder: Each team must design a machine that will take an automobile and break it up into pieces small enough to fit through a 1-foot hole in a metal plate wall. The entire car must be passed through (You might allow them to throw the engine (only) over the top of the wall. Fastest time wins. Small shards (like glass pieces) do not have to all be picked up.

Crusher: Design a machine which will reduce an automobile to the smallest possible volume within a 3-minute time period. (Note: measuring the actual volume of the result might be a little problematic; You can't just use water displacement unless you wrap it in plastic first).

Car-Toss: Design a machine which will throw a car the farthest.

(You might notice a theme here; I figure cars are in plentiful supply in a junkyard, and they're nice massive objects to work on with lots of bendable and breakable parts!)

-- Mark Phillips (msss@ne.mediaone.net), November 26, 2000.

The buried-car idea seems like a good challenge, although you're actually asking them to do two completely different tasks: excavate a car-sized hole and hoist a car out of a hole.

Car-shredding and car-crushing seem completely out of the question, though. Car crushers in real life are gigantic machines weighing many many tons. And I doubt you'd get very far trying to shred a whole car. The first time the blade chokes on a piece of the frame, you're done for the day.

-- Derek Jensen (djensen@kconline.com), December 11, 2000.

While a helicopter is a bit beyond what could be done (at least within the limitations of the show), maybe an autogyro could substitute. All that is required is enough forward speed for the rotor to attain lift, then see how far downrange you could fly. This would even relieve the problem of an on board engine.

If I remember correctly, the german navy experimented with something like this in WW II, using the U-Boat's forward motion to tow a small manned autogyro observation platform. Please don't ask what happened to the pilot/observer when the sub "crash dived" (probably the reason the idea was not popular in the U-Boat fleet).

Scoring could be by the least amount of airspeed required to launch, load carrying ability, or flight time/distance.

-- Arthur Majoor (a_majoor@hotmail.com), December 22, 2000.

It takes megabucks and lots of engineering and specific materials and processes to build a helicopter large enough to haul four people around. A helicopter is precision to the point that even every bolt and washer has specifications, and must be disassembled and checked on a regular schedule, whether the machine is flown or not to keep it in airworthy condition. An autogyro, however is a different beast, and given the rotor blades, and some key items, could be bodged into existance, and be about as safe or safer than the flying machines on the earlier show were. One of the bigger safety concerns is that with a rotor, like a helicopter, if one crashes, pieces are still jumping around like three legged grasshoppers for ten minutes after the crash. Building a "chopper" or autogyro may have been a good possible solution to the radio controled bombers challenge though.

-- Waddy Thompson (cthomp3851@aol.com), January 11, 2001.

Build "Fire Trucks". Each team would have to construct a fire truck, race to a fire, extinguish the fire, and rescue a dummy. To complicate the situation, the fire would be on the second or third floor of a mock apartment. The race to the fire could be as simple or complicated as needed to add excitement. The challenge would be to build a truck, water tank, pump, and nozzle capable of reaching the fire. The tank must hold enough water to put out the fire, but not so much as to slow the truck too much. The pump must pump the water high enough to put out the fire, and the teams must have enough control of the machine to be able to direct the water on to the entire fire. Trucks and pumps could be human powered, or use engines.

The rescue of the dummy might poise a complicated danger and could be deleted. A similar skill contest could add excitement without real danger.

If this makes it to an episode, can my wife, baby son and I come watch the filming?

Eddie.

-- Eddie Sinclair (esinclair@houston.rr.com), January 19, 2001.

The Car Crusher has already been done. The Transatlantic Championship episode pitted the Long Brothers against the Megalomaniacs (I think). Long Brothers won with their hammer mechanism while the other team went with hydraulics.

Thomas

-- Thomas (trh1@cris.com), January 19, 2001.

How about an earth-moving competition. Each team has a set amount of time to move as much dirt/rubble from a pile to another point 50 or so meters away. You could make a dump-truck, a bulldozer, or something else...

-- Chris Cooper (cooper13@home.com), February 05, 2001.

How about a tank that can go off-road on shoot a pumkin capture the and battle

-- Bryan Mcnair (jeff6t9@hotmail.com), February 16, 2001.

Make a challenge of having to move a volume of water from one container to another, or from a lake or pond into a container...the catch...no pumps or hoses allowed.

-- Michael (Mantabo@aol.com), July 12, 2001.

I think they should build a monster crawler they are like monster trucks but with tank tracks instead of big wheels!!

-- Jared Seymour (jk.seymour@xtra.co.nz), January 09, 2002.

what about a type of piston/catapault that fires tomatoes rapid or normal and is used to shoot a scraped car over a big bowl 50 meters away after 10 minutes measure the juice

-- Louis weinzweig (chs_9699@talk21.com), January 03, 2003.

THe helicopter is shear madness. A four man is just plain impossible in ten hours with anything resembling safety. On the other hand, a tethered lifter could be more feasible, or even a single seater. I sure as hell wouldn't want to ride in a junkyard chopper, but then, I wouldn't risk a jet powered go-kart either.

-- Psiberzerker (Psiberzerker@hotmail.com), November 27, 2003.

as someone said,a helicopter would be a fantastic idea!

-- dominic (dominicjohnson8@hotmail.com), October 24, 2004.

Im not sure what you call them but the trucks with a lifting crane that usually are taking crates from B&Q etc are (I think) an interesting idea for the show, the teams could have to lift an already specified load (crate full of Bricks etc) onto the actual vehicle ( not suspended) and transport it to a designated zone and place in next zone all in quickest time possible. + I think that races they do try to be too origanal, whats wrong with a rally based drive, Mud tires and a large engene throbing away, Who really needs hovercrafts and jet propelled cars, when many thrill could still be made from normal scrapyard cars

Dan :)

-- Daniel Carline (danc@dsl.pipex.com), January 11, 2005.