You know I have always wished, hoped they would have a small spot on how they actually moved the various contraptions out onto the test sites :) That would have been fun to watch with some of the really huge, fragiles creations
shareinit! i love this show - i wish it were longer so they could show more!
shareIn the filmed in the UK episodes, for trials they didn't do in situ, and for things without wheels, they just lifted with a crane over the wall, and onto a flatbed truck. Since the UK filming was always done in space carved out of a real working scrapyard, there are always cranes on site. (the US filmed shows were in a "synthetic" junkyard - while near some real yards, it didn't have the variety or quantity of the UK sets)
Here is a picture of Major Leak (our fireboat, UK series final, 2000) getting transferred to the flatbed. http://www.the-nerds.org/DSCF0037.JPG
This was a problem with some of the large items, anything wider than 3 meters. (which would mean "oversized load" permits, time for obtaining same was something they never remembered to include in the schedule.
Some of the creations were fragile. Sometimes the start of a trial was delayed as a team worked frantically to repair damage that happened in transport. In the case of the steam car build (UK series, 2000) the machines were moved by an ordinary tow truck. I caught the driver hooking the tie down cable onto the tie-rod, so we arrived intact. The beach boys machine wasn't so lucky. In the ride (well over an hour) to the test site, the heavy boiler hanging over the rear axle managed to break the shackles. They spent most of the morning of test day improvising a replacement, while we had time to do extensive trials on our machine. (we found and fixed the leaking piston rod gland, a loose cylinder cover, and a somewhat tempermental safety valve, along with discovering what we had to do to get the thing to start rolling without us getting out to push)
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-dp-
Founder, The New England Rubbish Deconstruction Society; The NERDS
http://www.the-nerds.org/ The first american team to appear on Junkyard Wars.
This planet needs a lot more kids who think taking a lawnmower apart is more
fun than playing a videogame
Wow. Thanks for the info. :)
share RJNerd you are awesome. Thanks for the insider info that was very cool of you to share.
I had noticed that the UK junkyard was better in quality and more like a real junkyard. The USA version the cars looked stacked too neatly, and there was very little debris in the yard. In a real junkyard people are constantly tearing of panels and pieces to get to the part they need(the way a child digs thru a trunk throwing out the toys they're not looking for. These end up everywhere. These little debris pieces and ACTUAL junk vehicles are what makes Scrapheap Challenge(UK) better than Junkyard Wars(USA). You start to wonder why in Junkyard Wars all the cars start without repairs. Real people drive cars as long as they drive. It is dead, unfixable cars that end up in the junkyard and therein lies the challenge. You are working with material deemed unfit for use or repair by the previous owner. Now that's a challenge.
Another reason is that the host and hostess are much more informed and charming on Scrapheap Challenge than they are on Junkyard Wars. I mean Sue Ann Luther looks really good and all, but she is a poser what with all the devil horn gestures and the gothic metal wardrobe(she is so not metal). Everything that the hosts of Junkyard Wars say is just like their surroundings, so much junk rattling out of their mouths;they're vocab is pathetic. At least the UK hosts are educated people, even if they don't know every mechanical nuance. An intelligent person can circumvent the issue without looking foolish, which is something the Brits do better, and the Americans, in this case, do not.
The devil is in the details.
Believe it or not the shows filmed in the US - here in Sunland, CA. was actually a working junkyard, although they may have organized it a bit for the show.
I remember walking through the junkyard looking for bits and pieces to use as "props". I played one of the Stormtroopers in Junkyard Megawars.