My last New challenge idea (for a while) RJR derailed

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OK, it is a race around a track. Each team goes around a track they've built one lap. Each team member gets on and makes a lap. First team to make a lap with all four team members wins.

Any type vechile goes. Track is only 100 feet long and is some type of circular track.

ONE BIG HITCH! It is on a rail or rails and the teams have to make their own rail out of scrap! Be it pipe, 2X4 what ever they can find to make a rail some sort of motored machine they build will stay on.

Is this too difficult. Each team will be allowed two hours to set up their rail(s) the following day.

-- Richard James Retey (theswampie@cs.com), March 14, 2001

Answers

OK here is what I'd do. I'd try and take two bikes and put some sort of small motor on it, perhaps an axel on front and back. take the tires off the bikes.

I'd try and find 100 feet of metal pipe and 100 feet of PCV. On the outside rail I'd use the metal pipe, inside the PCV. You'd need about 20 spars to connect the two pipes together and some sort of spikes to connect the spars to the ground.

One team could try and use a cable, sort of a ski lift type deal but suspending such a thing seems difficult at best. Guess you could sink three or four large posts, perhaps half telephone poles, if you had time to anchor them and connect the cable with enough tension the actual cable chair seems fairly easy to build.

I don't know, just thinking out loud. This this would be a fun challenge.

-- Richard James Retey (theswampie@cs.com), March 14, 2001.


I would tackle this by building a buggy that follows a wheel, then dig a trench for the "steering" wheel to follow, using some kind of cobbled up trenching rig. A single trench or rail would be much faster and easier to make. Just my first though about this idea. It would be a good challenge.

-- Waddy Thompson (cthomp3851@aol.com), March 14, 2001.

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