Take Hold of the Flame

WELDING! This. is. awesome. It feels like using a hot glue gun, but with more molten metal than glue. Oh, and you can't see a thing until you pull the trigger to arc electricity through, fusing your pieces together.

Did I mention that it looks badass? No? Well, it looks badass. Our team all learned to weld for this project at Tech Shop, which is where we are doing most of the building.


To start we do tack welds, which are just strong enough to hold our pieces in place and just weak enough that if we find we've made a mistake, it's nothing a hard swing of a hammer can't fix. See those little spots? That's all it takes.


Welding can fill small gaps between pieces. Because we want both sides to be identical and they've already been carefully measured, we don't want any gaps. Clamping everything together keeps it solid. Those arrow-shaped things are magnets to hold everything in place.


With the sides fully tacked together, we double check that everything is level and square. Here I am demonstrating a technique I picked up for creating right angles with your hands. I tried using it to confirm our measurements, but I must have done something wrong because it didn't agree with the level. More practice is needed.


A class was about to take over the room, so before we beefed up our welds, we moved all the equipment outside.


Welding gets hot. Wear your gloves and long sleeves! That spot of light is bright enough to give you a tan.


Grinder time.


What is it about sparks that is so awesome?


SEE? Pure awesome! To keep the inside of the frame flush, we grind out the bumps created by welding so the crossbeams will fit in place.


Lock it down. After putting in the bearings and placing the axle, everything gets clamped together for welding into one piece.


Let's compare. Which frame would you rather race in?


It's the end of the day and the shop is closing. Next week it's time to put on some brakes and get the steering set up. I suppose that will require front wheels, but those are just details. For now, we have the world's most monstrous handtruck.

Heavy Metal

This past weekend was pretty exciting; it was our first build with final materials. After working out the proportions with our wood prototype it was time to get dirty and make this thing happen.

Andrew has made the model slightly longer to accommodate our lanky driver. Here you can see him working in Sketchup while we design our braking and steering systems. Ackerman angles are pretty cool and will help our cart control better as it rockets down the hill.


On Saturday, we arrive early at the shop with our materials: 24 ft of 1.5" square steel tubing for the frame, a 26" long 1" dia. steel rod for our axle, and some tubing for our steering wheel. Over the next two weekends, this metal caterpillar of material will transform into a magnificently robust butterfly of a frame. I'm sorry.. that metaphor wasn't very rock 'n roll, was it? It won't happen again.


Measure. Mark. Measure. Mark. Measure. Mark. That sums up the first half of our day. Boring. Bring on the CHOPSAWWW!


What!!? LAME! I thought these things were supposed to throw off a ton of kick ass sparks! What gives?


YEAAAAAH! Much better! The room is ablaze! I'm going to spare you the several dozen pictures I took of this part of the process. But it was freakin' awesome. Those square tubes? They belch sparks like a windup nun on crack.


I'm not kidding. That's Satan's breath right there.


There's a lot of slag left on the cuts and it can be quite sharp. The next step is to grind the edges smooth so it doesn't 1) cut whiny punks that can't handle the awesomeness of this vehicle 2) get in the way of welding later.


That's the end of Day 1 for the Brutal Bus build. All of our pieces are cut to size and ready to weld tomorrow! You're right, Andrew, that does deserve some horn.

Into the Void

Hey folks! We've been pretty busy putting the Tour of Destruction together, and we'd like to show you some of our progress! First up is our wooden prototype - we're constructing a first pass of the bus out of 2x4s (which, contrary to what I initially thought, are not actually 2 by 4 of any measurement), nails, bolts, and good intentions in order to test the stability of our design, as well as make sure we're working with the correct proportions before committing this bad-boy to a welded metal frame.

Here are some of our intrepid builders (from left: Sean, Luke, and Andrew - myself unpictured) brewing over the design from our top secret construction facility. Note the furrowed brows and looks of deep concentration!

Andrew created a mock-up of our idea for the frame using Google SketchUp. It's a pretty handy tool for prototyping in 3D, especially if you're looking to create more man-made, symmetrical objects. We got all of our measurements from there, and after a few tweaks to the proportions, we got to building!

Here are some of our supplies - 2x4s as well as some 18" golf cart wheels from Northern Tool and Equipment, and a big old bag of building accessories from good ol' Home Depot.

Originally we were going to use these rubber longboard wheels for the front pair of tires, but they wound up being a bit too small for our frame to comfortably clear the ground (which we discovered once we had Sean sit on it). It didn't accurately match the proportions of front to back wheels in the original bus design as well, so we have since moved onto slightly larger wheels, rolling in at 6" also from Northern Tool.

After much cutting and nailing, we find Andrew and Luke discussing how to effectively attach the supports for the back wheels, while Sean (unsuccessfully) attempts to break our front axle.

Sean works on attaching the rear wheels once the main body is put together.

The moment of truth! The frame withstood Sean's weight, though not without some very creaky complaints. That, however, is why we're building the frame out of steel.

We certainly learned a lot about what we need to consider in the future of this project, and we're feeling pretty good about where this cart is going. Stay tuned for more updates! Up next is some body prototyping, and the real deal - committing our frame to metal!

-Christine