Leo catches the early morning rays (yesterday).

It’s time to discuss tomorrow’s build - motorized vehicles. Very exciting, but also many ambiguous design trade-offs to weigh.

Gever accidentally suggests and then has to sketch possible ways to build simple rack-and-pinion steering mechanisms. The sketch turns out so good, it convinces one of the teams to try it. He fervently hopes that this is not a repeat of the flap-drive proposal.

Down at the other end of the table, the Bad Dog team discusses the pros and cons of building a PVC tubing chopper.

Gever and Jiro take the tinkerers through the basics of internal combustion, clutches, transmissions, and differentials - of which, the latter two will not be found on our vehicles since we are using scavenged weed-whacker motors.

Jiro takes Isaac, Gabe, and Spencer through a tear-down, clean-up, and rebuild of a faulty fuel system on a two-stroke Craftsman weed-whacker motor.

Before we begin to build, the officials from the TSRL (Tinkering School Racing League) review the the requirements with the teams:
- Must have brakes.
- Must have steering.
- Must not have impalements.

Maxine and her team do some pre-visualization of their vehicle to make sure that it will fit every person on the team and all of the required elements.

Jacob and Gever refine the steering design for the Bad Dog chopper.

Leo and Theo (of the team that couldn’t pick a name so let’s just call them the Red team for now) work on the steering system for the Red team’s four wheel F1 derived car. Maxine is waiting for the drill-press so she can finish mounting the drive wheels.

Despite the amazing comforts of the scavenged Ikea steam-formed plywood seats, the Bad Dogs decide that they are just too heavy for their super-light chopper.

Gabe hangs on to the chopper’s drive wheel while Isaac checks the length of the chassis. There is a lot of discussion about the proper length - room for a seat, the steering, places to put your feet, a fender to protect the rider from the wheel - it’s a lot of stuff, plus there are concerns about the rigidity (or lack thereof) of the PVC.

Using a classic box-frame to pinch the wheel axles, Maxine gets the Red team’s cart up off the ground and into the it’s-a-little-bit-hard-to-work-on-now-that-it-rolls phase of construction.

The Bad Dogs have settled on a length and they are drilling screws to prevent any further discussion. Gever steadies it, Gabe centers the tubes vertically, Hanna keeps the nose of the chassis aligned, and Isaac drills guide holes and drives screws.

The Red team’s front-end has a half-dozen screw tips poking through that require the angle-grinder to remove. Gever loves his angle-grinder and is only too happy to make pretty sparks.

Gever loves sparks and he recommends opening this picture for a closer look. Just marvel at the mid-air explosions - it’s fantastic!

It appears that he just can’t get enough of these beautiful spark pictures.

The weed-whackers have an amazingly simple, but also very awkward way of connecting to the drive shaft - a spinning shaft that ends two-inches shy of the outside of the motor housing has a square hole in the center where the drive shaft is supposed to be held in by external forces, perhaps some kind of magic, or divine intervention.

In last night’s design session, the Red team arrived at the novel idea of mounting the motor on the front fork of the chopper to create a front-wheel drive motorcycle. This idea fell by the wayside as the logistical problems of mounting the motor became evident.

Isaac checks out the stability of his team’s chopper. They will have to stiffen the chassis tomorrow, but otherwise it’s looking, and feeling, bad (as in good).

The weed-whacker motor housings are a little hostile to external mountings, so the teams will have to create wooden harnesses that accommodate the strange shapes.

Leo, Maxine, and Theo discuss steering wheel placement on the Red team car while Isaac tries not to think about the fact that their motor is 1cc larger than the Bad Dog motor.

Able to help out in many ways, leaves a very small carbon footprint, pretty good with a screwdriver and drill, it’s H the generic Hero. Who can this very useful, friendly, funny, smart, talented person be? The world will never know…

Oh wait, it’s Isaac!

After dinner everyone has made their way back down to the studio for some casual tinkering (Jacob and Spencer are making tiny amounts of hydrogen by electrolysis, the Red team is making a plan for the next day, the Bad Dogs and working on a new steering bearing) and Gever, Isaac, Theo, and Jiro head to the metalshop to finish up the drive shafts (pictures of those tomorrow).