Channel 4 – Scrapheap Challenge 2004 – Challenges – Chariots

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The Anoraks secured a classic DAF early on

The classic car was cut and shut to shorten its length

Reassuringly stable, but it wasn't the fastest vehicle ever built

Rhino and Geoff ready themselves to attack!

The final over, The Anoraks claim their prize

The Anoraks' diary

Chariots of fire

When we applied to Scrapheap, we thought there was no chance we would get on the programme. When we did, we thought there would be no chance we would get beyond the first round. But before we knew it, we were in the final.

We met our expert, Rhino, in the hotel and we tried to get some idea from him about what we were building. All we found out was that he was into off-roading, too, so we reckoned we were going to do an off-road challenge. We were very surprised when Robert and Lisa announced we were building chariots.

Rhino's speciality was building trikes so the plan was to get him to build a trike. Lyndon and Marc went off on a scavenge but the Hairy Hogs beat them to a nice Yamaha 850. Try as they might, our lads could not find another bike and when Marc called in to say we had to settle for the Trabant he had found earlier, we were less than impressed.

After a few minutes our spirits were raised when Marc worked out it was actually a DAF Daffodil and not a Trabant.

The DAF was small, light and had a nice variomatic gearbox driven by rubber bands. It had two gears, forward and reverse, and that was it. You can go as fast backwards as you can forwards but that was one feature we didn't think we'd need.

When we opened the bonnet something we thought was the starter motor turned out to be the engine. It was air-cooled, with two cylinders and boasted a whole 600ccs of power!

We were on the back foot and by this stage we could hear the Hairy Hogs' bike running on all four cylinders and sounding very nice. We got the DAF running but the bark of that little engine wouldn't drive fear into a pack of Brownies, let alone a bunch of hairy Irish bikers.

So the plan was to build it small, light and nimble. There was no way we could go faster than the Hogs so we had to have more manoeuvrability.

We chopped the roof off the DAF for starters. Next came the doors, the middle and the boot. The final bit of preparation was to weld the two remaining bits of the DAF back together. This proved to be a bit of a job as welding rust and under-seal together was not easy but we got there in the end.

The result was something that looked like it should be in a kids' TV show rather than on Scrapheap.

With the 'horse' built, we started on the carriage, which was an old caravan chassis, chopped down to just the rear axle. We then fabricated a frame for us to hold on to and a base to kneel on, always with an eye on keeping the weight down.

We linked the two together by a length of pipe and a standard towing hitch. We had a bit of a moment when we thought the axles had to be two metres apart rather two and a half metres. Luckily, we realised in time.

The steering was made up of several steering columns welded to a Metro CV (constant velocity) joint then coupled to the original DAF steering. The throttle was a hand lever from a boat and the brakes were a lever operating the caravan rear axle. The gears were on a piece of string.

Swing low, sweet chariot

All we needed to do in tinkering time was paint it and make some steering stops so we didn't over-steer and bust the UJs (universal joints). The Hogs won the toss and elected to go first while we had to go and sit in the car park where the sound of that bike engine hitting high revs told us what we suspected, they could go fast.

The first event was speed-related, so we were resigned to loosing that. When we lined up, we were allowed a practice run to get used to the machine's handling characteristics, Lyndon was steering and braking, and Marc was on the throttle and kill switch, the plan was to take it easy.

However, the machine seemed to pick up speed and handle very well so when the flag dropped, we went for it, Rhino and I hanging out the side, motorcycle sidecar-style. All was going well until it started to misfire in the last chicane. The engine kept going but we crossed the line on one cylinder.

Apart from the misfire, we had done well. I was pleased but we needed to find the cause of the problem. It turned out the choke was stuck on, a quick bit of percussive maintenance on the carburettor and we were running on both cylinders again.

The second test was the one we had our hopes on, a complete lap of the circuit with eight targets to hit on the way. Each target was worth five seconds so we had to get every one. That was down to Rhino and myself. We hung out the side, baseball bats in hand, hitting watermelons, vases filled with flour and large steel Roman foot soldiers made of old oil drums. We set off at a steady pace and managed to hit all the targets with no dramas.

I was pleased with what we had done, the machine did its job but the Hogs had sounded fast.

When we were called for the presentation, we were convinced we had lost so we were stunned to find out we had won. The fact we were faster on the speed event was the icing on the cake.

Geoff Turtell