Scrapheap Diary, The Anoraks - "Variomaticus Anorakus"


Anoraks Scrapheap "Final" Diary
"Chariots"

When we applied to Scrapheap we thought there was no chance we would get on the programme, then when we did we thought there would be no chance we would get any further then the first round, next thing we find ourselves in the final !!


*Team Anorak Nick, Lyndon, Geoff and Marc.*

We met our expert Nick the previous night in the hotel, we tried to get some information out of him as to what we were building, all we found out was that he was into offroading, so putting two and two together to make eleven we thought we were building something offroad based, so we were very suprised when Robert and Lisa announced that we were building Roman Chariots ! Nicks special subject was building trikes so that’s what the first plan was, Lyndon and Marc went off on a scavenge, the Hairy Hogs beat us to a nice Yamaha 850, and try as they might they could not find another bike, when the radio crackeld into life and Marc said they had found a Trabant we were not that impressed ! After a few minutes our spirits were lifted by a few millimeters when Marc worked out it was infact a Daff Daffodil and not a Trabant !


*Apparently quite a rare machine, a Daf Daffodil.*

The Daf was small, light and had a nice automatic “Variomatic “ gearbox driven by rubber bands. It had two gears forward and backward and that was it, you can go as fast in reverse as you can in forward but that was one function of the gearbox we didn’t think we’d need. We opened the bonnet and what we thought was the starter motor was actualy the engine, air cooled, two cylinders and whole 600cc’s of power !


*Marc looks for the engine.*

We were on the back foot, by this stage we could hear the Hairy Hoggs bike running on all four cylinders and sounding very nice, we got the Daff running but the bark of that little engine was not something that was going to drive fear into anyone, let alone a bunch of bikers from Ireland !


*That’s the owners club upset.*

So the plan. Build it small light and nimble, there was no way we could go faster then the Hogs so we had to have good manouverability. We started by chopping the roof off the Daff. Next came the doors and middle, the boot. The final bit of preparation was to weld the two halves of the Daff back together, this proved to be a bit of a job as welding rust and underseal 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 Scrapheap !


*Noddy was pleased with his creation.*

With the “horse” built we started on the carriage, this was a old caravan chassis, chopped down to just the rear axle, we then fabricated a frame for us to hold onto, and a base to kneel on, always with a eye to 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 2.0 meters appart rather 2.5 meters, luckily we realised in time ! The steering was made up of several steering colums welded to a Metro CV then down to the original Daff 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 !


*Nearly done and it’s daylight !*

Test Day

All we needed to do in tinkering time was paint it and make some steering stops so we didn’t over steer and burst the UJ’s, the Hoggs won the toss and elected to go first, we had to go and sit in the carpark out of sight, we could hear however and the sound of that bike engine hitting high revs told us what we suspected, they could go fast !


	*"Variomaticus Anorakus"*	*Left View*


	*Luvely Naomi Signwriting*	*Special Thanks*


The first event was speed related so we were resigned to loosing that. When we lined up we where allowed a sighting lap to get used to the machines handling characteristics, Lyndon was steering and braking, and Marc was 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 Geoff hanging out the side Motorcycle Sidecar style, all was going well, the only problem was a missfire came on in the last chicane, the engine kept going but we crossed the the line on one cylinder !


*Ready for the off on the speed test.*

Apart from the missfire we had done well, I was pleased but we needed to find our missfire. The problem turned out to be the choke was stuck on, a quick but of percussive maintenance on the carburettor and we were running nicley on both cylinders again.


*The choke was stuck on.*

The second test was the one we had our hopes on, a figure of eight with eight targets we had to hit. Each target was worth 5 seconds so we had to get every target, that was down to Rhino and Geoff, we hung out the side baseball bats in hand hitting water mellons, vases filled with flour and large steel Roman foot solders made of old oil drums. We set of at a steady pace and managed to hit all the targets with no dramas.


*Nick gets the vase*

We were pleased with what we had done, the machine worked and did it’s job, we again had to wait in the carpark while the Hoggs had their run, they again sounded fast.


*And the winners are…..*

We were called for the presentation, we were all lined up, 100% convinced we had lost, when Lisa said the winners where the Anoraks all four of us were stunned, and the fact we where faster on the speed event was the icing on the cake, absolutely fantastic !


*The Anoraks !!*

Next up the Cat-alysts, will Geoff be able to make the build or will his unborn child have to take priority ?


*Scrapheap 2004 Teams and Crew.*

Find out more on Channel 4 on the 21st November @ 6:30pm