Longtime sweeping contractor, Mark Carter, president of LA-based Bill's Sweeping, was hired as a consultant to the show, and on the day of the contest brought along one of his fleet of sweepers to clean up after each run. The following is a compilation of what we each saw of the building process a little more than midway through the day:
At the outset there's a frantic search by the teams to find material that might be of use to them -- or to the other team. Yes, it's not without precedent that one team tries to scavenge key pieces of need by the other. Both teams knew they'd have to come up with some vehicle to use as propulsion for the sweeper, and onto which they could affix the sweeping components.
The Sewer Rats had difficulties from the get-go. First, the air team lost a significant amount of time finding a vehicle that would start and run. Then, once they overcame that hurdle, found their chosen truck had no brakes! Fortunately, this type of problem is one the safety team could take care of for them prior to the contest, as long as they could deal with it until then.
Once the Sewer Rats found a working truck, they couldn't find an engine to run their fan system. (They didn't know that the best engine in the yard had already been scavenged by the broom team. Even though the broom guys didn't end up using it, they kept it in their area so it wouldn't be available to the 'Rats.)
So, the air team ultimately decided use a front-wheel drive from a wrecked car as the way to propel a belt to spin their fan. The problem was the time it would take to pull the engine out of the car. This difficulty was solved with a great example of thinking outside the box. Instead of removing the engine, they cut the car in half and mounted it onto their truck. One problem with this was they'd then have to have two sweeper operators at the controls, one to drive the main truck chassis backwards, and one to handle the throttle on the front-wheel drive car system.
To accomplish the daunting separation process, the team put the car up on jackstands, cut it in half, and then used chain to jerk the two halves apart. Eventually, once the front of the car had been mounted onto the back of their truck, they welded the fan onto the brake drum of the car's front drive axle.
Another problem the Sewer Rats had with their design was getting the needed fan speed to pull enough of a vacuum to pick up debris. Unfortunately for them, a sweeper fan is designed to go at many more rpms than is a car tire. To get the sweeper to pick up material, Jim Adair's calculations showed that the car would have to be operated at about 100 mph in 5th gear. That was asking a lot for the engine of a car that was in a wrecking yard to begin with. This became perhaps the weakest link with the air sweeper team, the fact they had to count on their 'auxiliary engine' going at way more revolutions than they'd have liked.
Initially, they found a fan housing and planned to make a fan from flat metal material at hand. They knew this would be a time-consuming process, and they would also have the problem of fan balance, since there was no way to balance the fan once they got it made. So, when a fan was later discovered in the yard the plan immediately changed. Instead, they downsized a fan housing they found which, though usable otherwise, was too large. This was cut down with a torch and then attached around the fan. The fan was then welded to the brake drum and spun via putting the car in gear and hitting the throttle.
For a hopper the air team chose a standard dumpster. Then they fabricated the intake tubes from lengths of ventilation ducting, held on and fortified with, what else, duct tape. The pickup head was constructed out of the top of a plastic barrel, cut so a lip extended down to seal at the back and there was an opening in the front. For curtains, the team found an old conveyor belt of some kind that could be cut down to fit on the front of the 'sweeping head.'
Meanwhile, the Trash Can Heroes were having problems of their own...
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