Well, to be honest I never heard of this junkyard wars serie until they offered me to join their show as an expert. You probably know what this show is all about. I did not, because it is not broadcasted here in Germany. Anyway, in direct competition two teams have to built a special machine from scrap found on a junkyard within a time limit of usually 10 hours. When finished both teams have to fight or race each other with those machines. To learn more about JUNKYARD WARS follow this link.
In this case the order was to built an amphibian, that does swim, race and rock climbing. Because of this very difficult challenge it was called the MEGACHALLENGE. Instead of two now three teams had now 20 hours time to finish. It was an American, a British and a Russian team, each of three outstanding good mechanics and engineers sided by an expert. The British expert builds tracked ATVs, the American spends his time rock climbing by Jeep and I had to function as the amphibian expert.
 

First when I met my team I was very sceptical, because I got into language trouble: two of the three only spoke Russian! Let me introduce you from right to the left: Team captain Max, Evgueni, Vladimir and me. Max was the only one who spoke really good English, so he had to do a lot of translation work as well.

Even with that language handycap, after all I believe I got the best team by far! Those "Russian Bears" worked incredible good, fast and hard! Just amazing. I mean all teams did so as well, but the Russians were just unbelievable good in my eyes. Probably the vehicle I will tell you about could have never been built by a different team, so many thanks to you Max, Evgueni and Vladimir. Max also teaches engineering at Moscow University, so we had a perfect understanding when discussing technical problems.

While both other teams started from an existing 4WD chassis and decided to make it float with pontoons, I designed a vehicle starting from a boathull and make it real watertight.
Unfortunately but for understandable reasons I could not take any pictures during the building progress, because we were filmed all time long and anyway there was simply no time to do so. But this is what we ended up with:

Still some minor parts missing like cooler or passengers seat, basically it was ready after 20 hours. (To be honest those minor things kept us awake until 5 hours before the first race started!)
The body is an old fibre glas rowing boat placed on a Landrover chassis. The front end is Kawasaki motorcycle and engine and tranny are Japanese Toyota Celicia, 100 hp at 5 gears. A chain drove the differential from the transmission end, but the propshaft was driven by the engines pulley. So in the water the vehicle was supposed to go backwards with the single wheel acting as a rudder.

	That´s how she looked from the back. She came out more beauty than we expected.
	After a checking safety day, where the teams had a day off and time to recover (except the experts) all three vehicles where brought to the dry salt lake for their first race. Here you can see the two monster trucks built by the British and American team. Both started from an existing 4WD and stripped it down. How could we even think about beating those power machines by a tiny little boat? The Americans even supported their machine with a 350hp Chevy engine.
	While the other teams started to play around with their machines we still had to figure out some problems with the drive chain. It came off too easy. Not even 5 meters we were able to drive under our own power!
	So when the sun disappeared behind the mountains all teams and movie people drove back to their hotels to refresh and catch some sleep - except us. We had to solve the chain problem! Here you see Vladimir still welding underneath the vehicle. Many thanks to James and Tristan, who joined us for help!  Well, I did many crazy things in my lifetime so far, but this might be the strangest thing I ever did: Working with a Russian team on a tiny boat in the middle of an American desert, until two o´ clock in the morning to race two monster trucks at sunset on a dry salty lake! But finally we got her ready. Jesus - this was the very highlight of the whole challenge! After we got her run of course everbody had to ride her once out into the dark and - wow she was running like a wild beast!
	The next morning happy and just a little bit tired we were well prepaired and hoped for the best. Evgueni was elected to be the driver for the race, because he used to race motorcycles before. Copilot was Vladimir.
	Last checking before the start. And there we took off with incredible acceleration! It was fantastic to watch the little boat starting like a rocket and on the first hundred yards both competitors could not catch up. But by reasons of safety (remember it was an untested self built three wheeler) we had to drop the speed to about 30 mph only, if we do not want to take the risk crashing our only vehicle in the first race. At least we finished the lap and kept the vehicle unbroken.
	Next was the rocky section, a race against time. We did not really hope for a chance with a three wheeler here, but again we were surprised ourselves! However we started at last. Believe it or not, but it was so good off roading that by the half of the lap (shown in the picture) we were leading with 20 seconds in advance!  You may recognize our boat had changed colours. Meanwhile the Russian team had baptist their Amphibian "Rusalka" - means "Mermaid"
	The water section was the bit we were really looking forward, as we thought to have the best chances here. For better bouyancy we cut off the roll cage.
	Here at the start line we still hoped for the best! Of course we were a bit afraid of leaks but we sealed all holes with care. For the water crossing all team members had to be on board except the experts. So you will count three inside the vehicles. Notice the direction of our vehicle. I bet this was the very first time a vehicle ever started a race going backwards!  You can also see the huge bouyance pontoons at the sides of our competitors. (well, I would have liked to see them going through the rocks or racing the salt lake carrying those!)
	But when hitting the water we were shocked by a broken prop shaft join! It was partly of rubber which dried out by the sun for years when stored on the junkyard, so it broke without warning. Helplessly we drifted on the lake and had to watch our competitors making big splash!
	All they could do was taking the paddles and start to row. There was no way to give up! Would we have a chance? Well, you really should have watched the show when it was broadcasted - it was an unbelievable race and Challenge, a true Junkyard War!

The American Raptors	The British Bulldogs	The Russian Bears

The Megachallenge was battled out in mid July 2001 and was broadcasted in the US the day after Thanksgiving and in the UK on the 23rd December. Sorry if you missed it, - if you did, you really missed something!
To get some more details of this particular Megachallenge and the result of the battle, click the smiley. 

Please do not mind that I described Rusalka as one of three racing Amphibians here only. The two other vehicles are interesting constructions as well without doubt, but Rusalka was the only true amphibious by my understanding. However I feel closest to her, of course.
 
 

Some final details of Rusalka:
 
 

Toyota engine: 4 cylinder 4 stroke 2000cc 100hp from 1984	Seats were new as part of safety regulations. The exhaust sytem is from Kawasaki motorcycle and special designed to keep legspace for passenger.	Front end was Kawasaki but strengthened by additional coil springs. Inside the front wheel we placed a disk which should work as a rudder in water. Watch the prop behind the wheel.