Team members
| Pilot |
Pilot |
pilot |
Pit crew |
Pit crew |
Pit crew |
Team Judge |
| Robert D |
Eric H |
Daniel D |
Joel B |
Tom P |
Karl T |
Bill S |
Positions
| Costumes |
Sculpture |
Engineering |
Style |
Finish |
| ? |
? |
? |
? |
technical problems |
Dorrelian Motors was formed some time between when
Karl and I
met sometime around the treehouse in 1970 and the start of
Kinetics
in 1980, when my brother Robert visited the apartment I shared with Eric
and proceeded to explain how we could turn the bicycles upside down and
float them across the reservoir. Eric and I considered calling the men
in white suits for him, then proceeded to help him built the first craft
"Starbuck" a six hundred pound three seater, yes it had three upside down
bikes, and was complete with buck horns on the front and a six foot square
patchwork leather canopy suspended eleven feet or so above the road and
an interior that would remove the skin from your body if you moved in the
wrong way. The seats were about six feet off the ground and we had to climb
up a set of steps in the back to get to them. The machine was built mainly
from an old hospital bed and was very large and heavy as I said, But held
three riders side by side , along with half the garage's tools. The front
wheels started out being threaded onto the axle which only had a couple
problems with it, at first the axle was a solid pipe so when you turned
the outside wheel that was traveling a longer distance would unscrew with
a groan until we turned the opposite direction , when it would tighten
and the other side would loosen. this was solved by cutting the axle in
half, so the axles the proceeded to thread themselves into the wheels with
such force that they stripped out the threads while pulling the axles sideways
though the bearings. the rear wheel started as a set of bicycle wheels
that didn't make it back to the driveway after the first, (or second really),
test drive, it was also the steering wheel worked with a cable system that
started to crush the crafts frame work the first time we tried it. the
first time we managed to drag it out to the street , we all climbed up
and stood on the peddles, after checking that we were in the lowest gearing
we realized that we really weren't moving and there was no way we were
going to get it to move down hill with the way we had the sprockets set
up, so we changed the gearing a bit and tried again, that's when we bent
the rear wheels, and dragged it back home with the truck. we replaced the
rear wheels and fork with a single heavy one and then wondered about getting
it to stop. We had solved the breaking problem by wedging a 2x4 through
the rear fork that levered against the rear wheel when you stood on a bar
in the front. Although it had some problems , we made it around the parade
route on saturday , but took a little too long fine tuning the mechanical
parts to work as well as we could , so that it was friday before we used
the fiberglas and resin for the first time ,or closer to friday night with
the challenge the next day and the temperature dropping past the 65 degrees
F that the resin needs to set.... so it didn't... for three days !
we slept through the race and Robert was thrown out of his house shortly
after by his room mates for stinking up the house and driving them nuts
building the machine in the driveway.
