Jay: Dan, welcome to the site. Let's jump right in. What did you think when you saw the munching machine the Chaos Crew had built in the Demolition Challenge?

Dan: WOW was on everyones mind. They had built a j.c.b. in a day? It was quite an impressive piece of bodging, especially compared to our spindly contraption. However we also knew that simple things are slower, but less likely to break down on the day.

J: Wow, indeed. I want to follow that up by asking about your battering ram. What advantages did you have over their muncher?

D: Simplicity. It was a slower but surer method. As you may have noted on t.v.when it did break, we fixed it with rope. In retrospect, we should have just used the rope in the first place.

J: True but hindsight is 20/20. One more question about the battering ram...was it as tiring to operate as it appeared on TV?

D: It was very tiring,but at the same time incredibly fast and exciting (being a race) so the effects weren't realised untill after the excitement had died down. Then obviously, everyone was knackered.

J: As we all know, you won the demolition and faced the Americans in a Steam Car Challenge. Your car broke twice. Any idea what went wrong?

D: We dont actually know. The drive coupling broke first, but that wasnt a problem. It had only been half welded (we had forgotten to finish welding it on the build day). It didnt take long to weld back up again. But then, when we were moving again, our engineer Adrian started to look increasingly worried. Steam came out from all the wrong places, and we started to grind to a halt. The initial thoughts were that the oil was the wrong type and was emulsifying in the cylinders, but i think it was actually much more complicated than that.

J: That a shame, really. Let me stir up the anti-American sentiment a little bit. Were you guys dissappointed losing to the Americans?

D: We were dissapointed to lose, but not because it was a u.s. team. In the tests before the race, it looked like we were going to thrash them, so we were convinced, for the first time, that we were definately going to
win. That made it more dissapointing.

J: I'm always looking for trouble...was there any resentment against the Americans?

D: Not for entering certainly, but when they kept on winning....

J: 'Nuff said. I'll drop it, I promise. How strict was the show about the 10 hour time limit?

D: Very. You really just get 10 hours. We do get time on the race day to do last minute adjustments and tarting, but nothing fundamental.

J: I suppose they have to be to remain fair to everyone. Are there any machines you'd like to see built on the show in the future?

D: I really wanted to do a water one (we would have done if our steam car hadn't broken down). Jamie and I both thought it would be good to have a race between "stored human energy" machines. We were quite inspired by our air cannon, and were thinking of other uses for it. A race where each team has a set time to store energy (like us pumping up our air tank) and then use the stored energy to power a vehicle for a race or distance trial.

J: That would be an interesting machine. I hope RDF is reading this. Finally, was this something you'd do again?

D: YES. I havent had so much fun for free for ages. Imagine being given a purpose, a scrap yard and a well equiped workshop, and a day to make and a day to race. Heaven.