This question came to mind after watching the recent episode where three teams had to build working airplanes.
Does Junkyard Wars seed their junkyards? This came up when all the teams seemed to discover seemingly brand new propellers amidst the rubbish. Do the teams have prior knowledge of what the project will be? If not, are they provided various schematics to choose from? The latter question came up when the hosts were talking about the various designs not being used for decades.
There are several threads around here dealing with Junkyard Wars and whether or not they seed the yard. Short answer: yes, they do.
If they weren’t you’d be seeing a whole lot more bedprings. (Go to a real junkyard sometime to see what I’m talking about)
Sir, vague results from the SDMB search engine. Help plz.
They admitted it on a recent 100th episode or some such thingy they did not long ago. They did kind of a behind the scenes deal, and showed how they had a crew deciding what kind of stuff should be in the junkyard.
In addition to what Smeghead said (I saw that episode also), there are plenty of threads about this (also noted by Jeff). I searched for “Junkyard Wars seed” and came up with at least this thread, which references a couple of other threads, which probably reference other threads about it. That doesn’t seem “vague” to me.
In addition to seeding, after each competition whatever has been made usually gets dismantled and anything reusable gets put back in the yard.
Is there actually anything usable left after the races? Putting blown motors, wheels with welded on axles and such back in the yard doesn’t seem like a good idea.
That sounds like such an interesting show… why do we get all the crappy imports here. Grrr!
It was fairly obvious for the airplane challenge that the junkyard was seeded. Ever see a junkyard with flight-worthy wooden propellers?[sup]1[/sup] The teams even had some idea ahead of time what they were going to build. Notice that they had no expert with them - they were all experts! It was still very impressive, though, to see that biplane leap into the sky.
Blue Curls: The show is known as Scrapheap Challenge in the UK. Maybe it has the same name Down Under.
[sup]1[/sup] Or rocket motors and steam engines.
BTW the upcoming Wars is about…get this…jet tricycles.
Building a trike with a jet engine? MEGALOMANIACAL!!!
If the yard isn’t seeded with jet engines, I suppose they could make a small, single-stage jet out of a turbocharger and oil furnace parts.
You’re right, anything from the racing episodes would probably be sold for scrap. There are other things that are reuseable though, such as most of the components from the cannons.
The upcoming jet tricycle episode looks awesome.
My wife and I have been fans of the show since it was a trial recycle of the British version a few years ago. Our favorite is still the hydraulic wall-eating machine.
And regarding seeding: The show has insurance consultants and other safety engineers to make sure the contestants aren’t going to get ground up or exploded or whatever by some hunk-a-junk contraption they whack together. Since there’s absolutely no way to put together an operationally safe steam engine, for example, they’ll provide that in the junkyard. There’s also the infamous roll of Mylar for the flying-target-shooter episode. Pipes and bearings and cable and other components are all ripped off existing material, though.
(The new co-host chick they’ve got is cuuuuute, but she ain’t no Cathy Rogers.)
In the build-a-flying-rocket episode, I thought, "hmmm, how convenient that someone threw out all those perfectly good model rocket engines! :dubious:
At the start of that episode, they said something to the effect of “since people don’t throw out rockets, we’ve hidden a bunch in the yard.” So they’re not hiding some of the more obvious examples of seeding.