05x07 - Backyard Monsters (Pt. 2)

[bunniefuu]

[upbeat rock music]

♪ Monster monster garage

♪ Monster monster garage

♪ Monster monster garage

♪ Monster monster garage

♪ Monster monster garage

♪ Monster Garage

[objects clatter]

- That's right folks.

The garage is empty.

We're not building in here.

No, this week we're headed out to your garages,

in backyards all across North America.

Can you believe it?

It's the one, the only Backyard Monsters.

Get with it.

[upbeat rock music]

- [Narrator] We're going to hit supersonic speeds

in a jet-powered beer truck.

- We don't want it to be a 350 mile sardine can,

that's for sure.

- [Narrator] Drive through a wall of fire

in a menacing party tank.

- Oh, so good.

Propane, that's the secret.

It's the propane.

- [Narrator] Wreak havoc on some innocent animals

with fire breathing robots.

- This is the natural outpouring of the way

that my brain happens to have been formed.

[pair laughs]

- [Narrator] Take a ride on a super powered trike.

- It's like seeing the "Mona Lisa" in person.

- [Narrator] And that ain't all.

Our first stop, Shasta Lake,

to take a dip inside a dolphin.

[driver squeals like dolphin]

- That's as good as I've got.

- [Narrator] We are high up on the Left Coast.

Our hunt for monsters has led us to a backyard

in Shasta Lake, Northern California.

Rob Innis and Dan Piazza head into their garage

to show us their latest creation.

It's a bird, it's a plane.

No, it's a dolphin?

- This here is our two seater dolphin.

- [Narrator] Introducing a fully submersible

torpedo shaped watercraft inspired by Flipper

and the aircraft industry.

- It's got a canopy from F22,

which is the new stealth fighter.

So we're kind of trying to give it a bit

of a stealthy look to it.

- [Narrator] It looks cool and it can take a beating.

- It was designed to take a bird strike at 300 knots.

So, if we don't have no bird strike in it,

so we might have a fish strike at 300 knots.

If we can ever get going that fast.

- [Narrator] This dolphin has been a dream

seven years in the making,

but now it's a viable company.

They've even got T-shirts.

- Innespace is not a spelling mistake.

Inner space is like outer space.

Inner space, underwater.

My last name is Innes, space.

It's brilliant.

Isn't that clever?

My mom didn't get it either.

The way we decided to build this,

we copied from the aircraft industry

for making one off aircraft.

And what you do is you basically make a jig

of all the shapes or called stations every foot,

and that gets you the shape that you want.

Then what we do is cover it in this stuff.

This is called Nida-Core.

It's basically a PVC honeycomb,

and you can actually shape it over your jigs

to get the shape that you want.

You then screw it down to your jigs,

wet it out with fiberglass resin

and it will actually hold to that shape.

Then you fiberglass the outside,

pull it off, flip it over,

fiberglass the inside and you end up with

a very strong sandwich construction.

- [Narrator] The look is all dolphin,

but this baby needs mechanical power to act like one.

- A real dolphin is neutrally buoyant,

so they can just hover underwater

and they just kick their tail wherever they want to go.

This thing is very positively buoyant,

it's like a boat.

So you have to force it underwater.

So although it's inspired by a dolphin,

designed to look and perform like a dolphin,

it doesn't really function in the same way.

- [Narrator] This mechanical monster mimics another

water-loving species altogether.

- Penguins float just like a duck,

but they have to kick and fly underwater,

which is more similar to this.

If a penguin stops flying, they just pop out of the water.

So, there's a lot to be learned from them.

[upbeat music]

- [Narrator] And learn they did.

They've turned horsepower into water power.

- We're putting this rotary engine out

of the Mazda right now.

The way it sits is about 150 horsepower, so.

And, you're possibly be able to pump this thing up

to 250 horsepower if you want to,

you know, supercharge it, maybe a little nitrous.

And if you need that little extra horsepower,

you can just hit a button and just fly.

- [Narrator] This double occupancy beast won't get wet

for another six months.

- We got a long ways to go, man.

- Yeah.

- [Narrator] But we didn't come here

to see garage bound crafts.

We want water.

This dolphin is their 4-year-old prototype,

a fully operational one seater vessel.

[engine roar]

Easy on the eyes, but not so easy to operate.

- You have four independent controls.

You have the main wings here,

which you operate with your arms.

These are responsible for pulling the center of the craft

down there like the main wings on an aircraft.

They also are ailerons,

which control your roll left and right.

This controls the left wing,

this controls the right wing.

On the right hand side here you have a throttle

that you can feather just like a jet ski.

On the left hand side, you got a transmission selector,

which you can switch between forward, neutral, and reverse

while you're driving.

These are the rotavators here,

which are kind of like the flukes of a dolphin.

You operate these with your feet.

They're controlled independently.

If you do them opposing like this,

they'll turn the vessel left and right.

If you do them up or down like this,

this will bring the nose up or the nose down.

When we're underwater, the engine actually breathes

through the snorkel, which is at the top of the dorsal fin.

If you go below this depth,

there's a couple of wires here that'll set off

a little flood sensor.

Sends a little alarm,

tells you to come back up.

- From working with the jet skis,

we found out that the jet units weren't working

under the water very good.

As soon as you put them under the water,

they stop with propulsions.

So, we went to the prop

and it really pushes along lot better

than the the jet did.

And this come off of a inboard bow.

So we went ahead and installed that,

and it works great for us.

- [Narrator] Enough talk.

They hit the wave to see what kind of juice

this monster has.

- You have to get a little bit of speed up

in order to dive.

Not more than like 12, 15 miles an hour.

You can dive about that slowly.

The faster you dive, the deeper you can go

and the higher jumps you can get at the other end.

[upbeat music]

- [Narrator] The one seater can achieve speeds

of up to 30 miles per hour on the surface,

and 20 miles per hour below the surface.

[upbeat music]

This dolphin has some tricks up its fin,

due to its full three axis control, pitch,

roll, and yaw.

[upbeat music]

- You don't really run out of air from breathing.

What starves the air is the engine,

which sucks 200 cubic feet per minute.

Once the snorkel goes underwater,

that engine just wants to keep on running.

So it will actually start sucking it in.

It will pop your ears sometimes, creak and groan.

It's a scary feeling when you're not used to it.

[engine roars]

We haven't got air conditioning in this model just yet,

so best we've got is a little fan.

And if you get really hot,

you just dip it with the canopy open

and you get a bit of a splash in the face

and that seems to cool you down.

[upbeat rock music]

What we really want to do is start racing these things.

And you know, rather than selling them to billionaires

and put them on the back of their boat,

we want to go out and smash them up

and race them and use them, you know?

We'd like to start a race series

kind of like monster trucks.

- Woo hoo!

[Rob cheers]

- [Narrator] That's it from Shasta Lake, California.

Two dudes and a fake fish, totally monster.

[Rob makes dolphin noises]

Backyard Monster factoid.

The US Navy deployed a team of dolphins to Iraq

in 2003 to locate underwater mines.

The dolphins used sonar to see through porous objects

and locate ship mines.

One thing the dolphins didn't find,

weapons of mass destruction.

♪ Monster monster garage

Next up, we head down the coast of the Golden State

to an offbeat beach town, Santa Cruz, California.

Not just a haven for hippies,

it's also the headquarters of the Blastolene Brothers.

[Mike groans and chuckles]

Mike Leeds and Randy Grubb are the Blastolene Brothers,

custom car builders specializing in super hot rods

made with monster engines and mega parts.

They are brothers in spirit only.

- We're a beautiful match.

We really compliment each other and support each other

in whatever needs to happen,

and we're there for each other.

- [Narrator] Both renowned glass artists,

they met in 1997 through their art dealer.

- This is a $10,000 piece of glass.

I'm the only guy in the world

that makes these in this scale.

Michael Leeds was a stained glass window maker

that started doing these fused glass panels.

We're artists.

And this automobile thing is basically just the medium

that we're working in currently.

When you step back and you look at this piece

as a piece of sculpture,

it should have all the strength and flow and motion

that a good piece of sculpture has.

And, that's what these are.

These are just big sculptures that you can ride and drive.

[upbeat music]

- [Narrator] We dig their monster mentality so much

that we followed them to a classic car show

at Art Center in Pasadena for the unveiling

of their latest mega car, the Blastolene Indy Special.

- About five and a half weeks in the grill alone.

So it was probably the hardest piece.

- It's one of the focal points of the car.

- The Blastolene Indy Special features

an 1800 cubic inch gasoline burning V12

that was originally designed for an M47 patent tank,

developing 910 horsepower, 1500 foot pounds of torque

at 2,400 RPM.

- I mean, this thing is just so enormous.

It's just the most impact of any car on the whole show.

Just by brutality, you know?

[group laughs]

[engine roars]

- Yeah, it's just a beautiful, beautiful car.

One of a kind.

I've been waiting for two years for this car.

- [Narrator] In terms of Blastolene bucks,

buying this beauty would require the cash needed

to purchase 50 of Randy's $10,000

tree in a jar masterpieces.

- Now I want you to keep it under 200 most of the time.

- Okay. - Okay.

For the first 50 miles or so. - Under 200.

- Yeah, yeah, then you can go ahead and rev her up.

- Okay. - Okay.

- [Narrator] After the show, we followed the brothers

back to their shop to see what they've got brewing,

a badass super trike with a dubious name.

- We call it Roadkill.

Kind of rolls off the tongue nice.

- [Randy] The tank should be coming back

from the painter. - [Michael] That's right.

- We've got a lot of little details

that we've never been able to put the whole bike together

and take it for a ride.

So, that's the goal today, I think.

- Yeah, we're going to sit on it

and we're going to drive it.

- [Narrator] Ironically, Roadkill was inspired

by a trike the Blastolene Brothers helped build

on "Monster Garage".

- So we're going to make this Peterbilt into a motorcycle.

- Now we wanted to build a bike from the get go.

Because Mike, because Jesse thought that trikes-

- Were for pussies.

- Were for pussies. - Were for pussies.

- You're a p*ssy, 'cause you can't ride on two wheels,

'cause you're afraid you're going to...

It's like training wheels.

You know what, you're afraid you're going to fall over?

- And then we proceeded to build him a trike, right?

- Well yeah.

- Well which he, yeah, which he loves to death.

[upbeat music]

- [Narrator] With the MG trike as a rough first draft,

The Blastos have come up with some refined

design features for Roadkill.

- The trike we built for Jesse had no suspension at all.

And that's a real problem as far as being

a real roadworthy machine.

And that's what Michael got out of his system here,

was developing this incredible suspension system

that's going to allow this trike to ride

like a dream.

- [Narrator] What's so special

about their rear end suspension?

- The center section mounts firmly to the frame.

And then the half shafts and the trailing arms

allow the suspension to move

with the center section staying fixed.

This fixed element couples directly with the transmission.

This 350 turbo transmission

with virtually no drive shaft used at all.

And this arrangement is what really is the beauty

of this machine that Michael's designed here.

- [Narrator] Independent rear suspension

and a fancy front suspension to boot.

- We've got dual A arms, facing forward.

This is an air suspension cylinder that I call Canover.

This is a Canover air suspension cylinder

that actually does the supporting of the front suspension.

So it's an air spring and a shock absorber in one unit.

[upbeat music]

- [Narrator] The frame is attached directly to the motor

to create stability.

- This whole upper A arm arrangement mounts

to the motor and actually uses the motor

as a stressed frame member.

- [Narrator] The final touch is a one of a kind

steering system developed by Leeds.

- By taking some small block Chevy cam gears,

and grinding all the teeth off

except this one little section.

And, so as you turn the handlebar,

the front end turns just like this.

And as the suspension works,

it goes back and forth this way.

These are Michael's magic pieces.

[upbeat music]

- [Michael] One, two.

[pair whistles]

[upbeat rock music]

- [Randy] This is awesome, Michael.

Look at how soft and compliant it is.

- Oh yeah.

- Blower scoop.

- [Narrator] The super trike is ready for its maiden voyage.

- Woo!

- [Narrator] Let's hope it drives

better than they high five.

- Okay. - Try the brakes.

Really just a little bit of brakes.

How's it feel?

You got brakes? - Yeah.

[engine roars]

Not bad for out of the box, huh?

- Not bad for out of the box.

[pair laughs]

- [Narrator] The machine's horsepower must have rattled

Mike's brain as he's forgotten the existence

of all trikes before Roadkill.

- You know what I've been thinking?

I think that we have a completely new breed of vehicle.

[upbeat music]

- [Narrator] Maybe not a new breed, but definitely cool.

They hit the streets and take Roadkill

for its first cruise around Santa Cruz.

- [Michael] Weight to power ratio is at the extreme end

of the spectrum.

We've got probably about 450 horsepower or so.

And I would be surprised if this vehicle weighs

in over 1100 pounds.

You're essentially, you're riding on a motor with wheels.

And that's not much of an exaggeration.

- [Narrator] The locals line up to see

the Blastolene's public display of perfection.

- There you go, huh?

- Oh dude. - [Randy] There you go.

- It's sweet. - [Randy] Huh?

- Is it a motorcycle, yeah?

- It's a new breed of vehicle.

It's a completely new breed of vehicle.

- You're actually sitting on a big motor.

- Yeah, basically.

- I think it's pretty wild man.

I'd like to have one.

- I don't want to cry on camera.

- [Local] Why are you going to cry?

- This is the most beautiful bike I've ever seen.

Trike, excuse me.

It's beautiful.

It's like seeing the "Mona Lisa" in person.

I got to walk away, I'm sorry.

Have a nice day.

Good work gentlemen, that's amazing.

[group laughs]

- I like it.

- There you go buddy.

- It's the coolest thing I ever seen in my life.

- I like it.

[pair speaks foreign language]

- Have you got room for your honey

on the back of that thing?

- Oh you bet, that's the most important thing.

- [Narrator] Roadkill has sparked the interest

of a West Coast hip-hop celebrity.

You could be macking on one of these trikes too.

They plan to build 20 more rolling sculptures

in the future.

[engine roars]

[upbeat music]

♪ Monster monster garage

Now, up to the Great White North

and the City of Saints.

Where we find that monster making maniacs

can live anywhere, even in Canada.

Montreal is home of one of the finest

engineering programs in the world.

- We're ETS, École de technologie supérieure.

- [Narrator] Translation, college of kick a*s technology.

And the pride of the school is a little a ATV

that has won three very big races.

The Mini Baja is an annual competition

comprised of three regional races.

The competition doesn't just focus on speed,

but on a machine's ability to handle such design challenges

as rocks, ramps, and water.

Only college students are eligible.

Even so, over 2000 of them participated this season.

- This year was a kind of special year for us

because we wrote history.

We made it, first overall in in West Coast,

East Coast, and Midwest.

And it's never been done before.

- [Narrator] Heading up this band of Canadian creators

is David [indistinct]

This year's team captain

and the designer of the suspension handling

and steering of the Mini Baja.

and Paolo Hulerio, a mechanical engineer major

who machined and assembled this year's car.

- We breathe Mini Baja, we heat that.

We love it.

And whenever you're going to a Mini Baja competition

and you say ETS, they'll know who we are.

- [Narrator] It's this passion that allowed the team

to overcome the race's biggest hurdle,

the required 10 horsepower 305 cubic centimeter engine

that can't be modified.

That's the same size engine found in most riding lawnmowers.

To maximize the motor muscle,

the transmission now becomes extremely important.

- CVT stands for continuously variable transmission.

It consists of two pulleys mounted through a rubber strap.

When you accelerate, the engine revs up.

This closes here.

So when you close this part,

the strap's going to go up and it's going to go down

in this part.

So it varies the transmission ratio.

So this is what makes the the car accelerate.

It's not the engine revolution that changes.

You know, the engine revs at a specific RPM,

and the CVT does all the work for it.

- [Narrator] Besides a tricked out tr*nny,

the ETS team had some other monster magic up their sleeves.

- First of all, we have four wheel independent suspension.

And all the powertrain, the engine and transmission

and the CVT is all mounted on a sub frame,

which is mounted through vibration isolators.

- [Narrator] To become amphibious,

the little machines are strapped with foam.

But to boost the thrust,

ETS came up with a powerful innovation.

- So it's about 40% of our propulsion in the water

comes from the shape of the fenders.

And when the wheel rotates,

all the water that would normally be projected upwards,

it's diverted by the deflector.

So, this is what adds to the the thrust.

- [Narrator] We rarely get to the French speaking end

of the Great White North.

So while we're here, let's get a little language lesson.

Monster styles,

[Narrator speaks foreign language]

- Ah, I take the wrench and [beep]

And I throw it.

I can't translate it.

Its too...

[group speaks foreign language]

[beep]

[group speaks foreign language]

[beep]

[beep]

[group speaks foreign language]

[beep]

[group laughs]

- He didn't understand it too.

[narrator speaks foreign language]

- [Narrator] Now, let's get schooled

in mini ATV performance.

[upbeat rock music]

They also brought their 2003 vehicle.

Maybe newer isn't better.

- Ready?

[Announcer speaks foreign language]

[group cheers]

[upbeat music]

- That's what I'm talking about.

Woo!

Now what, no way!

[group laughs]

[upbeat music]

[group cheers]

[upbeat music]

[group cheers]

- Oh yeah, number five!

Oh my God, thank you very much.

- [Narrator] Or maybe it is.

The 2005 again proved its metal.

- What happened?

- It was just too fast.

[group laughs]

- You have an all around car,

that's why we're kicking everybody's a*s.

[group laughs]

[upbeat music]

- [Narrator] The success of this little Baja

comes from the passion that these young engineers

should be putting towards picking up chicks.

[upbeat music]

Backyard Monster factoid.

College student competitions reach the pinnacle

of absurdity with Foam Booth Cramming.

The US record was captured in 1959 when 22 students

from St. Mary's College squished into a booth.

Why, who cares?

♪ Monster monster garage

In the playground of the Midwest,

we hop off at Railroad City.

we've come to the crossroads of America, Indianapolis,

the mecca of high speed.

We are on the prowl for another backyard monster.

Paul Stender owns and operates Speed For Hire,

a company that specializes in jet power.

Paul got his start when he bought the famous

Jazz Jet Funny Car.

Ever since, he's been putting jet engines into everything

from outhouses to school buses.

We've come to witness the completion of his latest monster,

a jet powered beer truck called Jet Brew.

- So if we got to work all night,

we got to work all night.

But right now we're actually not doing bad.

It looks like it's a long ways to go,

but hey, we got a day left.

What can we do, you know?

- [Narrator] What's the rush?

Paul's only got two days to finish the build

before an air show with thousands of fans.

Paul's team of speed demons have been buzzing

around the shop for days working

on the gigantic Jet Brew truck.

What started as an international 7,600 truck,

has been stripped to the bare frame.

And a 48,000 horsepower General Electric jet engine

has been dropped in.

- Basically what it does, it compresses air here,

which just draws it down.

Injects fuel here at these fuel injectors, basically.

You've got burner cans, which are basic combustion chambers.

They're on basically on fire you could say,

which in turn throws heat against more blades in back,

which spins it faster.

- [Narrator] Simply put, fuel plus air equals beer to go.

- It's in full open right now,

but this'll close down about this big.

This makes more thrust at lower RPMs,

and it sounds really cool too.

Screams like a dinosaur just...

Once we get the front done, that's the key.

'Cause you got to kind of start at the front,

work your way back.

Now it's just like a jigsaw puzzle.

Put every piece in, just weld them in.

Chad's going to be here a little bit to do that.

And then screw aluminum on and away we go,

nothing to it.

- [Narrator] The body's got to be durable enough

to withstand speeds up to 350 miles per hour.

- We'll do a couple right in the middle.

[upbeat music]

- [Narrator] Paul pushes the build forward

by moving the truck's cab to its final location.

[upbeat music]

- We even possibly could be done tonight with this thing,

so it was a good chance.

I guess we don't need five days, do we?

We're all dialed in.

Air intake looks good, oh man.

- [Narrator] The last task of the day is to secure

the roof onto Jet Brew.

[upbeat rock music]

The team has successfully completed the jet skeleton,

but a truckload of skin will need to be attached tomorrow.

It's one day before the air show,

and Paul's crew has to skin the entire truck,

secure the roof, test the engine, and pack the parachute.

Sounds like a lot of work to get done by tomorrow.

But these builders don't seem too concerned.

- Geez, I've been further behind than this.

I've been way further behind than this

and still made it.

- [Narrator] Before screwing the aluminum plates in,

Paul administers a silicone adhesive

that will make their truck's body air tight.

[upbeat music]

- Right there.

[upbeat rock music]

- [Narrator] With the sides of the truck skin,

they add some fiery decals to give this sleepy giant

a monster makeover.

- Oh, working great.

We're not going to sleep tonight,

but other than that, we're doing all right.

- [Narrator] The sides and top of the truck body

need to be sealed together.

Paul's go-to guy, Scott, rises to the occasion.

- We don't need it to pull open or anything,

and that's why we're gluing it.

This screws are holding

a little better than a rivet, supposedly.

We're hoping.

You notice the way the metal's laid,

it's overlapped this way for the airflow,

so hopefully that won't pull anything up.

It's a lot like building a high speed trailer.

- Well, all I know right now is at five o'clock

tomorrow morning we got to have a jet truck sitting

in this trailer we're standing on.

If not, we're going to be in big trouble.

But I think we're going to do it.

We're not getting any sleep tonight.

We're going to be driving straight through.

I'll tell you what, I think in about eight or 10 hours,

I got my die hards left.

Keith's here, Scott's still here.

But I think three of us get it done.

So we'll see you boys in Elkhart tomorrow morning.

- [Narrator] Jet Brew didn't make it

to the Elkhart Air Show after all.

- Keith couldn't hardly weld anymore.

He couldn't see straight.

Scott was ready to fall over.

- [Scott] I did fall over once.

- Yeah, he actually did fall flat over once,

and that was another story entirely.

But, we looked at it and said, man,

we've got 12 to 18 hours left

for work with three guys.

It just wasn't going to be.

- He's very disappointed.

All the work he's put into it the last week and everything.

And all the work we just put in the last two days.

It's a big disappointment.

But, when you're messing with, you know,



that's a lot to be messing with.

You know, human life is more important

than making a run at an air show.

- [Narrator] The Jet Brew team met with some turbulence

and missed their air show deadline.

We caught up with Paul one month later

at the Morris Sky Fest for the world debut, take two.

They took the time to build the Jet Brew right,

and now they're ready to unleash its mighty power

on the runway.

At 10 foot tall and 40 feet long,

Jet Brew is the world's biggest jet beer truck.

- It's a little bit different.

- It's a really good creation.

Yeah.

- [Narrator] Always a showman, Paul holds off on Jet Brew

and warms up the crowd with a few of his other

jet powered toys.

[dramatic music]

A jet powered outhouse.

Paul is number one in number two vehicles.

[vehicle blasts]

Looks like the driver's got some business to take care of.

He leaves a trail of thunder in his wake.

Too bad for the folks downwind.

[upbeat music]

For his second run, Paul shows off his cherry red pickup.

Paul created the Ram Jet from a 2000 Dodge.

It has 10,000 horsepower and goes 350 miles per hour

on a slow day.

Sky's the limit.

Now, let's see what this supersonic Jet Brew truck can do.

- Controls, here's my throttle.

Forward of course, up, back.

My afterburner button,

that's the jet powers the afterburner.

On the steering wheel we got the hot streak.

Our first parachute, our emergency backup parachute.

Of course we got our main power switch,

our igniters for the main engine.

Smoke fire, smoke stack smoke.

Our fire bottle, of course, percent RPM gauge,

temperature gauge, oil pressure.

- [Narrator] After months of hard work,

it's time to see if this bad boy can deliver the brew.

Will it be flavorful or will it fall flat?

[engine blasts]

Paul warms up the engine.

All systems are go.

[truck horn blows]

[truck blasts]

This baby's got thrust.

It tears down the runway at breakneck speed.

At 288 miles per hour,

the jet truck makes its mark on Morris Car Fest.

- It was cool.

- [Narrator] This top g*n is pleased with his

fast and furious first run.

- We did a big fire show.

I think the crowd really loved it.

Put down a pretty good pass.

I ran it really super deep.

I'll tell you what, we definitely got the coolest

jet truck in the air show

and drag racing industry right now.

I tell you what, you felt all 48,000 horsepower out there

and it sure was a blast.

Thing's about the most fun to drive ever been

in anything I've got.

Definitely the most fun.

[truck blasts]

[upbeat music]

♪ Monster monster garage

- [Narrator] We're back in the El Dorado state.

We've arrived in Palo Alto, California,

home of Stanford University and lots of smarty pants

with too much time on their hands.

Our search for a backyard monster has led us

to a renegade designer, Neal Ormond

and his mighty tank, the Badonkadonk.

From his bedroom and backyard headquarters,

Neal runs NAO Design, his one man operation

does a lot with a little.

- This is where everything gets built, pretty much.

I don't have too much of a shop.

This is our pipe bender, nothing fancy.

This is my welder, also nothing fancy.

But, we get it done.

Stone age technology, it just takes a little bit longer.

The heavy duty construction happens outside.

The bedroom is typically happens to be more

the electronics and the more fine tuning

and delicate stuff that I do in here.

- [Narrator] Despite his modest surroundings,

Neal's inventions are popular with a wide range

of people from eccentric celebrities like David Lee Roth

to international governments.

- Pneumatic cannon, barrel opens up and you can fire

hot dogs, carrots, pretty much anything

that'll fit down that barrel.

We've just been in contact with some riot control police

in Malaysia that wanted to use the pneumatic cannon

for crowd control, basically.

These are the digi grade stilts made of redwood aluminum

and coyote fur.

Those are actually from a fur coat

that I bought used in Berkeley.

So I didn't k*ll any animals, don't worry.

[playful music]

I'm a monster, oh yeah.

I don't like doing things that have been done before.

Big on unconventionality.

So you know, if something's been built before,

it doesn't hold as much interest for me.

And so that's what kind of drives me to pretty much just,

you know, strictly pursue unconventional stuff.

Weird designs, extreme designs.

- [Narrator] The crowning jewel in Neal's ambitious arsenal

is his menacing 1100 pound tank.

This is the JL 421 Badonkadonk.

That was actually derived

from an episode of "Crank Yankers".

I believe it was Spoonie Luv who had placed an ad

for women with a Badonkadonk butt.

I had never heard the word before,

but it was obvious right from that moment

that that was befitting completely of a vehicle like this.

A little bit curvaceous and large.

I mean, depending on your perspective, I don't know.

It's totally a Badonkadonk.

- [Narrator] Although he graduated from Stanford

a few years ago, Neal is still an active member

of the marching band and so is the Donk.

- It's kind of a flagship vehicle by this point.

Most of the people on campus recognize it.

For football games, we'll put our drums

and equipment on top, drive it up at the front

of the band as we're kind of marching in.

- [Narrator] The Donk is the unofficial mascot

of the Stanford Band.

- Probably the majority of its actual hours spent out

and about are just kind of cruising,

and take it to the coffee house,

get a few pitchers, sit up on the roof.

That's actually an important preparation

for rehearsal for the band, so.

- [Narrator] Neal's managed to turn the Donk

into a fire spewing rhythm machine.

- So there's a little piezo sensor right here.

And that pretty much just senses every time

you hit the head.

And, this is the control box right here.

There's a little microprocessor.

It just listens for every time you hit the drum head.

And every time it does that,

it shoots a burst of fire around the ring of six.

[Neal drums]

The windows, as you can see here,

are this is actually one of the little tricks of the Donk.

They're a fine stainless steel mesh.

A lot of little holes in it and so you can see out

through the holes.

So that's good for not being seen

when you are driving around.

These are stainless steel tanks.

These are the expansion chambers

for the pyrotechnic system as well.

[tank horn blares]

[Neal laughs]

Well, the camera's shaking a little bit there.

What's the matter?

The drive on the Donk here is kind of unique.

It's a tiller, first of all.

The main reason behind that being is that we wanted

to be able to drive, you know, obviously from inside

just looking out through the windows.

But we also wanted to have the option of standing up.

The steering is left and right,

although it's reverse steering.

So you push left to go right and vice versa.

And that actually throws a lot of people off.

It's also, I guess another one of our security features

is that if the uninitiated tried to drive off,

they'd pretty much end up in a wall.

Little bit of extra space here under the seat.

For rum running, you know, that type of stuff.

Just don't tell the cops.

[police siren rings]

There's also a master power and ignition switch,

but I'm not at liberty to discuss the location

of those because that's the Donk security system.

So there are, there is a master switch,

but I can't tell you.

[upbeat music]

- [Narrator] The Donk heads out of suburbia

and into the wild to show us what it's made of.

[upbeat playful music]

- To be honest, you could maybe use a few more horsepower,

but it is only a six horsepower,

like a Go-kart engine under there.

But, other than that, I mean it's a top speed

of about 40 miles an hour.

[alpacas hum]

[upbeat playful music]

- [Narrator] His band mate and partner in crime,

Link, shows up to help Neal demonstrate

his versatile arsenal.

- In goes the wiener.

Ready for meat expl*si*n.

[g*n fires]

[upbeat rock music]

- [Narrator] After schooling us in Weiner Schutzel,

Link and Neal give us a smoking hot demonstration.

[upbeat rock music]

[Link shouts]

[upbeat rock music]

- At least for me, this is, you know,

the epitome of what Stanford has produced.

And so in that respect,

I think they should be pretty happy about it.

Oh, so good.

So good.

Propane, that's the secret.

It's the propane.

It's got that little flavor on the outside.

See that, propane.

A one, two, a one, two, three, four.

[Neal drums]

- [Narrator] Incidentally, the Donk is for sale

on Amazon for 20 grand.

However, Neal hasn't had any offers yet.

- My legs are hot.

[Neal drums]

- Yeah, we're coming into our fourth season.

Oh, hey, hey?

Wait and see what happens to these poor innocent softies.

Stick around.

As I was saying, you know the Schwag's been on the show...

Hey, hey, I'm busy.

♪ Monster monster garage

Hey folks, it's the Big Schwag here,

and we are flying down to the City of Angels.

In our quest to find backyard monsters,

we discovered Robochrist Industries in downtown Los Angeles.

Christian Ristow is a master machine artist

who builds robots that wreak havoc.

- I'm working on a robot.

I live in a machine shop.

I build robots and other crazy, stupid things like that.

I mean, that's kind of like my passion.

I've been building robots since '93, 12 years.

And I have six now.

So I guess that's one robot every two years,

that's not bad.

- [Narrator] As the son of a plastic surgeon

and a fine artist, it's no surprise that Christian

grew up with his own take on constructing

and destructing reality.

- I did not actually go to school for engineering.

I often think I should have.

I studied architecture actually,

but I was kind of always a tinkerer when I was a kid.

Building this and that and taking things apart

and occasionally succeeding in putting them back together,

stuff like that.

My learning curve as well as my productivity curve

took a giant leap when I learned how to weld,

which was in college.

I mean, it's sort of amusing to note that I went

to a sort of fancy school and studied architecture,

and really what I was really getting off on was welding.

I went to an Ivy League school

to learn how to weld, basically.

- [Narrator] After graduating, Christian grabbed his welder

and left the Ivy League world forever.

He went to the place he could pursue his robotic

and artistic endeavors, Hollywood.

- For a living, I work in the movies.

I do what's called animatronics,

puppets and robots for film and television.

- [Narrator] Christian was recently a builder

on "Monster Garage's" Dunk Tank episode.

[group laughs]

- [Builder] Slam dunk.

- [Narrator] He impressed Jesse James

with his hydraulic knowledge.

- I like that guy.

Christian, he's smart.

- Okay, open.

- That works pretty bitchin' though.

I have to say, that's probably the best hydraulic stuff

we've ever had on this show.

Usually this stuff's all like

[builder makes screeching sounds]

- Well, it's not my first time doing hydraulics.

- You the man, bro. - Okay, one more time.

- You are the man.

- You guys are the man.

- [Narrator] There's only one reason Ristow

builds these mechanical behemoths,

to revel in their demise.

- If you're building something that is engineered

to destroy stuff, then the joy of of the destruction

is kind of more pure than the joy of the build.

The destruction is just like, yeah, I'm done.

Great, awesome, I get to destroy stuff now.

- [Narrator] "Monster Garage" has been no slouch

in adding to the annals of destruction,

but we've never done it with robots.

So we brought him here to the Big MG's junkyard

to show us how it's done.

Tonight he's going to release some pent up aggression

by smashing stuff with two of his robots.

[upbeat dramatic music]

- So we brought two robots here tonight

to bid farewell to this very evil car

that's been a very bad car.

And we're going to punish it this evening

by giving it a really awful death.

Helping me tonight is my good friend and colleague

Johnny America here, and he's going to

be running the Necropod.

This is a 48 volt all electric tracked vehicle.

Two rubber tracks.

It's got a clamping jaw mouth here in the front.

It's all hydraulic.

Through the leverage, we're probably getting



So, certainly plenty to crush and hurt a person.

And it should handle this car handily.

And this machine was built under

a very compressed timeframe.

[Christian chuckles]

- [Johnny] Notice the wiring loom is all the same color.

- Yeah, we like to color code things

so they're easy to remember.

You know, figure out how they work later.

So I like to use all green.

- Where's that wire go?

- Except on this machine I like to use all red.

- How about that one?

- And over here we have the Subjugator,

the second machine that I brought this evening.

Powered by industrial Wisconsin V4 air cooled engine.

This machine also has a flame thrower,

which comes out from kind of the armpit area

of the arm here.

I purposefully did all the hydraulic lines on the first,

let's say, eight or 10 feet of the arm.

Stainless lines, stainless braid lines,

so they're more or less fireproof.

This is kind of my most aggressive and robust machine.

You know, this is the natural outpouring

of the way that my brain happens to have been formed.

[group laughs]

- It's good.

- [Narrator] Before they release the robots,

they have some high tech Jerry rigging to do.

- This here, by the way, is an old aerospace trick.

It's all held together with zip ties

and little bits of aluminum you find

sitting around the shop.

Yeah, you see a lot of this holding

the space shuttle together and those

sonic boom aircraft, you know.

[engine roars]

- [Narrator] Darkness descends on this playground

of the mechanical macabre.

As the robots reveal their true natures.

Christian starts off by releasing some childhood demons

on poor defenseless animals.

Burn baby, burn.

[upbeat dramatic music]

What's wrong, little buddy?

Never got a bike for Christmas?

Why does he revel in wreckage?

Because he likes the sweet sight of annihilation.

- They're basically made to be

sort of charismatic performers.

They're not for industry.

They don't have to make anybody's job easier

or to pave the road or like, you know,

pick up your groceries.

They're to like destroy stuff.

- [Narrator] Let's get busy.

[machine beeps]

This mad machine operator

is laying down the law robot style.

The Necropod knocks the naughty little car off balance.

The Subjugator stabs through the hood

like a stick of butter.

[upbeat dramatic music]

They've done a good job of violating the car.

Hats off to these disciples of destruction.

Mangled and weak, the car is nearly finished.

What's left to do but set it on fire?

[upbeat dramatic music]

- Moose is on the scene to keep this apocalypse

from spreading wild.

- [Johnny] It's good fun. - Good fun.

- [Johnny] That's why we're such well adjusted people.

- Good chemically smoky fun.

[pair cheers]

- That was good times.

- [Narrator] The wrath of Ristow's robots

results in a wake of ruin.

- I don't get to do that every day.

Only like every week or so.

- But we are really nice people.

- Yeah. - We are, generally very nice.

- We're not as bad as we look.

- No, I think we're very approachable, you know.

Nice, well adjusted.

- Yeah, I'm always much like more calm

right after something like this.

- Absolutely. - Yeah.

- It's like having a nice brisk jog.

- Yeah, it's like a sneeze.

Like the tension just builds and builds and builds

whenever I don't have a show.

And then get to do something like this

and it's better.

- Absolutely.

- You know, the Schwag has no problem releasing tension.

And I don't need no stinking robots.

[upbeat rock music]

[upbeat music]