It is Mid April and the weather here in Oregon is starting to get nice. We’re getting on to Build Season and we have a lot of Building planned this summer.

I did a walk around video today, the first one I have done since last year.

Those wheels are our first priority, mainly because they aren’t that expensive but do require some skilled welding that will take time to accomplish. We need to sell 4 Tripods before we can order material to make the wheels I am hoping we can do that this week. I have just added 28 new Tripods to the web page.

http://www.LostMachine.com/store/index.html

Of course if you would like to make a smaller donation we would really appreciate it:

PayPal Donation

After the wheels we will be focusing on raising money for a new engine and control system. This is our most expensive purchase but also one of the least labor intensive.

Once those are done we can put large fire effects on the ship, the goal is to have a Sail of Fire. That will take both a lot of money and a lot of work, but can you put a price on lighting up the desert with huge poofs of fire? It turns out that you can and it is about $2000…but what is the cost of a hundred smiles and what is the cost of a hundred smiles a few thousand times? Yes, we love what we do, we believe in it too, and we hope that you’ll believe in us too.

Our request for an Electrical Engineer has been answered. We had a lot of offers to help from some very talented people, in the end we went with someone who has a long history of developing open source hardware and is a founding member of one of the best know Hacker Spaces in the US.
We are happy to say things are looking good again. I want to thank everyone that offered help, your support meant a lot to all of us.

The new Tripods are currently being made, this week we will start on the lenses, then the back covers, we will save the soldering of the boards for last. We hope to have them ready by early December.

With my Burning Man Projects I have two goals that I like to accomplish:

1: To create a challenging engineering project that my friends could work on. One that required everyone to push their abilities and learn more of what they are capable of accomplishing.

2: To raise the level of Art and give something beautiful to the Burning Man community.

It is also my hope people working on my projects will learn things that they will use in their own work, and that they will pass that on to others.

I would like to take a moment to acknowledge Jesse Banks, the creator of the original Tripod circuit board. He put in hundreds of hours on the ship and helped solve some difficult engineering challenges. He has since decided to move forward and pursue other goals; we wish him the best of luck and will miss the enthusiasm he brought to the project.

Where do I start on this construction blog entry? This is what I’ve been thinking for the last two weeks. While this isn’t the end, this entry is a bit of a conclusion. How do you conclude six years of your life?

Let’s start where we left off

Trailer: We got it, one of the ship’s crew loaned us $2400 to have a trailer made. Mike at http://ms-trailer.com/ worked fast and in less than a week we had our trailer. This crew member would like to be paid back so our next order of business is paying her back, but more of that later.

There was something I left out, something that I didn’t up date on the blog, something very critical.

During the christening event the engine blew up on us. One of the exhaust valves dropped into the cylinder and ripped apart the piston, damaging the cylinder walls and trashing the head of the engine. We just had a new head gasket put on the engine and other repairs completed. The shop that did the work took the damaged engine was able to patch it together for us. They had to order parts with over-night shipping, the engine block was sent to one machine shop and the head was sent to another. They worked fast and got the engine back to us the day before we intended to leave. We then worked late into the night to install the rebuilt engine.

The next day we started the ship with the rebuilt engine and drove her across the street to the trailer. There was no time to test her around the neighborhood, we parked at the loading ramps to the trailer and began the process of winching her on.

We loaded the rest of our supplies and hit the road around 7pm on Saturday, 31 hours later than we planned.

Taking a break to sleep at a rest stop on the way and only traveling 30mph on the grades had us arrive at Burning Man around 2pm on Sunday. We were able to assemble the ship and make it to the DMV by sunset where we were granted our day and night passes.

We took the ship out 4 more times throughout the week and we learned something new every time. We had minor electrical problems, and a fuel line problem that was easy to fix, but on Thursday the engine gave out. We left the ship out on Playa for people to stumble on throughout the next several days. People were appreciative of her as an art piece. Lucky for us, the engine gave out not that far from the man, we had front row seats for Saturday’s burn. On Sunday a member of the temple crew towed us to the Temple of Flux where again we had another amazing view. On Monday we loaded the ship up left playa on Tuesday. She sailed the playa like a dream and we look forward to her being there another year.

The ship will need a new engine and we would like to make rear wheels that match the front. Before then we will be building tripods for the holiday season. Again all sales of tripods will go to the building of the ship, specifically to paying off our trailer and then replacing the engine. We also plan to update the website and are looking for any video footage that you have.

C. S. Tere is an amazing piece of art and engineering. My goals for building an art car were to bring my friends together to work on an epic project and to teach them something new to create a challenging engineering project that my friends could work on. One that required everyone to push their abilities and learn more of what they are capable of accomplishing. To raise the bar of Art Car construction and give something
beautiful to the Burning Man community.

Both of these goals were accomplished and it shows in every part of the ship. Thank you everyone, those that showed up for an hour to paint, people that purchased tripods and patches and those that put all their soul into the project. I couldn’t have made it this year with out every single person who contributed.

Thank you.

Captain Andy

We are posting today with a very serious purpose. In an unforeseen turn of events, our plan for ship transportation has fallen through. In order to get our (very nearly complete) Clock Ship to the playa, we need to borrow, rent, or buy a very large flatbed trailer.

We’ve made several calls; no one seems to have what we need available for rent. We’ve asked several friends, but nothing has turned up yet. We’ve posted to Craigslist and scoured the internet… at this point, we have three options:

#1: Mothball the whole project for a year.

#2: Raise $3200 by MONDAY to pay for a custom-built rig.

#3: Borrow a trailer from you, or your cousin, or your friend Alex. We need it to be 8 feet wide and at least 25 feet long (more would be better), and it must be capable of carrying at least 7,000 pounds. It needs to be towable with a standard ball hitch—we have an F350 lined up for this purpose—and a tilt-bed would be preferable. We’ll need it from Wednesday August 25th to Thursday September 9th… Any leads would be appreciated!

So if you can give us a few dollars, we’d really appreciate that (via PayPal–go to lostmachine.com and hit DONATE). If you know someone who might have a trailer, we’d appreciate it if you’d call them. Otherwise… hopefully we will see you on the playa next year.

The ship is ready to go; she just needs a ride.

We don’t like being in this desperate situation, and we hate asking for help—what we really need now is a playa miracle. Bueller?

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Captain Andy

This has been a really busy weekend. Sorry I haven’t been updating as much as I would like. It has just been a lot of work, but I would like to get you caught up right now.

We have all the hydraulic lines installed. It took three days to get them all in and over 120 ft of hose and 65ft in hard line (pipe) to get everything hooked up.

We have the engine installed. Unfortunately are electronics are keeping it from starting. All our connections were corroded. We’ve been changing them out, with all new switches, relays and connectors.

Railing is going in.

The Stairs are going in.

We are still need donations. There is a bit more that we need. Please check out the new Video and the KickStarter website.

And we are getting paint on.