“It’s a crazy machine” among crazy inventions
By Ray Cleaver
Photographs: Rob Tucker
Taranaki farmer/inventor Dave Hunger has done it again. Dave has featured in The Shed magazine three times before with his innovative and wacky inventions—a giant trebuchet, a replica of Henry Ford’s first tractor, and a giant wheel you pedal along. Kiwi ingenuity at its finest and yes, No 8 wire does sometimes feature.
This time Dave has created another pedalling device—a contraption that he calls Goliath which has a 38-inch (965 mm) tractor tyre in front and small wheels on the back.
Says Dave, “It’s a crazy machine. I saw a clip of something similar on YouTube [search for Monsterbike] and it looked like a nice easy project. It took me two weeks to build part-time, a project to help keep me sane over spring. The tractor tyre is the biggest I could get. Being bald makes it easier for pedaling and I got it for free.”
The clip on YouTube shows a machine pedaled via the big tractor tyre. Dave thought this looked like it would be too hard for kids to pedal so he attached the drive to the back wheels.
Frame
The frame is 50 mm galvanised pipe, actually, the pole from an old rotary clothesline he bent with his hydraulic pipe-bender. The steering head, pedal crank, and back cogs are off bicycles. Dave joined three bike chains together to make the distance.
“Three chain joiners at $7 each was the total cost of the project – my cheapest invention so far.”
After playing around with the cogs to get the gearing right, Dave attached the chain to the smallest gear at the crank and the largest gear at the axle end.
The front axle is made of water pipe, 25 mm pipe pushed through 32 mm pipe, and heaps of grease between them. The back axle is 2.5 metres across for stability
“The back wheels are off a kid’s bike and the back axle has no bearings. It’s just a 50 mm water pipe inside a 60 mm pipe and, again, lots of grease.
“I started off with two-wheel drive but it was too hard to pedal and corner so it’s just one-wheel drive now. It pedals backwards as well and there are no brakes, the pedals are the brakes. The guys at the local scrap yard know me very well.”
Twenty gutter bolts hold the tyre onto the frame. “One technical feature is the holes drilled through the tyre so it won’t fill with water when it rains. That’s as sophisticated as it gets,” said Dave with a grin.
A broken school seat for the rider and a bent reinforcing rod for a step welded on, completed the project. “The positioning of the seat is crucial to get the weight of the rider of the back axle for traction.
The big lamp on the front is off a 1920s Buick, a spare for one of Dave’s vintage cars that has been sitting around for 20 years.
Inventions
Dave’s dairy farm is littered with crazy inventions.
“My motto is that if you store things long enough they’ll come in handy sometime. Many Shed readers will know this.”
A tour around the farm revealed other inventions: a 20 metre by 10-metre maze; a working Fergie 24 hp tractor with a lengthened chassis to feature two engines, one behind the other; and a 1952 Fergie TEA tractor that has had a conversion, with the small four-cylinder engine replaced with an early 1950s flathead Ford V8, taking it from 25hp to 100hp. The latter runs well but Dave said it’s just a toy.
“I won’t be using it on the farm, it’s just a complete and utter waste of time,” he said.
Behind the milking shed is a 60-metre flying fox running on a cable made of four strands of plaited 2.5 mm high-tensile fencing wire.
Alongside this is a 15-metre Lawsoniana trunk, pivoted like a seesaw with a bicycle attached at each end that spins around. Dave calls this his ET Ride.
Dave’s farm is on the Vintage Trail of the Taranaki Fringe Garden Festival and it’s popular with the men while their wives are looking at gardens around the region.
