Friday, December 09, 2005

Redneck Kayak Testing



Well its Friday here at Liquidlogic and last night the ice came out and covered all the trees with a nice layer of the cold stuff. All the grocery stores were out of bread, milk, and toilet paper. Schools canceled across the land. Somebody lost control in front of our shop and knocked all the power out in the neighborhood so I didn't have anything to do in the shop so we decided to have a little fun with a couple trucks, a sledge hammer, and some kayaks. What else was I supposed to do.





I was on Boatertalk in the morning and someone challenged me to do the boat test where you drive the car up on the boats and see how they hold up. We decided to do some other goofing around. We took a couple of boats that were well used and abused and put them to a little more testing. We did several different tests. The first thing was driving up on the boats. That worked out great no issues. There was some deflection but nothing too dramatic. Then Woody started getting really excited about driving the truck and well we found out that kayaks make great jumps, ramps, and parking blocks. Yep thats a 17,000 pound truck. Yep those are a playboat and a riverrunner, and actually they are prototypes which aren't as strong as our production boats. They weren't our creekboats, so they are a little lighter lay up than the creek boats. I can't imagine what those would take.



Then we figured we have two trucks here, some chain, and a kayak. Lets see what else we can do, so we decided to test the security bars and the inserts in the plastic that hold the security bars on the boats. The inserts are actually the weak point in the security bar system, if the insert is small they rip out of the boat. In our boats we put in extra large inserts so that they don't pull out of the boat. Pretty certain that we have the strongest security bar set up in the industry. I am glad that those weren't my tires that were being burned to a crisp.




Last but not least was Woody doing impact testing at 30 degrees. "Hey Shane I know what lets see if I can crack a kayak with this sledge hammer when I hit it right on the end of the boat." "I bet since its cold it will be more brittle." So 10 smacks later with a 20 lb sledge we were having a good time.



Anyway the whole point of this was to have a good time and make some fun video. Beats a stick in the eye.
Here are the videos. If you can keep the audio up there is some funny stuff especially the slow mo sounds.

Redneck Security Bar Test!
Redneck Impact Testing!
Redneck Boat Testing!

Let me know what you think.
Shane

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