Have you ever seen those cement drainage pipes running down hillsides? They’re meant to let water flow without eroding the landscape. With their flowing, organic lines, we decided to turn them into a new kind of ride with the Drainage Luge!
1. Get the parts: Use the drainage pipe width to determine how big your 3/4” plywood needs to be. And you’ll need four skateboard trucks with bolts big enough to go through your wood (Figure A). Also rope to make hand-holds.
2. Affix reinforcements: Determine where the trucks go, length-wise, on your board. Cut truck reinforcement strips from 3/4” ply and glue and clamp these to the luge (Figure B). Let dry. We spaced ours about 4" from each end.
3. Prepping the board: It isn’t necessary to add padding, but it would behoove you to sand the board surface and to remove any sharp edges… and splinters! (Figure C)
4. Install the trucks: Depending on the width of your board, you want to make sure the outside wheels are roughly 30" apart—from outer wheel to outer wheel. Also make sure they’re the proper distance from the front of the board. Mark the drill locations for each truck hole, remove the truck, and drill. Once all the trucks holes are drilled, add trucks, bolts, washers, lock nuts, and tighten (Figure D).
5. Handholds: As an afterthought, we added rope handholds to help with staying on the board, and to aid steering (Figure E). At roughly the middle of the board (front-to-back), we drilled 1/2” holes, 4" apart on either side, roughly 2" from the edge.
6. Test Your Ride! Now for the fun part. Riding. First, scout the terrain. You don’t want to shoot down the pipe only to find that it ends at a cement wall, steel pipe, or off a cliff! Remove any obstacles, and note where you need to stop. Wear boots, helmet, gloves, and pads. Mount and give yourself a few luge-like pushes. Before you know it, you’ll achieve incredible speeds (Figure F). To stop, use your feet, Fred Flintstone-style, on the dirt.
Figure A: Four trucks
Figure B: Clamp the strips
Figure C: Sand the surface
Figure D: Secure the parts
Figure E: Rope handholds
Figure F: Shoot the pipe!
For more detailed instructions and tips, check out the project page for this Instructable.
Phillip and Mars Shoemaker live in San Jose, CA, with the rest of their family. They love to build and invent things, including new sports, robots, and things that attack.