Vehicles at the 2014 Maker Faire in San Mateo

About Lloyd Kahn

Lloyd Kahn started building his own home in the early '60s and went on to publish books showing homeowners how they could build their own homes with their own hands. He got his start in publishing by working as the shelter editor of the Whole Earth Catalog with Stewart Brand in the late '60s. He has since authored six highly-graphic books on homemade building, all of which are interrelated. The books, "The Shelter Library Of Building Books," include Shelter, Shelter II (1978), Home Work (2004), Builders of the Pacific Coast (2008), Tiny Homes (2012), and Tiny Homes on the Move (2014). Lloyd operates from Northern California studio built of recycled lumber, set in the midst of a vegetable garden, and hooked into the world via five Mac computers. You can check out videos (one with over 450,000 views) on Lloyd by doing a search on YouTube:

2 Responses to Vehicles at the 2014 Maker Faire in San Mateo

  1. love these.

    a LOT of talent/hard work making these.

    seems to me, if every school had a few clubs making these, there would be no problem getting regular attendance

  2. The vehicle in the second photo was built and owned by a casual acquaintance of mine, Michael Leeds, of Santa Cruz, California. Its name is the "Blown Ranger", and it features a V-12 supercharged aircraft engine and an incredible monocue/space frame chassis. Lots more here.

    Michael and his fellow creator Randy Grubb have been building some fantastic vehicles out of big truck parts and unlikely engine combinations (military tank engine, anyone?). At least one of the finished products sits in Jay Leno's garage. Click around the site in the link above and be amazed.

    I once sent Michael some photos of my 1963 Crown house bus conversion under construction, and got back some back-of-the-napkin sketches that were out-of-this-world fanciful, but way beyond my construction skills.

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