Deaf students build "Monster" rat-rod

05:50 PM CDT on Friday, September 30, 2005

By MICHAEL MENDOZA / KVUE News

A TV show that challenges a team of mechanics to put together a vehicle from scratch came to Austin Friday to shoot an episode.

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Students from the Texas School for the Deaf taped an episode of "Monster Garage" Friday.

Neither the mechanics nor the garage were ordinary. They're students from the Texas School for the Deaf.

The students are the new stars in an upcoming episode of Discovery Channel's "Monster Garage," which was shot on campus at the Texas School for the Deaf's own auto-body garage.

Byron Terrell is part of the team of six students.

"I'm just shocked that I actually got to meet Jessie James," Terrell said.

Jesse James is the host of the show.

"Compared to other high school's we've done they have a pretty good knowledge of nuts and bolts and stuff," James said.

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The team's challenge is to build a rat-rod -- basically a hot rod that's made from junk-yard parts -- in 5 days, from scratch.

The parts came from just about anywhere.

"We didn't have the body. The body of the car hadn't shown up till the afternoon of Day 2."

James found the body of the car himself.

"It's Texas man. Everybody's got cars in their front yards," he said. "Sometimes we're looking at that clock and the clock's ticking. It's running out. We're in a rush.

The challenge facing these students is even greater, because they're only getting half the regular time to work on it because they still need to go to class.

"It's stressing me out. I'm used to doing 15 hour days and still barely getting by," Terrell said.

But before the students' time was up we had to leave.

To find out if they finished their rat-rod in time, you'll have to tune in to their episode of "Monster garage."

The show is episode 10 of this season, scheduled to air near the end of the December.