In a thread about redneck materials you guys had to be mentioned. Yes, it went slightly against the thread title, but the ridiculous things you do need to be remembered. 
Edit: If it works, no matter how “redneck” or “ghetto” it is, more power to you.
Last year we snipped the wire out of an old umbrella because it was strong and flexible.
Edit: Whoops, noticed the words “this season.” We haven’t used too many strange parts this year. Though during build we used several “redneck” construction methods, most notably using a cleco tool for awhile because if we pulled it out the cleco would have snapped into a tube, and we would have had to cut the tube to get the cleco out.
We’re using paint rollers. Actually, a LOT of them. In the 20s I believe…
PVC for our entire hopper.
Not my decision.
We were using a quik-grip clamp to hold the battery on for a few weeks. We changed it the day before ship but hey, it worked. We ran our pre-ship scrimmage with it on.
-Vivek
Copper pipe and PVC. Not as much copper pipe as last year, but still a significant amount. There’s a picture of it here somewhere. We’re all about the cheap, all our money goes to the kit, registration, hotels, etc. etc.
Oh yeah and a VHS tape on the control board:)
We chopped the handle off a snow brush and are using it on our turret.
In 2007 I remember needing to put together a camera cage with essentially no materials. We ended up draining a mountain dew bottle and riveting it to chicken wire.
Wood and Lanyard
during the long island reginoal we had a promblem with our collection system where the balls with fly our the robot and not land i our storage bin. we spend two days doing all of this complex ways top slove this issue and the last thing we tried was just putting a piece of carboard up and that worked way better then anything esle.
Ditto! We used it because it was lightweight, flexible and CHEAP!
One more to contribute: Gaffer’s tape. Lots and [i]lots of gaffer’s tape. (We used up most of a roll on The Blackout.)
Our conveyor belt this year was built mostly out of canvas, styrofoam, and mountain bike tires and was stitched together with dental floss. Which is an upgrade from our prototype belt, which was literally stapled together. 
Also, our ball-dumping mechanism was literally a string. (I’ll post a picture if I can find one; our bot hasn’t been shipped back yet so I can’t take one.)
I don’t think this year’s robot has anything particularly “redneck” on it… but last year, our gripper was made out of driveway reflectors. And of course, the rookie robot in '03 was primarily plywood, so it doesn’t look as high quality as later years. It no longer exists, though.
wood and lanyard, hotglue and hope, zipties and zen
A team I saw at Palmetto used almost an entire grocery shopping cart as their robot.
Well being from Alabama…
We used to put our robot up on cinder blocks (redneck jackstands) in the pit.
But now we “transport” our robot with our space shuttle cart.
Our '07 bot used a paint brush as a chain tensioner. And a stress ball cut in half acting like a spring.
Our spiral hopper’s center shaft is made up of hairbrushes we found at Walgreens.
And the turret (driven by a friction wheel) is lined with weather stripping to improve the grip.
Does it get more redneck than duct tape ? but honestly… what is better than duct tape ?!?
as far as redneck stories i have heard one from a team member from a time before i was on the team. it might be redneck but it was good thinking.
the story goes that at the competition the robot had some super shifters and allegedly one of them broke. so in order to keep a particular gear a teammate fashioned some wire and pop sickle sticks together to hold a particular piece in place.
lo and behold the robot stayed in gear.
haha
Our entire robot was redneck. We used scraps of metal we had left over from previous years and a bunch of zip ties to hold the game pieces in our robot.
I also made a suggestion for next year: build a robot such that it looks like it’s made of scrap, but it works really well.