Creative. Hard-working. Passionate. The three words describe the Long brothers. The Pennsylvania natives are the first Americans to be named Junkyard Wars champions. The popular cable TV series has a lot of gear-heads excited. And these three are farm boys.

As children, many engineers loved to tinker. In the basement, in the garage, out in the barn, they'd take apart transistor radios, small appliances or engines and put them back together again. Sometimes, with a little ingenuity, the reassembled product worked faster, better, more powerfully than the original.

One agricultural engineer and his brothers have taken such tinkering to new heights. Pennsylvania native Brian Long, along with brothers Terry and Greg, are currently enjoying a measure of celebrity as the first-ever American champions of cable television's Junkyard Wars, a popular feature of The Learning Channel (TLC).

Junkyard Wars is the ultimate engineering challenge, "the perfect forum for those who believe they can build anything out of junk," according to the program notes. Teams of three friends are given an assignment--build an amphibious vehicle, for instance--and deposited into a junkyard where they must scavenge for all the parts necessary to build their machine. After 10 hours of designing, building and tweaking, the teams put their product to the test in a performance competition. The winners of the match progress to a championship contest.

The Long brothers' efforts to get on the show began several years ago when Brian, who works in Coventry, England, for the international farm machinery manufacturer AGCO, came across a British television program called Scrapheap Challenge.

"I watched for five minutes and was hooked," recalled Brian. Knowing his brothers would also love the show, he taped an episode--a tractor-pulling competition--and shared it with them on his next visit home. They, too, became instant fans. "Like all armchair engineers, we questioned why the team would build their machine that way, or should they have done it this way," said Brian.

Their enthusiasm led them to the inevitable: They had to find a way to get on the show.

On his return to England, Brian contacted a Scrapheap Challenge producer. The brothers prepared an audition tape and were accepted for the British series. But they had to decline the invitation. "It turned out that filming was planned for the same time Terry's wife was expecting a baby," Brian explained. "We thought, 'Well, that's it.'"

Three months later, however, the producer called to announce an American series was in development. Were the Long brothers interested? "It took two seconds to agree," said Brian.

Renamed Junkyard Wars for its American audience, the shows were taped in England in August and September of 2000. Competing along with the Long Brothers were such teams as the Texas Scrap Daddies and the Rusty Juveniles. Participants were generally techno-creative types but represented an eclectic mix of backgrounds--emergency room physician, firefighter, stockbroker and an agricultural engineer.

Preparation? There was none. "They basically threw you into it," laughed Brian.

What they were thrown into was a real, working junkyard. The yard was stocked, but teams didn't know what they'd find. "If we needed an engine," he explained, "there were about five of them. We had to pick the one that worked."

The brothers won all three of their contests, constructing first an off-road vehicle, then a hovercraft and finally, for the championship, a rocket. TLC originally aired the shows in January, and reruns are being broadcast in June on Tuesday and Sunday nights.

But the Long brothers' fun didn't stop with their championship victory. Subsequent to the taping of the American series, the brothers were matched against the winners of the British Scrapheap Challenge series. "We didn't learn of the trans-Atlantic challenge until we reached the semi-finals of the American series," said Brian, "but that made us all the more focused."

Off to the junkyard they trooped once again--eager to face their British challengers.

As in the previous challenges, the teams didn't know what they were going to build until the day of the contest. "On the morning of the build, when we heard it was a car crusher, we were fairly confident," Brian recalled. "We all started thinking of the designs. Terry came up with the idea of dropping a big weight repeatedly. It was a big build and a long 10 hours. When finished, we knew we had a working machine, but would it be enough to crush a car?"

Interested viewers will be held in suspense until this summer. The trans-Atlantic competition has aired in Britain but won't be shown on American television until July.

Because they met only four other teams during the filming of the series, the brothers didn't fully appreciate their achievement until they watched the series on television. "Watching all the other competitions--seeing the effort everyone put in to win--made our achievements seem that much bigger. It was the best feeling of accomplishment," said Brian.

Nevertheless, true to his engineering nature, Brian finds himself questioning their winning efforts and wondering whether one design element or another couldn't have been improved.

He won't have to wait long to try out any fresh ideas. The brothers will be defending their title next season. "Even now," Brian admitted, "I'm thinking, 'What is it going to be and how do we build it?'"

So how does one become a successful Junkyard Warrior? For the Long brothers, an agricultural background was key. Growing up on the family's Tyrone, Penn., dairy farm provided great experience, and, Brian added, "We all did a lot of 4-H projects and demonstrations that also helped us."

In addition, the brothers can point to their higher-level agricultural training. Brian and Greg earned degrees from Penn State University in agricultural engineering and agricultural mechanization, respectively. And Terry has elevated his childhood tinkering to professional status--he's a farm machinery mechanic and continues to work on the family farm now owned by eldest brother, Jeff.

Junkyard Wars producers say auditions for the upcoming season are officially closed, but they are always on the lookout for new talent. For details on the application process, see the show's website, www.junkyard-wars.com.

And Brian's words of advice for aspiring Junkyard Warriors are: "Finish what you start. I see too many projects start and not get finished. The fun and learning comes from operating and testing your creations."