fenders moved

I finished up the rest of the sheetmetal work on the fenders over the weekend. This should be the last of the major sheetmetal work. At least for now. The fenders and wheelwells are all moved around and the car has a pretty good stance that I'm happy with.

I'm thinking that over the winter I may yard the AWD out of it and just run a rear-wheel drive only setup. This would allow me better fuel mileage and I could lower the Explorer suspension another 2-3 inches.

Now its time to think about finishing up that wiring harness and start scheming for some winter bondo and body work.

more fat fender

A shot of the passenger's fender with some black, still have to finish the grill below.

I got it pretty close with a hammer and dolly but I'll probably have to go back during bondo/prep and take otu the big stuff.

new hinge

Close up of the passenger side hinge

return of the fat fender

So for the final touch on the crazy sheetmetal bod mods, the front of the car needs to be widened. As of now the entire rear clip was widened 6" and I widened the front clip 8" at the firewall. To keep the car looking proportional I think the front fenders ought to be widened out a bit.

I thought I would go 8" to match my work at the firewall but turns out 6" looked the best and fell across the front tires pretty well.

This is all happening in a very off-angle gravel driveway though so well see.

This work gives me a chance to demo the lapped fender stuff from earlier and redo my hinge for the front clip. The hinge for the front clip was shotty so its good to redo this. It held up fine over the last year but some of the steel was lapped and just some of the fitting was rough. Im happier with this hinge now, its much simpler and clean.

dash mock up

The dash is in with the flat white on, just starting on the wiring for ECU, fuel and lights. The starting circuit is almost done though. The white paint is growing on me, I think as I come up with more wood trim and door panels its gonna look sick.

topless

Stil workin on the new dash and rebuilding the wiring harness, but the hardtop is off and she's ready for cruisin. Hoping to catch some good August weather if I can get this wiring done.

steering shaft

Believe it or not things are getting cleaned up under the hood, this picture doesn't really highlight that but its a shot of the steering shaft I made. I used part of the Ford Explorer's about 1' out of the steering box. The u-joint is from a Subaru (go figure) but they're steel and small so it works good for me. I had to cut 1" off the end of the junkyard steering column. The columns lower bearing was the steering box of the old Courier pickup so I found a bearing that I could slip inside the column tube. Luckily it also had a near perfect diamter for the steering shaft itself. The diamter of the bearing allowed some slip so I preloaded it with the length of the shaft. Basically the shaft is slightly too long so it preloads my new lower bearing. Some gloss balck and away it goes!

dash guts

This is a shot from the passenger side, shows the new steering column and the new fuse block. I moved the starter solenoid inside too. You can see how the steering column just bolts to the bottom of the dash using the factory mount. The factory gromet too

steering column and dash

This steering column is from a 1975 Ford Courier pickup that I got from the junkyard for $35 bucks. I was finally able to get rid of the rest of the factory Ford steering column (and the magnesium) by replacing it with this unit and removing the factory dash completely.

sneak peek

Heres a pic of the new dash that im putting in the hotrod. I removed every single wire from the car, stripped out the remaining Ford Explorer dash down to the firewall and fabbed up my own. Still working on the wire harness couple weeks to go. All the wires are under the dash now though including the PCM (computer) the starter solenoid and a new marine fuse block.

The dash is gonna be flat white paint with a flat clear coat. Very simple layout: Tach., water temp and oil pressure gauges thats it. No speedo, fuel, battery, etc. Eight toggle switches, half of em for lights the other half for fuel pump, computer power and start switch.

Custom Exhaust

A buddy of mine needed a short section fabbed up for his project 1992 GSX1100 he's been building. He had the header and a titanium muffler needed a 12" pipe to snake up and connect the system. I built a connector for the Ti muffler and pinned it in place with screws, my pipe I just weldedto the header.

Electric fan

The stock clutch fan seemed to be stuck on, it was loud at idle. I had to remove the radiator to get clearance to unscrew the fan assembly, but while i had it ripped apart i was able to wire brush and repaint some rusty spots around the radiator mounts and crossmember i made. The fan seems to be a good fit i just had to make one bracket for the upper mounting bolt on top of the radiator. The motor seems to rev a little quicker now with the propeler gone!

2 stroke pipe repair

I've heard that you can pressurize a 2-stroke pipe and heat up the dents with a torch and they'll blow back out.  Sounds pretty neat to me so finally I made some fittings and gave it a shot. I put a gigantic dent in my FMF pipe up at Walker Valley. This thing was huge, it actually cracked the factory weld of the pipe, about 1" long. I rewelded it and ground it down a bit before heating. This dent was about 3" in diameter and about an inch deep. Since the pipe was basically destroyed it seemed like a good test pipe to see if I could make this work.

I used 1/8" pipe through a rubber stopper on the silencer end, I welded up a flange that I could clamp this thing into the pipe with. I started out with a gauge that read from 0-20 psi thinking this would give me better control over the pressure.







This is also a rubber stopper that I drilled a hole through and pushed through part of a bicycle stem/valve that I cut out of an old bike tube. It worked great for regulating the pressure in the pipe as I heated it

Turns out 50-60 psi works best with a nice dull-orange color. I just used MAPP gas in a handheld torch.

The small rock dings before the expansion chamber are tough to get. I tried but they wouldn't quite go, maybe with a smaller torch.  Not bad considering these pipes are $250!

Benham Custom Snowboards

I found this wakeboard in  a local boardshop for a great deal, thanks Hiddenwave! It has TONS of rocker and no fins. It 144cm long and 15.5" wide at the waist! The board is mostly wood core and is super stiff. I took 3" out of the tail, drilled and epoxied in a couple of inserts to fit my snowboard bindings and cut the swallow-tail in.

This is the most fun I have ever had on a snowboard. Ever. My first run was down from 7th Heaven up at Stevens Pass and it was awesome. Its really stable and fast, and yes its very "surfy" feeling. Big slashy turns! No offense "snowboarding industry" but you should really still make something like this, my 2010 Burton Custom 165cm wide is now on Craigslist.