Most liked posts in thread: Isobell, The RatRod Project

Its never "Finished" Chris, it's just done for a little while... You know how it goes!

I only got one pic at C&C before the crowds came, and the Rat got swarmed, but its not worth sharing! Teresa and Erik made it out this morning to see it at C&C, and brought a cake! Thanks again guys!

After I left C&C, I header up to MINI of Loveland for some show & tell time since I have been in their parts department at least once a week for the last couple months. Gave Cait (The worlds best sales lady) a quick ride around when her boss wasn't looking. And we kept these smiles the entire time!



And got a couple parting shots in front of the dealer as I left.





Then just DROVE it, everywhere around town. It feels so good having this thing back out on the streets!

I have to thank everybody for their support...

Everybody who follows this thread, the entire group that makes up the RMW forum, Cooper for coming through with a good motor, Shanne (llabmik? On here) for the ViPEC and tuning session, Jan & Colin for making the good stuff, Teresa & Erik for the support and friendship, Dave.0 for keeping his boot in my ass to get it done, all the members of MINI5280 and MINI-COW, MINI of Loveland for doing what they do, and everybody else (I know I missed a bunch of you) who chipped in and offered what they could!

I have decided to sticker bomb my inner roof with different brewery labels, and I am going to need LOTS of them! If you want your own little piece of real estate on the Rat-MINI, pick up a sticker from your favorite micro brewery, sign it with a Sharpie and mail them to me (PM for address) they will be used! (Please no mainstream brewers such as Budweiser Coors and the likes), or if you are going to the Dragon, you can stick your own to it in person!

Thanks again for the constant support and just for looking... The build of this car will continue, so stay tuned! And never let your Painter/Body man Tune your car!

 

So in the past week, I have been fiddling with some stuff...

The lower part of the front bumper can not interchange between the S and the Justa mustache bumper, so I am ordering one this weekend.

I decided on my weekend project... It includes some paint...

And so far I got the first two window decals done...

#1...



And #2...



:beer

 

Ok so back to the car here...

At MOTD the Rat-MINI decided it had an appetite for S/C belts. Our original diagnosis was a misaligned S/C pulley, so not much that I could do at the Dragon... I replaced the belt with the help of Helix and friends outside the Helix tent on vendor row, and on the way home it ate another rib off the new belt. The way the remaining 5 ribs of a belt looked on the pulleys, to me didn't add up if it was a S/C pulley problem, so I investigated it a bit further. Sure enough, running on stands with the passenger front wheel and liner removed showed the problem. The OE (2004) crank pulley was flopping around like a fish!

Lucky for me I had an ATI pulley ready to install from my original motor, so it was a free fix.

Anyhow, the crank bolt calls for 85 Ftlbs of torque, and normally (every one of them I have changed anyhow) they are STUCK on bad...
Not this one though! It popped right out using a standard 3/8 drive ratchet!
Then is when the problems started... I go to attach my puller to the pulley, and two of the bolts threaded into the jack holes, but the third hole had no threads!

My thought was to weld a nut over the hole, put the bolt in and yank that POS off... So out came the welder. I got the nut tacked into place, threaded the bolt in, and a quarter of a turn on the puller later I was back to square one! The welds just popped right off the pulley, so I gave it another shot, and put some heat on it this time... Again as soon as I applied pressure to the puller the welds broke off of the pulley!

So back to the drawing board!

I thought about it over a long night out with some friends, then thought about it some more the next morning... Then it hit me. I have a bunch of flappy arm 3 prong pullers in different sizes, but there is little to no room between the pulley, and the oil pump housing, so I found some arms that I could squeeze behind the pulley, but they were for a 3" puller. Time to start piecing together tools to make a puller that would work...

So I took the arms off the 3" puller, then the links off of a 6" puller, and the center hub and bolt from a 4", and it all fit!

Slowly the pulley started coming off, with the help of a lot of oil and some heat, then all at once was the thud I was hoping for!

FrankenPuller worked! Granted that POS pulley is borked pretty bad, but who cares it came off, and the ATI was replacing it.

Finally Monday morning, the ATI pulley went on without issue. Bolt torqued down to 85ftlbs, and a new belt... Fired it up and steady as a rock, and a lot smoother of a feel inside the car... Boom, DONE! Test drive around the block...

Well one thing lead to another, and "around the block" just wasn't good enough! So I headed for the sticks... 200 Miles and a little over half a tank of 91 Colorado crap gas later I returned home with a complete belt, over a full hole showing on the tensioner, and a big unexplainable grin on my face... Still keeping an eye on everything though, but at this point I drive the Rat about as much as Dave.0 drives in general... So maybe once a week to a month.

 

Some edits from yesterday's photoshoot in Wyoming with some MINI-COW members... [emoji39]

 

Betterer pic's!













Best shot from yesterday...

 

So here was todays project: Valve cover painting...

I wanted it to look like an aluminum cover with the paint rotting off, but the cover is plastic! Nothing I cant handle...:wink:





So now it's aluminum?

And I said "Let there be Spice Orange!" Then it was, but rather quickly the orange started to fall off! (With the help of a little sand paper)



All said and done, the clear went on... NO FLATTENER! I want this shiny!:drool









No it's not perfectly smooth, but I didn't want smooth... To me it looks as good or better than the rust! Now it's back to polishing for me.:beer

 

Here's a couple pre Dragon teaser pic's...

Caught Joe @ Sleek Motoring catching a pic... :beer





Then a couple from today at Red Rocks park... Way too much traffic to get an updated tunnel shot. :cryin:





That's all for today, I will edit and get some more up as I have time.

 

Better pic's of the front... It has been a good weekend, with a big step in the right direction.:beer

 

11 Years of a military career down. I will never get the last 8 Years back, but it is time to start my life over again without the chance of getting that letter no soldier wants to get.

This time, I did the boots in Watermelon pink, with silver stripes and soles. The 1SG even complimented me on keeping the tradition alive as I shook his hand and walked out the door a free man.

 

So back onto the topic of Isobell...

I have been thinking about making some of the popular old hot rod sponsor decals new again.
Keeping with the whole rusty old speed shop car theme, it fits having the decals on the rear side glass. Cant have old parts manufacturer logos on a modern car they don't make parts for, so why not make the new shop/manufacturer logos look like the ones from the hot rod age?

I played around with the idea a bit, and actually really like the one I started drafting up!
There will be a few more that I will have to redesign but heres the first prototype logo...

 

Unfortunately I went over the side of the dragon.



We are both fine, minus a change of shorts!

Thank you Whales and everybody else who stopped for the recovery including the NC hillbilly who luckily had a chain in his pickup to pull her back on the road.

There is no damage. The X-brace actually dug into the ground and stopped me when it high centered! It was a butt puckering moment when I got out of the car and found that not only if I had gone another 4 feet foreword, there was a 10 foot vertical drop, and if I had been another foot to the left the driver front tire would have went in a hole and rolled the car!

Everybody stay safe, and USE THE DAMN PULL OFFS!!!

 

Well after the third time of jumping it up on the launch control for 10 feet then hitting the 7200 RPM REV Limit, he came running out in his boxer shorts and said "Really"... Then I explained to him that starting his bike up at 2AM, plus having every other car he owns has a loud exhaust, kinda piss'es his neighbors off. I also told him that he complains how loud my car is when I start it a few times a week, yet they rev theirs up in the driveway every effin day, that it was only a matter of time before it caught up to him. (Note to people, if you have a loud exhaust, dont even start the thing while it will disturb those around you)

Surprisingly the cops didnt show up this time, but they will the next time he decides to wake us up in the middle of the night.

 

You see, bullet holes aren't a problem... I could do those...

Problem is: Do I really want to?

 

Meanwhile...

Still rusting away...