The articulated, mutant vehicle, bull from Dallas, TX
We pulled the seats, dash, and wiring harness (again), bondo-ed the welds, and painted it flat black. We want the fame to disappear.
We are almost done with the sub-floor for the decks. Also very close to having all design drawings and the 3D model complete.
With the decks and rails recently completed and mutant vehicle applications being open, it is time to finalize our design. That means quite a few drawings, meetings, and some model making (including a 3D CAD model).
Final images to be posted here soon.
Brett and company spent a long weekend putting the final welds on the decks and rails.
Today was a gorgeous day. We cleaned the warehouse, ran Decotoro, and took pictures of it’s current state.
We even had a friend come over and do a drone flyover to get some interesting isometric shots!
Check out the shadows of the decks and rails.
We have not come across many mutant vehicles that use a Ford Ranger as a base. I did find one however. I corresponded with them about our build plan and they seemed to think we were on the right path. The one suggestion they provided was to invest in a good set of jounce bumpers. There is quite a bit out there in the jounce bumper/bump stop world and it is a wide price range ($10 – $400). In looking at jounce bumpers and bump stops, everything started looking like Kong dog toys to me. Did you know that Kong dog toys were designed after suspension bump stops?
We wanted something that would touch most of the time with some load and still have some travel. In the front we are using a pair of bumpers from Airbag Man Suspension out of Brindale, Australia. On the rear we have a pair of Daystar, Universal Stinger bump stops.
While the front stops easily went into place where the original bump stops mounted to the lower control arms, brackets had to be made for the rear stops
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Usually there are three to four of us working on the Decotoro at a time and usually some people drop by. However, it never works out that all five of us are working and someone drops by. So we never get a team picture (and we are not going to the effort of a tripod and timer to get it either). Finally, tonight, people dropped by while all five of us were there!
So, there we are. From left to right: WayWard, Brett, Sos, Jackhammr, and Chico.
Our base wiring harness is nearing completion and Jackhammr has done some great work. We now have a push button start integrated into our driver-side A-pillar.
We have continued to build through January. We have added the front bumper, a ladder to the upper deck, and rails for both decks. The upper deck rails are removable for transport.
Where November was a slow month for the Decotoro build team, December was equal and opposite fast paced.
Brett said he/we would “have the decks on by New years”. He was right.
This month we have:
Now it is really starting to take shape. It looks like the beginnings of a mutant vehicle or at least a strange farm or utility truck. Initially we were shooting for the decks to be eight feet wide. After making them and placing them on the truck, it was clear that was going to be a lot to deal with. Also, a bit too much for a five and half foot wide truck. So, we cut the decks down to seven feet wide and agreed that gave us that much more room to work with on on the sides and the depth of the art. It did waste some metal in the process. I’ll take that one. I could have mocked that up and seen the problems of going so wide. At seven feet wide the decks seem like a natural fit for the base truck. We also trimmed the upper deck front and lower deck rear corners. That made sense to us for the shape we need to build our bull around.
Our power steering woes could be a post on it’s own. As mentioned we have a power steering fluid leak (passenger side tie rod boot). We ran the pump dry and ruined and replaced it. The new pump is not as quiet as we’d like and perhaps it is not seated correctly. Initially we looked to put a seal kit into the existing rack. We spent a few hours on it before deciding it was much easier to replace. Unfortunately I decided to order online and it is taking about two and a half weeks to get here. This also delays some testing work on the wiring harness since we cannot run the engine with the pump disconnected from the rack.
Overall I think the whole team is excited and proud. We bought a $1300 truck with a 170,000 miles on it and with some maintenance and many upgrades we have turned it into what seems to be an excellent mutant vehicle base. All in a bit less than six months. Now we have seven months to make the art.
Happy New Year 2019!
We are getting close to a finished cockpit. This week we’ve been adding a stainless steel dashboard. This will serve as a console for our instrument cluster, controls, and storage and protection for the remainder of the wiring harness.
With a number of quality work days in the last weeks we have been able to make the Decotoro base vehicle drive-able again. We mounted the racing seats, mounted a shifter, and added a steering wheel.
Notes: We mounted the passenger side seat on a 360° swivel. For the shifter, since we removed the original steering column, we bought 2003 Mercury Sable console shifter off of eBay and then we mounted it in the driver side A-pillar. I look forward to posting this mod to the Ford Ranger/Explorer forums. There are quite a few discussions about moving the shifter from the steering column to the floor. I don’t suppose this would work for everyone since most people are likely keeping the doors and hinges on.
Then we added a steering column and steering wheel.
With the excitement of driving again we ran the power steering pump while dry and ended up replacing it. We are now left with a minor power steering fluid leak to repair.
Now we are finishing the cockpit metal work, dashboard, and wiring harness.
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