Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage

My cage rage continues. It is a fever with no remedy burning away. All I can do is feed it dumpster bit parts and cheap hand me down jumble bits. Spending money only on the truly needed. I do get off on seeing how much I can do with so little.

Sourced a 74 Suoer Beetle transmission, Independent rear suspension and a couple of bitsa front ends. Welding the IRS trailing arm mounts into the frame was a mother fucker.

The local VW shop Kustom Coach Werks has been a huge help as I didn't have anything to learn from piecing new things together. It took me three front beams before I had a rust fee one to build off of. I welded in suspension pre-load ride height adjusters that are basically a jam nut that holds the center of the torsion springs within the front beam. Simple. The KCW shop has a Class 11 bug they race baja with and had front disc brake conversion kit laying around.

Today I welded in a cheapy class 11 roll cage. Rat cage!

She is a real "loose end"

Circa 1976....While working for Dyke's Bikes bicycle shop in Fort Collins my pop met my Mom. That was cool for me. Mr. Dykman, my Pop's boss had a 1956 Willys jeep. I was told they would load it full of fixed up old clunker bikes and deliver them to less off kids on Christmas eve. My Pop took ownership of the jeep after being owed a few too many paychecks. A few years later after I was born my Pop took the engine out to rebuild it. I was 3 then. Anyhoo, my mom and Pop split up and it got a bit ugly. The engine got tossed out with the bath water but I made it through. Kind of. When I was 16 I went and drug the jeep out of the neighbor's field who had been storing it there for my Pop. As a 16 year old I knew that all it needed was a fancy paint job and a big ass roll bar. Total fuck head. So the jeep then sat in my step-father's field for another 16 years and then I got a shop with a yard and stuffed it into a horse trailer and brought it to a new home. The day after I started into the project the green bug followed me home. Projects multiply so well.

I have no want for a jeep and other than being a patina pervert it has no value to me beyond my Pop's history. My motivation right now is centered around building a daily driver race car out of the green bug. But in trying to tie up a loose end I did go pick up an engine for the jeep last weekend and plunking it into the old chassis did do something to me. I wonder how long it will sit before I try to make it all run again. The jeep is a lot like my family relations. I try. Now and then we all try. Thankful to have what I have and I hope my friends and family are as well.

Baja dog spotting at 38 seconds in

Such a camera queen

Big Japenese motorcycle engine... ok, so it is a car engine

 It is just like a big Honda engine. Me valve seat tools fit perfect and say what we all want to say about cages but at least their valves cost 1/5 of the price of motorcycle valves. Even OEM. Heads are re-built as the half of the valves were bent a mere .010" form the head on impact the ol 2.5 RS suffered. Free loader Freddy scored again when my neighbor gave me another Subaru 2.5 engine with the smashed cam pully and timing belt covers I needed. I cant help it, the freakish four wheel gods just keep giving me the ingredients...

Party!

In rust we trust. The 4 wheel disease spreads. part 4x2

Mary Ellen was the owner/operator of this 1966 volkwagon "car for the people right up until 1973 when it was parked running. Parked too close to the road though and parts disappeared until the shell was all that was left rotting right into the ground where I plucked it. What have I got myself into? Why am I having trouble sleeping. My brain only produces dreams of replay scenarios like mating a subaru engine to a vw transmission, converting to independent rear suspension, disc brakes, fuel cells, cages, harnesses... madness. I may be losing my mind but the creative process has unlimited potential. 

Trying to keep it together while letting loose of it all.

FTW

Something about bugs rotting into the soil.

The engine I found for the jeep is not going to work. At least I don't want to make it work. and fuck up an other wise original vehicle. I am putting the jeep back out to pasture to graze on desert rays for another stint of time so I can feed the bug. But does my brain feed the bug or is the bug feeding off of my brain...

The Atack of the Two Too many Wheels - Part 4x1

I was just starting to settle in to my new shop, filling up wall space with posters, arranging my motorcycle feng shui, of course feeding my constant fetish for hoarding junk. Now that I have my own yard the first thing I did was go drag my Pop's old 1956 Willys jeep out of the field and start to finish what he started 35 years ago when he went to rebuild the engine and then the family fell apart. Never mind that I am my father's son! I have a yard. Lets fill it with junk already. And then a few days after starting to tear into the jeep an old timer came into my shop asking if I would like a few old dirt bikes he had rusting away in his yard. He had an impressive junk yard; cranes, tractors, classic rust heap big finned cat eyed beauties. Acres and acres of junk. He had to clean it all out as property tax was whipping it's enslaved free world order down on his old timer back. I am sure that will never happen to me. No way. Next to the rusty old dirt bikes was a VW bug... Just like I always wanted. Even my favorite color. And wouldn't you know, it literally followed me home. To be continued....