Damian's Birthday - Shed Cleaned Up!!!

The day started bright and early at Team Booger Mobile HQ (aka Damian's place), because it was Damian's birthday!! Scottie arrived to find Damian sitting up in bed having a coffee with his family and presents...

Damian and family migrated to the kitchen table, with presents etc in tow!! (The inappropriate card in the middle of the photo is from Scottie of course!!)


Damian's family gave him a cool new tool chest with tools!!




Scottie gave Damian some scratchies, and in keeping with Damian's usual luck, he scratched a whopping THREE DOLLARS!! Woot!! Damian intends to donate this back to Instant Scratch-It in the form of another three one dollar scratchies!!

Damian's boys decided that Tonka should join the festivities and attached a bow... Tonka gave up trying to remove it and had a nap!

After coffee and pancakes (birthday breakfast!!), the boys headed to the shed, where Damian got to work gluing on more door rubbers...

Scottie used some "gentle persuasion" to adjust the shape of the front seat mounting plates to match the floor pan...

Scottie then wanted a road trip to collect some more bits and pieces... Damian pointed out that since it was Anzac Day, nothing would be open. Scottie decided that it was time to sort out the mess in the shed - get tools back in order, and make a pile of rubbish to be thrown out etc.

This is what it looked like to begin with... (Actually, this is after Scottie had already moved a heap of stuff!)

Meanwhile, Damian kept on gluing, finishing his second door!!

Damian's son Aidan decided to try out Booger's head - his feet are the snot!!

Damian's boys also helped him out by putting all the tools into his new tool chest...

Damian had moved onto the third door rubber, only to run out of special glue 3/4 of the way around! He will have to wait until Monday for the shops to open again!!

Scottie had continued cleaning the shed, sorting tools from junk, junk from useful stuff, useful stuff from stuff suitable to sell on Ebay...

Damian's shed hasn't been this clean since it was built!!

Outside the shed, there was a pile of metal junk to be loaded into the XD and dumped at some stage...

And a pile of general garbage that Damian will feed into his wheelie bin over the coming weeks...

No day working on Booger Mobile would be complete without Damian having painted something black... this time, it was a set of small nuts and bolts to attach some more LED safety lights!

And here they are nice and black!!

After cleaning up the shed, Scottie had moved onto trial fitting the exhaust... Here's what the exhaust tip looks like sticking out behind Booger Mobile!!

Damian had attached another set of amber ultra-bright LED lights to the front and rear of the roof-rack (far left and far right of the image below). These will be wired into the same controller as the first set of amber LED lights.

At the end of the day, the shed had been cleaned, more LED lights attached, some more door rubbers attached (damn running out of glue!!), front seat bracing mounts adjusted and a list of remaining tasks compiled for stuff to be completed in order for registration to take place...

Oh, there was also some official paperwork completed, and discussions about hotel accommodation for the esCarpade.

A great day was had, and Booger Mobile continues to move forward... There are a few items that are holding up progress at this point, but once they are sorted out, hold on to your hats because it's all going to happen quickly!!!

Boot Seal, Door Seal, FRONT SEAT!!

Another Sunday, another day working on Booger Mobile!! After the obligatory coffee, Damian and Scottie headed to the shed... today's goals were to get started on the door seals and to trial fit (and work out bolt placements etc) for the front seat!!

First cab off the rank was the boot lid... the seal attaches to the actual boot lid (rather than to the car as it does on a lot of vehicles), so the lid was carefully removed and laid on a blanket ready for action!! (Regular blog readers may recognise Damian's childhood blanket under the boot lid!)


But where's the boot lid seal? Scottie, have you seen it? OI... Stop skipping with the boot lid seal, Damian needs it!!




Just in case you don't know where a boot lid goes, this is where it came from!! (The trunk, for American blog followers!!)

Scottie had an attempt at installing the boot lid seal by throwing it at the boot lid... it had limited success!!

Scottie left Damian to sort out the boot lid seal, and moved on to investigating the bench bucket seat that was going to grace the front of Booger Mobile. First step - find new bolts to replace the ones that were cut off removing the seat at the wrecking yard!

Damian commenced gluing the boot lid seal down with special rubber glue... Coat both surfaces, then wait until they are almost dry...

While waiting for the surfaces to dry, Damian and Scottie put the seat into the front of Booger Mobile... The boys like the laid back look - not sure it will pass roadworthy though!!

Meanwhile, the glue had dried, so Damian commenced sticking it down... one painstaking part at a time... that glue really lived up to the name "contact adhesive"... One slip and the seal was permanently stuck where it landed!!

Turned out alright in the end though!! Just needed to be fit back onto the car!

Meanwhile, Scottie had moved on to drilling through the floor of Booger Mobile - the new seat has bolts that are slightly closer together than the original XM bolt holes, so the boys took the opportunity to move the seat slightly rearward to give better leg room in the front, plus to move past some of the under-car obstacles that would prevent drilling in other locations!!

Speaking on under-car obstacles... this one annoyed Scottie a little by pushing the drill off course - so Scottie had his revenge!! BWAHAHAHAHAHA...

After quite a long time stuffing around with the boot lid trying to get it to line up correctly (almost an hour in total), the boys were happy with the positioning. Damian decided that shoving Scottie in the boot with a torch was the best way to check the seal!!

For a giggle, one of the times that Damian was closing the boot, he threw the keys in to Scottie... "Here, hold these" SLAM!! Damian found this highly amusing... Scottie meanwhile was asking for the boot to be opened, jiggling the keys in hope and desperation...

And here's the completed seal, with the boot lid installed and adjusted, and as you can see, Damian did, eventually, let Scottie out of the boot!! (Either that or he put these photos out of order to cover his tracks!!)

And a little bit of black foam tape to really make a nice dust seal!! (Later in the day, the boys decided this will be replaced with some soft pinch weld in the near future!)

The front seat was test-bolted in, and chocked up at the back to get the right height...

The boys really like the fold-down centre seat that forms an armrest!!

The front seat sits up on a little plastic mount on the front (so that the sliding backwards/forwards mechanism doesn't hit the ground), however in the XM, the rear mounts end up on a sloped section of floor, so Scottie had to fashion some kind of angled mount...

Damian suggested using some spare polyurethane suspension bushes and cutting them to size...

While Scottie worked on the seat mounts, Damian commenced the first door seal - the passenger side rear door! Damian thought the boot lid seal was painful - it was NOTHING compared to the door seal!!!

Scottie wasn't happy with the angle of the hand cut polyurethane block, so out came the trusty angle grinder, which turned the polyurethane into stringy, blue fairy floss (cotton candy for the Americans!).

And this is the finished product... one down, one to go!!

Dispensing with formality, Scottie took to the second one directly with the angle grinder... The results speak for themselves!!

Damian continued gluing the door seal on...

Shortly after this photo was taken, Kane from Kerbside Car Sound (and his lovely partner Liz) stopped by to check out Booger Mobile, and take some measurements and notes for the stereo that he is providing to Team Booger Mobile... this will naturally have a blog post all of its own when it happens, but in the mean time, a big thank you goes out from Team Booger Mobile to Kane for his generosity!

Needless to say, by the end of the day the boys were happy with their progress, Damian had a new found appreciation for glue (having accidentally dropped a bit on the back of his leg, which he removed in the shower, along with his leg hairs!), and Scottie had a new found appreciation of Damian's ability to glue bits of rubber to random shaped objects!!

With the front seat almost ready to be installed, Booger Mobile is really starting to look like a car again (rather than just an empty shell). The esCarpade is now less than 6 months away... Aaaaaaaaaaaaargh!!

Door Rubbers and Fun Switches!!

Sunday morning rolled around (as it does each week), and Scottie arrived ready to get into the remaining door-glass-seals... Having spent the entire day the previous weekend achieving a single door being completed, Scottie had an idea how it all worked, and would set himself the goal of getting the remaining three doors completed!!

First task was to remove the door handle, window winder and door skin. This task was made more interesting for Scottie due to the fact that Damian had put the clip the wrong way round on the window winder, making it far more difficult to remove. Damian suggested it simply made it more secure!! ;-)



While Scottie was doing door-glass-seals, Damian decided that mounting the UHF Radio was in order, and had a great idea about how to mount the five fun switches (LED lights, amber rotating light etc) - use a piece of angle in front of the UHF mount!




Meanwhile, Scottie wasn't pleased with the thickness of the front quarter glass rubber - it was a bit too thick for it to close nicely, so Scottie being Scottie, out came the angle grinder!!

Meanwhile, Damian was drilling... and drilling... and drilling...

Scottie got the quarter glass rubber to fit much more nicely!

Then Scottie got the rest of the driver's side front door back together again... He was certainly making awesome progress today!!

Damian continued to work on the UHF mount and switches, discovering that he needed to make a snappy trip to the hardware store (to buy more small bolts for Scottie to use, and) to buy some more foam tape and spade terminals.

Scottie started on the rear door - readers can tell this piece is for a rear door as it's being cut on an angle rather than square!!

The roofrack is as good a place as any for the door glass to rest safely!! Look at the grunge on the top of the car!! The boys are hanging out for the front and rear windows to be put back in so they can give it a wash!!

Damian completed the UHF mount and the mounting of the switches... then he set about wiring up the switches for ground and power for the lights (the switches light up when on).

Scottie was now doing the bailey channel for the driver's side rear door...

Scottie was busily installing all the various bits and pieces, then came to do the inner door belt... The photo below shows something interesting - they have sent the wrong part!! (The short one is incorrect - it should be the same length as the long one!!)

Which is funny, because the part numbers are the same - it must just be a packing issue...

Of course, it just wouldn't be Booger Mobile if there wasn't some debacle... Damian will have to chase down a replacement part sometime in the coming weeks...

Damian was using heat-shrink tubing to seal the wires he was joining to spade terminals, so Scottie decided to demonstrate to one of Damian's children how well they shrink onto your finger!! Sadly for Scottie, he underestimated a) how tight it gets and b) how HOT it gets!!

Gave Damian a good laugh though!!

After making a bunch of piggy-backed wires to connect the earth to, Damian noticed that they made a lovely star shape... Awwwwwwwwwwww...

Scottie was relaxing in the back seat, working on the final door-glass-rubbers!!

Damian got the switches hooked up to power and earthed out, flicked on the power, and POP. Fuse blown... After checking the wires weren't touching etc, he installed a new fuse and tried again... POP!! Fuse blown again!!

After discussing the issue with Scottie, it was decided that the power wire should go onto a different terminal, as the one that Damian had used (marked Accessory - so he reasonably thought that was where the power for the lights went in) wasn't correct.

After switching to the correct terminals (and installing ANOTHER new fuse), success!! You can just see the green glow in the image below.

And by the end of the day, the remaining three doors had their door-glass-rubbers etc installed, and the UHF Radio Mount and switch panel were completed...

Progress continues, slowly but surely, but with the esCarpade now only SIX MONTHS away, the boys are starting to get to the pointy end.

It's been a long, slow journey to this point, with seemingly many months to comfortably get stuff done, now it's starting to look as though time has sped up!!

Stay tuned for the next exciting episode!!