Up on jack stands (again), but the head's started!!

Saturday rolled around (as it does with startling regularity) and Damian was getting all geared up for a day working on Booger Mobile without Scottie, who was going to be working on his Hilux... Then a message arrived from Scottie saying that he would be down to work on Booger Mobile instead!! Woohoo!!

First job of the day was to get the harnesses fitted. Should just bolt straight in, right? lolsigh...


Time for Scottie to climb into the boot to see how easy it's going to be to locate the backing plates and drill the necessary holes...

A debacle of course!! The subwoofer needed to be moved, but of course it's screwed in through the back of behind the rear seat... not to worry, a slight levering motion was sufficient to extract the screws from the wooden case...

The drilling could then commence!

These are the seat-belt spacers that are being used to get the rear straps to sit on a nicer angle due to the rear seat being higher than the parcel shelf.

This is where the fun began... of course, the bolts that come with the seatbelts were far too short, but there were other bolts that had been purchased earlier for just such an occasion... of course they were slightly too short also, so the boys headed off with shopping list in hand (including new bolts).

Naturally, they couldn't get hold of the exact bolts they required, so they got the next nearest size. Of course, this was ever so slightly larger, meaning the bolts no longer fit through the spacers... Time for Scottie to break out the drill and angle grinder!!

The first couple drilled out slightly rounder no problems... the next two wouldn't drill out at all - probably due to the slightly different style that they were, so Scottie drilled out some taller spacers before using the angle grinder to cut them to the correct length...

Damian then used fake chrome in a can to make them look shiny!!

There they are, lined up nicely along the rear parcel shelf...

And with harnesses attached!!

With that job finished, Scottie moved on to the mounting of the external oil cooler that Damian had previously made a bracket for...

This little shower-cap for the air cleaner is called a K&N Precharger, which is basically a washable pre-filter for the air cleaner.

This is the result of some cutting that Scottie was doing - pretty isn't it!!

This it the top bracket that Scottie made up. It's a work of art, really!

Scottie was back in the boot putting a few finishing touches on and getting a pic of the backing plate, when Damian heard a muffled cry for help... Seems Booger Mobile had attempted to eat Scottie!!

And here are the backing plates... beautiful!!

Scottie testing out the harnesses... They adjust up perfectly, and are very comfortable!

Serious Scottie with a close up of the harness.

Silly Scottie posing with the air freshener, because it has a smiley face on it!!

After his brief modelling stint, Scottie returned to installing the external oil cooler... Damian assisted with a nut that didn't want to play nicely...

Before moving on to painting the frame of the back half of Booger's head white. The shade cloth that Damian bought to cover it in is off white, so the white frame should be nicely hidden!!

Lunch time arrived, and Scottie decided he would try out one of the Aqualager's supplied by Silver Sponsor Aqualogical.

After lunch, it was back to the external oil cooler...

While Damian investigated why the horn had ceased working. Turns out the old relay had packed it in, however the connections for the relay were in a triangle configuration, so Damian got a new relay and made some double ended wires to connect them all through to the new relay.

Meanwhile, Scottie was cutting some old rubber hose with the angle grinder, creating far more smoke than the picture below shows!!

After that was completed, Scottie jacked up Booger Mobile and removed the rear leaf springs. Even though the heavy duty Lovell's springs were brand new, the boys are going to get them reset to add an extra 50mm to the height at the rear (that's 2 inches to you non-metric people)!!

After having a minor shorting out issue with the horn relay (honestly, what kind of bad design has the positive in at the rear of the plug, right were it touches the bolt holding the clip onto the negatively earthed car???), Damian rewrapped it, adding an extra few layers of protection and changing the bolt to a smaller one.

He even used the nice Booger green electrician's tape that Kane from Kerbside Car Sound left for the boys to use!

Damian then moved back onto the fire extinguisher mount. Here he is angle grinding... there are a pair of safety glasses somewhere under all that hair!!

The height that Booger Mobile is sitting at in this picture is about 100mm higher at the rear than it was... the springs are only going to be adjusted by 50mm, so it will be a bit lower than this, but hopefully there will be a noticeable increase in ground clearance at the back!!

Scottie went home at this point, taking the rear leaf springs with him. He will get them dropped off to the spring resetters up near where he lives, ready to put them back in next weekend!!

Damian painted the front half of Booger's head with the white paint.

And continued with the fire extinguisher mount. Camp Quality esCarpade rules state that there must be an extinguisher that can be reached by both driver and navigator.

This shot gives a good indication of just how much extra clearance there is (while jacked up).

And a pic of the installed external oil cooler.

Damian painted some bits for holding on the fire extinguisher mount...

And once they were dry, the fire extinguisher was installed!!

With the fire extinguisher installed and the kids in bed, Damian moved the back half of Booger's head to the lounge room along with the shade cloth, to see how it might work.

Ably assisted by his beautiful wife Tricia, Damian decided the best way was to start with a semi-circle and see how that goes!! First, mark out a semi-circle!!

Cut it out and drape it over the frame to see how it fits!!

Start by attaching the top middle.

Then pull tight and attach the bottom middle... Then continue around the bottom of the frame to the upright - this is where the gathering of the spare material will happen!

A bit more thinking and stretching to see how it all works...

Then sew down from the top middle to the bottom.

Sew back along the bottom towards the back, then pull the material tight and fold over so that it follows the vertical frame. This will be hidden by clever painting later!!

And after two hours of painful stretching and hand stitching, half of the back half of Booger's head (ie: a quarter of a circle) was completely sewn!!

This is the easy half too!! Hopefully the next part of it will be even easier... then there's the front half, which is going to be very interesting indeed!!

You may note that Scottie didn't take Booger Mobile home tonight... He had decided that it was best to follow the advice given regarding the front shims not being correct on the outer tie-rod ends - this advice was basically not to drive Booger Mobile until the problem was corrected. Damian will take the outer tie-rod end to the engineer on Monday morning on the way to the bus stop (Camp Quality Senior Camp is on this coming Monday to Friday), so that he can use it to measure up for the new shims.

The list had several items ticked off it today, but also had a bunch of things added... some days it seems the boys are busy all day, but the list is busier!!