Tag: off road

Subtle Shuttle – Ford E350 4×4 build

Gregor Halenda is a man whose talents I’ve followed for many years. Long-time readers will remember the post I wrote up about Gregor’s multiple projects (with no less than 6 links to various threads) that he had a hand in, including his gorgeous home that opened my eyes to the wonders of mid century modern architecture. That post was made over two years ago, and Gregor has not been idle. Along with his busy photography schedule, he has turned his attentions to creating a capable adventure vehicle for quality family time on (and off) the open road. The base vehicle? An airport shuttle bus!

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What I’m Watching: Dirt Every Day

If you miss the old Roadkill (pre Dodge sponsorship days), then you’re going to love Dirt Every Day. While I’m not really into off-roading, I absolutely LOVE this channel. Fred is a down to earth guy who hosts his own series videos on the MotorTrend channel, which is why he’s allowed to poke fun at Finnegan and Freiburger (and their newfound viral popularity) whenever he so chooses. In this episode, he starts transforming a Plymouth Road Runner into a turbo diesel powered off road warrior.

1976 International Scout Traveler

Even though I’m not into off-roading myself, I really enjoy reading builds from this dirt-loving subculture. Reason being is that I get to see the same metal-working techniques being implemented for a different purpose, it’s just interesting to see the similarities and differences. High instead of low, mud instead of asphalt, dirt instead of shine, but at the end of the day we are all modifying our vehicles so we can enjoy them beyond the expectations the manufacturer had in mind for them. This particular build is a 1976 Scout Traveler, a vehicle made by International, and it’s being built to a very high standard for the purpose of long and remote hunting trips in the countryside.

Thanks to Jess for submitting. Click here for more off-road builds.

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BUILT from eBay [video build x4]

So, I’ve become a bit of a YouTube junky lately. My almost nightly ritual consists of plonking myself down on the couch with a hot coffee, firing up the iPad, plugging in my over-ear headphones, and catching up on all of my favourite subscriptions. Some of those include /DRIVE, HoonTV, Jay Leno’s Garage, Marchettino, Mighty Car Mods, Motor Trend (Roadkill and Dirt Every Day), and of course Petrolicious. For too long I imagined YouTube’s sole existence catered to wannabe celebrities uploading videos of themselves doing something stupid in the hope of going viral. Now I’m more than aware that it’s become quite the replacement for television, with professionally produced channels releasing regular content aimed at specific demographics, making their viewers crave new content just like you would for Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones.

It was during a browsing session that I stumbled across a 10-part series called “BUILT from eBay”, which chronicled the process of four different shops (aligned with 4 different magazines) building four different cars using parts bought only from eBay. While the concept is pretty transparent as being one big commercial, the content is quite entertaining. Hell, you get to see four completely different cars being built without having to read a single word, what’s there to complain about?

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Mercedes V8 Unimog

Anyone else wondering what a Unimog is? If you are, like I was, I’ll do the Wiki-ing for you…

The name Unimog is pronounced [ˈuːnɪmÉ”k] in German and is an acronym for the German“UNIversal-MOtor-Gerät”, Gerät being the German word for machine or device.

The more you know, hey? This Mercedes Unimog (we can pretend we knew what that meant all along now) was bought sight unseen, with what turned out to be a blown motor. The owner sees to break it down from it’s ex-military looking guise, throw an assortment of parts and fabrication at it (over the course of 2 rebuilds), and ends up with a mud-ready 347ci Ford V8-powered off road assault vehicle, perfect climbing steep trails, dashing through the now snow, or being covered in sweet, glorious, dirty mud. All this while seating 5 people in open-air (somewhat) comfort.

Thanks to Chris for submitting. Click here for more off road builds.

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Fabricated Ford F150

What is it about off-road guys that makes them churn out pr0n-quality fabrication? Is it the fact that their parts need to endure high levels of abuse, or do they just like leaving the rest of us in awe? I could just post a bunch of welding pics from this thread without actually showing the car and people would be highly entertained. This Ford F150 is transformed into a rolling collection of beefy one-off hand made parts, culminating in a vehicle so robust that it could probably survive an atom bomb.

Thanks to Cody for submitting.

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Retromod Toyota Tacoma

Well here’s a first, I cant’ say I’ve ever featured an expedition truck before, nor have I read a build with the words “can be loaded safely in a 20-foot container with one or two NATO crates of supplies behind it”. The owner of this rig had gotten the most out of his trusty FJ Cruiser, so he decided to create a new expedition vehicle with some retro flavour. Instead of scouring the classifieds for a well-worn 70’s-80’s truck and having to go through the whole restoration process before even beginning to modify it for his needs (including a shortened bed), he began this build with a brand new 2012 Toyota Tacoma and proceeded to turn back the clock aesthetically to create what he cleverly calls a “retromod”.

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FMU BMW X5

Confession: I’ve had a long-running man-crush on Fluid Motor Union ever since I first stumbled across their posts on the StanceWorks forums. Their famous flame-spitting Gallardo image is my Ps3 wallpaper, every day I look forward to their in-depth posts about the latest goings-on at the shop, and I constantly day-dream of sending my Datto over to the land of 1-gallon soda cups for a bespoke one-off FMU exhaust system. Not only do they do some of the cleanest and most impressive fabrication work I’ve seen, but they take the time to document their daily activities on their own blog and various forums, so people like you and me can enjoy gawking at glorious TIG beads from our computer screens all over the world.

Recently the team embarked on giving a damaged BMW X5 a new lease on life, but kept a lot of the progress shrouded in secrecy, until now…

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Jeep Buggy Racer

On Friday, a reader by the name of Brad made a request on the Build-Threads Facebook page for a Jeep build. Not wanting to disappoint, I headed to my submissions list and fished out some Jeep links from long-time submitter, Cereal. This particular Jeep starts out with little more than a cab and a grille, which the owner then custom fabricates everything around until a completely custom race-spec buggy is born. What I love about this build is the pure strength and size of the parts used and fabrication techniques that go with them, everything is built to take extreme punishment, including the beefiest skid-plate I’ve ever seen!

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