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The Bikerat

Strap a leaf blower to it for ***** and giggles!

[video=youtube;cbGWgvJN1_8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbGWgvJN1_8[/video]
 
I've managed a fair bit of work on the bikerat in the last few days, mainly sorting out the paint and preparing for future mods. The paint is flaking off in quite a few places, not due to corrosion or anything I can see, I don't really understand what's happened. As I sand down the bad bits it keeps flaking further and further, so a small chip turns into a huge patch!

Fixing the nasty paintwork.





Getting back to my roots with some old school arch rolling.



This is the only bad bit of rust I've found so far. It's a bumper mount behind the rear passenger side arch.



Cut out and ready for a patch, I'll do it when I have enough bits to justify lugging the massive welder around the house.



The rear crash bar has definitely had a little love-tap at some point, so the bumper didn't really fit, it was also pretty scabby and horrible. So I cleaned it up and gave it a good seeing to with a great big bit of metal. It's better than it was, at least the bumper goes on now...



Kurusted and hammerited.



As the bumper mounts are now either rotted away, snapped off, or bent into completely the wrong place, we came up with a pretty good mounting solution.



Today was a good day. It's really weird to switch back and forward between working on that '86 landy and the micra. The size and weight of everything is just on an entirely different scale!

 
How have I missed this thread....Jimbo I'll be disappointed if this thing comes out looking even remotely sensible.
 
Well, the front wheels fit, I'll measure them properly later and find spigots. I measured the rears and they look like they'll fit too. Winning.

Small problem that I hadn't anticipated; the nuts are too big, there's not enough space for a socket. So I'll have a look for slim nuts. I wonder what will come up when I google that....



The jack is supporting the weight here, hence the gap, as the nuts are just finger tight.



That's going to be pretty tight! 185s on a micra :lol:.
It will need a bit of stretch when I get around to lowering it, but I may as well wear out these Yokohamas first.



Ready for wire brushing and rust treatment.



Of course, as soon as I got to that stage it started raining :mad:
 
Are those the original nuts from the Micra? They may not be the right seat type to match the wheels. Steel wheels frequently use a different type to alloys.
 
Yep, they're a 60 degree taper as far as I can tell, irrelevant now anyway. I'll hopefully find a decent used set somewhere, might take some digging though. If anybody has a set of M12x1.25 lying around let me know!
 
I might have a set of long blue D1 Spec ones lying around dude, they're yours if i can find them ;)
 
No worries pal, the offer is there if you should want your Micra to resemble something from Ben Hur, they are seriously long :lol:
 
It's been raining for a week, so I commandeered my parents' garage for a while. Painting car parts with a roller is heaps of fun, I can't believe it took me until I was 32 to do it. I'll get the rest done over the next few weeks. There's a growing pile of awesome to be played with first. Also, my new flatmate RUNS HIS OWN PRINTING AND GRAPHICS BUISNESS. He does proper fancy vehicle graphics. AMAZE. FRICKIN. BALLS. Dumb stuff will happen.

"Rolled" and stretched arch. By "rolled", I mean smashed up with a big hammer. Deeply satisfying. They were hammerited behind the lip just before "rolling", then heaps over the top once it was done, so hopefully that will keep the moisture and rust out.



Then it finally stopped raining today, so I went nuts with the wire brush on the drill, treated and painted everything, then put the front end back together. There's new bumper mounts on there too, the old ones pretty much fell apart in my hands. I was amazed to find they only cost £8 a side brand new, that's a lot of metalwork for the price! I actually managed a fair old stretch on the arches, I may not need stretchy tyres when I drop it.









I've got a bit of work to do on the back end, it was bugging me that the bumper was barely hanging on so I stripped the bumper and crash bar off another one at the scrappy. The bumper is painted (and this one has mounts on it), the bar was fully stripped down, treated and hammerited, so it's good to go. I don't know what the captive bolts on the bar were made of, but it took me over an hour to grind and drill them off, chuffing tough stuff that.

The bad news is that the rear wheels don't fit, the centre bore is about 56mm, I need 59.1. So I'll find somebody with a lathe, or router...... failing that, dremel :lol:
 
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Loving where you are going with this Jim.
I wish I had half your imagination

Sent from my SM-G130HN using Tapatalk
 
This is my kinda build! You can't go wrong with turning a mini sh!tbox into to something far cooler. Keep up the good work Jim ;)
 
Question for you Jim

How much does the car owe you so far?

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So far about £600. That's including the brand spanky bike rack, wheels, tax, insurance, paint, new/scrappy parts, and a few more comedy things yet to be revealed. Oh, and the car.
 
lol Jim. This will give my friend Dave some ideas. He recently bought a 1990 Micra 1.2 GS. Only had 43K on the clock. :D
 
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