ooooooook time for my latest. Literally my latest as I haven't done ANYTHING to any other car since this was finished, and that was a good 4 or 5 months ago.
It all started with this Dodge Rampage Real Rider that came from E-Bay in this super-nice, nearly mint original shape:
but saaaadly, the car was missing the trike in the bed. The child that owned it (I hope it was a child) liked it so much that he cut it off, I assume. You can even see signs of the blade in the rear border of the roof, above the rear glass.
I started to sniff around looking for an interior piece for one of these. You'd think that would be pretty difficult, but this car was also a made-in-Mexico model and it was quite the good seller for obvious resaons. I asked around in the club and sure enough, a guy popped up that had an interior piece off a mexican car, but it was white (very rare btw). He showed it to me in a get-together and I was about to take it, but another guy overheard us talking about it and he told me he had a complete car that was trashed but it had a yellow interior. We agreed to trade in the next meeting, and this was what he gave me:
Pretty trashed but sure enough, the interior piece was there, complete with trike, and it was very yellow.
It really hurt to tear apart a made-in-Mexico car as I do not have it, I only have international versions of this car, but...
The interior piece was cleaned as much as it could be cleaned, then cut in half and trimmed carefulyl with a cutter until the motorbike could fit well in the hole on the bed of the Rampage.
It was then installed just with some Pritt Takt, it was never put in there permamently, but the damned white gooey holds it in place firmly. So the car finally had a bike in the rear:
If I didn't tell you this story and you didn't see the pics, you wouldn't have believed this car was lacking the trike.
Finally! And what's really cool is that I was missing the gray wheels version, I already had the (much rarer) white wheels car. Now on to find the mexican versions (including the almost-urban-legend one with normal blackwalls):
Aaaaand that's it, enjoy!
NOT.
Obviously, the previously shown process left me with this, the donor Rampage with half an interior.
Of course, I have a very soft heart for donor cars, specially if they are as rare as a white-wheels, Made-in-Mexico, I-don't-have-it-dammit Dodge Rampage. I had to do something with it. So...
First idea for this car was to straight-up restore it, something that seemed absolutely plausible since paint guy found this poor thing in a flea market:
Yes, it's YET another made-in-Mexico Rampage, the very rare white-interior version, but this was absolutely dead. Still, the interior piece was there and could be used to bring the other one back to life. He knew I had it so he grabbed it and gave it to me.
Unfortunately, the bike was pretty trashed and very, VERY dirty. I left it in water for DAYS and the mud and filth didn't come off even with a tootbrush. And since the car was gonna participate in the custom contest for the upcoming club meeting, I decided I would not use it or I wouldn't complete it in time, as detaling the bike and cutom-making its missing stuff would take loads of time.
Of course, that let me with the problem of the hole in the bed. Fortunately, I already had something in mind to make a custom bed cover. I have a plastic folder in which I store my old drawings which has a ribbed surface that was perfect for it. I cut a small chunck and trimmed it to fit, then painted it matte black:
I also threw together a little something in Photoshop to roughly show the paint guy what I wanted; he told me he had me covered with the color:
Yes, I am fully aware that Shelby never messed with the Rampage, but it's a popular upgrade for these trucks to be fitted with Shelby engines and drivetrians, or at least parts, form their high-powered cousins. The wheels were the closest I could find to the ones I already had decided for the truck, some JL stars with rubber tires.
For fitting said wheels, though, the chassis had to be modified in order not to modify the axle lenght, which I didin 't want to because it positioned the wheels perfectly in the car. I had to trim away these little metal... things.
Paint time! there is no picture, but the interior was also painted in the same caramel hue I used for the Stutz's interior, then matte-clear-coated. I wanted it gray, but the interior was painted the night before the meeting and I did not have gray paint. I used what I had.
Proper stance was taken care of with some random plastic bits; you can also see in this picture that the headlamps on the chassis were masked off so they'd stay in bare zamac, they were later polished up a bit with the Dremel:
Here is the result; custom graphics were made in Photoshop and printed in white water-decal paper; obviously the graphics are meant to seem like the letters are body color, and incredibly, I chose the blue of the lettering by eye only, and I almost nailed it.
holes and turn signals detailed:
The bed came out pretty good:
Stancey:
And now, for real, that's it. Like this post!