Rusty's Build Thread [250+ photos]

[Presns3]

i am seriously blown away!!!!
where do you get all this money?!?!?!?

[M.Burroughs]

Reserved for the future.

[M.Burroughs]

Reserved for the future.

[M.Burroughs]

September 27, 2010

Rusty is revealed once again, this time with a 5" chopped top, 4" more drop, new, one-off gold-plated 17" ronal racing splits, a diesel-rubbed body, and a fresh new interior.

[M.Burroughs]

September 18, 2010

Roof nears completion




It was time for the motor to go in. We'd put it in and out of the car probably 10 times, but this was the first time with the new trans.

For those who don't know, one issue with this swap is that the driveshaft has to go in at the same time as the engine, as both ends of it are "slips". The rear goes through the subframe before bolting to the diff. The front is a slip yoke that slides into the trans, so the engine must be lowered into place, sliding over the driveshaft, and then bolted down.

It's a PITA.

Engine going in:


Then making the 3rd driveshaft for the car, so it can go in and we can get the motor into place..







We had to remove the gas tank and the spare tire well since they were dragging... so here's rodney cutting out the old well...



Trunk is done:
15 gallon fuel cell and a walbro 255 fuel pump.


As a whole:




Got my gauge panel for the interior done:


September 24, 2010

The night we're supposed to be leaving for H20... The entire engine power wiring harness melts.

Debate:


I stayed up all night to make a new harness from scratch.




It fires up, we dance, we rush to finish.

Windows in:


Demolish front fenders:


Load 'er up and head to H2O!

[M.Burroughs]

September 10, 2010

Roof is coming together. Ratty donates the center sections...





Over the next few days, the car slowly comes together..



Now back to that front suspension... How do we get it lower?

Well, A) we shorten the front struts and inch. We did so by removing the struts from the car and then removing the shocks from the strut housings. From there we shortened the internal spacer and put it back together.

Cutting the strut...


Shortening the Spacer in the bottom... the right way.


Reassembly:


Welding:



And the finished product:


And notch the frame rails.. in 3 spots on each side (only one shown)


And cut out the tops of the fender supports...


It's comin' down.. but it needs a little more.

So we made our own strut hat/mounts.. I need to find pictures.

Frame rails and control arms on the shop floor:


Floorpan resting on the ground...


-10* of camber


September 13, 2010

Rusty gets antique tags!


Front end on, coming together..




September 15, 2010

More roof segments done..






Gotta lift the center..


Also, this showed up:


I had to remove the gas tank and spare tire well, as they were hitting the ground.


Not even aired all the way out... the diff hovers above the ground. Look at the angle of the axles...



Oh.. and brian sent me this pic... my completed 17s, the only set in the world.

[M.Burroughs]

September 1, 2010

Skip forward a few days of un-photographed work.

A total of 5" chopped out of the pillars. Front halves in place.. rear not so much.







We decided not to angle the pillars more, so we had to cut the roof into four equal pieces. One for each corner. Then we had to patch everything in between.

Now, before the rear pieces of the roof could go on, we needed to redo the rear strut towers. I wanted to drop the car enough to set it on the ground.. shortening the rear struts wasn't so much an option, so we modified the car.









Completed with the rear end aired out...



September 9, 2010

We've still been working every night. The car sits low....



But not low enough...

[M.Burroughs]

May 30, 2010

Rusty's transmission explodes.

The car sat. I pulled the engine out to put the new trans in, but the trans didn't go in for quite some time.



But the heat of the trans exploded welded the DS to the transmission, so she was stuck pretty good.






July 13, 2010

While Rusty sits with no engine and trans, I get a call from brian at Rotiform telling me he got a set of 5x120 Ronal centers in, but he thought I was the only one who could rock 'em. I asked why, and he sent me this photo...



Challenge accepted.

It was serious motivation to bring Rusty back... but just gold wheels wasn't going to work.
Something big needed to be done.

I decided to blacken the body with the diesel oil.



Black and gold, what better combo, right? Well, something was still lacking, but I didn't know what yet...

Brian sent me the ronals set up as 16s, which was the original plan. I mounted 'em up.





If I were static, it would have been perfect.. but aired out, they wouldn't tuck as it was. They'd hit right there, and the car would sit too high for my liking...

So Cory and I took to the fenders....

If you've ever rolled E28 fenders, you know our pain. Well, you don't, but you think you do.

August 16, 2010







2 nights of rolling got the rear to where we thought would work... but they were 16s. By this point, I knew I wanted to stay with 17s... so we tested with the ACS and some super spacers...



It was sick... but the car still didn't squat down like it should. Realistically, we had a loooong way to go.

August 19. 2010

I decided to strip the interior completely. I was tired of the nasty blue garbage that was in there.





August 23, 2010

We had talked about chopping the top on rusty an entire year earlier. I had done countless photoshops of it, and had talked about it at length.

I realized that it was time.

I called up my friend Chuck Yoder, and we made plans. Bigger fenders, chopped top, the whole 9 yards...

So we took Rusty to his new temporary home in chuck's garage and got to work.

We decided to tackle the fenders first.

The inner fenders had to be removed entirely for clearance.


We had to cut into the door frames for the tire to have a spot to go. Believe it or not, this made a HUGE difference.



Chuck did the fenders with a ball peen hammer. That's it.




So what next? Well, I guess its time to cut off the roof.

Bracing for the chassis, since it will flex when the roof is cut off.




Making measurements, tape lines..


Cut number one... no turning back...


That looks like a roof...




We initially chopped 3" out of the top... and put the roof back into position. We decided it needed more chop, as the look wasn't changed enough from original.


Next set of cuts partway done!

[M.Burroughs]

March 16, 2010

Oh hey, look what showed up thanks to Rotiform..


Test fit...


So I got tires mounted, and ish slowly came together.



Buuuuuuttttttt


Once we got it driving, during a test drive, the driveshaft U-joint in the back exploded. The driveshaft wrecked everything, and shot about 12 feet in the air after tearing a 14" hole in the floor of the car and killing everything else down there.



And these showed up, thanks to Open Road Tuning and BagYard...



I didn't take pics of the install and whatnot, because I was in a super rush. Sorry.

April 10, 2010

Rusty rises from the dead, 1JZ powered and on air ride. It didn't sit much lower, but of course, that was to come...













The car drove wonderfully from Nashville to Atlanta... all thanks to Jerry once again.

So I rocked it.... for a while.

Two more of my favorite pics of the car.






Louise saw the car again, and loved it, so feature number 3 arrived.











And one last photo, which was supposed to be the mag shoot.

[M.Burroughs]

First, I bought a euro front end. Austin's to be exact. Austin's beast lives on....



Next was suspending the engine to make engine mounts.





Not much room...


Jerry of course helped me order every damn thing I needed.

IC showed up:


Test hanging:


Those towhooks gotta go....



And so they did!


Motor mounts done, engine in...




Jerry went beast-mode on the wiring. Shit never woulda happened without him.






The man, the myth, the god.

[M.Burroughs]

February 5, 2010

Driving the car coast to coast and much much more takes its toll on a car that bashes into anything in its way... and so does getting hit by a semi truck. From something, whatever it was, the car began to fall apart. The end seemed near. Rusty's outlook was bad.

We decided to pull the motor and begin stripping it. It had lived a good, long life.

The final photos:




Engine, wheels, suspension out:


The beast, 500,000+ miles.










But of course Rusty could never die. You should have known that.





Parts began to arrive.

[M.Burroughs]

October 14, 2009

So we got back from Cali a month later, at the end of August. Fast forward a month and Ben Terry calls me inviting me to Stance of the Union.
Well, I did the cross-country thing once, and decided I needed more light this time.





The main issue was that the wheels were cracked. I'm not sure how, but it happened... so to get the car to TX, I swapped to 17s, which of course, dropped the car even more.



Meanwhile, while I was in TX, magazine feature number two hit shelves in S3 Mag.




November 16, 2009

I had started to grow tired of the orange rust, so I switched it up a bit.

Webb and I sanded the car partially down. Enough to knock the top layer of rust off, but not quite all of it. We followed that with a glaze of Naval Jelly over the entire car. We wiped it all off, then coated the car in fresh motor oil.

Add some P40 mustang graphics, hand painted by yours truly (and my momma!) and keep the 17s on and you have the 2nd iteration of Rusty.













I didn't do a whole lot to the car for a while. Here are a few other pics after the oil dried.







And my favorite photo of the car to date.

[M.Burroughs]

I'm sure you know what happens next...





I've got build pics of the trailer somewhere but I can't find them.
What we did was cut the rails off of the perimeter of the trailer, removed the axle, and flipped the trailer.
We welded the railings back on upside-down, and mounted the axle to the top (previously the bottom) of the leaf springs.

Result?

Dumped trailer.







Up next? California!

July 31, 2009

Andrew and I went on our "epic" road trip to California.
Get the whole story here, because its worth reading... but I'll post some important parts of the "build" here.

Before we could leave, we had to roll the fenders even more. Rubbing was constant with the trailer.



The trailer was packed up:


We had lots of issues. Dead fuel pumps, dead tires, falling exhausts, etc.

So One awesome Foster family, two fuel pumps, a cap and rotor, and two new tires, later, we were able to get on the road.




The exhaust also had to be re-done.





DJ Neeko helped us patch it up and put a skidplate on it.





The patented "Neekflow" side exit was super gangster.

But in a single week we dominated it again, so rusty became exhaustless.

[M.Burroughs]

May 10, 2009

On May 10, 2009, we turned the BMW game upside down.























A few days later, I returned with no hood at all:








A few more photos:

[M.Burroughs]

January 30, 2009

January 30, 2009 was a bitter-sweet day. It was the day my magazine feature landed.





It was also the day I let a friend borrow my car, and they slammed it into the side of a semi-truck.



I got a large insurance check for it, put it in the back of the driveway, and forgot about it. I stripped it of the suspension and goodies for my replacement 6-er...

Fast forward...

April 24, 2009

I remembered I had "rusty" sitting down in the driveway...

So I got to work...
I had that silver parts car. It clicked that I had the parts to put the E28 back together... so I pulled the fender and got out the tools, and eventually got it to line up to some far off extent..



But the problem was it was now black, silver, and a rusty hood.
When I had rusted the hood, I wanted to rust the whole car, but couldn't murder my car like that. After all, it's like a delayed lethal injection.

Well, there I was... I had an E28 that had put money in my pocket and was either going to go to the junk yard, or I could give it one last hurrah....

I'm sure you already know what I did.





April 27, 2009

It took 3 days and a LOT of paint removal pads... but I got 'er done.



I whipped out the same concoction I used to rust the hood, and gave the car a dousing... unfortunately, it didn't work as well.



I went back to the drawing board, figured out an even better solution, and within 4 hours, I had a rusty E28.

Rusty was born.









I hit the car again with the solution and really got the rust to darken down a bit, to what everyone saw. I also yanked the RSs from the 6, and lastly, I chopped those springs to hell.