Have you ever wanted to drive a race car but just didn’t think you had the cash? Well the Bomber Race during the Rock Rallye at Morris Mountain ORV might just be the answer. The race consists of junk cars racing around a specially built track for 4 hours all the while slamming into each other.
We decided to sponsor and help Crazy Steve of Integrity Automotive build a race car. The rules are simple; you take a car, rip out all of the glass, cage it, paint it & go race! The entrants for the 2010 race include everything from a F250 conversion van to a Honda Civic hatchback.
After a lot of searching we decided on a 1994 Ford Taurus. Actually it found us as its owner was giving it away for FREE. We got to work quickly cutting the roof off (this made it easier to build the cage) & gutting the car. The car needed some TLC including a new head gasket and some other miscellaneous wrenching. It didn’t take long for us to get it running enough to take it out to the dirt lot next door for some testing. The car was overheating badly, hey we can always just run the heater on full blast during the race right?
Next was the paint scheme. The rules state that we have to have a Nascar inspired paint scheme. We went to work with some Ford Blue and some cheap black spray paint. After rattle-canning the car half to death we slapped on a few stickers to make it look racey. We hand painted the Busted Knuckle Films logo on to the hood with some white enamel.
Then came the mandatory Roll-cage. A few pieces of 1-3/4″ .120 wall HREW tubing was bent up with a ProTools bender. We started with the main hoop just behind the driver otherwise known as the B-pillar. We welded it to the floor with some square plates. Then we connected two supports from it back to the trunk area. A few bars going down beside the driver and passengers feet and we had a regulation 6 point cage. We had a nice surprise as the car caught on fire while welding the plates to the floor. Turns out the gas line was running just below it. No worries though we quickly dowsed it out with a fire extinguisher. We also cut out the passenger airbag and added a grab bar for the person that is brave enough to ride with Steve.
Custom bumpers were fabbed up to keep the car protected during the 4hour smash em up derby endurance race. We hope the car can stay together for the entire race. It will be tough with Steveo behind the wheel. He already broke both front CV shafts test driving the Bomber Taurus in the field next to the shop. We will see what happens when he hits the 50′ table top. Catch all the action in our next DVD entitled “RockRods”. If you want to race check out the links in this post and get started!
Most of the body has been reworked and there is very little left of the original panels. The front and rear is doved and the whole thing is caged extending all the way to the front of the motor. The front panels were cut off and welded to the hood along with the grill so the whole thing lifts up as one unit and is out of the way so it can be worked on without anything in the way. The body was painted from the baby-turd-green it originally came from the factory to a bright “Ford” blue implement paint found at TSC. The cage got orange paint just to be bright and stand out.
1987 Toyota 4Runner SR5
In 2004, After a few different paint jobs and some hardcore wheeling the new weak link was found . Who can blame him when it only costs $60 to spray the whole rig. The new limiting factor for the rig was the Independent front suspension or IFS. This suspension design is not the best for rock-crawling purposes. It was time for a SAS Solid Axle Swap. Wade cut off the front suspension and swapped in an Solid front axle out of a 85′ truck he got for FREE from his neighbor with a mix of All-Pro, Longfield, and Marlin parts. The whole swap including new rear springs took only 4 days and was done in the street in front of his house. Wow what a difference the swap made on the trail.
This setup lasted a few years but as most of us know the more you push a rockcrawler the more you find its weak links. The old carbureted 4.2 Inline 6 cylinder and manual trans were making wheeling difficult. Wayne found a donor 2wd Cherokee and swapped the Fuel Injected 4.0 and AW4 automatic transmission into the CJ7. He even set the cherokee guage cluster into the dash of the CJ. The tilt steering column was also swapped in from the cherokee. The Jeep was starting to look more like a TJ than a CJ.
Lastly it was time for some paint and some protection for the Jeep. Wayne built a 6 point Rollcage out of 1.75 .120 wall DOM tubing. He also added a front stinger and tube fenders to finish out the front of the Jeep. The CJ7 dubbed “TJ7″ due to its components is beat on alot these days without a glitch. You can see this rig and more in action in our latest 
It didn’t stop there. Next was some custom tube work that included bumpers, a full cage, sliders & of course dovetailing the rear. Byron bent up a nice stinger and a few more hoops for the front and went with a clean and simple design for the rear. He then made some square tube rocksliders to keep his rocker panels happy. After that he cut wedges out of the back of the bronco floor and pulled the bedsides in until he had the right amount of dovetail. Now it was cage time. The cage was built a lot like a truck cage out of 1-3/4′ .120 wall tubing. The factory Dash & steering wheel were ripped out and chucked in the trash pile. They were replaced with a clean custom dash with only the necessities for gauges. Finally a set of rock rings and 42″ Pitbull Rockers were mounted under the bronco to give it that one of a kind stance he had been looking for.
