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Mad Ax

F150 Scaler Build - CC01, word and pic heavy

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This is yet another old project from the back of the shelf.  I probably started a build thread about this way back when but I expect all my photos were stored in the Bucket of Photos back before I threw my teddies out the pram over the Great Photobucket Ransom, so here it is afresh, courtesy of TCPhotos.

This one isn't actually being built by me, it's being built by Adam and Nigel, who run a custom workshop called SCRAPSpeed.  Since this one is from the archives, I'll start right at the beginning.

It was back on 4th May 2014 - 6 years ago almost to the day, if you can believe that - when I popped over to see my friends Adam and Nigel at their workshop.  I happened to notice that had a stripped out 9th gen F150 sitting on the shop floor.  I asked if it was for a customer, but Adam shook his head and rolled his eyes at Nigel, who was fabricating something out of aluminium at the back of the shop.  "He brought it back from the swap meet last week." He said.  "We're going to lift the body and do a bit of off-roading."

The shell looked like new, and was in a fresh coat of white primer.  Underneath was a fairly standard chassis with some mild steering upgrades and the usual independent front, live rear that you find on these Fords.

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I took a look at the brackets that Nigel was fabricating.  He told me they were so he could 4-link the rear end, apparently a better set-up than stock.

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I hung around while he got them fitted.  I don't know much about these F150s but that sure looks better than what was on there before.

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I had to go back the next day to pick up some things, so I grabbed another pic.  Adam had just finished fitting a tubular bumper to the front of the truck.

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11th May 2014 - I went back over to see how the lads were getting on with their F150 build.  Nigel had got rid of those 1.9" wheels that look like they should be off a Pajero or something and stuck on these 1.55s with super-sticky Mickey Thompson rubber.  I think that looks so much better.

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18th May 2014, I was passing the workshop and I spotted the F150 out front.  Nigel had pulled it out to work on a customer car.  I stopped to grab these pics of the awesome bash guard that he'd made.

I'm so jealous of the lake outside their workshop.  I used to have a pond like that just outside my house but my wife said it would be a health hazard to the baby we were planning to have so we filled it in.

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27th May 2014.  Adam needed my help with something so I spent the day at SCRAPSpeed.  While I was busy fixing Adam's PC and cleaning off all the viruses that Nigel had managed to download while he was trying to stream some US motorsport videos off some dodgy sharing site, the SCRAPSpeed boys were busy in the workshop sorting the interior for their F150.

They made this floor pan.  They had to leave an area cut out for the heavy duty steering system that Adam had installed.

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They also fabricated their own bench seat.

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9th June 2014.  The boys have the body off the truck.  Not sure what they've got planned here...

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25th June 2014.  Nigel gave me a close up view of the bash guard and tow hooks that he'd made.

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He then had some more work to do on the bench seat

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Unfortunately for him, Adam didn't have much to do

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Working with Adam can be quite tiresome, so I'm told...

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Adam was able to crack on and fit the seat mounts

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But Nigel was so mad with him, he made him clean up the workshop before he could sit down for his post-workshop beer

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26th June 2014 - the bench seat is fitted!

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16th Feb 2015.  Wow, time flies.  I hadn't had a chance to get over to see the SCRAPSpeed boys in ages so I called in on the way back from ordering a long weight at the local hardware store.

Nigel was busy fabricating a dashboard for his F150.

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And that was that.  You know, life gets in the way.  Nigel got into a legal dispute with his nextdoor neighbour over access rights to the two-tier glass-fronted pond he'd made in his back garden, Adam had to have an operation after some business with a toy rocket, a disused submarine base and a wholesale size pack of bubblegum, Nigel had to move overseas after his pond cracked during cold weather and sent an icy cascade over the back garden of the house at the bottom of the hill, freezing solid the hibernating rare Moroccan Crested Rabbits owned by Heimy T. Hopperbauer III, local landowner and part-time gangster, and Adam wound up working a dead-end job putting the holes in Rich Tea biscuits.

Well, anyway, the global pandemic had changed matters somewhat.  Nigel had been repatriated, Adam has been furloughed, Heimy T. Hoppebauer III is shielding from Covid-19 due to a pre-existing condition caused by inhaling too many paint fumes when he went into the SCRAPSpeed workshop's paint booth to complain about the smell of paint when the boys were busy painting.

With no business to run and nothing else to do during lockdown, Adam and Nigel wheeled the dusty hulk of their old F150 out of the back of the workshop and decided to make some progress.  I took a 2-hour essential motorcycle ride along every single B-road in all of Wiltshire to get to the newsagent nextdoor to the SCRAPSpeed workshop to buy the only remaining white chocolate Twix bar in the county.  While I was waiting my contactless transaction to go through on the newsagent's turn-of-the-century card reader, I stood at a safe 2 metre distance to take some pics of what the boys were up to.

Here's all the parts neatly laid out on the workshop floor.

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Nigel had some idea about fitting aftermarket light buckets from Shapeways, so he cut the stock light buckets off the tailgate.  There's some story as to why the tailgate is unpainted black and scarred from use while the rest of the body is like new, but I forget what it was.  That and I couldn't really hear him because he mumbles a lot and I was 2 metres away.

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that tailgate looks pretty messed up to me.

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Still, 20 minutes with some wet or dry and Nigel had it all cleaned up

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Meanwhile, Adam was busy cleaning up the seat

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There.  That looks better.

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A bit of filler primer on the tailgate worked wonders too

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Meanwhile there were some marks in the bonnet that needed filling

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Before the boys decided to make a tool chest for the bed

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Adam kinda got a bit distracted

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but nothing puts him off his game

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Finished tool chest looks pretty good

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So they went over to the paint booth to throw some paint on the body.  Originally they were going to go with a deep maroon colour or something, but what with not being able to get to the auto parts store to get more paint (the home and garden outlet nextdoor to the auto store had just sold the last limited edition Peppa Pig pink toilet paper 24-pack known to be in the country just 20 minutes before Nigel phoned to check, which ruined that plan), they had to go with what they had in stock.  This is Volkswagen Brilliant Orange.  No idea why they had that, since they've never built a Volkswagen, they've never built anything orange and they're completely not brilliant.

Still, it looks pretty good on the Ford body.

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Then they tried to find some paint to sort out the bench seat.  They had some red oxide primer, which kinda looks like a deep tan, but unfortunately the nozzle was blocked and it didn't come out right.

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Nigel went outside and started hacking down the fence around the workshop garden, on the basis that he could make the essential journey to the hardware store to buy some replacement panels and grab some more red oxide primer he was in there, but meanwhile Adam just went mental with the blocked nozzle and shot on enough paint to drown a small wasp.  Disaster averted and no need to go to the hardware store after all.

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With the paint touch-dry after curing under a halogen lamp, Nigel and Adam lifted it onto their chassis and did an articulation test

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Looking pretty good for a day's work, I think.  Actually the body would come down a little without affecting tyre clearance.  I think the boys will look at that later.

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Oh, and they had some metallic paint to finish the tool chest too.

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That's a good day's work, IMO

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10th May 2020.  I had to pop over to SCRAPSpeed's workshop to clean Adam's pet hamster.  Since I'm the only person in the whole of Wiltshire qualified to clean a hamster according to current EU regulations, it was classed as an essential work journey.  (Technically we still have to confirm to EU rules right now, although we have official notified our intention to leave, so all hamsters must be cleaned to the necessary EU standards).

When I got there, Adam and Nigel were busy fitting all the accessories and ancillaries to the body.

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Nigel got to work fitting the window glass while Adam wired up the custom dash.

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The truck came with tinted glass but Nigel wanted something simpler.  He also made this neat sunroof riser.

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Once the body was complete and re-mounted, and Adam's hamster was sparkling clean and in conformance of all necessary regulations, they pulled the truck out so I could get some better photos.

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They still need to order those light lenses

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On 5/3/2020 at 7:49 AM, Mad Ax said:

11th May 2014 - I went back over to see how the lads were getting on with their F150 build.  Nigel had got rid of those 1.9" wheels that look like they should be off a Pajero or something and stuck on these 1.55s with super-sticky Mickey Thompson rubber.  I think that looks so much better.

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SEVERAL People argue with me about this.... 1.55s look SO much more Scale on these Trucks than anything else! Great choice!!

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4 hours ago, Carmine A said:

SEVERAL People argue with me about this.... 1.55s look SO much more Scale on these Trucks than anything else! Great choice!!

Actually I got this a bit wrong - they are 1.7s.  I think they're about the right size for this type of truck, and with the Mickey Thompson rubber they look just right.  1.55s do look stunning on the right rig, tho :)

Enjoy your CC01 refresh!

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I popped over to see Adam and Nigel over the Christmas holidays.  Nigel is starting a new sideline business breeding koi carp and had asked for donations to help him get started, so I took some jerry cans of fresh water from my tap to help him get started.

Tier 2 restrictions means we could only meet outside, but Adam gave me some photos they took while they were looking over the F150 the previous day.  Like all long-term projects it tends to get sidelined for important things like customer work, Christmas holidays and the annual Wiltshire Hamster Racing Festival, which this year was held remotely via Zoom (Adam's hamster took 2nd place in the steeplechase), and not much has been done to it since last time I was there.  In fact it has deteriorated somewhat.

Anyway, Nigel had ordered a bulk load of one-way koi valves and some anti-decarpulation gates from Shapeways, and because of the extortionate shipping he decided to tag these AMPro light lenses on to sweeten the deal.  There were supposed to be some backplates for mounting LEDs but bizarrely Shapeways told him there was a problem with the design and it can't be fulfilled, so he will have to fabricate some himself, in between assembling his one-way koi valves.

This is one lens, after a huge load of sanding and polishing.

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I'm not sure what material they're made from, but the finish is rougher than some of the detail, so Nigel thought it best to sand them smooth and polish them with body finishing paste.  It's sort of worked - they look awesome when they're wet but still cloud over when dry.

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Some more trimming and sanding was required to get them sitting smooth in the body.

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but eventually Nigel was happy

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Meanwhile, the dash that Adam had fabricated had come loose while the truck was parked, so he broke out the hot glue gun and put it back in properly.

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England is now in national lockdown and all hamster racing is postponed, so I won't have any reason to visit the guys again until the season hopefully resumes late spring - hopefully they will have made a bit more progress since then, although Nigel will be busy digging his koi pond and as Adam is technically unemployed he has been drafted into one of the new emergency vaccine sites (which comes with a free 15 minute training session for anyone who hasn't delivered an hypodermic injection before - although it's not clear yet if he will be administering the injections or delivering the over-ripe bananas for the new trainees to have some practice goes on).

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