hood

We just had our 36th annual Lilliput club Rally in Taupo, soooo much fun. And you never know when you'll stumble apon a fellow "old schooler" 

^ Thanks brother, I appreciate the love

Wow, love the nostalgia. I vividly recall that day. In particular I used to roll the length of the southern motorway with the front in the air and the rear on the bumps. The dropshop did a nice job on that clip which I intend to keep in place.

Orginally in two minds to load this thread on here on Oldschool, but like I said theres been some clever work done to it in recent times thats certainly worth sharing, and since the old MTNZ forums are long gone I still miss the golden years of minitrucks in this country circa 2007 in my opinion.

Yeah its unfortunately collecting dust as we speak, but I'll get there with it.

FYI our friendly local certification expert used to be a minitruck enuthisist @cletusas we used to be in the same club too haha

These go alright ay, I was hooning, I mean following one today in my Mrs' ISIS. Old mate was giving it some jandle 

First round of budget mods came into effect, with aftermarket rubbish Taiwanese front quarters, a 4x4 bumper and one piece glass doors off a single cab.

I later found an old boy who was a panel man in a passed life and got him to convert the stock tail lights for a set of 89-93 Cadillac Deville lights with another wellside I came across. Fast forward today I think I am on my 4th wellside, but more on that later

It was cool at the time, but in retrospect you soon learn that good things aren't cheap, and cheap things aren't good. The tail light conversion was a mess, the buckets/filler panels were gas welded in, and bondo'd up to the wazoo which eventually cracked out and could never be painted.

By then I purchased my first set of personalized plates when they were cheap new $500, but then that was a fair amount of coin to lay down. They were dubbed RDGR8A. This at the time appealed because when you say the word Road Grater it kind sounds like "Road grata" but later I regretted this and then tracked down RDGR8R approximately 15 years later second hand for the price of $650.

Also I brought my first set of wheels, a brand new x5 set of BA XR8 Falcons which were a perfect offset to eventually lay rail in and they were pretty cool from the factory. I've still got them and intend to use them as skid rims if needed.

I made up a new slipper thing out of scrap RHS and had a bolt inserted (not pictured) then a local mate came round and zapped it in for me.

Wheels back on, and the van is back on the ground.

I also purchased some quality non abrasive white wall cleaner whilst I was at Kumeu the other weekend.

I love cruising this thing on the new Hamilton/Auckland expressway, handles like a dream!

Also tarnished the inners wheel tubs with the black stuff too, they scrubbed up nicely...

I had some time during the last week of the xmas break to give the underside a tidy up.

I dragged it into my works workshop and lifted it up on the hoist for ergonomic reasons, no way I can fit under this at home haha. Its factory C notched!

I wire brushed the rails and hit with Brunox and sealed it with quick dry black. Came up reasonably well.

While it was in the air I noticed I broke the leaf slipper off at some point? haha So I've got some hot glue gun work to do before it's next outing.

What a neat job on the revamp, well done!

How cool are old caravans, enjoy the memory making moments!

^Absolutely love that POS^

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Last December 2022 we were invited to a club members place for a Lilliput xmas do. It was fun, super chill and we met some new faces in the process 

We had 4 Gazelles set up on the lawn, all with the trimmings!

The recent SI trip was the last straw that broke the camel's back for the factory jockey wheel set up, so I have swapped it out with a folding unit from TWL, it does the trick and later I'll jazz it up and try and make the wheel period looking to match the Van's wheel/tyre combo.

I made up a backing plate for the Ubolt attachment, it's a bit rough but at the time didn't have the tooling to mount it by drilling into the draw bar....I have a new draw bar in the pipeline for this year (yeah its fugly/haggard af I know)

I still drag this thing out of my driveway and it makes the Mrs gringe after I had the tow wagon subtly lowered but I'm cool with it.