\ Home | Tom Mandera's Big Sky Binders

JustInternational's Binder Bash 6/25/05

After fixing the damage from Memorial Day's race, we loaded Little Devil up behind the Travelette and headed to Idaho to Coeur d'Alene to the Just International's Club Binder Bash event.



We spent Friday at the water slides, where I wore a hole in the bottom of my foot, then woke up early Saturday to head to the Kootenai County Fairgrounds and the show.







After offloading Little Devil, they made me park in the Wild Modified area.. despite my simple SOA and Reverse Shackle that netted less lift than most 4" lifts.. otherwise, there's nothing Wild about this Scout.. except the way I drive it. :D



Memorial Day Baja 5/28-29/2005

After the rollover in Cascade in February, I spent the following three months putting Little Devil back together in preparation for the M4x4A "season opener" of Memorial Day Weekend.



It took a little doing.. including replacing just about every piece of sheetmetal on the rig, then painting it, but I got it done.



On Friday, John and Pansy Comer lent a hand putting decals on the rig - the last finishing touches before the race.



Saturday morning, we had breakfast just down the street before heading up to Cascade.







Race Picture Gallery

Paint! (??)

On 5/14, I finally did it.. I put down some paint on Little Devil, after replacing most of the sheetmetal and doing some body work and fixing up all of the various things mangled in the February roll-over..



Here is is, ready for paint.







Scott came by to help get me started on the job..



Before I got started, I threw out a few schemes for fellow Binder folk to provide feedback on.



Paint Schemes



John Donnelly had the "winning" idea by incorporating the Scout Light Line logo.



Here's the first coat of Zero Rust Black going down. Michelle took pictures.







And skipping ahead, the mostly finished product.



Racing Videos - Now FOR SALE

For years I've been taking video and capturing it and converting it and posting it to share with everyone.



..and that's going to continue.



But I've also been taking the time to start making compilations of race video and organize 'em all into a DVD you can play in most set-top DVD players.



Image quality is pretty high, download time is short (none!), and you can watch it on your big-screen if you want. Much better than the scaled down videos I've posted for download.



So I thought I'd do a little experiment and set up a shopping cart and make these DVDs available for purchase by anyone that would like to watch, relive, and/or entertain their Jeep driving friends. It's also an opportunity to lend a little support to my racing endeavors.



Click the "Buy Racing Videos" link on the left, or follow the one right below:

Winter Baja 2005



The only DVD currently available contains footage from the Cascade County 4-Wheelers Winter Baja in February 2005 in Cascade, MT. It includes video of Little Devil's roll-over, along with in-Scout audio of the thump, thump, thump the Scout makes as it rolls over. Still managed a 2nd place finish.



It also contains video from all of the races that day, with a number of Broncos, a Subaru, and other vehicles competing.

Devil's new front clip (Rollover Repairs)

Naturally, after last weekend's little mishap, some repairs and upgrades were necessary.. so I bought some 2x.095 tube and broke out the JD2 and finally made some bends with it.



I used my porta-power to operate it so the going wasn't fast but it was going. I got a little better at resetting the ram to continue my bends as things went on. I'm glad I bought a 220V hydraulic power pack.. if only I had the ram n' such to go with it...



I didn't get too crazy - just two 90-deg bends in the same plane.







Update 5/23:



I finally used my JD2 Tubing Bender

Now that my 1.5hp Fenner 220V pump arrived ($175 from Ebay).. I haven't ordered the ram and valve and such, and found a pressing need to bend some tube, so I gave my original plan (of using my 10T porta-power to operate it) a go since I also finally bought some tube (local place actually had some!).



I was working in the new shop at my mom's place when I bought the JD2 a few years ago, and since it was plumbed for radiaint floor heat, manual bending wasn't an option, so I bought the JD2 with the hydraulic mounts, and a 10T Porta-power.
Subscribe to