Rat Bus

[BearCreek Majors]

OK, a few more pics, the back bumper/pan was so bad we just decided to go with a new pan and hide the bumper behind it, not cut the door down and instead drop it down ito the pan with one step inside of the door.
On my way to a auction to day to maybe buy a plow for the County....That still needs to be put back together!

Pat

[Brian]

Having watched the Pumpkin Chuckin' I have arrived at the conclusion that you guys are great at engineering and problem solving but have too much time on your hands!

[JC]

How's the bus project going, Pat?
You got me thinking about my old Fords. I think I have a pair of 312 T-Bird heads, a 4-barrel intake and a pair of rams horn exhaust manifolds (the ones without the cross-over pipe in the front). I may have given them to the guy that bought my '56 F-100, but I can't remember for sure. I'll have to look for them, one of these days.

[BearCreek Majors]

When my dad passed away I ended up with a shed full of his stuff, several flatheads and probably a dozen Y blocks. I have the good four barrel intakes not to mention the Stromberg’s X 6 and a few good sets of the ram horn manifolds as well. For some reason with all these goodies I don’t have a pair of the good four barrel heads but do have a friend that owes me a pair he has in an F600.
The boys have been busier on the bus than me, I spent most of the week putting the County back together enough to drive it around the yard the other day, still have to put the bonnet and running boards back on her. The boys also did some junk yard scrounging and found most of the original school bus lights, got a good start at attaching the rear pan and also dropped the front and back a good 4”.

This weekend we are busy with pumpkin chucking and garden tractor pulls tomorrow, today we blew the living s##t out of a Ford van from the junkyard and then flipped it on its side and preceded to torture it further, one bowling ball went through the roof, through the floor, hit the rear differential and knocked a hole in the top casting big enough to stick your fist into! I’ll have to post some pics tomorrow.

Pat

[brownsmule]

Like your progress on the bus. Notice y'all have SunDrop all the way up there; I thought it was just a Southern Thang. Anyway our bottles look different from yours. We look forward to your completed pictures of the Bus and the Good Times to be had. Good Job
brownsmule

[JC]

That's cool, Pat! I've never seen 6 Strombergs on a Y-block before. Who made the manifold?

[BearCreek Majors]

JC, I may have mistakenly posted before that the intake was a Offenhauser but I had to go look this morn and its a Edelbrock, probably not extreamly rare but it is the only one I have ever seen, a few years ago on our way to the Iola car show I swore up and down that I wasent going to bring anything home with me as I only had $50.00 in my pocket.......I had to borrow money from my kids and cousins to pay for it.....Ya, I had to hide it from my wife for almost a year.

Brownsmule, are you pulling my leg or do you guys realy have Sundrop over there???? I have never found this stuff outside of our part of Wisconsin and I'v been told the bottling plant Just Nort of us in Shawano is the only one that still bottles it in glass. Any one not fimilure with this stuff, it makes MountainDew taste like cat wizz.

The boss is standing behind me telling me its time to go shoot some pumpkins and I can talk to my boyfrends some other time...gess that means I'm outa here!

Later.

Pat

[BearCreek Majors]

OK we’re done shooting for the weekend, one more show next weekend and we can put them away for the year! If you look close at the last pic of the van you can see the hole on the rear differential from a bowling ball.

The kid has his Cub/Kubota working about as good as he is going to get out of that little 11hp twin diesel. He picked up another Kubota engine last month for next year, it’s a three cylinder, and I believe he told me somewhere around 25hp from the factory, 50 to 60 hp shouldn’t be hard to get out of it.

Pat

[super6954]

Hi Pat
Ge you guys are having some fun down there I wish we had some of that stuff up here in Manitoba . The bus is looking cool and I cant wait to see it finished .
I like the look of the little kubota our Dutch friend next door could get his to smoke like that from stock. having said that he could probably get smoke out of a wheel barrow he'd work it that hard
Its maybe a good thing we are not a forum of tree huggers on here running fordsons/ Fords and we like a bit of smoke to clear our lungs. If this was on youtube we'd have thirty pages of save the world tree huggers on here moaning about the polution by now .
Keep having fun and post the pictures
Regards Robert

[brownsmule]

Yep, I've been drinking the stuff over 60 years. And I'm not over there but down here (NC USA) Our local bottling plant is in Concord NC USA and no longer use glass bottles, only non-returns and cans.
It would be my pleasure to send one of our old glass bottles your way if you would like one for the collection. No Charge, just need to know where to send it to. btw, Y'all are having way to much fun..
Best Regards
brownsmule

[Bensdexta]

Hi Pat,
Is that your mega canon? Shoots 3/4mile according to the vid?
With what pressure does it shoot the cabbages?
Merits a thread on its own

[BearCreek Majors]

Brownsmule, thanks for the offer but I’m not collecting Sundrop bottles, the kids just haven’t returned the ones in the pic yet.

Ben, yes the cannon is ours, My uncle, his boys, myself and my boys, and a few friends have been doing this for several years. The big unit took us close to four years to build what you see there. The world record for pumpkins has finally made it just over a mile this year. We feel we have done this several times ourselves but finding a pumpkin that you just shot a mile away is not very easy. We shot a bowling ball we panted florescent orange a few years ago and the next spring a hunter noticed something funny looking in the dirt and started kicking at it until he found a orange bowling ball, it was close to a mile and a half away. I’m thinking we shot it at about 125 to 150psi, usually we can’t shoot a pumpkin with more than 90 to a 100 psi without having them crush in the barrel and come out pie filling but occasionally we can get a good hard one to take more, the boys sent a white Lumina out at 125psi last Sun and it came out in one piece….and was gone! Cabbage is a bi##h to shoot. We have the record at just over 5/8 of a mile. Cabbage has a bad habit of peeling apart as it flies through the air, too much pressure and in a few hundred yards you’ll end up with nothing but a core falling to the ground. I’m thinking the best we have done was probably around 90psi or less.

I have barley touched the bus in the last two weeks although the boys have been hammering away at it. I did put the Selene to work today plowing under the pumpkin patch.

Pat

[Brian]

Would these be the right "calibre" for a mile shoot? They are a selection of our small ones. We must have 300 this year.

[BearCreek Majors]

Brian, those are way too big, our big gun only has a 10” barrel! Good to see you guys had a good crop, it was so wet over here this summer that our plants got a fungus growing on the leaves. This area grows at least a couple thousand acres of cabbage for the sauerkraut factory and it was probably the worst year ever for them. I think most of the farmers only had 15% of the crops usable, some of them probably less. Good thing the corn and soybeans did good.

The boys have been working away on the back of the buss and have a good start on the step. I went out in the barn and dug up a set of dual exhaust manifolds and found out why all the big trucks with the Y block had the exhaust crossover pipe… someone put the steering box in the way! I’m sure there’s a few old guys snickering to themselves about now.

Pat

[JC]

Looks like the bus project is coming right along.
I'm pretty sure that the manifolds that I have (had?) are actual rams horns that dump out in the middle. Those might miss the steering box. One of these days, I've got to go look and see if they're still around.

[BearCreek Majors]

JC, I thought I had a set of Ram horns but all I could find was the rear dump manifolds, no big deal I’m making do with what I have, I’ll post a pic when done, still waiting for a few parts to come in.

The boys have their hearts set on taking it out for Halloween so we got some paint on it today. It’s far from done and at some point the front left fender will have to come off and get finished, but if everything falls in place this next week we should be able to get it on the road for next weekend.

Pat

[JC]

Good ol' rat rod flat black. It sure makes body work a lot easier
Halloween seems like the perfect time for it to make its debut.

[BearCreek Majors]

We have been busy getting it done enough for a Halloween Run tonight, Its far from finished but my boys have been busting butt every night working on it and a couple of friends have been helping this last week. We took it out for its first run down to the gas station last night with no issues except for the secondary’s in the carburetor stuck open a little……have no idea how they got open in the first place!
It’s pretty ugly under the hood yet but I now have the ultimate in Ram horn dual exhaust! The new pipes exiting on the front of the manifolds plus the one rear pipe on the right side……not every day you see a vehicle with three exhaust pipes.
That’s the nice thing about a rat rod…. Instead of people looking, sneering, and walking away , they can openly point , laugh , and it’s all in good fun!

Pat

[super6954]

She looks realy great and all that done in a short times pretty impressive too .
Regards Robert

[BearCreek Majors]

We got to take it out for Halloween and got lots of looks and complements. Had lots of fun and it was worth every scraped knuckle!
Just a few more pic’s, at some point we still need to finish under the hood and the interior.

Pat

[Bensdexta]

Looking good and fast work
Any prob licencing her for road use or can she get an exemption for Halloween?

[BearCreek Majors]

The weekend before last was the annual Bear Creek Saint Mary’s parish sauerkraut festival….seriously…even I can’t make this stuff up! (Bear Creek is home of the world’s largest kraut factory)
Saturday we put on the garden tractor pulls and on Sunday they have a car show, and of course I just had to take the Rat Bus….and took home a trophy!
They have several classes, and give two trophies per class. I was entered in the “Special Interest” class, and somehow get the feeling there were only two vehicles in the class! When filling out the registration form the last question is “list any special features” I simply listed “Ugly”

Also took it to the Symco Shakedown last weekend (held on the Symco Thresheree grounds). We got a lot of looks and great comments and had a great time. When I left to go home Saturday night I started it up and flipped on all the lights and people were damn near knocking each other over taking pictures, apparently it looks like the circus is coming to town….. I think a few of them we just trying to get the hell out of the way.

Pat

[BearCreek Majors]

I didn’t sleep real well last night, feeling a little guilty about selling the bus yesterday. We haven’t done much with the old girl lately and I have way too many other things going on, so we took her to the Symco Shakedown (car show) this weekend and sold her. I just hope the guy that bought her has some fun as well, a lot of good memories were made with that bucket of rust.

Pat

[county654]

Nice Project, Pat.
Over here in Germany you hardly have any chance to licen a rebuild like that for road again

You are talking about a "Sauerkrautfestival" do you have german ancestores like many people in Wisconsin?

By the way, exactly 30 years ago I spend 3 month in Wisconsin in a 4 H program, on a farm in Denzer County, with a Familie in Nekoosa and on a farm in a town called Belgium........those were the days

[BearCreek Majors]

I did have a few issues getting it licensed with the DMV (department of motor vehicles) they told me that a converted school bus cannot have any yellow paint on it….as if anyone would mistake ours as an actual school bus! I informed them that the wheels and body lines were actually “Swamp blossom orange” and with a dirty look and a snarl, we got it titled and licensed.

Lots of Germans and Europeans in this area, lots of krout, brats, beer and polka, Its still quite common in this area to have polka bands for weddings, even if they aren’t a polka band they had better be able to play a few! There isn’t anything better than going out for some chicken, ham and a polka band.

My Grandmother on my dads side is a Stilen, and I have always consider myself an all American mutt, German, Dutch, Belgian, French, and American Indian, and my kids have Polish thrown in the mix.

I live somewhat between these two areas of Wisconsin and have been over to both of them. We used to get to Nekoosa once in a while to the fall harvest festival, and my oldest boy lives up in Manitowoc just off the lake as Belgium is, amazing how much colder it can be 10 to 20 miles inland from the lake. Nekoosa is still largely trees and forest area, and the Belgium area is still just as scenic as it probably was 30 years ago, lots of rolling hills and farms scattered about. Unfortunately a lot of the old barns and farms are slowly going vacant and falling in disrepair as the land gets swallowed up by larger farms.

As kids we were all in 4 H as well and I remember having several foreign exchange students in our school.

Pat