Rat-Rod Transformed Into A Taxi In Seven Days | Ridiculous Rides
AN ECCENTRIC mechanic has converted a London taxi into a crazy rat-rod van in just seven days. 44-year-old Paul Bacon, from Leicestershire, spent £450 on a traditional black cab and with the help of some timber, fibreglass and expanding foam he managed to construct a rusty rat-rod that he now uses for work. It took Paul just a week to finish the project – and he admits that he can no longer drive around his local town without receiving a few strange looks.
Transcript
00:00 A lot of people who first see the van say it looks like something from a horror movie.
00:07 Eccentric car customiser, Paul Bacon, has created this weird yet wonderful vehicle to
00:29 act as brand ambassador for his car customising business, Cyclone Works.
00:34 So the inspiration for this project was just to build something really quick. I needed
00:40 a van, I wanted that retro sort of cool look. Initially I was looking at taxis just to use
00:46 the chassis on a different project but then it occurred to me, you know, I could convert
00:50 this into a van.
00:53 So then the taxi van, even though it looks like it's been quite heavily lowered, it's
00:56 not lowered at all. Suspension is totally standard. What I've done, I've lowered the
01:02 wheel arch from about just here, down to there.
01:07 I've really liked cars all of my life, particularly sort of custom cars, hot rods, that sort of
01:11 thing. We've got the truck style wing mirrors and we've also got the swamp box aircon there
01:18 as well, which is made out of the back box just from a scrap yard.
01:26 Started off in my back garden. I basically cut the back of the old taxi off, built a
01:31 timber frame and then started to construct the new shape of the van around that timber
01:36 frame using dye bond and expanding foam that was finally covered in fibreglass.
01:43 Built the taxi van in seven days. The reason it was done in seven days, I had seven days
01:48 free, I needed a van, that was all the time I had, so it had to be done.
01:53 So inside the van, first off we've got the seats. It's the rear seat out of a 1974 Rolls
02:00 Royce Silver Shadow and that just went in really easily, just fitted like it was meant
02:09 to be.
02:10 Under the bonnet of the van, it's a really big heavy bonnet, 2.7 Nissan engine that loads
02:17 of London taxis have.
02:22 Some of the paint work on the van is, it's a sort of a fake rust paint and then it's
02:27 got some white and then that was all tinted over with 2K matte lacquer.
02:34 At the moment, I've only ever really been up to about 64, 65, but I'm hoping to break
02:39 that magical 65 barrier over the next couple of weeks, you know, probably on a nice downhill
02:43 stretch of road.
02:47 The process start to finish came in at just over a thousand pounds. The taxi, I got the
02:53 taxi for about 450 pounds. It's probably the most usable vehicle I've built. A lot of people
03:00 smile, people wave, people come up and ask a lot of questions about the van. You know,
03:05 but it always starts every morning, it always works. I can carry loads of junk in the back
03:10 and you know, that's probably all you need from a van really.
03:13 [Music]
03:20 [Music]
03:27 [BLANK_AUDIO]