Halo Warthog Build

Hi all,
- Welcome to my build thread. This is the first time I have ever done anything like this so please excuse any mistakes.

Let me give you a brief little run down. Ever since 2001 (I'm only 18 may I add) I have been massively into a the video game series Halo, I still remember to this day standing in line at Toys R' Us with my dad buying an Xbox Original, Halo coming with the Xbox of course.
Some of you may be aware of it, some may not.
Childhood memories sitting on the sofa with my dad eating bombay mix shooting aliens? Nothing cooler than that you may say? Well you are wrong. It has the coolest looking 4x4 ever put into a video game. For the last 13 years there would be nothing I wanted more than to have a real life fully road legal Warthog from the video game.
Just look at it!
It has 4 wheel steering and everything.


I have a very close friend who shares similar interests with me, the main one being of course we are both massive Halo fans, so we looked into it. A British team actually made one for a short movie and I was in love. There is nothing I would love more than to actually own a real life warthog.
the picture below is the one a company made for the short movie named, OPERATION CHASTITY
operationchastity.com/launch/warthog

I thought it was brilliant.
they also had a sort of build thread on their website and me and my friend looked at it, and thought "that really doesn't look as hard as I thought it would be. At this point we realised if we both want this car of our dreams we will have to make it ourselves. We understand the time,money, blood, sweat and tears that will have to go into this, but we was determined to make it happen.
And so it begun.



Now all we needed was a donor vehicle, we needed to find a 4x4 that was running perfect and no rust to the chassis. Obviously none of the original body work will be kept, we will just use the chassis, engine and basically everything that was not the body. As we would build our own frame/body from Steel. We was looking at 110 defenders as that is what was used for the other builds but most were suffering from bad rust issues. And we couldnt have that on our hog. Also seeing as we are both 18 we didnt have much money to play with.

Untill...This little Jem popped up.
57k Miles, Auto, perfect running condition. £750



At this point in time I didn't realise how much of a bargain this actually was, but who's can complain about a bargain?!
Not long after purchasing, we took it for a spin round my friends yard (where we will be doing the work)
After our 5 minutes of fun we started stripping it. We needed to get it down to its bare chassis, which obviously means removing all the body work.

Slowly bolt by bolt we removed everything that was just an addition to the body itself.



This was the relativity easy stage apart from a few cut fingers resulting from catching on sharp edges.

Within 3 hours we had our little Jimny stripped to its bare body


Bearing in mind we have very little car mechanical experience, My expertise is motorcycles and know basics of cars and they engines, while my partner is very good at practical work (e.g metal working, welding etc)
But we was not going to let that scare us off. We have friends and family who know their stuff willing to help. And who cares if it takes 6 months or 6 years... we are building a warthog, and actually being able to get up early on a Saturday and do something with my life apart from sitting at home playing computer games.
Sometimes we both have to pinch ourselves and put into reality that we are building this car we have both dreamt about for years, so that was enough motivation for us to keep going.

I really like this photo


So now we are sitting here looking at it thinking...hmmm how are we going to move forward from this.

and then it hit us...ANGLE GRINDER!






I may have missed a bunch of photos which are on my phone so may have to go back and edit in future.
I dont know if we angle grinded the roof off for easy of access...or maybe down the the fact we havent actually destroyed anything, was a good way of taking some stress out!

The bolts that mount the chassis to the body were soon undone and the body started to lift off.
the back came off easy, had to cut out the handbrake and other important leavers that stick though, but essentially it just lifted straight off.

the front was not as easy, as this required some "accurate cutting" to get certain parts away from the engine


and then before you know it.....Drumroll please!





We now have the chassis required to start building our steel frame.
We ordered a bunch of rectangular and square box steel and a bunch of steel steel. and a decent welder of course.
While we was waiting for the steel to arrive we was looking into more Hog-like wheels, we spotted a set on eBay...Snatched them up for £150 If I remember properly. Now we had a 200 mile road trip down to Wales to collect them! Panicking the whole way hoping they will fit in the back of my partners Fiesta.

A "short" journey to Wales later...


Suspension in the Fiesta suffered slightly, but we needed these tyres.

another "short" journey home after exploring the Welsh countryside and almost running down a few sheep we was back in Essex and ready to fit the wheels.

I would say quite an improvement.




*Please note I cannot edit this post any more due to size so the build will continue at the bottom, Please scroll down*

I have to say that's an absolute bargain jimny, the hardtop alone will fetch £350 on ebay or the for sale section here.
I'm after a drivers door mirror... Want to tell me how much you want for it with postage ?

Good luck with the build, big job on your hands, but at your age I'd been building rally cars for 2 years so don't let your age put you off

Gary

Keep us updated

hi Gary,
private message me and we will try and work something out. we have most parts left, and wow the hardtop! might have to sell all of the spares!

Wow what an awesome project, can't wait to see the progress! I'm after some bits you may have going spare, namely front offside wing, drivers door and poss the front seats. If they're available please could you let me know?




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please message me, I know we have both front seats and more than sure we have a wing still intact, please message me and we can look at going forwar