THE MENTORSHIP MENU

This is Ratiki.

A surf wagon I built with help from a lot of friends in Austin, Texas.

A couple decades ago, Classic Trucks magazine ran a feature on it.

But there was room for improvement.

A new engine. A static-dropped front suspension. Some careful and purposeful fabrication.

Hence, Ratiki 2.0.

As you can see on the right, I painted an entire section of my garage to match it. And the front clip is off. Every unnecessary hole in the firewall was filled.

The crossmember has been pancaked to give the engine two more inches of ground clearance. Inner fenders have been fabricated for clearance using repurposed trailer fenders.

Everything's painted satin black. I want the engine bay to look like it came that way from the factory. Only cleaner.

The vehicle goes down. The engine goes up. The tires clear. I'm adding period 60s five-spoke wheels and will have a sign painter hand-letter the graphics.

A new engine is going in. And this one means business.

A Smeding 383 stroker. 425 HP on regular gas. Some things are changing for the better. A lot is staying the same.

The interior, for example.

After all, I'm not fixing someone else's problem.

Ratiki 2.0 is coming back better with a real job to do.

Vintage picking.

It's a lot like mentorship, actually.

Easy to talk about. Harder to actually do.

So, yeah. I spend my mentorship money chasing this dream.

And there are more rolling obsessions parked behind it.

One-one-one mentoring.