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[ Eric ] You're watching Powernation!
[Eric] Today on Music City Trucks we put the final touches on Project Nightshift before its road test. We'll show you a common problem with the electrical switches with these old Dodges and how to remedy them for good. [Anthony] We button up our interior with new seats and show you a d-i-y restoration technique that'll save you some coin. [Mike] Then we'll give the Dodge a little diesel shakedown. [ Music ] Hey guys, welcome to Music City Trucks. Today we're kicking off a brand new season with a familiar project. [Eric] And a new face. Let me introduce you guys to Anthony Serrao, the newest member of the Music City Trucks team. [Anthony] Hey guys! I'm Anthony Serrao. I'm a welder and fabricator by trade. I build custom cars and trucks for myself on the side. Most of my stuff's a lot lower than this here. I'm super excited to be here, help you boys finish up Project Nightshift, and see what else we got coming down line. [Mike] We're happy to have you. Let's get this thing finished up. [Eric] Speaking of Project Nightshift, whether this is the first time you've ever laid eyes on this big black Cummins or you've been dying to see it since last season we're gonna get you all caught up on everything we've done to it since we picked it up. We started by pulling this dust covered '93 Dodge Ram out of the barn it was left in. Once we got it back to the shop we started tearing out the drivetrain so we could get the 12-valve 6-BT Cummins pulled out for some upgrades. Once removed we gave the 31 year old B-series diesel a fresh coat of paint and added a little more power by swapping out the factory VE pump for a P-7100 to deliver fuel to bigger injectors and help the engine keep up with a bigger turbo. After finishing up with our powerplant we started stripping the factory suspension so we could add a new six inch lift kit. This included a new set of leaf springs all the way around and new remote reservoir shocks for added capability. We upgraded the brakes to a more modern disc setup. Next we laid down a custom paint job on our W-350 with a dark two tone theme to match the name and attitude of Project Nightshift. The transmission was swapped out with a more robust and reliable Allison 1,000 from ATS that can handle the added horsepower and keep this rig rolling. Next we installed the refurbished transfer case also from ATS. Then we installed our intercooler and plumbed in the turbo. The front clip was installed as well as the grille with our new Carriker Customs inserts. Lastly we fabricated our custom stainless steel exhaust that we got from MBRP. With all that being said we are dangerously close to getting this truck back on the road. Obviously we've still got plenty of work left to do and a lot of is gonna be here in our interior. We're gonna be getting started getting in here and getting our headlight switch replaced. Now a lot of the time we wouldn't show you guys something this small but it's a really common failure point on these trucks. So we wanted to talk about it a little bit. If you look you'll see some burned contacts on the inside here and some melted plastic. It could have come from this or it could have come from the connector that this thing gets plugged into. Either way that's not gonna cut it because not only is it unsafe but it's gonna make our lights not work the way they're supposed to. So we're gonna be getting rid of this and we're gonna replace it with a Duralast switch that we got from the Autozone Pro website. If we look at these side by side you'll notice it's exactly the same minus the burned bits of it and that's exactly how it's supposed to be. Duralast makes sure that their parts are designed to meet or exceed o-e fit, form, and function. So we're not gonna have any issues getting this thing installed and we're not gonna have to worry about it after the fact. So now that we've got our new switch let's check out that connector. Now our switch isn't the only thing that's got to get replaced. This connector as you can tell has definitely seen better days. Like I mentioned before, what's happened is it's got hot from the middle and just heated its way out melting the plastic all the way around. Obviously we're gonna be replacing this with a new connector. Now I've already got this one prepped with the heat shrink on and the connectors on. So we're gonna take a look at another brand new and show you why I did that here in just a minute. Looking at this new one obviously these wires are much heavier gauge. That's gonna help keep the temp down in the connector to prevent that from happening again in the future. Of course, like I mentioned heat shrink, don't forget it, especially on something like this because getting cross contact between these connectors is gonna cause all kinds of weird problems that you really don't want to deal with. Let's take a look at a brand new one. First thing you're gonna notice is that all these wires are the same length. That's why I prepped the other one beforehand because if you were to take all these wires and bundle them up like this and put all your butt connectors on and make your connections you're gonna end up with a big bulb of butt connectors right here in the middle of your harness and nobody wants that. Plus having all those connectors in such close proximity increases your chances of having heat build up and having more issues like that further down the road. So we've got all these staggered. We've got this other one prepped already. So we're gonna go ahead and get all of these cut one at a time, placed in here, get the switch in, call it done. All the wires on the new connector are the same as the factory wires but just to be safe we're gonna do it one at a time. Go for about a three-eighths of an inch strip on here. Give this a little twist. Make sure we get our connector oriented the right way. We're gonna adding a little bit of length on with these new wires but not too bad. Shouldn't cause any issues. [ Music ]
[ heat gun humming ] [Eric] With that finished up all that's left before we can install our new Duralast switch is to get this bracket off of the old one and get it swapped over. Once we're done with that we can go ahead and move on and get the rest of this interior finished up. [Anthony] We add the final pieces of our interior with new seats and show you a way to refurbish your old door panels to make them look great again.
[Anthony] Hey guys, welcome back to Music City Trucks. Now that Eric's got our headlight switch installed and our dash back together we can go ahead and finish up this seat install. As you can see we've already got our carpet installed. We got our kit from First Gen Industries. It's a pre-molded black carpet kit that we got to better match the theme of Project Nightshift. Up top we got our gauge cluster from Dakota Digital. It's their VHX option and we got it in red to also better match the theme of Project Nightshift. On the seat side of things we've already got our TMI frame installed along with the passenger seat and our Sport Buddy console. The only thing left to do is get the driver's seat mounted in the truck, but in order to do that we first have to mount these sliders onto the seat frames. We're running TMI's Pro Classic Low Back in a black vinyl with a red stitch. It's gonna look real good on Project Nightshift. Now these are pretty simple to install with basic hand tools but there's a couple of tricks that are gonna make your life a little bit easier. The first one here we're gonna go ahead and get the screwdriver into this hole on the eyelet on the bracket. We're gonna go ahead and pivot that up, hold it down, stick something either a screwdriver, maybe an allen like I got here. That way you'll be able to slide the slider past the hole here. That way we can get our bolts mounted into the seat frame. When you're putting these bolts in place it's a good idea to put a drop of thread locker on them to keep them in place. [ Music ] [ ratchet clicking ] [Anthony] Now on these sliders there is a left and a right hand side and you want to make sure you get them on the right side. This one with the handle you want to make sure it's on the left side. So if you're sitting on the seat you want to be grabbing it with your left hand. [ ratchet clicking ] [Anthony] Alright! Now on this side we don't need an allen wrench in here because we have the handle. Now the handle lets us move this spring loaded plate up and down that catches the slide. On this side it doesn't have the handle. So we stuck this in here to mimic what the handle's doing to raise this out of the groove so we can slide it and get it out of our way. We'll go ahead and do that, and now you see I've got access to the hole. We can get our bolt mounted into the frame. [ ratchet clicking ] [Anthony] Our next step, what we need to do is make sure that the sliders are in the same slots and they're even on both sides. What we're gonna do is move this one up, make sure they're lined up, and we're gonna get this wire rod that comes with the kit. Now on this kit there's two O-rings that are gonna slide in and they're gonna lock these together. That way when you pull this handle they both move in unison. How we're gonna do that is we're gonna take our pliers, pinch down on this back here, get these O-rings to slide to the middle of the rod. We're gonna pop this side in right here and then we're gonna use our little allen wrench to get this one over. Get your pliers. Put them right there so they're locked into that groove that's on the wire rod. Do that for both sides. Should be good to go. Now the seat's ready to go in the truck. [ Music ]
Get this last nut tightened down and we're good to go. We got the seat sliders on. It works, it's operational, but we've got one more thing we want to show you. [Eric] And that is gonna be to get this passenger side door panel refinished. Now we've already got the drivers side done, and there's a reason we're refinishing these instead of replacing them. Nobody makes reproductions of these door panels and to get used ones you're looking at $100 bucks a piece for ones that look like this or upwards of $500 dollars for a pair of new old stock ones. Even if you're pouring money into a project like this that's gonna be a show piece you do want to save where you can. So we're gonna be doing this ourselves. Save ourselves some time, some money, and some headache trying to find it. The first step is gonna be to get this upper door panel carpeting painted and we're gonna have to do that on here. The reason for that is because it is plastic riveted into the backside of the door panel. To remove that and then reinstall it would be a real pain. So we're gonna tape this off right now, get this dyed, and move on. [ Music ] I'm not going crazy trying to cover every little bit of this door panel while I'm masking because we do still have to go back and scuff all this plastic before we can paint it. A little bit of overspray isn't gonna kill us here. You also want to make sure while you're doing this that you don't get any of the carpet fibers trapped under your tape. That'll leave little bits of your old color and nobody wants that. [ Music ] One thing I did forget to mention is before you actually go to spray this stuff you want to make sure that your carpet is nice and clean. So vacuum it up, use a carpet cleaner, or spray it down and scrub it out with a light brush. Just make sure there's no dirt or anything that's gonna cause issues with your dye. While you're doing this you want to make sure you're getting long, even strokes on your fabric and you want to spray at a little bit of an angle. You also want to make sure you're going a little light because you don't want this stuff getting bunched up. It's gonna create big crunchy spots in your carpet if that paint dries at all. Now that we've got a couple of light coats in one direction we're gonna give this a few minutes to flash off before we spray it the same way from the other direction. If you were dealing with regular carpet as opposed to something with short fibers like this you would want to wait until it flashed off and then take a soft brush and just brush those fibers out and make sure none of them are clumped up and you get full, even coverage. So there's no reason for us to brush it out. All we've got to do is wait a couple of minutes, spray it again, and move along. [Mike] Coming up, we finish our door panel makeover and share some tips when ordering custom driveshafts.
[Eric] Hey guys, welcome back. While you guys were gone I went ahead and took a red scuff pad to this door panel to get the surface abraded. After that I took some wax and grease remover and got this thing wiped down. Now we're in the booth and ready to go. Now that the prep work's finished up I've got our door panel hung up here in the booth and we're gonna get started hitting it with some of this adhesion promotor. The paint that we're using is a direct-to-metal or d-t-m paint, meaning the use of a primer is not necessarily required. However we're painting plastic not metal, and we want to make sure that this paint latches on as good as possible. So this adhesion promotor is going to chemically abrade the surface in addition to the physical abrasion we did with our scuffing pad. Once we spray two light coats of this we're ready to get our color laid down. [ Music ] For our color we're gonna be using some hot rod black so we match the rest of the interior panels we've already painted. With our paint cured I've got this door panel back in the studio. We're gonna go ahead and get some adhesive sprayed on both of our surfaces. You don't want to do too crazy of a coat but you definitely want a good bit on there. Just make sure this is fully covered. I went ahead and taped up around the edges of our carpet as well because this stuff gets a little messy as you can see, and that is gonna make sure that it doesn't wrap around and get caught up in all the fibers. Now that we've got both of our surfaces sprayed I'm having Mike give me a hand real quick just getting this laid down cause I can do it by myself but it's a lot easier having an extra set of hands. [ Music ]
We're gonna start by rolling outward. Make sure these edges get in nice and tight. It helps if you keep just a little bit of backwards pressure on your carpet. That way everything stays nice and straight. [ Music ]
Just like that we have essentially a brand new door panel. All that's left is just put a couple more pieces on here and then we're ready to get it put in the truck. [Anthony] Alright! While Eric was busy finishing up our door panels I went ahead and hung our front bumper. These are Keldermann Manufacturing's Bravo Series bumpers. We got ours in raw and we paint matched it to our truck. For the lights we went with XK Glow's 20-inch light bar in the middle and their C-3 cube lights on the side. This thing's gonna light up the night. [Mike] Now any time you modify your vehicle's ride height, the engine, transmission, or transfer case combination, well there's a high probability it's gonna affect the driveshaft length. That's very common to have to change a driveshaft for your vehicle when you modify it. That's what we've had to do here with our Dodge with the lift kit and a different transmission. I want to show you some differences here or some specifics about these driveshafts. Now this driveshaft right here I pulled out from the warehouse because it's a slip yoke design. Now this is not for our truck but it's a different one. This is the most common design of the driveshaft. The slip yoke, it slides in the back of the transmission. The reason it has a slip yoke design is as the rear end moves up and down for suspension articulation that driveshaft has to change length cause the transmission is fixed but the rear end's moving up and down. So this slides in and out of the back of the transmission to accommodate for that length change. Well ours isn't that easy. They have to do a two piece design, or this telescoping style, because on the back of the transfer case is a fixed yoke as opposed to the slip yoke. So as the suspension articulates, moves up and down, this length between the yoke of the rear end and the transfer case is gonna change length. So to accommodate that this driveshaft will plunge inside of itself, or telescope, to achieve that length change. On our front driveshaft we have a similar design with that telescoping unit but what makes this one unique is the double cardan joint. It has two U-joints built in here. That way we can achieve a greater angle of attack from the transfer case down to the front differential. To get your custom driveshaft you need to know the length and each manufacturer has their specific way of measuring the length for your driveshaft. Ours wants us to go from the face of the pinion at the yoke coming out of the rear end to the transfer case, the yoke coming out of the transfer case. That length along with the U-joint size. These U-joints come in different sizes depending on your horsepower and torque application, and to measure this we take our calipers here and we can get the diameter of the cap along with the width of that U-joint. So the series of U-joint, the length of your driveshaft is the information needed to get your own custom driveshaft. Enough about these. Let's get them installed in the truck. [Eric] The job is done. Now it's time to clock out and hit the streets in Nightshift.
[ Music ]
[ engine starting ] [ diesel engine rumbling ] [ Music ]
[Eric] To say that this truck has made an extreme transformation would be a little bit of an understatement. Inside and out this truck has come full circle from the day we picked it up. [ Music ] It was a good solid work truck when we started but you can't really go wrong if that's what you're looking for and your choice is a W-350 Cummins, or D-350 if you're just going on the road. I think one of the most impressive things that I've noticed about this since we got it done is probably the fact that for no more work than we did we have seen an insane increase in performance out of that 12-valve. Really if we're doing no more than a turbo, some bigger injectors, manifold, and that P-pump swap it is a night and day difference on the road. This thing didn't have a whole lot of get up when we first got it because it wasn't supposed to, right? This is a work truck. It's not meant for going fast, but if you need to pull a house down this is the set of keys that you're grabbing. Not only can it still do that but now it's pretty dang quick, and it's got a lot more style than it did before. Even out here when there's not a whole lot of heads to turn this thing is turning some heads. Believe it or not I think this thing actually rides a little bit better now on the 35s and the lift than it did in stock form. I don't know exactly how that works, but for a lifted dually this thing is pretty nice going down the road. A lot smoother than I would have expected for sure. There's that gear. I'm getting the feeling from this one that this is one of those trucks you've gotta be a little bit careful with. If you give it just a little bit too much she's liable to get away from you. I know that sounds a little crazy for a build like this that didn't get a whole lot of crazy engine work done but believe me when I tell you, this thing wants to go. From the outside you would never know unless somebody told you that this is the same truck we pulled in last year. With the darker gray in the middle and the pitch black on the top and the bottom down to that blood red pinstripe front to back this thing looks about as mean as it could get. Then you add in the custom lighting on the outside and you've got one menacing profile especially in the dark. These last couple of seasons on Music City Trucks have been great and I wouldn't trade the experience for the world, but I think it's time to move on and get back to something that's a little bit more me. So we'll see you guys a little further on down the road.
Show Full Transcript
[Eric] Today on Music City Trucks we put the final touches on Project Nightshift before its road test. We'll show you a common problem with the electrical switches with these old Dodges and how to remedy them for good. [Anthony] We button up our interior with new seats and show you a d-i-y restoration technique that'll save you some coin. [Mike] Then we'll give the Dodge a little diesel shakedown. [ Music ] Hey guys, welcome to Music City Trucks. Today we're kicking off a brand new season with a familiar project. [Eric] And a new face. Let me introduce you guys to Anthony Serrao, the newest member of the Music City Trucks team. [Anthony] Hey guys! I'm Anthony Serrao. I'm a welder and fabricator by trade. I build custom cars and trucks for myself on the side. Most of my stuff's a lot lower than this here. I'm super excited to be here, help you boys finish up Project Nightshift, and see what else we got coming down line. [Mike] We're happy to have you. Let's get this thing finished up. [Eric] Speaking of Project Nightshift, whether this is the first time you've ever laid eyes on this big black Cummins or you've been dying to see it since last season we're gonna get you all caught up on everything we've done to it since we picked it up. We started by pulling this dust covered '93 Dodge Ram out of the barn it was left in. Once we got it back to the shop we started tearing out the drivetrain so we could get the 12-valve 6-BT Cummins pulled out for some upgrades. Once removed we gave the 31 year old B-series diesel a fresh coat of paint and added a little more power by swapping out the factory VE pump for a P-7100 to deliver fuel to bigger injectors and help the engine keep up with a bigger turbo. After finishing up with our powerplant we started stripping the factory suspension so we could add a new six inch lift kit. This included a new set of leaf springs all the way around and new remote reservoir shocks for added capability. We upgraded the brakes to a more modern disc setup. Next we laid down a custom paint job on our W-350 with a dark two tone theme to match the name and attitude of Project Nightshift. The transmission was swapped out with a more robust and reliable Allison 1,000 from ATS that can handle the added horsepower and keep this rig rolling. Next we installed the refurbished transfer case also from ATS. Then we installed our intercooler and plumbed in the turbo. The front clip was installed as well as the grille with our new Carriker Customs inserts. Lastly we fabricated our custom stainless steel exhaust that we got from MBRP. With all that being said we are dangerously close to getting this truck back on the road. Obviously we've still got plenty of work left to do and a lot of is gonna be here in our interior. We're gonna be getting started getting in here and getting our headlight switch replaced. Now a lot of the time we wouldn't show you guys something this small but it's a really common failure point on these trucks. So we wanted to talk about it a little bit. If you look you'll see some burned contacts on the inside here and some melted plastic. It could have come from this or it could have come from the connector that this thing gets plugged into. Either way that's not gonna cut it because not only is it unsafe but it's gonna make our lights not work the way they're supposed to. So we're gonna be getting rid of this and we're gonna replace it with a Duralast switch that we got from the Autozone Pro website. If we look at these side by side you'll notice it's exactly the same minus the burned bits of it and that's exactly how it's supposed to be. Duralast makes sure that their parts are designed to meet or exceed o-e fit, form, and function. So we're not gonna have any issues getting this thing installed and we're not gonna have to worry about it after the fact. So now that we've got our new switch let's check out that connector. Now our switch isn't the only thing that's got to get replaced. This connector as you can tell has definitely seen better days. Like I mentioned before, what's happened is it's got hot from the middle and just heated its way out melting the plastic all the way around. Obviously we're gonna be replacing this with a new connector. Now I've already got this one prepped with the heat shrink on and the connectors on. So we're gonna take a look at another brand new and show you why I did that here in just a minute. Looking at this new one obviously these wires are much heavier gauge. That's gonna help keep the temp down in the connector to prevent that from happening again in the future. Of course, like I mentioned heat shrink, don't forget it, especially on something like this because getting cross contact between these connectors is gonna cause all kinds of weird problems that you really don't want to deal with. Let's take a look at a brand new one. First thing you're gonna notice is that all these wires are the same length. That's why I prepped the other one beforehand because if you were to take all these wires and bundle them up like this and put all your butt connectors on and make your connections you're gonna end up with a big bulb of butt connectors right here in the middle of your harness and nobody wants that. Plus having all those connectors in such close proximity increases your chances of having heat build up and having more issues like that further down the road. So we've got all these staggered. We've got this other one prepped already. So we're gonna go ahead and get all of these cut one at a time, placed in here, get the switch in, call it done. All the wires on the new connector are the same as the factory wires but just to be safe we're gonna do it one at a time. Go for about a three-eighths of an inch strip on here. Give this a little twist. Make sure we get our connector oriented the right way. We're gonna adding a little bit of length on with these new wires but not too bad. Shouldn't cause any issues. [ Music ]
[ heat gun humming ] [Eric] With that finished up all that's left before we can install our new Duralast switch is to get this bracket off of the old one and get it swapped over. Once we're done with that we can go ahead and move on and get the rest of this interior finished up. [Anthony] We add the final pieces of our interior with new seats and show you a way to refurbish your old door panels to make them look great again.
[Anthony] Hey guys, welcome back to Music City Trucks. Now that Eric's got our headlight switch installed and our dash back together we can go ahead and finish up this seat install. As you can see we've already got our carpet installed. We got our kit from First Gen Industries. It's a pre-molded black carpet kit that we got to better match the theme of Project Nightshift. Up top we got our gauge cluster from Dakota Digital. It's their VHX option and we got it in red to also better match the theme of Project Nightshift. On the seat side of things we've already got our TMI frame installed along with the passenger seat and our Sport Buddy console. The only thing left to do is get the driver's seat mounted in the truck, but in order to do that we first have to mount these sliders onto the seat frames. We're running TMI's Pro Classic Low Back in a black vinyl with a red stitch. It's gonna look real good on Project Nightshift. Now these are pretty simple to install with basic hand tools but there's a couple of tricks that are gonna make your life a little bit easier. The first one here we're gonna go ahead and get the screwdriver into this hole on the eyelet on the bracket. We're gonna go ahead and pivot that up, hold it down, stick something either a screwdriver, maybe an allen like I got here. That way you'll be able to slide the slider past the hole here. That way we can get our bolts mounted into the seat frame. When you're putting these bolts in place it's a good idea to put a drop of thread locker on them to keep them in place. [ Music ] [ ratchet clicking ] [Anthony] Now on these sliders there is a left and a right hand side and you want to make sure you get them on the right side. This one with the handle you want to make sure it's on the left side. So if you're sitting on the seat you want to be grabbing it with your left hand. [ ratchet clicking ] [Anthony] Alright! Now on this side we don't need an allen wrench in here because we have the handle. Now the handle lets us move this spring loaded plate up and down that catches the slide. On this side it doesn't have the handle. So we stuck this in here to mimic what the handle's doing to raise this out of the groove so we can slide it and get it out of our way. We'll go ahead and do that, and now you see I've got access to the hole. We can get our bolt mounted into the frame. [ ratchet clicking ] [Anthony] Our next step, what we need to do is make sure that the sliders are in the same slots and they're even on both sides. What we're gonna do is move this one up, make sure they're lined up, and we're gonna get this wire rod that comes with the kit. Now on this kit there's two O-rings that are gonna slide in and they're gonna lock these together. That way when you pull this handle they both move in unison. How we're gonna do that is we're gonna take our pliers, pinch down on this back here, get these O-rings to slide to the middle of the rod. We're gonna pop this side in right here and then we're gonna use our little allen wrench to get this one over. Get your pliers. Put them right there so they're locked into that groove that's on the wire rod. Do that for both sides. Should be good to go. Now the seat's ready to go in the truck. [ Music ]
Get this last nut tightened down and we're good to go. We got the seat sliders on. It works, it's operational, but we've got one more thing we want to show you. [Eric] And that is gonna be to get this passenger side door panel refinished. Now we've already got the drivers side done, and there's a reason we're refinishing these instead of replacing them. Nobody makes reproductions of these door panels and to get used ones you're looking at $100 bucks a piece for ones that look like this or upwards of $500 dollars for a pair of new old stock ones. Even if you're pouring money into a project like this that's gonna be a show piece you do want to save where you can. So we're gonna be doing this ourselves. Save ourselves some time, some money, and some headache trying to find it. The first step is gonna be to get this upper door panel carpeting painted and we're gonna have to do that on here. The reason for that is because it is plastic riveted into the backside of the door panel. To remove that and then reinstall it would be a real pain. So we're gonna tape this off right now, get this dyed, and move on. [ Music ] I'm not going crazy trying to cover every little bit of this door panel while I'm masking because we do still have to go back and scuff all this plastic before we can paint it. A little bit of overspray isn't gonna kill us here. You also want to make sure while you're doing this that you don't get any of the carpet fibers trapped under your tape. That'll leave little bits of your old color and nobody wants that. [ Music ] One thing I did forget to mention is before you actually go to spray this stuff you want to make sure that your carpet is nice and clean. So vacuum it up, use a carpet cleaner, or spray it down and scrub it out with a light brush. Just make sure there's no dirt or anything that's gonna cause issues with your dye. While you're doing this you want to make sure you're getting long, even strokes on your fabric and you want to spray at a little bit of an angle. You also want to make sure you're going a little light because you don't want this stuff getting bunched up. It's gonna create big crunchy spots in your carpet if that paint dries at all. Now that we've got a couple of light coats in one direction we're gonna give this a few minutes to flash off before we spray it the same way from the other direction. If you were dealing with regular carpet as opposed to something with short fibers like this you would want to wait until it flashed off and then take a soft brush and just brush those fibers out and make sure none of them are clumped up and you get full, even coverage. So there's no reason for us to brush it out. All we've got to do is wait a couple of minutes, spray it again, and move along. [Mike] Coming up, we finish our door panel makeover and share some tips when ordering custom driveshafts.
[Eric] Hey guys, welcome back. While you guys were gone I went ahead and took a red scuff pad to this door panel to get the surface abraded. After that I took some wax and grease remover and got this thing wiped down. Now we're in the booth and ready to go. Now that the prep work's finished up I've got our door panel hung up here in the booth and we're gonna get started hitting it with some of this adhesion promotor. The paint that we're using is a direct-to-metal or d-t-m paint, meaning the use of a primer is not necessarily required. However we're painting plastic not metal, and we want to make sure that this paint latches on as good as possible. So this adhesion promotor is going to chemically abrade the surface in addition to the physical abrasion we did with our scuffing pad. Once we spray two light coats of this we're ready to get our color laid down. [ Music ] For our color we're gonna be using some hot rod black so we match the rest of the interior panels we've already painted. With our paint cured I've got this door panel back in the studio. We're gonna go ahead and get some adhesive sprayed on both of our surfaces. You don't want to do too crazy of a coat but you definitely want a good bit on there. Just make sure this is fully covered. I went ahead and taped up around the edges of our carpet as well because this stuff gets a little messy as you can see, and that is gonna make sure that it doesn't wrap around and get caught up in all the fibers. Now that we've got both of our surfaces sprayed I'm having Mike give me a hand real quick just getting this laid down cause I can do it by myself but it's a lot easier having an extra set of hands. [ Music ]
We're gonna start by rolling outward. Make sure these edges get in nice and tight. It helps if you keep just a little bit of backwards pressure on your carpet. That way everything stays nice and straight. [ Music ]
Just like that we have essentially a brand new door panel. All that's left is just put a couple more pieces on here and then we're ready to get it put in the truck. [Anthony] Alright! While Eric was busy finishing up our door panels I went ahead and hung our front bumper. These are Keldermann Manufacturing's Bravo Series bumpers. We got ours in raw and we paint matched it to our truck. For the lights we went with XK Glow's 20-inch light bar in the middle and their C-3 cube lights on the side. This thing's gonna light up the night. [Mike] Now any time you modify your vehicle's ride height, the engine, transmission, or transfer case combination, well there's a high probability it's gonna affect the driveshaft length. That's very common to have to change a driveshaft for your vehicle when you modify it. That's what we've had to do here with our Dodge with the lift kit and a different transmission. I want to show you some differences here or some specifics about these driveshafts. Now this driveshaft right here I pulled out from the warehouse because it's a slip yoke design. Now this is not for our truck but it's a different one. This is the most common design of the driveshaft. The slip yoke, it slides in the back of the transmission. The reason it has a slip yoke design is as the rear end moves up and down for suspension articulation that driveshaft has to change length cause the transmission is fixed but the rear end's moving up and down. So this slides in and out of the back of the transmission to accommodate for that length change. Well ours isn't that easy. They have to do a two piece design, or this telescoping style, because on the back of the transfer case is a fixed yoke as opposed to the slip yoke. So as the suspension articulates, moves up and down, this length between the yoke of the rear end and the transfer case is gonna change length. So to accommodate that this driveshaft will plunge inside of itself, or telescope, to achieve that length change. On our front driveshaft we have a similar design with that telescoping unit but what makes this one unique is the double cardan joint. It has two U-joints built in here. That way we can achieve a greater angle of attack from the transfer case down to the front differential. To get your custom driveshaft you need to know the length and each manufacturer has their specific way of measuring the length for your driveshaft. Ours wants us to go from the face of the pinion at the yoke coming out of the rear end to the transfer case, the yoke coming out of the transfer case. That length along with the U-joint size. These U-joints come in different sizes depending on your horsepower and torque application, and to measure this we take our calipers here and we can get the diameter of the cap along with the width of that U-joint. So the series of U-joint, the length of your driveshaft is the information needed to get your own custom driveshaft. Enough about these. Let's get them installed in the truck. [Eric] The job is done. Now it's time to clock out and hit the streets in Nightshift.
[ Music ]
[ engine starting ] [ diesel engine rumbling ] [ Music ]
[Eric] To say that this truck has made an extreme transformation would be a little bit of an understatement. Inside and out this truck has come full circle from the day we picked it up. [ Music ] It was a good solid work truck when we started but you can't really go wrong if that's what you're looking for and your choice is a W-350 Cummins, or D-350 if you're just going on the road. I think one of the most impressive things that I've noticed about this since we got it done is probably the fact that for no more work than we did we have seen an insane increase in performance out of that 12-valve. Really if we're doing no more than a turbo, some bigger injectors, manifold, and that P-pump swap it is a night and day difference on the road. This thing didn't have a whole lot of get up when we first got it because it wasn't supposed to, right? This is a work truck. It's not meant for going fast, but if you need to pull a house down this is the set of keys that you're grabbing. Not only can it still do that but now it's pretty dang quick, and it's got a lot more style than it did before. Even out here when there's not a whole lot of heads to turn this thing is turning some heads. Believe it or not I think this thing actually rides a little bit better now on the 35s and the lift than it did in stock form. I don't know exactly how that works, but for a lifted dually this thing is pretty nice going down the road. A lot smoother than I would have expected for sure. There's that gear. I'm getting the feeling from this one that this is one of those trucks you've gotta be a little bit careful with. If you give it just a little bit too much she's liable to get away from you. I know that sounds a little crazy for a build like this that didn't get a whole lot of crazy engine work done but believe me when I tell you, this thing wants to go. From the outside you would never know unless somebody told you that this is the same truck we pulled in last year. With the darker gray in the middle and the pitch black on the top and the bottom down to that blood red pinstripe front to back this thing looks about as mean as it could get. Then you add in the custom lighting on the outside and you've got one menacing profile especially in the dark. These last couple of seasons on Music City Trucks have been great and I wouldn't trade the experience for the world, but I think it's time to move on and get back to something that's a little bit more me. So we'll see you guys a little further on down the road.
