The Year in Review

Today, we've packed a whole season into one show. We're taking a look back at some of your favorite projects from this season and we're living some of our favorite moments.

Also, we'll rewind the tape and take a closer look at shortening our seat 10 bed. And finally, we'll show you some of the really cool projects we're getting ready to start on. That's all today here on trucks.

Hey, welcome to trucks.

Well, we've taken on a whole lot of projects this year and finished most of them, but a season here at the shop, it goes by in a blur. So we thought it'd be kind of cool to take a look back and revisit some of these projects that we've done and some of their payoffs

now, like Kevin said, we've covered a lot of ground this year from the drag strip to the mud hole and of course, on the street

now we've done some low buck budget stuff and we've thrown a few dollars around and we've had a lot of fun doing it.

So not only are we gonna take a look back at what we've done this past year, but we're gonna give you a little preview on some of the projects we got cooking for next year.

Now, one of your favorite projects, as well as ours, this full size 79 Bronco that we've named Dass Bronco. This thing has been run through the Ringer and through the mud and we just couldn't kill it. But when we first got our hands on this thing, it was far from being ready for the trail. In fact, if you remember, it was just a bunch of parts and pieces spread out over about a half acre.

We saw the unmistakable shape of a 79 Bronco tub sitting in a field loaded with a bunch of other worn out trucks and ended up scraping together the parts and buying the Bronco and the 460 long block for so cheap that we couldn't pass it up.

Now, back at the shop, we stripped the body off the frame,

checked all the components for damage and wear

and replace only what we needed to. In order to get it up and running again

along the way, we threw an inexpensive four inch lift on it. 37 inch wheels and tires and cut out the fenders to give us room for some extra wheel travel.

After that, we hammered out the dance and then gave it a unique dazzle camouflage paint job

and then threw it on the trail and beat on it

and beat on it

and beat on it

and jumped it

and beat on it some more and no matter what we tried to do or where we tried to go, it got us there in style.

Now, the only real issues we had other than losing our power steering pump out on the trail is we broke off a couple of wheel studs and that may have something to do with launching a 4500 pound vehicle into the air. But hey, these are over the counter replacement parts. So we're gonna be up to speed in no time. But all in all Das

Bronco proved itself.

Now

do S Bronco wasn't the only rig we abused off road this year. I know you guys remember our YJ project. Well, the stock Jeep axles were no match for 37 inch tires or a V8. Never mind both of them. We proved it.

We bought our 87 YJ with the somewhat underwhelming carbureted 4.2 L six, which was a decent engine for longevity but not so hot in the power department with only 112 horsepower on tap.

So we thought a Chevy 350 was a much better idea

and is a pretty common swap for a lot of you Jeep guys.

We found a well used long block and freshened it up with a rebuild kit, then topped it off with an EF I conversion

that proved to be totally reliable even at the steepest angles

with an eight inch lift and larger and heavier 37 inch tires on our first trail test. The stock axles gave up no surprises here, but it was kind of fun breaking.

So we dragged it back to the shop again, loaded it up with some high opinion data sixties and hit the trail one more time.

This time, the YJ was unstoppable, taking everything we threw at it and making it a seriously fun on and off road.

Now, that's plenty of mud rocks and dirt. But we wanted to build a giveaway truck and rather than give you guys something that's beat up and abused, we wanted you to have something that would shine something. Your wife would actually let you park in the driveway.

So we started Project H RT, our fiberglass 37 Ford, we got from Legend Motors and this thing is getting the full treatment.

Legend Motors worldwide has a great reputation and we knew we'd be getting our hands on, not just a cool replica truck but a solid street rod chassis to boot.

So after taking a tour of the manufacturing facility, we brought our truck home and got to work.

Project H RT is getting its power from a potent 347 Stroker, a six speed single overdrive manual transmission and a nine inch rear axle assembly mounted to the box frame with a ladder bar suspension out back and tubular independent suspension up front.

Ridiculously large wheels and tires are just the beginning of custom options. We'll be throwing at this truck. It's gonna be cool

and that 347 is gonna motivate that little truck, but we're far from finished with project H RT. So we'll carry it over into the next season to finish it up then. And today we're also gonna show you some new trucks projects for upcoming episodes. But getting back to Fast Fords, we also had the opportunity with the help of Jack Rush to build our own version of a Rausch

stage three F 150. And let me tell you

that dude was fat.

Everybody that knows about trucks knows the Ford lightning

and everyone that knows about Ford's lightning knows that Ford no longer makes them. So we considered it our duty to step up when Rausch

asked us to build them a version of a two wheel drive blown F 150 using parts from their stage three bin.

The interesting thing is that since we built that truck and beat the heck out of it on TV,

Rausch

has introduced their nightmare truck with the same platform we use on our F 150 along with the rest of their state three lineup.

Thank you, Rouse performance for filling the lightning void.

Now, that truck was fun. Don't get me wrong, but there's nothing that can top driving the world's tallest truck. Yes, we're talking Bigfoot.

Now we love getting out there to car and truck shows. So we jumped at the chance to go to summit racing's annual truck fest this year,

it's free to get in and there's something for everyone there.

Lots of street trucks, even a mini

Rubi

on trail to test your off road rigs.

You never know who you're gonna meet there. And we were lucky enough to bump into George Barris himself. But the coolest thing was getting some seed time in the world's tallest truck. Bigfoot. This truck is a magnet for anyone who sees it

and watching it go by is almost as much fun as driving it.

Well, almost.

Now, this is a rush man

up next. We'll be hauling some

tan

and later we cut 20 inches out of our C Ten's bed and we'll show you even more detail on how we did it. Stay tuned.

Hey, welcome back to trucks and our look back at some of our favorite projects that we've been working on this past season.

And one of the most extensive build ups ever done on trucks is this one right here, Hall. And as 10

Hall an S 10 started out as a budget V8 conversion using a high mileage, plain old V6 S 10.

Now, that was a fun swap. But when we got bored with S

10-K, things went to a whole other level. The cab is about the only thing that stayed the same.

We back half the frame

lightened the front gutted the inside caged it and gave it some fat rolling stock to help with traction, then

dropped in a blown 355 inch small block between the rails.

After taking it out at the shop, we hauled it to a local eight mile track for a testing tune to chase down any weaklings and dial in the suspension.

After a few runs down the track, we did a little tuning for more power with the pulley swap, smaller jets and larger squirters

and learned what worked well with Hall and S 10 and what didn't.

Now that test and tune session was a lot of fun,

but we still don't have this thing dialed in 100%.

In fact, when we first started planning this project, it was gonna be more of a street truck than it turned out to be. So, with a few changes like a looser torque converter, a trans bra

and

maybe some more fine tuning on our engine combination. Well, this thing will live up to its performance potential and all of our expectations. Yeah, because I hadn't gotten nearly enough. See time in that thing yet.

But now the 66 C 10 Days

driver project that we've been working on is near and dear to my heart. It's one of my personal favorites because I've got one of these trucks. Mine's a long bed and it's been in the family since it was new, but I've always wanted a short bed, so we're not gonna change my truck. But I remember conversations with my dad about how he used to shorten and bob the open road trucks. So Ryan and I started talking about it, did a little bit of research. And before you know it, a project is born,

we got our cherry 66 long bed from Mike Cranford complete with the original owner's manual and sir

records with the truck still wearing its original paint.

It also came to us with the original 283 under the hood. So we tuned it up, fired it up

and then decided that it was solid enough to use as a foundation.

So we stripped it down to the bare rails, found the best section of flat parallel frames and walked the step by step through sectioning the truck frames the right way,

reinforcing it with fish plates

and repositioning the cab mats back to the correct location.

Then we went to work, installing a complete air spring system with a mild sea nut to give this truck a custom stance with great handling and durability.

Since our goal here is to build a great looking daily driver.

Now that took care of the frame, which was pretty straightforward when you compared to the complicated sectioning, we had to do both front and rear on this pickup bed. Now, we've been getting some great feedback from you guys about our rewind segments, which is basically when we take unused footage and dive a little deeper into certain projects. When we come back, we'll show you a little more detail on what it took to make this long bed, a short bed

after the break, welding stamped sheet metal can be tricky. So we'll show you the right way in our rewind segment. Stick around.

Hey, welcome back to trucks. Today. We're taking a look back at some of the more popular projects we've done this season and taking that long wheel base 66 C 10 and make it into the more popular short wheelbase was a challenge, but it's all good because we got to show you guys how to properly section the frame and how to shorten bedsides.

So right now, we're gonna do a rewind for you and dig a little deeper into the technical aspects of sheet metal work.

Now, we wanted to take 12 inches of bedside from the front

and an additional eight inches of length from the rear to give us the factory measured bedsides and to maintain the contour that was originally stamped into the panels.

So then we started cutting

and cutting

and cutting some more.

Now, this is actually the section we cut out of the top of the bedside and you can see very clearly that doing a staggered cut on the top allowed us to keep the original position of the steak pocket

for a totally factory look. We used a grinder with a 4.5 inch cut off wheel. We got from Industrial Depot. Now, a larger blade is gonna give you a straighter more accurate cut with better control. And when you're dealing with sheet metal that only needs a

16 of an inch gap for weld penetration. Well, accuracy matters. But if all you've got is one of these pneumatic cut off wheels, you can still get the job done, just don't try and make the blade eat too much. For example,

use your hand as a guide and gently feed it into your metal going against the rotation of the blade. If the blade starts to slow down, just back off a little bit, give it a little less pressure and you can get a nice controlled accurate cut.

Now, after the metal is cut and you're happy with the fit, it's got to be welded together,

but sheet metal is different than regular rolled steel.

There's built in stress from the stamping process that has to be taken into account.

Too much heat can release the stress and cause warpage.

So we use tax to locate the sections then spaced out the rest of the welds until it was a solid joint all the way down the sea

on the inside of the bed. I used a rosette weld, sometimes known as a plug weld to join the two pieces of metal together. Now, that type of weld replaces the factory spot weld and is probably a little stronger

with a rosette weld. You're carefully watching your weld pool and filling it up until it looks level with the surrounding metal.

Now, if you're doing a restoration, a rosette weld can kind of present a problem because when you grind everything flush, you lose the look of a factory spot weld. But if you take a blunt drift and a hammer and punch between your spot welds

where you can dimple the metal and actually recreate the look of the factory spot weld

and not lose any points on the show field.

We ground and fit the panels so that there is a slight gap between both pieces, then tack them together to hold the location.

We're spacing our wells out to minimize distortion and warpage

and traveling around until the joint is one solid piece of metal.

The surface then gets ground down flush with a flap wheel instead of a grinding rock

again because a flat wheel stays cooler and less warpage will occur.

The last thing we did after we sectioned these bedsides is to apply a product called

Plex 20. The manufacturer claims that it'll stop flash rusting indefinitely and that was over two months ago and check it out. There's no sign of rusting anywhere on all of this bare steel. So these panels are gonna be ready when we are to finish the bodywork and get them ready for paint.

When we come back, we'll show you two of the really sweet projects we've got coming up and one that's not so sweet.

Hey, welcome back to trucks and thanks for sticking with us. Now, we told you earlier that we'd be giving you a little glimpse of some of the upcoming trucks projects and those of you guys who know what you're looking at. Well, this needs no explanation but in case you don't, this is a first generation 1994 Ford Lightning

and this is probably Ford's inspiration for building the Lightning in the first place. A 1990 Chevy 454 Ss.

Now it's had recent paint. So the badges are missing.

The original wheels are long gone and it's well used, but it still has the 454 big block turbo 400 trans

and heavy duty rear axle. The lightning, she comes packing too with the heavy duty frame beefed up drive train pushed by the potent 351 Windsor with the high flow GT 40 heads. Now, both of these trucks were rated at less than 250 horsepower from the factory. But you got to remember that that was high performance back in the day.

Now, both of these muscle trucks have plenty of performance potential. So we've decided on a little friendly competition to pit these two trucks against each other and I'm taking the Chevy

and those of you guys that know me well, you know, I'm a blue oval guy so the lightning is right up my alley. So what we're gonna do is set a similar performance goal for both vehicles that somewhere north of 400 horsepower and pit them up against each other and see who comes out on top. Now, both of these vehicles give us a rock solid platform to start with, but

check out what's coming in the door.

This is a 1988 Jeep Cherokee that somebody gave us just to get it off of their property. It's got 100 and 40,000 miles on it. It's beat up all over and it's wrecked in the front

now, crashed out or not. We're gonna turn this thing into a respectable trail rig

that you can drive to the trail wheel all day and

drive it home and we're gonna do it on the cheap with almost no budget.

Now, obviously, this is not all we've got coming up, there's plenty of killer trucks to build and we're gonna be showing up at a lot more events. So we want to say thanks for watching so far and stay with us because it only gets better.

Let's get this thing out of here. It stinks.

Now, I know you guys remember G M's Stroker HT 383 E emissions legal crate engine for 96 to 99 trucks and suvs. Well, like we told you before, this thing puts out 340 horsepower and 435 ft pounds of torque and they're available at any GM parts reseller.

Now, Skog

and

DICY, one of the nation's largest distributors of GM Crate Engines offers this two book photo instruction manual, the details removal and reinstallation of a GM crate engine into your truck. These books are a great resource with clear pictures and all the facts and specs that you need for the engine swap and the pages are made from a material that doesn't absorb grease so it's safe to take you to the shop with you while you're working. Now, normally the set goes for about 100 and 50 bucks. But if you buy your crate engine from Skog

and Dicky's as well for a limited time, they'll throw the set in for free.

Thanks for watching trucks. We see you guys next week.