Hemi-Sphere

Today on the premiere episode of Xtreme 4x4. How do you handle a hungry

hemi? You take it to new heights, Ian and Jessi break out the airbags for an extreme suspension upgrade. Plus in your face hardcore action from off-road racing's premiere event,

Brandon.

Um

Welcome to our show and the premiere episode of Xtreme 4x4. The show that's all about the four wheel drive lifestyle

and experiencing the great outdoors off the beaten path. It's where all the fun is, but of course, you gotta build them before you can break them. That's right, Jessi. And when we're not building some of the sickest four wheel drive trucks you've ever seen, we'll be out covering racing's top events like these

core racing from Crandon, Wisconsin

Baha

and will be in your face with hardcore rock crawling,

Bill Climes,

mud

bugs

and more.

But right now I just wanna get dirty on our first project. Me too, Jessi. You know,

there's always been a trade off. You can have a big lift with a harsh ride or a smaller lift with a smooth ride. But with today's Kelderman air ride kit that we're gonna install on a 2004 Dodge

hemi. We're getting the best of both worlds.

This is

Keldermans big red Dodge equipped with the same 10 inch Kelderman air ride kit we're going to install in our project here today.

You probably saw this truck on the cover of Truck Trend magazine.

Don't be intimidated by the amount of parts in the bed of this truck.

It truly is a bolt on kit

and here we have it

not only does this kit make your truck look cool, but it replaces the factory suspension with these air bags giving you anywhere between 5 to 13 inches of lift

and in the rear,

we're gonna be replacing the factory leaf springs with a heavy duty four length set up.

And as I'm sure you're aware, whenever you install a four L

wheel hop and axle wrap are all but eliminated

and that's gonna help us out when we start adding some serious power to our dodge.

This kit comes complete with everything you will need for the install four Firestone airbags, upper and lower trailing arms for the rear

pan, hard bar, rear axle brackets, upper and lower bag mounts and trailing arm mounts, a

drop, pitman arm,

upper and lower shock mounts, upper and lower bag mounts, upper and lower trailing arms for the front

sway bar, lowering blocks

and trailing arm mounts

and your custom choice of shocks compressors and controls

before you take anything off this truck. It's a good idea to establish a baseline measurement. In this case, we're going to check the pinion angle by marking the differential and using an angle finder.

First,

Ian's gonna remove the factory air box so we can gain access to the shock tower nuts.

Then after supporting the front differential simply remove the lower shock bolt.

Now, you don't need a lift to install this kit.

It's just as easy to use a floor jack and some jack stands.

But when you have a hoist, this big,

you'd be a fool not to use it.

We'll remove the four sway bar bolt

and this track bar bowl.

Now we'll simply lower the differential

and the curl spring will slide right in.

It's replaced with

this airbag assembly.

You pre assemble it on the bench to make sure your shock mounts line up.

Then the upper mount comes off

and it goes in the truck.

Now that we've got the top of that bag bolted in, it's time to get these trailing arms out of here. And the new ones in these ones from Kelderman are a lot longer than the stock ones. And they also have tons of adjust ability that's gonna help us out when we got to pitch this front end to get our alignment angle back. If you remember, we measured that front pinion angle with an angle finder and we have to set it back to stock. We have to reset this eccentric at the same time. Now, you might not know what an eccentric is, but I'm gonna show you

you're gonna find an eccentric where

an alignment angle can be adjusted. In

this case, it's a bolt with a washer with a whole knot in the center. And when this turns, it's actually gonna pitch that axle back and forth. What that's gonna do is it's gonna change our caster angle, which is the relationship between the upper and lower ball joint on the truck.

Thank you for that eccentric experience on the chalk board

in. No swipe Jessi. Now remember when I told you about your custom shock options with this kit,

we decided to run with the 7100 series with an external reservoir, multiple valving options inside of a two inch body.

Some people call it Billstein. Some people call it Bill Stein. Either way these shocks are bitching

and they're a real pain to get in. So Ian, could you come over and help me get these implants? Sure, not a problem.

Ok. Ready. Yep. Here we go.

All right,

I'll get the other one.

All right.

Now, Dodge comes with factory brake lines that are long enough for us to remount them because with the lift, you're gonna need that extra movement. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna weld on a stud right here, bolt it on right there. Some people drill holes, you can mount it right there either way, whatever works best for you.

Let's get this other shock. On. Got it right here

after the break, Ian and Jessi button up the front suspension of their dodge project plus fender defender dirt flying off road racing action. When Xtreme 4x4 continues,

the Xtreme 4x4 event of the week is brought to you by Warren number one in Winches.

Welcome back to Xtreme 4x4 and our project today,

we're putting the biggest Kelderman air ride kit they make for a dodge in this truck and that's gonna change all our alignment angles. So I went ahead and put in this drop pitman arm to compensate for that.

I also bolted in the sway bar lowering blocks to keep everything in line.

Have you seen this awesome shop? We're gonna work in. We got the jeep back there where we're gonna do an easy budget build up later. We got tubing benders, welders,

the coolest thing of all. We got this 50 inch plasma screen TV, where we're gonna be bringing you some of the coolest off road events from around the world. Check it out

for

the fastest and most intense truck racing. You've got to love the core series fender to fender. Go get em, smash em up style racing,

rocks flying over the jump bumps, turns cartwheels. You name it. This is what a

racing about right here. This is definitely extreme racing. You have to be on the edge here to be competitive

packing 850 horses, the pro four and two wheel drive classes don't just push the envelope

it right through it. Really, it's every man for himself out here. It's definitely a macho man sport. You know, I've never been in a dogfight in like an F-16, but I think that would probably be about as close as you can compare it to. So there's only a few people in this world that can probably understand what we do. I don't think there's any other motor sport that has anything, the extreme that we do. I think you're here to watch trucks roll over

running. This hard rollovers are just part of the game.

How's that? For extreme?

Yeah, the driver doesn't want to be the guy upside down. But, you know, that's part of racing and that's why people pay the money to come. See, it wouldn't be racing if it wasn't Robin Robin's racing. If you can't handle it, get out somebody in the way. Sometimes you got to bump them sometimes you don't. But, uh,

it can get pretty physical out

there a lot of times.

You know, we're side by side 344 wide. And,

uh, I mean, it gets very exciting core racing is probably the most extreme off road racing

that the fans can actually enjoy.

Every year. 30,000 fans make the pilgrimage to off road racing's premiere track.

This is the best place in the world,

the best off road racetrack in the world. Brandon, Brandon,

Wisconsin.

No, they call it the Indianapolis above

road because there's not a faster, wider, bigger track that we ever race on and they draw the crowd to prove it

to win here. These guys have to first survive the land rush start.

The Oklahoma land rush here is incredible.

Going 100 miles an hour into the first turn at the start,

you know, and it's, it's quite a challenge going into that turn. It is probably the most adrenaline packed start of any, any motorsport. So you get a bunch of trucks going side by side

to connect. Uh You get some excitement going on there. Talk about, uh,

jacking up. That's the rush right there

geared to handle the rocks, the jumps and three G corners. This place doesn't get any easier after turn one

pretty intense. We're squeezing everything we can out of these trucks. The competition is so stiff that, uh, you know, that's, that's what you need to do. If you want to win races, you gotta let it hang out there. The only thing that keeps them together is just the, the high quality stuff we got in them

at a cost of a quarter of a million dollars a rig like Scott Douglas's Ford ain't built to hall wood.

Everything about this thing is handmade and it's made to do one thing and that's go from point A to point B in a hurry.

Now I'm talking when we go down these straightaways, we can do a 200 yard dash and get this thing probably to 90 miles an hour. And the beauty about it is we can stop it from the next corner.

It's in the corners where technology takes over

these axles and CV S cannot handle all that horsepower. So what we've got to do is we got to have some sort of slipper device

to where when it reaches maximum horsepower in a lower gear, it'll momentarily slip it.

The other trick thing to it is I come into the corner and when I lift off the throttle, it disengages this torque on demand system. It's an electric system that's done by a little switch on the, on the throttle. And all of a sudden it gives me two wheel drive into the corner so I can pitch in the corners like a two wheel drive truck. As soon as I crack the throttle, all four wheels are driving and away we go

and when the competition gets close, Scott's got his secret weapon.

One thing that's real distinct about this, we run two collectors into one single five inch exhaust, a five inch Dymax welded Muffler right here. It turns out here and comes out right off the side of the truck. What happens is when I get off the throttle, the fuel accumulates in the muffler there and then that hot air and hot exhaust all of a sudden ignites it and just shoots those flames out. So the kids love it. The crowd loves it and we kind of love it when it throws the flame in the competitor's window.

Now, with all this equipment we've talked about and all this speed and all this trick stuff and handmade parts. There's nothing like driving one of these things. It is just incredible. I love my job. It's the most incredible thing in the world. It is just a real thrill to drive these things and it's super exciting.

Look at all that fun. If you would like more information on the car racing series, you can check out a link on our website after the show

and Scott Douglas offered to bring that F 150. By later this season, we're gonna flip a coin to see who gets to drive it.

For more information on today's show. Go online, Xtreme 4x4, tv.com.

Welcome back to Xtreme 4x4 and our Dodge Air Ride project. Since the front end is already in, it's time to put in our rear end. But before I can put in that four link system, I need to take out the factory Leaf springs.

Now, if you don't know how to take out leaf springs,

you should be watching the women's channel

out with the oars in with the new, these are the factory bump stops and we are going to be replacing them with these upper bag mats.

There's a lot less bracketry in the rear. You simply install a lower trailing arm bracket.

So

mo

and actual brackets

now we just gotta slap in these trailing arms.

I just them like so, so they line up with the holes,

Watson.

Now, if you take a close look at the ends of these trailing arms, these adjustment pieces are actually from semi trucks that Kelderman has adapted to their kit.

Nothing says macho like semi truck parts.

The airbag just slips into place

and now we can start on the other side.

We know the guy who owns this truck and he's gonna work it pretty hard.

So we're gonna go ahead and tack all the trailing iron brackets to frame with our meg welder. Mig welders are pretty commonplace in most shops here at extreme. We like to use a mixed gas of both Argon and Co2. So we get good clean welds with excellent penetration.

And since Kellerman powder coats this kit, I went ahead and took the liberty to grind some of that powder coating off so I can actually weld it to the frame.

Ok. So we've run into a small problem. The owner of this truck has put on his own custom dual exhaust system which

gets in the way of the pan

har bar. So I'm just gonna have to cut it off.

Mhm

When you push the limit of any lift kit like we do here at extreme, you're gonna run into some issues. In this case, we're gonna have to install this indexing ring between the transfer case and the transmission to clock it down,

that's going to help our U joint angles on our front shaft. The back shaft has a CV joint on it, but the front only has a U joint. So we're going to send it out to Dyno

Engineering and have this lengthened by an inch and a half. After lowering and bolting the ringing onto the case,

just reinstall it to the tranny.

During the break, we're gonna go over all the nuts and bolts to make sure it's all tightened down and then all we have left to do is plummet and wire it.

Now, you can already see the dramatic suspension change that we've made.

But wait until you see this truck on these massive meats.

I

gotta be honest with you, this hasn't been the easiest job, but if we wiped out on the first show, we couldn't call ourselves extreme.

I've gone ahead and

fed up this aluminum panel to hold all of our air ride stuff. We've gone with their big red solenoid pack, four valves, four tires,

traded out the tanks for 23 gallons and are gonna stick with their twin V

air compressors. This whole panel is gonna slip in place of the spare tire

because when you're rolling on 30 eights, we don't need a spare.

Speaking of 38

these are Mickey Thompson's Baha

Claw radios, which are perfect for our massive street lift because of their improved rolling and hydroplane resistance.

We slapped them on these, we racing Cheyenne series 18 by 12

which are forged from one piece of aluminum, making them some of the strongest and most lightweight wheels out there.

Now, between you and me, when it comes to off road, just take the tread, turn it around,

it'll give you more bite on anything you wanna grab on to

before we get those tires mounted.

We have to run our airlines,

install the digital display in the cab,

raise our panel into place

and feed it some juice.

We all know what our stock

hemi look like.

Well, take a look at this.

We all know that this truck is huge but it's actually the little things in life that really matter. This key fob

remotely controls each individual bag,

check it out.

I'm gonna drop the front end.

Oh, that goes down pretty fast.

Why couldn't you do that before I got out?

Few adjustments and it looks like we'll be done.

Well, I would hope so.

We worked really long and hard on this thing today.

Yeah, something tells me the size of those tires. We're gonna need to upgrade those brakes.

Yeah, bigger is probably better. Huh? I think so.