Project A.J. Part 3

Jessi and I and climb back on project AJ today, the power plant of their ultimate Jeep comes together including this beefy 383 race motor plus the Baha

Cup challenge is all about survival. Extreme starts. Now,

welcome to Xtreme 4x4 in part three of project AJ our hard core no budget Jeep build. Now, if you remember we began this project with a bunch of catalogs and an idea.

Once the parts started to arrive, we began to mock up a rolling chassis by hanging some curry dips on the skyjacker, eight inch rock ready double flex suspension.

Then we completed that rolling chassis by adding the terra

flex high steer kit,

some worn free wheel and hubs

and some pro comp X terrain tires mounted on extreme series wheels.

We

fed up some roll cage and body protection tubing on the advanced frameworks frame.

Then we built the winch mount around the brake lines

and once we had everything in place that we needed, we pulled off the aquilo

body and began to tear the truck down. Now we're back to where we started with a huge pile of parts and a big job to do so this week, we're gonna concentrate on putting the engine together for this beast. Then we're gonna drop the entire drive train into our newly coated frame.

You did a pretty good job on it. I like it

when you're doing a truck build up, you got a lot of options. When it comes to the power plant, you can go to a wrecking yard, take out an engine and do an easy engine swap. You can take that same wrecking yard engine, rebuild it yourself with some rings, some bearings, maybe even some mild machine work, or you can even take it to an engine shop and have them build it for you to your own specifications. And if that's too much work, you can head to a dealer or an aftermarket supplier and buy a complete turnkey crate engine. And we chose to combine two of those options together.

We started with a season small block 350 that we sent over to Keith Thornton, that automotive specialist and had him bore and stroke this thing to 383 cubic inches. The nice thing is all of our machine work and bottom end assembly was done in one spot

and then we're gonna be building the top end here at extreme using the same parts that you would find on a GM performance parts crate engine.

The short blocks been bored 30 over and filled with one of Eagle's new rotating assemblies. It consists of a 4340 heat treated, internally balanced crank shaft,

srp 30 over lightweight pistons and some Eagle 3d rods. These are 300 1000th of an inch longer than the standard GM 5.7 connecting rods making them six inches which will give us a better rod to stroke ratio allowing the engine to spin up faster. And there's a light reciprocating mass due to smaller pistons.

Those lightweight pistons are an aluminum alloy flat top designed for a nice treatable compression and then they were fit with a Molly file

fit ring set before they were stuffed in the block. Finally, Keith Thornton slid in a full hydraulic crane roller cam. It's gonna give us a nice torque curve for our Jeep. But right now I got to button up the bottom end.

The first thing we're gonna drop on this block is this set of fast burn aluminum heads from GM performance parts.

The 62 CC combustion chamber comes with a two inch lightweight hollow stem intake valve and an inch and a half sodium filled exhaust.

We're gonna seal up that cylinder head using these felt pro head gaskets. They're specifically designed to be used on a cast iron block with aluminum heads with a steel shim for the combustion area and sealed around all the coolant ports.

Thanks.

Once the heads are in place, we can drop in the roller lifters,

push rods

and then top it off with some roller rockers.

These rocker arms are gonna help eliminate stress on the top of our valves as well as reduce friction throughout the entire valve train. Now, this valve train is made of matching components from crane

and they also come with these dual valve springs. But we talked to the guys at crane and they said that these GM springs do not exceed the lift limitations of our camp. So we're just gonna go ahead and leave them in there.

Anyone who takes their truck off road knows the benefits of having fuel injection on a vehicle that sees extreme angles.

So once we get this intake sealed up with the silicone,

we're gonna go ahead and drop on G M's port fuel injected ramjet intake.

This package includes the intake, the fuel rail, the injectors, all the sensors and even a new distributor

and they go ahead and install the throttle body onto the intake for you. All we have to do is drop this on the heads.

Now to control that injection, we're gonna be using this Mefi

four conversion kit also from GM performance parts.

Now, this package includes all the sensors and all the wiring we're gonna need to run that engine. Now that fuel injection will also require an 02 sensor to measure the oxygen content in the exhaust pipe.

So I went ahead and I pre drilled this hole in our collectors gonna weld on the bung and then we'll go ahead and install the 02 sensor.

Now, with everything in place on this engine, we can start hooking up this harness. Now, the nice thing about these weather pack connectors are not only they waterproof, but they'll only fit in one sensor. So they're labeled to show you where they go. But there's no way you can mix this up.

Once we get all these hooked up, we're gonna install the knock sensor on the block, hook up the ground wires and this thing's ready to run.

Got my bung molded on. That's a lovely job. Well, thank you. Thank you. I think we've got everything we need to make it run.

We'll probably move some stuff when the body's on the frame.

But for today,

if we just mount this stuff to the back of the heads and stuff, we should be able to fire it

right on.

So that taste good.

Stay with extreme because later Ian and Jessi attempt to fire up that small block. But next baja terrain jammed into one killer short course. It's the Baja Cup challenge. When Xtreme 4x4 continues,

we're back on extreme and we're going racing at one of California's most famous tracks. Glen Helen

known for its Motocross Championships. This track has evolved into one of the toughest off road courses anywhere.

After a five year layoff off road truck racing returned to the world renowned Glen Helen

raceway. If nothing else to leave, to be able to say I raced to Glen

Hell in my truck. I'm pumped called the Baha

Cup challenge. This one off race lived up to its namesake. It's really hard going. It's just like nice golf. This is extreme sport

in

two hours. These drivers had to battle not only the competition

but also the nasty two mile course.

The track is

incredible. It's very tough. This one is combining fire roads and sand washes and boulders and

super high hills. So it's more of a challenging type of technical course where you really gotta pay attention to what your vehicle's gonna do when you hit the certain area,

everyone who's ever driven to work and just wants to pin it through all the traffic on the highway

and, you know, hit a curb, go upstairs, you, you're doing it, you know,

I can't even believe this is like legal. They just should be outlawed because it's so much fun, you know, and that's what it is.

And anyone who drives on the highway and got a speeding ticket can relate to that.

These things can go 100 miles an hour over stuff that you can't walk on.

It's just insane. The stuff that these things can go over. It's extreme. Extremely

using score racing rules meant different classes raced at the same time. You have guys that are super fast over certain sections. You have guys that are super slow everywhere. So it makes it difficult. You have to kind of pick and choose what you're gonna do running. The 1984 Ford Ranger

Billy Manfro was doing it in class seven open. We try to keep the truck light. We try to keep it low, we try to keep it fast

with a former Bush series engine. He had the goods to go fast.

It's over 500 horsepower out of a naturally aspirated 4.5 L V6. This is the hot motor to run. This was a race of attrition

and Billy Man

Froy was one of the casualties.

We were doing just fine and all of a sudden, I just lost all four gears. So we were done

a rough day. Wasn't enough to dampen his

enthusiasm. I

sleep, eat and breathe this stuff. There's never a time in the day where I'm not thinking about driving this far. It just makes you want to go out and try again. All I can, all I can think of right now is we're gonna go home, we're going to wash it off, we're gonna

fix up whatever happened to it and

come on out back and do it again. I can't wait for the next one

while Billy was thinking of the next race. Class seven open teammates, Jack Mitman and Quaker Sherlock were running 12. You know, there's no worrying about consequences, just pin it and go and see what happens.

Biker has a garage full of X games and gravity games medals for street luge. He got a new truck last year and was cooked when I'm on a skateboard going 65 miles an hour. That's adrenaline.

But to me, this is just like a

kid opening his new toy on Christmas. And this is just a huge fun factor for me to find something like this at the point in my life right now is just awesome.

It's on, bro

in it.

Biker pinned it and finished second at Glen Helen, leaving his veteran teammate in awe at the newcomer skills. What is that called in your head? You equilibrium when you're missing something and you've got no fear, but that's what he's got. I mean, he's fearless. So if you put him in a safe situation, it's just off the hook. It's great to be involved in something like a dude. So I'm seven,

you

know,

so

it's a stoke and it really is.

That's some pretty crazy stuff. But I think equilibrium has to do with balance, not fearlessness. Who cares from street luge to off road? That biker. She looks pretty extreme.

I think she likes him.

Got an idea for the show. Drop us a line at Xtreme 4x4 tv.com.

Welcome back to extreme. We got our frame back from the boys at our local Rhino

lining dealer. They did an amazing job on it. We couldn't decide if we wanted to paint it or powder coat it. But the idea of Rhino

lining it was perfect.

And when we showed up over there with this thing on the trailer, they took one look at it and suggested that we spray it with their

dura spray product. Now, that's their commercial grade product and it goes on in multiple coats a little bit thinner. And that will help because it won't build up when you get into these little nooks and crannies making reassembly difficult.

Now, this thing is rust proof, chemical proof. You can dent this stuff and it won't crack because it's rubberized.

But the best thing is if you want to have a color match to the paint on your truck, they can do that for you right there

since it's up on the lift. Let's get that drive

train

behind that 383. We're gonna be installing this 700 R four that we had TCI put together for us

and we chose an automatic because we didn't want to lose that forward momentum that you get when you push in the clutch.

Now, the 700 R four has a super low 3.06 1st gear ratio.

And with the Saturday night special torque converter that's got a stall speed of about 5 to 600 higher than a stall converter. This puppy is gonna really shine off road.

The final piece in this drive train puzzle is obviously the transfer case and you won't find a harder core transfer case than the Atlas too from advanced adopters. Now, this is a fully hell

gear set transfer case that's synchronized and that means you're gonna be able to shift on the fly. But the thing that sets us apart from the crowd is the Twin Towers or twin sticks that's gonna let you shift this thing front and rear axle independently of each other. And that's what really helps these things work good off road.

Remember last time we were in Jellicoe, Mike Smith drives with an Atlas too in his land cruiser.

When he pulls on that cutting brake, he then slips the rear shifter in a neutral and drives with the front axle only.

That's what makes super tight turns easy with these trucks

to get that Atlas bolted up. We're gonna have to use a couple of adapters, but don't worry, the guys at advanced are gonna be able to talk you through what you need to get

to be able to get that Atlas behind almost any transmission.

We chose the 4.3 to 1 low gear, but they also have an ultimate low of a 5 to 1 if that's how much gear ratio you're looking for.

Now, the first thing we have to do before we can bolt it up is put the shifters together. So we're going to start by installing the shift tower onto the case,

then built up the twin sticks,

install the ship rod ends

and connect them together with the links.

Are you done yet?

The boat? Let me do the hard part for you.

No problem.

Can you just,

and once we get this drive train all bolted together, we're actually gonna fire this engine before the end of the show. And like I said before, we're not gonna make you wait a few years to see this thing run. So make sure you stay tuned.

Yep.

Welcome back to Xtreme 4x4. In part three of project AJ,

we got our 383 small block, our TCI 700 R four and our advanced adapters Atlas two transfer case all in between the frame rails, but we're not quite ready to start it yet. We got a few more parts before we can hear this monster roar.

And the first thing is the fuel system and it's going to start with this RC I fuel cell that we got from summit racing. Now we're gonna try something a little different with this truck. We're not sure if it's gonna work, but we're gonna find out

we're going to mount this flexible pickup tube inside this non foam filled cell made out of this brass fitting and the fuel pump.

So,

and the plan is with this thing secured at the top of the tank. When the trucks driving over the trail, this thing should follow the fuel around the tank. And that way if you get this thing on its side or even on its roof, the pickup will pick up air and starve the pump.

So the first thing we're going to do

is take out the factory pickup.

First, I'll pull out the existing pickup tube,

then I'll cut it to length and install my rubber line

and we're gonna leave his fuel cell on top of this bench for now

and hook it up with a long piece of hose. That way we can test to see if that movable pickup works. And while I was working on the fuel cell, I went ahead and started prepping up our fuel lines by adding our fuel filter and our fuel pump. Now, if you remember it's fuel injected, so there's gonna be a return line and a feed line.

So you wanna make sure that you're gonna have your fuel filter before your pump and both of them as close to the fuel cell as possible.

I will then adapt the fuel lines to the fuel rails with these fittings from Earls

and we don't yet have the fittings for our return fuel line. So, what I did is temporarily rigged up this line so we can get fuel running through our entire system to fire up.

This is the first engine build we've done here at Xtreme. It's got some pretty serious parts in it.

So in honor of our first build, the guys over at horsepower sent us a case of Royal purple and this stuff is fully synthetic. So it's gonna adhere to all of our metal surfaces,

giving us more power, more torque

and dramatically reducing engine wear.

With the oil in the engine, we can go ahead and prime that oil system by pulling out the distributor

and slipping in this oil pump drive. We got from powerhouse products.

We'll just spin it up with an air drill

and that'll get oil all through the crank case.

And I made this panel to hold our ECU and our kill switch. And I know we don't have a radiator on here, but I don't care. We promised you that we'd have this thing running and I wanna hear what it sounds like. So can I have the switch, please? Yes.

Alright, ready. Yep. You ready?

All right. Well, the next time we're back on this project, we'll be slipping some diffs under there. We got a little surprise when it comes to the rims and we'll have this thing rolling around in. No time. See you next time.