Project A.J. Part 5

Today on extreme from boxes of parts to the ultimate trail rig. Ian and Jessi, bring us the final stages of project AJ plus it's not the Bush Leagues of

Baha,

but it's close off road racing for the working man.

I

welcome to Xtreme 4x4 and our final installation on project AJ. If remember when we started this project, we told you that we weren't gonna take forever to get it done.

That's right. We only set aside five weeks for this build and that's a lot of work in a short period of time, considering everything for this truck came out of a catalog. We didn't start with a donor vehicle, but in the end, we know all that hard work will be worth it.

So today is the day where we're gonna put in all of our finalizing touches like the roll cage, the seats,

the drive shafts, the welder, the air tanks, the cooling fans, the radiator, the hoses,

basically, we got a lot of work we need to get done

and it all starts at the front of the engine with the serpentine belt kit we got from GM performance parts. Now this comes with a brand new water pump, new power steering pump, brand new alternator. And the bracketry even has provisions to add an ac compressor if needed.

Now, it includes all the bolts and the hardware that's needed to turn the front of your small block into a one belt system.

Install the new water pump to the block,

both the AC compressor bracket to the head,

put on the new pulleys,

a bolt, the power steering bracket on

one item we're not going to install that came with that serpentine belt kit. Is it factory GM alternator?

Instead, we're going to use this high output version we got from Mobi

Arc that's gonna help power an item that every hardcore trail rig should have. It just so happens to be a welder.

This is a compact under hood, Mobi

Arc welder.

It delivers an alternate

current and is fully automatic, which means that the power goes from the alternator through this unit to charge the battery. But unlike other welders where you may have to flip a switch. This one automatically knows that you're in welding mode,

it works like a normal arc welder and you can even control the

output by using this little hand control

with the bracket installed. And the cable and wires connected to the back of the head unit mounted in place.

The red and black four gauge wire can be routed through the firewall and connected to the battery terminals,

connect the yellow four gauge wire to the alternator post, followed by the ground

with a water pump on the front of our small block. We can finally get a radiator into this grill shell.

Now, we chose this quadri Tech B cool, fully polished piece because it's a direct fit for CJ seven S

and it's going to bolt right in place on the grill shell. Now to keep our cool, we're gonna use this Hayden high performance fan.

Now, these things have reversible blades so they can work as a pusher or a polar unit and they cut

and three colors we chose red to match the rest of the Jeep. Now we're gonna test fit it behind the radiator and in front, determine the best place for it to go.

We still need a throttle cable and pedal assembly for AJ. We went ahead and took this brake pedal out of a used Jeep and we're going to put it in our new Jeep,

but we went ahead and chose the super slick floor mounted low car throttle pedal

and an LS one cable to go with it.

We have this fan set up right now in front of the radiator

to draw the cold air through it. But we have a clearance problem.

You can see that the housing for the fan is hitting our grill shell. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna clearance this grill shell to pull that back

and then we'll just put the cover back on with the motor.

Now it's a tight fit in the Jeep with a small block and I've seen guys take the same fan and just mount it on the outside of the grill. But we really want to sort of keep the front end kind of clean

to go with our low car throttle cable. We also had them send us this high tech kick down kit for our transmission.

Not only does the steel blades make it look nice, but it also provides a good source for heat protection

to control that 700 R four we got from TCI. We had B and M ship us their light truck megas

shifter, but this is a full ratchet shifter and it's easy to go from reverse to drive with only one hand, which is a huge benefit when you're off road. Plus with this adjustable bracket assembly, you can make this thing fit in almost any truck.

The rock chalk 60 that we got from. Curry has a parking brake system built into the rear disc set up. So we went back to low car and got one of these universal pedal kits

and the front cable to hook it all together.

And while Jessi puts the pedal to the metal, we'll shift gears and install our shifter. So stay tuned with us after the break and we'll be right back with you.

You can't get it. It's free.

You should fuck

you

next Baha buggies without having to spend big Baha Bucks, blue collar desert racing. When Xtreme 4x4 continues,

we've been getting a lot of emails asking us what this blue piping is that we have running around the shop.

Well, it's Garage pack Airlines and the nice thing about this lightweight powder coated aluminum piping is that it's easy to install. Anyone can do it.

And the best thing is when you add tools like our A BS product speed blaster, you just need to run a new line to that tool, disconnect the junction block like we did here and slip in an elbow.

The Xtreme 4x4 event of the week is brought to you by Fram America's number one oil filter.

There's nothing more satisfying than building your own rig and then going out and racing it. This group of off road enthusiasts do just that. They're part of the valley off road racing association

for 29 years. The Bora Series in Northern California has given up and Comers and Weekend Warriors a place to race.

It's more for the average working guy that can afford to come out and put something together, come out and have fun and have some

competitive racing against one another. These are guys that are enthusiasts. They race out of the garage, low budget, a good starter place for guys to get started. Everybody from lawyers to doctors,

you know, guys that are pounding nails for a living and whatnot. So it seems to be an affordable racing for people who want to have a good time.

Whether racing on the short course or in the desert.

Bora racers never go easy. They like to trade paint. It's like a NASCAR race. It's pretty exciting. Oh, yeah, I get sideways, get dirty,

get some air.

Have some fun when you're out there. It's hardcore. There's

awesome. Awesome. Awesome.

There are no big paychecks or million dollar sponsorship deals. These drivers are out here because they just love racing.

I think racing is racing and whether you have some older buggies or brand new stuff, it's still in the heart of the guys that are doing it. It's basically my life. I don't take any vacation. This is my vacation. It's just a lot of fun and

my whole life is pretty much dedicated to doing

it.

Patty Hao

has been on the gas in class seven for 10 years. There's nothing ladylike about it. It's been clean, dirty, fine and she's having fun beating the men. I've got two championships under my belt and it, the last couple of years by the, by the skin of my teeth. I'm not gonna let anybody close the door on me these days. Women racers are coming.

However, busting through that door still has its challenges.

I wouldn't always real forward. Not very

sexy, laid back. A little quiet

and uh, racing has actually helped me kind of come out a little bit and be strong and be, be smart and be professional and, and you always gotta be, you gotta be better than the next guy. You gotta act better than the next.

It takes a long time to get there sometimes. But what you did, you got it.

You're there around the pits are fellow competitors. Agree. She's got it. Patty's a fierce competitor out there. A very good driver. Patty smoked the two mile Sacramento track to finish second.

I just wanna go out, hit the track and do the best that I can do

and with the equipment that I have

and just be good. I do my dreams.

Two years ago, Steve Sullivan discovered Bora's open class and was hooked.

It's the funnest thing in the world to see if you can outbox or outsmart the other guy and go home and make the car work and,

and if you do that, I'm gonna give,

it's pretty gratification. It's a good deal. Last year. He boxed his way to the championship. This is a car to beat last year. We took the class one title

and, uh, for an old

car seemed to be doing it pretty well. Steve gave it new life by swapping out the VW engine for the V8 power of the Corvette.

It wasn't a Volkswagen guy. So

you use that thing for a boat. Anchor, went down in the junkyard and then the motor was 4000 bucks. It's a really light motor, but it puts out a ton of torque and a ton of horsepower, everything a guy needs and it's very calculating power. This car's got 16 inches of travel on the

14 in the rear. So we suffer that way and we try to make up for it with the horsepower to win out here. The driver needs more than a fat engine at this level of racing. The guy really has to be able to,

you know, to tear apart the motor in the rear end and define your problems and, you know, do some welding and that kind of stuff. You can't pay a guy to go to a prep shop, you know, so

it's really important to have some mechanical intuition

for the race win. Sullivan collected some coin,

but for Steve, this isn't about making money,

the money you get a payback and it barely pays for feeding the crew over the weekend right now. But

the bragging rights are worth way more than what the dollars are time in the garage. I

see the wife's not mad at me. She brought me a champagne. So I guess we're good for another race. A smile on my face how to describe it, but I wouldn't trade it for anything

that, that $1100 that Sullivan took home for the win. Sure. He is gonna put a big dent in his engine payment. I personally would have left the four cylinder Volkswagen engine in there. My first car was a Baha

bug and with the right displacement and turbo set up those things fly.

Make sure you stick with us through the break. When we come back, we'll be putting a jeep on the hoist and we'll be doing some stuff to the underside.

Welcome back to Xtreme 4x4 with the jeep up on the hoist. We can continue finishing this truck before it hits the trail for a real world test. And right now we're gonna be slipping in the drive shafts when we had the Jeep sitting on the ground and everything was bolted on. We took all the measurements that were required by Je Real so they could build us a set of their super tough custom built drive shafts

with shafts on the Jeep. We can go ahead and start planning our exhaust system.

Now, magna flow performance exhaust makes this great two and a quarter inch full stainless steel hot rod kit to put a custom exhaust on almost anything. We also have them send their fully polished stainless steel muffler. Now, this is a flow through design with no baffles and it's fully, well,

it's gonna give excellent sound and great performance. We also had them throw in a tip for where it exits the vehicle. And the last thing was a catalytic converter. Now, we're not going to put this Jeep on the street. So emissions aren't really an issue. But if this little beauty can clean up some of the air, we got to breathe on the trail. It's well worth the money

because of tight clearances. We're gonna have to build our own crossover pipe.

That's what makes Magna Flow's universal hot rod kit. Nice plenty of pipes to work with.

Next, I'll install the cabinet converter.

Then the muffler

test fit a couple pieces of pipe.

I'll cut a hole in the body for the exhaust,

but then install the tip

with all the underside components in place. We can finally finish this skid plate. We didn't want to send it out to get Rhino

Line just in case we had an interference with our drive shafts or exhaust, which we do.

So I'm definitely gonna have to cut some out here from our clearance for the drive shaft and then for the transmission pan, we're gonna have to bring that hoop in closer, so we're not interfering with our exhaust.

Ok? I'm ready to rub the whole thing together. Now

you ready?

You ready?

Oh, nice fit

with the drive line in our Jeep. We can start to pull some serious power out of our small block. Now, fuel air and spark technology are fast for short builds. This custom tunable XF I set up to pull serious power out of fuel injection engines.

Our kit comes with a fully labeled wiring

all the sensors that we need to hook it up to our small block. Now, the software to drive, it gets loaded onto a windows based PC

so you can tune it while you're driving, it has an onboard diagnostic feature as well as data logging. So you can keep track of every sensor in the engine.

We built this engine using GM fast burn aluminum heads and the ram jet intake that you would normally find on a GM crate engine. But we punched and stroked this to a 383. So the factor EC will give us a good torque curve, but we can do better than that by using that fast system right now. You just got to get all this wiring up.

Welcome back to extreme in the end of project AJ. Once we're finished today, this thing will be ready for the trail. All we have to do is fab up roll cage, which leads us to a question that we get asked a lot. And that is where do we get the idea for our roll cages? And more importantly, how do we know where to bend the tube and where to notch it to get a tight fit

the information we give you today may be pretty specific to our tube, shark bender and not

as part of our shark pool. But everything we tell you here can be adapted to almost any bender out there.

And the first thing we're going to do is bend a 90 degree bend on a piece of scrap tube.

We already calculated the spring back for our vendor by following the manufacturer's directions.

When you're building a roll cage, you're gonna wanna choose a starting point. And in most cases, and with AJ, we're gonna start with our main hoop, which is the hoop that goes right up above, behind your head in your seats and then plan the rest of the cage from that point.

So if I measured the distance between the insides of the Jeep,

we're gonna start with 53.5 inches

before we pulled this piece of tubing out of our bender, we marked the location of this shoe that pulled the tube over the bending dye.

Then by placing this 90 degree bend

in a corner, we can measure to see how much height it's going to take to make a 90 degree bend. And you can see it's gonna take 10 inches to accomplish that.

Knowing this about our bender, we can take the measurements that Jessi is making and easily build that main hoop

and it looks as though we're gonna need a hoop he

of about 48 inches. But I wouldn't have been able to determine that until we had our seats in place

48 inches

wide.

Uh 53.5.

You're welcome.

And for our seats, we went ahead and chose our bed full suspension seats. It's got this red Tweed, a super cool carbon fiber vinyl and it's all on the seat risers that were made specifically for CJ. Now, these Ultra Pro series seats also have this 3.5 inch higher hip area, which is gonna hold us in a lot better. So,

since we're not gonna have doors, it's gonna help prevent us from dying,

prevent us from dying.

With all the measurements for our main hoop. I can go ahead and cut this piece of tubing.

I added an extra few inches just to make sure we had enough.

We know we want that hoop to be 48 inches off the floor of the jeep.

And now we also know that this bender takes 10 inches to make a 90 degree bend.

So we'll set this shoe 38 inches from the end of the tube

and we'll end up with a 48 inch tall hoop.

Now, I'll also add an inch and a half to the length just for good measure. So we'll set this at 39.5.

Here we go.

As soon as that main hoop is finished, we're gonna have to build the rest of the roll cage around it, which involves notching that can be very tricky. So let's say you have a 90 degree angle, you want your down tube to run at 60 degrees. That means you're gonna notch this end at 30 degrees and the opposite end at 60. So all together it adds up to 180.

And when it starts to get real tricky is when you have an angle that's over 90 degrees, this is 100 and 10 degree angle, you're still gonna want your down bar at 60. So you have 30 degrees here. 100 and 10 degrees here, which leaves that you're gonna need 40 degrees here because all together it adds up to 100 and 80

with the hoop tact in place. And by using the tips and tricks, we just showed you,

you can have a cage like this.

Now, you can see we ran a little different design with this cage instead of a front hoop. We took this tube

and triangulated it back for a little extra strength. Then we added this extra bend right here for the extra headroom. Now, I know we promised you five shows and this thing will be done, but I'm not gonna lie to you. We're out of time. So,

so stick with us next week because we'll be finishing all the loose ends and then we'll have our ultimate payoff in two weeks. So.