1942 Dodge Power Wagon Restomod - Jay Leno's Garage

you know I feel like I'm being towed on a winch I know it's crazy isn't it it's amazing why it doesn't it why many fish welcome to the episode of Jay Leno's Garage today we're talking about what appears to be the mid-40s Dodge power wagon these were fantastic vehicles they built them from about 46 to 1968 all kinds of torque usually six-cylinder engines they could pull anything go anywhere this one's got six wheels this one's kind of an amalgamation of a couple of different trucks been a hotrod a little bit but not in the traditional way which is what I like let's meet the man who built this it's its legacy is the name of the company Winslow bent the best truck name ever Winslow bent that sounds like a truck yo Jay how are you just like a truck guy well they're truck clones and Winslow bent is a great truck you know we're from Wyoming so you're trying to represent good trucks and nice flannel shirts yeah and Lake legacy is the name of the company yes legacy classic trucks okay and what we're most known for is our dodge power wagon restorations we love power wagons a lot of just you know when you're driving down a country road and you see an old abandoned truck in the field I'm the guy that stops and tries to buy the right right and so we start with these abandoned just kind of Darrell X and we bring them back to our shop and give them a new life yeah and these were built at a time when wait they didn't care they want the heaviest strongest like so they measure the tential strength and we know it can take exactly this we could take exactly that but like the old Duesenbergs over there the chassis were just so over built because they never knew what they were going to deal with that's exactly right yeah the earlier versions before they called them Power Wagon these were in World War two the guys get back from World War two and say you're in the ranching you're into forestry you're into mining anything like that if you had a tough nasty job that had to get done right they said look give us some of those trucks we had over there so Chrysler relabeled these things the Power Wagon and they sold like hotcakes in fact they sold so many of these things really not that many are left today because these things were just worked into the ground yeah but the nice thing is these chassis even they rust out they can't really rust out exactly this so thick tis so heavy and this is not something you make the Beverly Hills school run like the Land Rover you know you pull into the mall and you know Buffy goes and gets their sneakers or whatever does that mean it's a real truck truck it is it is you keep it in the barn you take it out you want to go elk hunting or fish or something like that this is a great way to get around and the thing I love is is this tendency now to put a Chevy v8 and everything right ls7 LS whatever and those are wonderful motors but right you've gone a different way and we'll get to that in a little bit that's why it's kind of thrilled that you went this direction we'll talk about that well it's a little hint it says turbo diesel exactly and Cummings of course makes a fantastic engine so you put a Cummings what four six what it's a called a four bTW it's a 3.9 liter Cummins so it's a four cylinder okay it's kind of the baby version of what you see in the heavier commercial trucks before liter yeah yeah so you got a good size piston oh yeah and it's in its it's all stroke this is all torque yeah I mean we're making maybe a hundred and twenty horsepower right but your torque 1200 rpm I'm making more torque than any small-block Chevy ever built you're probably what 3,000 rpms the end of the world uh yeah you're screaming at 3,000 yeah yeah and you've got a five-speed gearbox that's right yeah we went with a five-speed fully synchronized which is a nice upgrade from how they were originally and what were they with a three-speed with no Drive four-speed what was more speed forth so you had supergranny kind of granny very much granny and then fourth gear was let's go to town boy fifth gear look at 40 miles around it sir cuz top speed of this truck back in the day was probably off 4045 that's about that's about right there but that was that's going up a hill like this exactly exactly you can be pulling a barn behind you and you'll be doing just fine now this is six wheels but it seems like a short bed for six wheels that's exactly right this is a mixture of parts and pieces when we were talking about the chassis this started off life as a 1942 dodge and it was called a w c63 it was a six wheel drive open cab okay true transport oh this vehicle was deployed in the European theater World War two at the end of the war one way or another it ended up in Norway came back to the United States was with the US Air Force then was decommissioned from the US Air Force by the time I found it all that was left was the chassis but I recognized what the chassis was and I knew what I wanted to do which was build a 6x6 civilian capped power wagon now did you shorten the wheelbase without the stock wheelbase the Stutz the stock wheelbase but the frame used to stick way out the back okay so you cut it here we've bobbed the frame okay and then we handle a bed that looked very we wanted to look like an original civilian Power Wagon bed but we had to make these openings for the tandem axles and then we had to hand build the fenders you can imagine when you get going 35 40 miles an hour and a vehicle like this there is a lot going on well it's this six wheel drive now it is a true six bison well okay so maybe we'll put it out in the air later we'll show people underneath oh that would be great yeah yeah we'll do that about this about an 8,000 pound vehicle okay so it needs all that 4,000 about 8,000 pounds you know I was just thinking well you know there's no door guard beams there's no airbags I was writing because a lot of times old cars look heavy and then you realize all they're only 3,700 pounds or something because it's all fins sheet steel but Wow 8,000 you look at the drum brakes and you look at how the frames made I mean the frame looks like it's a bridge I mean it's just so over built that this thing is heavy right so there's uh there's no question that you're driving a pretty substantial piece of machinery when you're bombing down the road you get Road hugging weight yes absolutely hugging weight and the attractions unbelievable when you're off-road the rear axles start bobbing up and down and they walk a little bit and it's just the sense of power and torque is phenomenal so can you go down the road at 65 or 70 not in this one I like I like 55 60 you can harder if you wanted to overtake someone but again all those drive lines and gearboxes and everything else a lot of stuff happening there's a lot of stuff happening that's exactly right well let's open the hood let's show people yeah that'd be great so we've got the old Butterfly hood here opens on both sides so you can see everything okay get this up a little prop rod okay so this is the 3.9 liter Cummins look at here is this oh that's all I say I thought that was a spring there I guess it is the spring that's that's the injection pump right all mechanical so this is a true one wire diesel the one wire that goes to this motor is to shut it off okay so the idea is if you get this thing running it's going to stay running right and when I was thinking about power wagon and what power wagons are designed for this seemed like a great engine to use so we're able to bring in power steering this here is your brake booster you got dual master right dual master which I insist on on any vehicle that I'm going to get away from original at all okay this is your brake fluid what we got here so this is a hydro boost brake system so the way that works is there's a pump on the side of the motor right it goes to your power brakes it goes to your power steering and that's a reservoir oh yeah that holds your extra juice but all runs in one big circuit okay very nice yeah watch it just runs on diesel fuel obviously yeah and not a big fan of cold starting you know down to about 20 degrees or so and then you want to have it plugged in just like so you got a block heater exactly okay yep yep and turbochargers over on the other side non intercooled again we just wanted to keep it really simple this was originally a six cylinder right okay right obviously this is a shorter cab cuz you a six wouldn't fit in here exactly you have the civilian model cab right you're 1990 through current Dodge pickup trucks come with this great big what's called a6bt coming big six-cylinder Cummins lopped two cylinders off and that's what you have here okay and actually all of the parts are interchangeable so if this car needs to be serviced you not chasing down special parts everything that you see under the hood you can basically get at NAPA I mean so it's really easy to service all your filters fluids everything well I love the fact you kept it sort of dodge with Cummings because they got that relationship already so it makes it kind of they go well together and I just wanted to do something that was really utilitarian yeah I didn't want to lose that when we did the build and this has normally been open here right correct yep yep the private would sit behind the wheel and you'd have 16 guys riding behind you and bullets whizzing everywhere and you'd have a closed cab to protect you would think I mean you would think you're going into combat exactly in cab it doesn't really make a lot of sense maybe if you needed to get out of there in a hurry and I always like a split windshield something sexy about that absolutely sets it off makes it look kind of cool yeah massive ah fender yeah a lot of steel one steel yeah we got hiding in it it does yeah Wow there you go yeah obviously it didn't have that originally but we got some air conditioning originally it had a big power take-off winch right and if you actually want to use your winch a lot those are pretty scary yeah and so we decided to go with a nice worn electric winch and then we put some charging posts over here so if you need to jumpstart your tractor okay or you want to put it on a trickle charge for the season what kind of alternator do you have in there that's just a GM 2 wire just very regular nothing exactly on all of our builds you'll see again and again I want to use really handy easy to access stuff because it's my hope that my customers don't just you know keep it in storage but they're actually taking it out and using it and so if you're in Missoula Montana and you need an alternator it's going to be on the shelf yeah auto parts exactly okay right right and they've got one they go in sitting across this is a much bigger tire than we ever would have had back in 1942 the biggest difference that you can make in one of these vehicles as far as making it drivable is changing out the wheels and tires yeah and on this build we went with the Toyo tires these are 37 inch Toyo I mean start with Toyo tires oh these are made in tomatoes true so 1945 about that these are made in America uh it's absolutely the way to go there you go there you go okay and actually we like Toyota cars we have them on a bunch of well I tell you it is the roundest tire that you can buy I mean these trucks originally were just all over the road and you swap in these wheels and tires and this thing goes nut straight down the road and we couldn't be happier with the product and let's take a look I like you clip get the classic oh yeah absolutely yeah so going inside I knew I wanted to update some things but I wanted to keep it looking correct right and so our gauges we wanted those to look like World War two bomber gauges very nice at a tilt away wheel yep it tilt I don't think to be tilt away wheels always kind of detract a little bit from a period interior I I say just lose a few pounds and like a great way wheel I agree I agree with you this is a huge truck yeah caps actually relatively small it is tiny and you know if that's the difference between getting in and out of your vehicle comfortably yeah go for it and this will course would have had a bench seat back absolutely such the up buckets back then yep but very nice let's uh let's take a next door we'll put it up in the air we'll see if the undercarriage looks like and then we'll can we take it for a spin that sounds great I'd love to let's do it okay we got the truck up on our sterile kony lift cease these are cool aren't they it's unbelievable these lifts are incredible the way you can wheel them around and just I mean this is an 8,000 pound truck yeah effortless have these if you have these reach Wyoming yet I mean you guys are doing this - yeah that's all-electric now it's all computer all right let's see what you were talking to people what you're talking about let's start in the engine here's a motor here here's our drive shaft that is the shortest drive shaft I've ever seen yep that's what they would call a spud shaft right and that just connects the transmission to the transfer case now is that a custom-built piece or is it is it is I had to I had to would have had one originally but this side of it is all modern now it's got the Spicer right 30 joint on it and this is all original and what we got about six Universal Tommy University oh well let's see we got one two three four but twelve twelve does the trick right here we go so it would come out of here we go this transfer case exactly and we go over here and it splits to go front here correct and then rear here and then another rear as well so see how this has dual rear outputs one okay goes to this offset differential here the other one makes a shot right to here to a carrier bearing okay and then to the back and that's how we get this incredible up and down action what is it's a transmission brake yeah that's your that's your brake for the hole for the hole or your parking brake doesn't matter okay yeah gotcha and how much horsepower is lost going through all this can you imagine I mean it must be like it's in 30% I mean this truck is making probably about 450 foot pounds of torque right now with the diesel engine and I don't know where it's going yeah okay then we split here yeah and you got into rear ends here and then you got more universals back here yes you know I'm surprised at how small the differentials are actually I expected some big giant pumpkin right right and you know a lot of what's happening the torque reduction is happening the differential these are 583 gears right so you've got 583 both set everywhere is fine baby 583 gears it's off that's where your mountain climbing ability comes but it's pretty neat because that means that everything through the transmission Drive lines all of that there's really not that much torque present there right it's once it hits the differential that's your torque multiple multiplication so that's where all of the reduction happens okay and because massively Springs there yeah and the cool thing here is that the leaf springs they're essentially like what you'd see on any other truck but they're upside down right the axles are mouths are upside down on ya the axles are mounted to the end see where your leaf spring would normally be mounted to the frame it's mounted to the axle in the center part this is where it all bobbles back and forth gotcha so this is a giant fulcrum right here now the English used to use Gators they leather think you'd fill these greased and then you put these leather Gators on you tie them off exactly the grease in exactly and there's still a lot of that present if you look at in the in the pinion seals yeah and in the axle seals they're super old-school and the best way to make them work is you you soak it in oil for 24 hours before you install it okay just to kind of get them all now are these the original transfer cases from 1942 of these modern these are all original everything you see on here this is all original stuff I mean what we've done is take pieces of a 42 pieces of 47 and try and get them all to jive together and build a truck that you know never existed but it should have there should have been a 696 civilian but there was and then we come up to front man you can't disengage front wheel right you can't or you can you can just have rear wheel yes absolutely but where's the fuel tank and what happened to us on this build was we got this thing done we like oh this is great everything's working everything's moving around the way it's supposed to we lopped off the back of the truck where are we going to put the fuel tank now you have a fuel choice so we built a little stealth tank that goes in the bed of the truck that's hilarious so you put well together the guy to go to the restaurant and since way to try the soup why can try the soup try the soup why try the soup alright where's your spoon ah exactly exactly and it was as a builder it was one of those like oh shoot are you getting me actually not our shoot but I guess yeah are you gonna hold drunken I nice put gas I wait a minute you know where's the gas oh how big is it tank is it's about 25 gallon oh oh let's go so it's plenty it's good where is it hidden away no it's in the bed of the truck you see it we color matched it to I see so it's like this isn't it's in the very front of the bed it's easy to access it's easy to get to very cool works great but you know this whole build was just it's a brilliant build I'm teasing you but it's really quite smart quite clever and it's a I mean it's a real truck truck coming in absolutely I'm living in Los Angeles we see so many trucks that never get anywhere near off road right maybe they take an exit off the freeway yeah but it's close so to see something that's it's a real work truck you can really it out in the boonies no fun with it it's the real deal and again we want to deliver something that's not only beautiful but that is really functional yeah and this thing you can take it out you can get it dirty you don't have to be afraid and it's gonna go anywhere and it's gonna get you bad and because it's it's it's not all modern you don't have electronics where if you get stuck now out in the field somewhere you don't have a circuit you don't even need electricity if the diesel engines running right you don't even need electricity right I mean it's so simple and so just redundant and it's just what you need nothing you don't and you know you've always got get home power you've always got get home traction and well let's leave home and take up a ride and see how it goes that sounds great I'd love to so how old's this company I started legacy in 2008 I had a number I was worked in cars on the side just for fun my builds were getting more and more complex and anyhow I was a restaurant guy I had three restaurants in Jackson and lost my job you know I was I was running the restaurants for the owners I lost my job 2008 I'm like this is it world's ending what I'm gonna do and I'm like forget about it I'm just gonna sit in my garage and work on cars friend called me up it's okay will you build me a lane cruiser and I said yes sure another guy called me up and I got my hands on one of these power wagons I built the Power Wagon the way I wanted the power wagon to be a hill and I put it up for sale and guy gave me $150,000 for it well I thought that's pretty good yeah let's do that again and today we're about a 10,000 square foot facility anyhow I've built 60 of these power wagons 60 yeah with a 60 of these things and they go between 150 and 250 thousand dollars and I'm I'm booked for 2016 I'm taking orders for 2017 Wow that's terrific how many guys in the shop we got about ten guys I love the absurdity of it it's just so fun I know it's really not upset at all it's really yeah Lily gray I mean from the truck point of view you have excellent vision right you know you've got Road clearance right you've got plenty of power yeah I mean it's all factor is off the scale of course yes the practical factor is off the scale - it's and I like it's um yeah the customer who owns this vehicle wants to use it to tow a jet boat to the lake yeah and I'm like you know what I appreciate a nice muscle car or an exotic or something but you're not he can't go out and get your Christmas tree with it you know what I mean like I remember a couple years ago Lincoln built something called the Blackwood which is the truck and like a pocket of it but it was like a luxury car and I remember that it really couldn't put anything in and I do remember that what it was for I remember that and you look down on all the other vehicles I listen me out and down there without me all the way down there I love these old truck mirrors you can actually see out of it I imagine back in the day you would have had to double clutch wood that's exactly right you would be shifting like crazy before you go it accelerates very nicely yeah I mean it bowls good well that's all that torque from the cowboy gear feels like second gear in it so one of the things that you can hear when you're driving this not only the noise of the diesel engine yeah the turbo which is exciting but you can start to hear all those gearboxes yeah you have got I don't know 10 gallons of gear oil that you're fighting your way through right now that's probably that's a heavy head like City more yet you don't need any differential coolers when you oh not really you know again I don't think it goes fast enough to really get hot but you were saying earlier you're turning a lot of stuff yeah to me that's the measure of what a vehicle is really fun to drive when you got fun with it going slow yeah you know and you go it's just fun to drive put that torque yeah we do it will you be the guys got a big-block Corvette or something today a chain on each one and so you can drag the other guy in the furnace that's exactly that's a kind of rate job with this car exactly right and drag the other guy Thurman yeah my love nuts have more torque than your and your muscle car does I feel like I'm in Hogan's Heroes when I get into it and I'm innocent as a Hogan's Heroes theme song I know and driving this is fun for me because like a lot of its kind of wondering where the vehicles been yeah I mean like I said you know this was in the European theatre world war two was probably running troops and supplies but you know you would want a six by six for the nasty kind of terrain and you know where was it how did it end up in Norway and it is the ultimate recycling you've taken a vehicle yeah made it useful again I've taken sit in a landfill it's not you know it's one less new truck I just kept something on the road oh that's exactly right on their choice of colour how many college did you go through before you drive through it we went through about four or five different Gray's I think the gray is one of the most elusive colors on an automobile like a grey is not a grey it's not a gray yeah for me I don't know if it's just my eyes but gray there seems to have blue in it our gray has green in it and we played around with the color at first by adding taking a kind of an industrial gray and adding green to it and it turned into this kind of wet concrete sort of look by which I really enjoyed about think working with the customer he's like no I want a little more blue in it and so we ended up with this color which is actually off in current production car what is it a Jeep Wrangler okay you can get a Jeep Wrangler in a color they call anvil and rumor has it that it was known internally as garbage can gray yeah because it looks an awful lot like a garbage can in a shop yeah and so we did the garbage can gray and turned out beautifully and again if you need to match the paint in 20 or 30 years it's a production car so it shouldn't be hard to come up with the code why the choice to stick the drum brakes around to put this on it period look gorgeous Bri it was it's a lot of monkeying around to get disc brakes and what we found was so we want to keep the original axle so we can have the original bolt pattern so I put original style wheel on thanks so then I'm machining right and I've done this before a machine that just breaks on fantastic now you're making more stopping power than you know what to do it well with the original chassis it actually can twist your leaf springs yeah and it can pull your steering wheel and it creates a very very dangerous situation so it was about working with the customer saying look do you want something that's you know cool is all get-out it goes 55 miles an hour you know or do you want a 70 mile an hour truck and there a quantum leap between something that goes 55 and something goes 70 miles an hour by I mean the physics is on a whole different level so are you buying up old power wagons or do you wait for a customer to come to you with their power way about a third of my customers bring their own I let you know some kind of a family heirloom or something and I have 30 or 40 of these sitting around in all various stages in a new area outside oh yeah no nobody big was I went to see a guy for some Model T bar yup can he have it so I got every part from Emmet massachusett kind of like a little shack and all the stuff is outside in the snow the Sepik ecause Model T made with vanadium steel yeah which was the best deal you can get right he just brush the rust off a little bit of soap as well and they're fine exactly I don't need everything inside and all that that's exactly right I totally yeah so we get we keep everything outside the pretty stuff stays inside the unrestored trucks they've been outside for 70 years so you always replace the father's innocence that photo once once in a while we use a stock motor they have a very cool sound to a little bit any more power probably better and for how much can you tell with it I think about 20,000 and cut off yeah you're obviously not going to be going very fast by right but as far as the weight capacity it's a two and a half ton truck yeah which is a lot of what you're feeling right now you're going over the bumps and stuff yeah all right that's a two and a half ton truck with tandem axles the following night to the road with their trucks and yeah I'm finding with this guy yeah like a minute movie convoy yeah like a CW Bacall song stupid that lariat song we are making beds and we're making running boards and we're making rear fenders we stamp everything in the US it's all stamped in Detroit I wanted everything made in the US yeah and that just one of the things with our brand that we're really into some of these new Bronco bodies and things like that and they're all made in Taiwan yeah and it's like Hello you know like that's that's not what we're trying to do here let's see how she really goes I get the feeling this is the thing that it will do very well right are they going to go up that one stay in first or second I would just leave it in first okay and just let it let it do its work you know it'll the client of the RPM here at is totally appropriate and it should just crawl itself right up there everything seems really happy you know I feel like I'm being towed out a winch I know it's crazy isn't it amazing why it really does fly many fish and you can feel it will think about it for a second and it's going to send power to one of the one of the six wheels and then away you go I think this is probably the speed that it was truly designed to operate at yeah you know just hauling troops across God knows what we all right yep you're doing great you know it's a nice line now you should be able to see where you're going she gets walk yourself down me oh absolutely like gravity do the job duplex money here all that yeah you think it would all find up wouldn't you now I know people watching the show can't tell this but we're going down this hill and you're pushing the gas pedal to keep it going down this hill right yeah I mean that's how much gear reduction there is in one of these old power wagons it's absolutely insane I love this thing yeah so yeah you go out you go out hunting or something you can get to wherever you want to get yeah no questions asked throw a Christmas tree in the back awesome firewood go fishing drive across the river whatever you need to do this thing will get you there don't begin to put a gas tank it exactly like probably go in a second sure so once you've billy-goat it up and down a few hills it becomes sort of confidence-inspiring and you're like hey I can go anywhere well they knew what they were doing back in 1942 and you realize this truck with the exception of the drivetrain and the transmission is basically 1942 it's not doing any it can't do any more than it did in 1942 that's exempt you put a little more modern diesel engine and it but has a little bit more horsepower but this is not about horsepower these were designed for serious nasty jobs yes serious Massey job well what a lot of fun this thing in C you don't have to go fast and have fun sometimes going one mile an hour straightening out of hill can be as scary as going 200 miles an hour very cool when so thank you my friend thank you so much what's your website legacy classic trucks comm check it out you like it we got boy hills to climb see you guys next week Oh

Channel: Jay Leno's Garage

Views: 3,605,555

Rating: 4.9063644 out of 5

Keywords: jay lenos garage, nbc jay leno, watch jay lenos garage video, watch jay lenos garage full ep, winslow bent legacy classic tr, 1942 dodge power wagon restomo, jay leno pickup truck, jay leno 6x6, jay leno winslow bent, jay leno dodge, winslow bent 1942 dodg, dodge, power wagon, restomod, Jay Leno, Jay Leno's Garage, car reviews, compares cars, classic cars, vintage cars, sports cars, super cars, cars, car gear, McLaren P1, Porsche 918 Spyder, Camaro Z28

Id: 0c68L_tieVs

Length: 31min 50sec (1910 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 20 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/thesurfingwalrus]

cummings

[u/TheRealFilthyRich]

I put a 3.9 Cummins in my 04 Tahoe and it pulls it fine but I don't think it is the right engine for a 3 axle monster. I would have put the 5.9l in it any day. Big mistake in my opinion

[u/datmart]

Holy crap that's an amazing 6x6!

[u/xCAPTAINxTEXASx]

I watched the video but forgot to comment here - God that thing is beautiful. If I ever won the lottery, I'd buy a few different versions. They really do some great work.