Full Build: Adding A '70s Ford Crew Cab To A Dodge Cummins Turbo Diesel Chassis

today it's our third new project of the season we'll start the process of taking a modern dodge cummins turbo diesel chassis and adding a classic 1970s ford four-door crew cab body to it for a modern tow rig with a vintage look it's all today here on trucks hey welcome to trucks well i know that you guys have seen this tow rig before this super duty has been used to pull around power block project vehicles for the better part of the last decade yeah and this thing has taken us everywhere and gets worked pretty hard and frankly gets a little bit abused it gets used by ian and chris the muscle car guys and mike and joe and it's been a good truck but frankly it's seen better days now this triton v10 makes good power but by no means is it a gas saver when pulling our open trailer it does all right but when we hooked to our enclose and hit a few steep grades well we could use a little more torque tommy's right so we thought it was about time for a brand new tow rig and like you guys already know for the ultimate in pulling power and long life well you want a diesel rig so that's what we're looking for today but we're gonna do it with a little bit of style and on a budget so we made our way back to our friend monty lloyd's collection of classic ford work trucks and if you remember he's the guy that supplied us with the body and frame for das bronco and sure enough monty had exactly what we were looking for this f-350 xlt ranger four-door cab with a short bed sitting on the long bed frame now it had faded paint and a little bit of surface rust but this body was in solid condition which is kind of rare for these trucks since they were used for work trucks now what minor detail it didn't have an engine but that's okay because this was a gas burner and we want a diesel all the other systems were in fine shape southern truck now even the interior although smelling a tad musty was in pretty good shape with everything there well almost and this four-door cab is going to be great for long trips where we go find other trucks projects [Music] support's in good shape the battery box isn't rusty see anything else in there this mulch just mulch next we wanted to double check our research we got about 110 110 and a half 110 and a half yeah we'll leave a couple inch gap for clearance 154 and a half ish right to the center of the hub cool remember that yeah now we are really seeing some potential with this carcass because you got to realize this rust well it's only on the surface this is the original paint this is a really solid foundation to start on now we know it's going to be a bunch of hard work but the fact that we found a mid 70s crew cab well it should make a really unique tow rig now we know a lot of you guys out there are stuffing later model diesels down into these older trucks and we're going to do something along those lines but with a slight twist so we got one more stop to make so we have made our way down to certified auto recycling in ardmore alabama and if you remember the door that we put on the second chance silverado it came from certified as well look there's another one and today we're going to recycle a diesel drivetrain into our new tow rig certified auto recycling has in stock almost every single part you could imagine for just about any late model vehicle on the road today their sales staff knows their parts and as well as local deliveries they also ship internationally we get a lot of customers that want to save money and use a used part on their vehicle because then a new one doesn't have to be produced that saves energy and it saves the customer a lot of money in case you're wondering where all those parts come from well they started out as complete vehicles that were total losses bought from an insurance company auction each vehicle is methodically and carefully dismantled piece by piece as much as ninety percent of these vehicles are recycled and trust me they don't sit around long they become parts for your vehicle quick [Music] now these guys have hundreds and hundreds of clean and complete late model engines foreign and domestic we've seen duramax and cummins and powerstroke diesels as well as almost any gas engine you can think of take a look at this 24 valve cummins we thought about going with something like this things clean ready to crate and ship it looks practically brand new and when certified dismantles a vehicle they take a lot of care with the multi-pin plugs they just start tearing stuff apart they even cap the inlets and outlets of the water pump the turbo and the oil lines and that way when it ships nothing gets inside your engine now just like engines these guys have transmissions in any flavor you want front wheel drive rear wheel drive manual or automatic two or four wheel drive take a look at this one this is something similar to what we want to use a heavy duty manual transmission for our new tow rig now even though these vehicles don't sit around very long certified's inventory is updated on a daily basis with a wide variety of both foreign and domestic vehicles as a matter of fact while we were there a whole new shipment of trucks was arriving so we did some snooping around and waded through the sea of vehicles waiting to be dismantled we found something that really caught our eye and it's not this thing well it did catch our eye it's just not what we're after now believe it or not this 97 2500 series three quarter ton just came in off the truck nothing on it has been processed and everything that we saw that we liked on the inside well it's all right here on one truck and with this truck being a 97 that means it's got the old school 12 valve coming so that means it's got the mechanical injection set up and with less electronics to deal with well the swap is less complicated and a little bit more budget friendly now these 12 valves well they make great power right out of the box but they can easily be modified for more now the radiator and the ac condenser all look to be in great shape i think we got a good candidate here now this right here this is why this truck totaled there's some pretty serious sheet metal damage and 157 000 miles which is nothing for this drive train it's just getting broke in but right here we've got severe suspension damage since the wheels stuffed into the cab but it's still perfect for what we want it for and we want to make a point right here and now the certified does not sell complete vehicles they have been in the rules big time for us so we can take this back home as a unit and show you how much time and money that certified auto recycling can save you by dismantling right here on site up next we'll start tearing our trucks apart and later now with the body separated from the rest of the frame yo yo yo i think we're at the point of no return we will get a truck on the new truck oh wow stay tuned hey welcome back to trucks when we drug our treasure back here to the shop and we can't wait to get started on our new project and like we talked about before there's plenty guys that are putting the cummins turbo diesel into a ford truck old or new and we decided right from the start that we wanted a diesel drive train in our tow rig just for the reliability of it as well as the extra foot pounds of torque but like we told you guys we wanted to do something a little bit different and it's an idea i'm sure a lot of you guys have had at one time or another taking a vintage body and plopping it down on a later model chassis let's face it this 97 dodge was benefited from 20 plus years of technology in comparison to that old ford it's got a partially boxed frame a good strong drive train as well as modern suspension and brakes not to mention the aftermarket support in the form of upgrades so we thought we'd head down that road and see what it takes to drop that classic ford body down on a newer dodge frame now like you guys already know every solid project starts with a good plan and a little bit of research tells us that this long bed extended cab dodge is 154 and three-quarter inch wheelbase now the club cab short bed ford is 155 inches they're almost identical and that is going to make this body swap even easier yeah because we're going to have enough work just to get everything in the cab functioning but by matching up the wheelbase well at least we don't have to deal with shortening or lengthening the frame drive shaft exhaust system wiring harness or fuel lines and that'll minimize the amount of time it takes to get this project up and running [Music] [Applause] [Music] our f-350 body is in 1979 the same year as das bronco but that doesn't mean that you're stuck with this front end styling because the fact is these fenders are the same from 1973 right on up to 1979 so you've got lots of options if you want to restyle the front end of your truck [Music] now despite the fact that our 30 year old ford is a little rusty we have no real issues with disassembly now we weren't just hacking things up to speed up the tear down process because we weren't sure what parts we were going to need of either body or either chassis now even though it's just the cab left it is still plenty heavy and you need to be careful with your lift arm or jack placement so you don't bend anything or lose a toe now with the right front wheel being stuffed into the cab we kind of had our suspicions about maybe a slight bit of frame damage but despite all of that this truck runs great and pulled itself under the lift no problem [Music] now disassembling our dodge was a little bit easier because it's 20 years newer the removal of the bed was pretty straightforward and we're also going to reuse our diesel fuel lines because that is going to save us money down the road at this point we're not sure how much of the original dodge wiring harness we're gonna keep so we're disconnecting instead of cutting [Music] [Music] up next it's the right way to evacuate your ac system and later we'll show you what our cool new tow rig is going to look like stick around [Applause] welcome back to the shop we're tearing down our wrecked dodge diesel and we got to deal with the ac system before we go any further that requires some specialized equipment we just don't have now since we obviously couldn't drive a rec truck to the service center jason sanders from our local ford dealer was kind enough to bring his reclaimer by and properly evacuate the 134a refrigerant from our truck system since we've got to separate the cab from the rest of the drive train and believe me an hour's worth of labor it's definitely worth what that costs to properly do this so not just release it into the atmosphere that way the penguins they stay cold the system is hooked up to the high and low side service valves then the refrigerant is withdrawn from our system filtered and placed into a storage tank that way it can be recycled later on into another vehicle [Music] build on a budget truck projects that save you time and money [Music] now obviously we've got a pretty big job ahead of us with our tow rig body swap project and we have noticed that with our cummins turbo diesel engine well every time we leave it sitting in one certain spot for any amount of time it kind of marks the floor now what's leaking is the rear main seal but with all the work that we still need to do in this project we're going to have to postpone to getting that fixed now the seal itself it's not going to cost you that much but the six to eight hours that it's going to take to replace that seal well that's what's going to bite you so if you've got a similar leak in your vehicle and you don't have that six to eight hours or you don't have that several hundred dollars that a shop is going to charge you to replace that seal well here's an option now we all know bars leaks for stopping radiator leaks but now they make this additive that will condition seals and according to them will stop a rear main seal from seeping it's designed to be used with all types of seals including rope two-piece and one-piece seals and bars leak says it works by simply adding it every time you change your oil when it comes in contact with a seal it expands it restoring its ceiling capability it's non-foaming non-corrosive and non-clogging and compatible with every different oil type including synthetic so depending on your oil leak rear main seal repair may just be the easiest and most cost effective seal repair available [Music] all right this is ridiculous we dropped bills on hey welcome back to trucks now with the body separated from the rest of the frame yo yo yo i think we're at the point of no return you will get a truck on the new truck i'm too hot [Music] all right now back to reality and quick now we wanted to take a minute and show you guys what we had envisioned in our minds when we dreamed up this project we want to take our 97 dodge chassis add our ford short bed the cool looking four-door crew cab and top it off with that classic forward front end and of course bathe it in a slick coat of paint but keep the factory two-tone that we think looks pretty good on the truck maybe change it to a blue and white yeah and since it's a two-wheel drive i lower it down a little bit now that was easy enough but now we actually have to do the work it might be a little easier without 20 pounds of bling anything i think so i think it's time to go look i could pause now you may have noticed that behind that big cummins turbo diesel is a five speed believe it or not the five-speed version of this truck is actually rated at 35 more horsepower and 20 more pound-feet of torque so the 5-speed is staying we think it's going to be a little more durable for towing too but the nv 4500 series transmission has some fifth gear issues and we'll address that later on and we're not scrapping the rest of this cab either these seats they're comfortable and there's nothing wrong with them center console is nice too we're going to use the gauge pod for engine communication and who knows we might even try and stuff this whole dash in our vintage ford truck because this truck came with something our ford truck never did and that is good cup holders now if you've got any questions about this thing or anything else you saw on today's show go to powerblocktv.com hey guys thanks for watching trucks see you next week today the body snatchers are back on our diesel tow rig body swap project we'll get our 97 dodge's frame straightened out then we'll do a simple hub and axle swap to make it a dually it's all today here on trucks hey welcome to trucks today we're back on our diesel tow rig project we're in the process of stripping parts off it so we can transplant some of this stuff into our classic ford to give you guys an idea on where this project got started check this out we found the truck we wanted at certified auto recycling but it wasn't perfect but right here we've got severe suspension damage since the wheels stuffed into the cab and even with the damage well it had everything else we needed for the basis of our next project and when this truck was wrecked there's a combination of sheet metal suspension and even a little bit of frame damage so we've shipped our chassis to gerald's auto body to have it straightened and we're going to show you guys a little bit of insight as to what it takes to repair one of these heavy duty frames sitting underneath these trucks and while he's there i'm going to head back down to certified pick up a few more parts that ought to help with the stability of our tow rig when dragging our enclosed trailer martin started his first body shop in 1977 and has been continually growing the business ever since the current location is 10 000 square feet with 17 employees and state of the art equipment so if you remember gerald's auto body is the shop that gave us the estimate for our second chance silverado to work from so we got a big dodge locked down to this state-of-the-art frame rack and we're gonna pull this dude back into spec now we've got alignment equipment back at the shop but our little mighty pole is in no way strong enough to do a boxed frame like this one like we showed you before the wheel was stuffed back up under the cab and it kind of drug the suspension with it gerald's frame technician greg has been working on this a little bit he's pulled the kink out of the frame but the lower control arm is still back and the radiator support tab is still back a little bit now we're going to get to see some cool metal moving around but what's really fascinating here is just how precise and accurate a laser alignment system like this is [Music] with the laser scanner placed under a perfectly level frame it measures that frame three times a second and transfers that data to a computer the software contains measurements and specs for every single manufactured vehicle including our big dodge there are also points on the frame that are measured by the laser and compared to factory specs for proper realignment that's accomplished by hanging flags from those strategic points and feeding the information via the laser back into the software however much the flags move during a poll tells the computer how much adjustment has been made and how much further you need to pull the software even shows you detailed pictures where to hang your flags from the frame once the flags have been identified by the laser we're ready to start our pull and this machine doesn't play with over 10 000 psi of hydraulic pulling pressure with the system measuring at three times a second greg has instant feedback that he can monitor during the pull he can actually watch the measurements change on the screen as he's straightening the frame just like you've seen us do greg is tapping on the frame while it's under pressure this relieves stress patience is very important when pulling and aligning frames and greg greenhaw has almost 20 years of experience in frame alignment with the incredible amounts of force and pressure at play here safety is an obvious concern and a pull like this is better left to professionals like gerald's auto body at home you hadn't got nothing like at the pool you know people use come along with trees and tractors and everything else but you know when you're putting seven eight ten thousand pound of pressure to it that's a whole lot and you gotta have something to really hold it now check it out that is actually a link from one of these pull chains that came apart under previous technicians poll while greg likes to leave it there's a bit of a souvenir the fact is that these box frames are some of the strongest out there and the most difficult to pull in a line what greg taught us is that if your pull chains are straight and not twisted well it's safer less likely for that to happen and you get a more accurate pull safety chains in place well that stuff is just what experience teaches you now thanks to gerald's auto body in pulaski tennessee we can catch up with ryan back at certified now the reason i made the trip back down here to certified auto recycling is so we could change our 2500 dodge ram from a single rear wheel axle to a dually setup now we know we're not going to change the load carrying capacity of our truck unless we change the leaf springs but this wider dually axle will give us a lot more stability which comes in especially handy when towing our enclosed trailer now take a look at this axle it's nice and clean even the rotor and the brake pads look usable now luckily for us our truck is a two-wheel drive but if you guys are swapping this dually axle into a four-wheel drive make sure you match up your ring and pinion ratio or else you're going to be doing a ring and pinion swap this dually axle is huge but there's one more piece of the puzzle now here's what's on our truck right now if we tried to bolt a dually wheel to this well we'd have major interference problems so what we're here to get is the hub spacers that'll change the offset of the wheel and give us plenty of clearance for our brake parts that way we can run the same spare tire at all four corners of our truck now we've been down here picking up plenty of truck parts but whether you need a window regulator for your minivan a wheel for your daily driver or just a radio for your grocery getter well certified auto recycling is the place to call let's get this stuff loaded up i'm gonna hit the road up next from the front to the back we'll convert our truck to a dooley and later it's an easy drum brake upgrade and overhaul stick around hey welcome back well thanks to our kendall crane this featherweight engine and transmission dropped right back into place on our newly straightened frame we just want to say thanks to greg and all the guys at gerald's auto body now certified had a bunch of options for us but here's what we ended up coming home with this is a dana 80 out of a 97 dually with 354 gears which should give us a reasonable highway cruise rpm and decent fuel economy now this drum brake axle is a little bit cheaper than the disc brake axle we showed you earlier and since our original truck head drums well it should drop right in without any modifications as far as stopping power goes but we got a cheap upgrade to help these drums work a little bit better now unlike the separate rotor and wheel spacer assembly we showed you earlier well this is an integrated unit the rotor seems to be in pretty good shape while we're installing them we might as well throw in some fresh bearings grease and a couple new seals now while we were down there we also picked up a set of dually tires and wheels while they look a little rough right now well they won't when we're done we'll get them all cleaned up hit them with some fresh paint they ought to look like new as for the tires well they're going to hit the trash pile in favor of some more highway friendly rubber [Music] now one of the best things about switching over to a dually system is that all six wheels and tires can be rotated really increasing your tire lifespan now tear down is pretty straightforward we'll pull a spindle nut and get the caliper safely out of the way like everything else on this truck these things are heavy now we could have thrown these parts on like they were but we thought we'd take a few minutes throw them in the blast at all cabinet and get them ready for a fresh coat of paint and we also wanted to throw in a new set of wheel bearings now driving the old races out we could use a regular old chisel but on the installation of the new races you need to use a brass drift that way you don't damage the surface of your new race [Music] and you'll know when you've got it fully driven in because you'll get a solid metal on metal feel [Music] then it was time to make them look new again and we did that by spraying on a fresh coat of semi-gloss paint from dupli-color [Music] and since i was a bit lazy and didn't mask off what i didn't want to paint i'll use some brake clean to wipe off the rotor surface so we didn't gum up our brake pads after that we installed our freshly packed wheel bearings and a couple of new grease seals that way the brakes and our wheel bearings on the front end of our dodge ought to be in good shape for quite a while now a little bit of axle grease on the spindle is just good insurance and make sure you carefully install the hub so you don't damage the seal on the sharp threaded end the hub gets followed by the pre-packed outer wheel bearing the washer and then the spindle nut gets torqued to spec and then backed off an eighth of a turn then finally locked in place with a cotter pin now because of the depth of the spindle nut inside the dually hub it can be a little tricky to put a cotter pin in what we ended up doing was trimming a longer cotter pin down and installing it with needle nose pliers we reused the original dust cap tapping it in gently with a screwdriver and a soft face hammer now the single rear wheel axle we pulled out is also a dana 80. we're going to keep it around just in case we can find another use for it in a project down the road [Music] now swapping the axle assemblies is pretty straight straightforward and can be done with basic tools but we've gotten pretty used to our overhead crane hey welcome back to the shop well now that we've got our diesel tow rig project converted to a dually we want to pay attention to some maintenance issues before we go any further so we're going to pull these gigantic drums off our newly acquired axle see what kind of shape the brakes are in [Music] now the axle we picked up had a few miles on it and it's well used you guys know sometimes getting these drums off can be a real bear that's frozen doesn't feel that cold now our brake drum had almost fused itself to the hub face so with the use of some penetrating oil and a few more light taps from the hammer we were able to break it free but the shoes were still holding up we had to take a different approach [Music] all right here's the lock lever let's roll the star wheel down hopefully collapse those shoes enough we can get this drum off ah that's better jeez now they do make specialized brake spring pliers to help remove the springs and retainers and they do come in handy but you can get by with just a couple of screwdrivers a couple pairs of pliers and i know it looks a little intimidating with so much going on in here but a good tip is to do one side at a time that way you can use the completely assembled side as a reference now along with our brake shoes and drums we also picked up a hardware kit so we're going to be replacing some of the springs but it's a really good idea to keep track of all the parts you remove with the shoes loose all that's left is removing the parking brake lever assembly from the rear shoe if you lose a little e-clip here don't spend too much time looking for it there should be one in the hardware kit build on a budget truck projects that save you time and money [Music] now we had to replace our shoes and drums just because they were worn out but here's a great cheap upgrade you guys that drive full-size dodges with drum brake axles that you can do whether your shoes need to be replaced or not what we're going to do is replace the dodge wheel cylinder with a one ton gm wheel cylinder it's got a slightly larger bore diameter it's going to put more pressure on the shoes against the drums when you hit the pedal stopping your truck faster the best part about it these wheel cylinders they only cost about 12 bucks each and it's the best way you can make your drum brake axle stop more like a disc brake axle just a lot cheaper hey thanks for sticking around well we've got our new gm wheel cylinders installed we're ready to move on with the rest of the brake shoe installation but before you throw the new shoes on go ahead and clean the contact points in between the shoes and the backing plate and lubricate them with some loctite anti-seize now if you're working on drum brakes and you disassemble both sides and you don't have one side to look at as a reference well all data diy is a great resource for step-by-step instructions on how to do almost anything on a particular vehicle and i'm sure if you're doing this job without the specialized brake spring pliers well it takes a little bit of extra patience now each spring does a specific job and goes in a specific location so make sure you get it right you're just going to give yourself break issues down the road and some of these springs are under a pretty fair amount of pressure so just be aware of that and with the springs and shoes installed we're almost ready to throw the drums on but before we do that we're going to make sure the self-adjusting mechanism and star wheel spins freely works properly this should be a good starting spot [Music] now most rotors and drums come with a sprayed on coating on the friction surface and that's there to prevent corrosion or rust while they're sitting on the parts store shelf so you need to make sure you remove it all before you install the parts otherwise you'll be riding down the road you're brake smoking looking like they're on fire ask me how i know now we're ready to install the drum but you can't just throw it on there and call it done you need to have a slight interference fit between the drum and the shoes it's a little too loose now to expand the shoes we just rotate the star wheel the only way it'll let you there we go just a light a little bit of drag that's all you want now if you have any questions about anything else you saw on today's show go to powerblocktv.com guys thanks for watching see you next week today we're back at work on our diesel dually body swap we'll mount our 79 ford bed and cab on our 97 dodge frame then we'll move the engine back just enough to make everything fit it's all today here on trucks hey welcome to trucks well today we're back on project super duly which really started out as a discussion between me and ryan talking about how much we wanted a diesel tow rig to pull our projects around and take them to payoffs and even go get new trucks to work on but we did not want to spend fifty thousand dollars or more buying a brand new one because this is trucks and we can build one and save money doing it we both really like the styling of these mid 70s ford so this is what started it all off but as much as we liked the look of that old truck we didn't want to be stuck with 70s era engineering we wanted more modern suspension steering and brakes so rather than swap a diesel engine into that old ford well we thought we'd replace the whole chassis with this one out of a 97 dodge it's complete with the cummins turbo diesel engine and heavy duty manual five-speed transmission now we didn't just randomly grab the first diesel truck frame that we came across at the recycler the fact is we did a bunch of research and found that this 97 dodge extended cab long bed frame is less than an inch difference in wheelbase than our crew cab short bed ford making them perfect for a body swap we did some upgrades and if you've been watching the shows you know that we used a dana 80 axle along with the dually front hubs giving us six interchangeable wheels true dually form now unlike the ford check this frame out ford is regular c channel and just a straight beam this one steps down two different times so we're kind of tied to this upper length right here unless of course we want to channel the bed but that's going to sacrifice cargo room and is way too much work for what we want to accomplish so the bed is tied to sitting down here so our plan is to center the wheel arches with the axle right here and then build the rest of the truck from the bed forward wait a little bit okay the ford bed is not going to bolt onto the dodge frame we've got a couple of issues the first one being this tab right here we want this cross brace to sit right on the top of the frame rail so we got some trimming to do right here now the other problem we have is this front bed mount while it looks okay now once we get that little riser tab cut off the back of the bed and it lowered down well this is going to need to be lowered as well and since we got it cut off and we're going to be moving it around anyway we might as well have it line up with the existing ford bed mounting location [Applause] [Music] now mocking up and fitting the body of this truck is actually the fun part because you can't really make a mistake since the chassis is dictating where the bed goes and we're building it from the rear to the front now a plasma torch will save you some time but you can achieve the same results with a cut-up wheel and a little martial arts practice too now the plasma cutter leaves a little bit of a rough edge so we're using a flap wheel to grind down any sharp spots as well as hit the top side of the frame rail because that's where we'll be welding in our new bed mount after taking a quick measurement all we had to do was trim a little bit off the factory mount and reusing the factory mount saves us a whole lot of time and frustration trying to fabricate a new one now once we had our mount modified all we had to do was flip it around so it was facing inward as opposed to facing outward on the dodge setup and it lined right up with the factory ford mount then we just cranked up our welder and burned it in all right now we got the bed pretty much where we want it but we're not going to bolt it down just yet we want to leave it loose to have a little bit of adjustability now we can start working our way forward move on to the cab [Music] now what we're doing for the cab is essentially the same thing we're doing for the bed we're going to utilize an existing portion of the body mount bracket but this time it's going to be in conjunction with the dodge body mount bushing because you need to isolate the cab from any chassis vibration now we'll cut this bracket off cut it to length and utilize the existing ford body mount location now to mount the body to the frame up front we kind of got lucky look at our brackets the factory ford cab mount is right above the factory dodge frame mount so we can get creative with the welder and the plasma cutter build a pedestal that utilizes the forward isolator and will bolt right up we'll box it and gusset it for strength ready yep [Music] hand me that cab [Music] all right with the body mount bushing in place it looks like we need a mount that's only two and a quarter inches tall the cab sitting where it's supposed to be it looks like we've got about six inches between the cab mount and the frame mount okay we've got six inches from the top of the isolator to right there trim that dude build it up [Music] now these mounts are actually from the original ford chassis which we cut off before we scrap the frame now ultimately this is just a mock-up and this mount will be boxed in for strength later on [Music] all right now using the original boat locations in the ford cab is really a shortcut because dropping the bolt through helps us center and locate where the new mounts need to be [Music] up next we're moving our motor mounts back and making a new transmission crossmember and later it's u-joint replacement made easy stay tuned oh no fail hey welcome back to trucks now just like we figured we would we've got a major clearance issue between the mechanical fan that wire and our radiator core support and not only that but we've got half foot between the back of the cylinder head and the firewall so we've got plenty of room to set the engine back and that'll give us the clearance we need up front but it'll also help us with the shifter location of our manual transmission so if we just set it back a few inches we still won't have to deal with lengthening or shortening the wiring harness or the fuel lines and you got to remember on top of the radiator and condenser we've got a honk and fat intercooler to go in front of here so setting the engine back it's a must but don't worry because we got a plan and here's what we're gonna do our truck obviously has a manual transmission but the trucks that came equipped with automatics have shorter drive shaft due to the differences in overall transmission case length this one's shorter than the manual transmission version by just over five inches we'll use that measurement to dictate how far we set the engine back once we swap the inputs over well this drive shaft will drop right in [Music] measuring five and an eighth inches back from the original engine mounts we're making another reference mark which will serve as a guide to relocate the engine mounts to their new home now the right hand frame rail is notched to make room for the air conditioning compressor now since we're moving the engine back well that relief has to be moved back as well which is fairly simple now following the original notch we'll just extend it back about six inches box it in and weld it up which will retain the original frame strength dodge made sure these mounts weren't gonna budge we used a plasma cutter cut off wheel and an air hammer to try to remove them and nothing worked except for kevin cool is it hot that wasn't that hard i don't know what took so long so we wouldn't lose our mark when we grind this paint away to weld in the mounts i went ahead and scribed the line with a cut-off wheel that way we don't lose track of where we are now the engine mounts didn't magically change color we threw them in the bead blaster to get rid of all of the paint because at this stage a contaminated weld is the last thing that we want [Music] [Music] just like the body mounts we wanted to utilize as much of the factory dodge hardware as possible and now that the cross member sits about five inches too far forward well we had to cut up the factory crossmember and use the outer pieces that bolt to the frame rail and the intersection that bolts to the transmission you good yep yes all right in place once we had the center the crossmember bolted to a new transmission mount we got from o'reilly's it was just a matter of modifying the ends of the cross member so we could get a nice clean installation we connected everything using some eighth inch plate once we had one side done we just had to make sure it was level before we finish it up one more tell me when that's good hey welcome back to trucks well we got our engine mounts burned in as well as some additional gussets underneath and on the back side so we're pretty confident that these are going to hold up that more than 1 000 pounds of engine in transmission over here we've got a relief cut boxed in so now we have room for ac pump and the rear crossmember is fully assembled so we're ready to drop in this engine and transmission and we're almost ready to throw in our new driveshaft almost build on a budget truck projects that save you time and money [Music] all right but before we install the new to us shorter drive shaft there's a couple of things we need to take care of first off like we told you we got to swap over the drive shaft input from our old shaft onto the replacement that way it'll plug right into the back of our envy 4500 manual transmission we also want to throw in a fresh set of u-joints because this used drive shaft that we picked up well who knows how many miles are on it or what kind of shape those u-joints are in now a little spray loop can go a long way in helping you remove the stubborn c-clamps that hold the u-joint in place and to dislodge the u-joint caps it just takes a few medium blows on the yoke don't hit the seal surface of the input or the area directly around the u-joint cap and with the cap removed you can clearly see some contamination in the grease and the needle bearings and at this point it's pretty obvious this drive shaft has seen some miles could use a fresh set of u-joints and to make sure we don't distort the area where the cap slides in we use a piece of scrap tubing to dry the cap out [Music] now some new joints are sealed and non-serviceable like the factory dodgy joints but some like this one have a hole drilled and tapped for a grease fitting now that's a plus because you're going to get a longer service life but it's also a potential weak point as the transmission yoke spins and tries to turn the drive shaft you want to index the joint so the hole is under compression if you install it like this as the transmission yoke spins it's going to try to pull that hole apart creating a potential weakness and possibly leaving you stranded on the side of the road [Music] for installation that same piece of scrap tubing comes in handy again to seat the u-joint in the drive shaft yo when installing the caps onto the cross you need to make sure the needle bearings don't fall to the bottom of the cap now in the past i've used a socket to seat the cap but i thought a better solution would be to weld a bolt nut and washer together and make my own handy little tool it's a lot better than tearing up expensive tools [Music] all right now don't forget you might lose a little bit of grease out of the universal joint during installation so once you get your zerk fittings tightened down go ahead and pump a few shots of grease in them you'll be ready for installation hey welcome back to trucks i'm gonna try this again that's a little better it's better let's get this thing bolted up well now that engine fits like a glove and we didn't even have to trim any sheet metal in the engine bay to get such a great fit either but some parts are gonna go away like this vacuum powered brake booster that came on this old ford we're gonna replace it with the dodge system that gets its pressure from the power steering pump and we thought we were going to have to get rid of this apartment size heater housing but the good news is it actually fits and if we clock our turbo down a little more well we'll have even more clearance but here's the most important thing we got today look here we've got room for the radiator and condenser and since the ford grille comes out so far we can even put an intercooler up here even room for an upgrade now there's an added bonus from moving the drivetrain back about five inches check out the shifter handle this thing wound up in the perfect spot we should have plenty of clearance between it and our center console we're miles away from the dash now speaking of dashes kevin and i kicked around the idea of swapping the entire dodge dash into this old ford but after taking some measurements well we realized it was going to be a ton of work but we are going to swap the clusters because after taking them out well we realize they're almost identical in size to get them to work well we'll just use the existing dodge wiring make up a couple of brackets this thing ought to sit right in here all right well we're pretty happy with the way this ford body set down on the dodge chassis and the next time you see this truck we're gonna make some more progress on it now if you've got any questions about any products we use on today's show go to powerblocktv.com thanks for watching trucks see you in a week today we're tweaking our five nine comments to make more power for project super dually and we're gonna show you how to take care of the killer dowel pin it's all today here on trucks hey guys welcome to trucks well if you're following this project along well then you know that this is the body for our project super dually a 79 ford four-door cab that we're dropping down on a 97 dodge chassis and as much as i'm chomping at the bit to get started on a cool paint scheme for this truck well the truth is we're just not ready to start the body work however we have had the body on and off the chassis several times making up body mounts and figuring out that we needed to set our engine and transmission back a good five and a half inches well we took care of that problem but it created another problem typical hot rodding now the turbo comes into contact with the heater housing we want to keep this heater housing because we're also keeping the stock heater controls inside the cap well we think we've got this figured out and it may be easier than you think and it won't cost a dime that's because what we plan on doing is taking this exhaust manifold is simply turning it over that way the turbo will sit just a little bit higher in the engine bay and hopefully it will give us the clearance we need between the turbo and the heater box that way we can keep it now to make sure the turbo's oil feed and return line are in the right place we're just going to index the front half of the turbo that way they'll be in the correct location now if you guys don't really like wrenching on a late model truck just due to the overly complex nature of all the underhood electronics and you'd rather tinker with an older truck with a carburetor just for simplicity well you need to take a look at some of these early model diesels you can make all sorts of adjustments and changes to get these things to run just like you want you can control how much fuel gets dumped into the engine before the turbo spool up you can limit the amount of turbo boost you make and you can extend the rpm range in which these things make power just by turning a few screws and swapping some springs out now these early five nine cummins can easily put down three or four hundred horsepower and 6 or 700 pound-feet of torque to the wheels and still retain its daily drivability plus you got enough power underneath your right foot to tow a gigantic trailer down the street and still get 20 miles per gallon out on the highway unloaded of course so today we're going to show you how to unleash some of that power [Music] now luckily for us the exhaust manifold ports are symmetrical so it's just a matter of flipping the exhaust manifold over and short of relocating a couple of brackets well there aren't going to be any drawbacks to doing this now to get our turbo to sit correctly on the exhaust manifold we need to remove a little bit of metal now we don't want to get too carried away here because this manifold gets really really hot and we don't want to create any weak points we use the same treatment on the turbo housing itself and with that done we'll blow out all the metal shavings then it's just a matter of clocking the front half of our turbo so everything lines up just be careful around the impeller blades you don't want to break them [Music] now before we get carried away with our power upgrades there's something that we need to check you guys that are familiar with the five nine cummins what you know about the killer dowel pin basically there's a dowel pin that's pressed into the block that locates the timing cover case now this thing can work its way loose over time and can cause you some serious heartache [Music] now if you're unbelievably lucky the killer dow pin will just fall to the bottom of the engine and you'll never know it so that's when you pack up and head to vegas now this job is still easy to do with the body on the vehicle but you do have to remove the fan shroud and the clutch panel all right what do we got now this is what you're looking for you can see the dowel pin starting to work its way out of the case this guy is even especially when he gets loose now you can imagine the consequences if this pin falls out if you're lucky it falls right down in that hole falls to the bottom of the case like kevin said but more than likely it's going to get grabbed by this gear and forced in between the gear and the timing case creating a big hole right here and a massive leak and if you're really unlucky what's going to fall all the way down to the bottom gets stuck in between the crank and the cam gears cause big big trouble now for all the havoc that little guy can wreak the fix is unbelievably simple all you need to do is make a tab that fits under this bolt and holds the killer dowel pin in place permanently now a quick internet search will lead you to a couple of kits that you can buy but check this out we found this in our junk drawer so just like we're gonna do you can make one with a hammer and a small drift just drive the pin back into its place yep now with the dowel pin back at its happy home all is once again right with the universe now we can do something about keeping him there which is easily accomplished utilizing the bolt location right next to the dowel pin now using our scrap piece we've simply cut a tab and drilled a hole in it we'll install the tab with a slightly longer bolt to compensate for the metal thickness and use loctite to keep it where we put it [Music] all right with our dowel pin secure we're almost ready to start making some changes so we can increase the power output of our 5.9 diesel now we picked up a couple of gauges from bully dog so we can monitor the boost and the exhaust gas temperatures from inside the cab now before we finalize the turbo installation we're going to go ahead and drill and tap the manifold for this egt probe [Music] now there's a couple of different spots you can choose from to drill and tap for an egt probe we stuff some paper towels into the manifold to minimize the amount of metal shavings that get left behind after drilling an eighth inch pilot hole we used a 5 16 bit to finish the job and with the hole drilled we used an eighth inch pipe tap to provide a mounting location for the egt probe this job can be accomplished with the turbo and the manifold in the truck it's just a little bit easier with it off if you are doing it on the truck pack the flutes of the tap with grease to help retain any metal shavings [Music] [Applause] there is a piece of trivia that you guys probably wouldn't know but up next jack roush stops by the shop for a little trivia and later we've got a heavy duty replacement for our weak clutch stay tuned hey welcome back to the shop well powerful diesel engines and light duty trucks are commonplace nowadays but it wasn't always like that jack roush stopped by the shop recently shared a little history with us there is a piece of trivia that you guys probably wouldn't know but do you know who the person was that put the first cummings diesel engine in a pickup truck no me really really about uh 20 years ago chrysler came to me and said that uh you know that they wanted to explore the prospect of putting a diesel six-cylinder engine in a pickup truck and uh so what they had was an industrial engine it wasn't a truck engine heavy equipment heavy heavy equipment diesel engine and it made so much noise that it was not it was not uh we're not feasible so we had to put a sound deadener in the firewall and had sound deadening the oil pan and do some other things to make a package reasonable but we did the first one really for chrysler cool that's neat well there you go from the man himself it's pretty cool to be around a pioneer like that well what we've had the chance to do is throw some new gaskets on adjust the valves clean a little bit of schmutz off the front of this engine and since it's so easy to do with the body off the frame what we threw new water pump on just because with that done now we can focus on turning up the wick now one of the easiest ways to add big power to one of these early cummins is with some fairly small parts like this stage four torque plate we picked up from bully dog now this part controls the maximum amount of fuel delivered to the engine at a certain rpm now you combine this with a couple of other mechanical upgrades we're going to make will easily be in the 300 horse and 700 pound feet of torque range now the kit also comes with a valve to alter the signal to the wastegate to increase boost pressure to match the increase in fuel now the torque plate is located under the afc housing and based on the marks on the screw heads was pretty obvious to us somebody's been in here before making some adjustments now before we install the new torque plate we want to install a 3000 rpm governor spring kit we picked up from ats diesel and after getting a baseline measurement of the stick out length of the governor spring stem we removed the lock nut the retainer and the two inner springs along with a couple of shims now a magnet and a pick come in real handy when doing fine tedious work like this and if you've ever played the game operation as a kid well you're already prepared so to keep any buzzers from going off or keep you from inventing new words and chasing parts make sure you don't drop anything into the injection pump housing now the installation is pretty easy it's the factory spring seat the new ats spring inside the factory spring followed by the retainer and the lock nut just verify your measurements are the same now we've got one more spring kit to install from ats but this time it's going in the afc or android fuel control and what this does is control how much fuel gets delivered to the engine in a low boost situation now the governor spring kit we just installed is going to allow our engine to fuel to about 3000 or 3200 rpm as opposed to the factory setting of about 2200 rpm now this afc spring kit changes things a little bit differently now by installing a lighter afc spring it's going to allow more fuel into the engine in a low boost situation which is going to make more power and make the engine more responsive at lower rpm all right well we're almost ready to install our modified afc housing but before we do that we finally need to install our new torque plate now the kit does come with an installation template but since ours has already been tinkered with we're going to install our fuel plate at almost a full forward position which will allow for near maximum fuel rack travel now we had picked up some 191 delivery valves from industrial injection to help boost the power output of this engine but we're going to hold off on the installation until we get the truck up and running now the delivery valve basically helps meter how much fuel gets injected into the cylinder now if you're going to do this job you need to remove the delivery valve holder to gain access and that requires a special socket this isn't the only special tool we picked up to work on this diesel either that's right and you've heard us say over and over again that having the right tool for the job can save you time money even parts and that delivery valve socket is a perfect example of that now in the matco tool catalog there are several diesel specific tools including this filter socket set a clutch fan wrench and this barring tool that's designed to sit in a port in the transmission adapter case and allows you to spin over that high compression engine with nothing more than a 3 8 ratchet this thing comes in handy they also offer diesel specific filter wrenches even this diesel compression testing kit which is pretty much a necessity if you've got serious engine problems to diagnose so it's nice to know that no matter what you're working on matco they got the tool for you hey welcome back to trucks well so far all the engine projects on super dually have gone without any trouble now it's time to move some big chunks all right now that we know we're gonna be making more power we need to make sure it actually gets to the ground now with the increase in torque well it's obviously more than a stock type clutch can handle so we've got a heavy duty replacement now who knows what we're going to find when we take this transmission off because obviously somebody's been in here before and incorrectly install this bracket here it's sandwiched in between the bell housing and the block adapter but either way we're going to take this transmission off find out what's inside make it upgrade okay here's the clutch pressure plate and flywheel we pulled out of the big dodge now it's not hard to see that the clutch and pressure plate have been recently replaced the problem is it's a stock replacement and it's a cheap offshore replacement at that and we're just not going to trust the saw clutch with our power upgrades the other issue is this check out the flywheel it hasn't been resurfaced there's glazing and hot spots all over the place so they've got a brand new clutch on a flywheel that hasn't been resurfaced well that's just goofy now the first time i ever put a clutch in the vehicle i was 16 or 17 it was a 63 ford f-100 three on the tree standard shift and i did the same thing i put a new clutch and didn't bother to have the flywheel resurfaced and it was all glazed over the thing chattered so hard when you let the clutch out that it wanted to shake you out of the vehicle well my excuse i was young and stupid back then and we learned from our mistakes hopefully the other thing that we're going to do is pull this tail housing off and see if that problematic fifth gear nut issue has been addressed now we don't need any more proof than that right there that a stock type clutch assembly ain't going to cut it behind our torquey straight 6. it's pretty obvious that the previous clutch that was installed got shredded to pieces so to us at least going back with the stocker was just a waste of time and money especially considering we're going to be making power improvements to the engine so we might as well upgrade the clutch as well that's why we're installing a south bend clutch now this dynamax clutch kit we got from south bend can handle up to 450 horsepower and 1 000 pound feet of torque that should easily cover our power improvements as well as offer up some room for upgrades in the future now this flywheel has been redrilled to accommodate a slightly larger pressure plate and that'll let us use a 13-inch clutch disc which is an improvement over the stock 12 and a quarter inch diameter now the flywheel also uses a sealed roller bearing instead of the stock needle bearing setup which is exposed to contamination now this pressure plate is 5 8 of an inch larger than the stocker and improves clamping force as well now the disc got some improvements too they swapped out some of the torsional coil springs in favor of these neoprene dampers which will stiffen up the disc allowing it to handle more horsepower and torque and the kit also includes a new throw out bearing and the necessary alignment tool now in between the clutch diameter increase and the choice of clutch material linings what we're going to eliminate early clutch disc failure and still have nice smooth pedal engagement [Music] after installing the flywheel onto the end of the crankshaft using loctite and 100 foot-pounds of torque the alignment tool allows you to perfectly center the clutch disc then you're ready for the pressure plate which is installed using loctite and the bolts snug down in a star pattern now be careful not to run the bolts in with too much pressure because the final torque spec is only 20 foot pounds and again is torqued down using a star pattern to ensure an even clamp load hey welcome back to the shop well we've already made some power upgrades dealt with some maintenance issues and installed a heavy duty clutch behind our diesel engine we're almost ready to reinstall our manual transmission but before we do that we want to pull this rear tail housing off and see if the problematic fifth gear nut issue has been dealt with already i've already removed the pto cover and drained the fluid so we wouldn't make a mess on our bench top [Music] now this silver piece here is actually the fifth gear retaining nut and what happens is the 50 on the main shaft actually rocks back and forth on the splines a little bit allowing the nut to back off letting this fifth gear assembly slide back and once it slides back on the main shaft far enough to clear the fifth gear on the counter shaft well you're basically left with a four speed transmission a repair to make and a few options and what we're going to do to fix that is weld it [Music] now we're using a big clamp to provide a good ground on the retaining nut before welding along with a glove to keep spatter off the gears now we're using the four notches on the retaining nut as a guide on where to place our tacks that's to not throw the shaft out of balance [Music] now i know a lot of you guys are saying well you just ruined those threads and you're probably right it will be a pain in the neck to remove that fifth gear nut but if we've got to go inside the case and deal with sync rows or replace bearings we're going to be replacing the factory main shaft anyway because it's the root of the fifth gear problem it doesn't allow for full fifth gear spline engagement so an aftermarket unit will allow for full engagement and eliminate the fifth gear problem anyway so this main shaft is sacrificial and at least this way well we know we're not gonna lose our overdrive got one last bit of business tap in a new tail shaft seal fill the transmission up with the recommended fluid we're going to call this thing done now if you got any questions about today's show check us out online at powerblocktv.com thanks for watching trucks see you next time today we've got seven of the very best custom hot rod builders in the nation helping us take projects super dually from a rough shell to a primed and ready to paint truck in just one show it's all today here on trucks hey guys welcome to trucks well there's a lot going on we've got a room full of people and a room full of action because we're pretty serious about making some good progress on the paint and body side of things for project super dually and we're hoping to take it from how it sits now to ready for paint by the end of the show so needless to say we've got our work cut out for us and if you're wondering who all these guys are that are cutting grinding welding and making noise well they're not just day laborers that we picked up from the local temp agency ryan's right we've assembled a team of the baddest paint and body guys in the country and although you may not recognize their faces i know you've seen their work we're calling this the truck cv auto body thrash so we're gonna take a minute and introduce you to the team welcome to the trucks auto body thrash in the shop today alan shepley allen owns mustang central in byron georgia and specializes in custom resto mods concourse restorations and full-on race and performance mustangs he's even got 10 years experience in experimental engineering and prototyping tim strange tim operates strange motion riding customs out of cambridge illinois their specialty is custom street rods and wicked street machines racking up multiple awards including america's top custom award for his 52 buick copper randy borcherding randy's shop is paint house in houston texas where they crank out high end customs restorations and flawless paint jobs randy's had several of his vehicles featured on power block and regularly competes at national and international car shows consistently bringing home awards eric saliba we've shown you eric's little shop of horrors down in lawrenceburg tennessee before where they crank out custom projects with a focus on blending new technology and nostalgic looks in just a few short years eric's built impressive vehicles that have been featured both on tv and in print jeff greening jeff is half of the father and son team that owns greening auto company and with over 40 years experience and a true passion for the automotive industry jeff is responsible for the stunning paint and bodywork that has won them worldwide notoriety and a long list of very happy clients jesse greening jesse's the other half and his amazing talent has led them to place as one of the great eight finalists for the highly coveted riddler award they've also been a street rod of the year finalist as well as an 08 sema best gm vehicle award winners brian finch brian's the proprietor of finch hot rod transformations out of hermitage tennessee his specialty is 60s and 70s era muscle cars and he builds them bumper to bumper including the paintwork he's on his way to becoming a top builder in the custom pro touring ranks okay now that you met the guy here's the plan basically we got the truck divvied up into about three sections the bed being the most challenging since we're having to make our own dually fenders then there's a cab with the doors placed on stands in different places around the room and then finally the front nose section or what we refer to as the dog house now we're doing a couple of different things but you better pay attention because these guys are good and they're fast [Music] now we're calling this a thrash but don't think for a second that it's unorganized these guys know exactly what to do and each team member fell into a job and got busy now everybody has a different specialty street rods mini trucks muscle cars but the common thread to all of this is good old-fashioned hard work and we're gonna have to cut through some crusty crap metal to make room for some brand new good metal okay we're running a tape line here to make sure we cut this panel off straight we're making sure we're just cutting the outer panel as i get this cut out we're going to grind it randy's going to cut a panel and put it right here on this on this edge here now a lot of guys including myself prefer to use a mig welder for sheet metal but it takes a lot of finesse to tig weld single walled sheet metal because of the incredibly focused heat zone i'm just trying to even up the gap so we can keep bringing the metal together to where we it's easier just to take together and the reason we're taking it together is it'll help us not have to grind so much with it now some of these sheet metal panels are brand new but other places we had no choice but to work with what was already there and randy borchening takes a crack at stating the obvious well i've discovered some rust it's kind of hard to tell i'm sure but these are rusty areas there's some really tiny ones back here but they imply that the metal is really thin all the way along here i'm going to cut out this whole area we'll make a patch weld it back in yeah i think we can bring it back from the dead we're going to resurrect this one some of the cool stuff we get to show you are the homemade tools and techniques from all of these guys like this tip from eric you're pulling a crown into an otherwise flat panel to match the contour of the factory stamp door it works perfectly now they make patch panels for a lot of this truck but not this store this is one of the rare shorter doors for the quad cab truck so what eric has done is used some 20 gauge flat sock and a brake made his own patch paddle and rolled it under that's what that's what 10 or 15 years of hacking up mini trucks will do for you nice job now the front of the door skin was good here but the back side in the jam was ate up with rust nobody makes a patch panel for this so brian tell them what you're doing so as kevin said we want to we want to maintain the integrity of this front panel keep it we don't do a lot of work we cut out where all the rot was make a new patch filler piece in here we separate the panels clean out all the rust treat it with some some good metal prep come back in with a small strip of metal on the back side we'll weld it along the end grind it good as new now it seems like a lot of work for just a small patch but these guys know you do it once and you do it right exactly [Music] up next more of the truck's auto body trash stay tuned [Music] guys welcome back to the shop as you can hear we're running wide open and our all-star crew is making some awesome progress on our project super dually paint and body thresh session now they've already got one customized dually fender already welded in and looking really really good now all they got to do is replicate it on the other side [Music] the problem is it looks like this it's beat up banged up rusty just plain nasty and more than a few hours away from looking like the other side but i've got faith [Music] and i know just enough about bodywork to stay the heck out of the way when these guys are in the room but one thing that's going to hold these guys up before they get to the other side and do the other fender flare is replacing some of the 40 year old rotted and well used bed floor sections while lmc does offer complete bed floor replacements we opted just for a few sections and just welded it to the solid middle section since this is going to be a work truck well it's going to get covered up with bed liner anyway [Music] and no this is not ian johnson's hair dryer it's a really cool tool we picked up from matco that recycles the blast media and captures it so it doesn't shoot out into the rest of the room does a great job [Music] now it's a great turning point in any project when we graduated from the hardcore metal work to using a little bit of filler to fine-tune the panels obviously eric's got the perfect ratio of hardener but now any major paint and body project is a process of constant refinement especially when you're used to the level of fit and finish that these professionals are you can tell a pro by their attention to detail check the panel gap it's oe standard it's nice and even all the way to the top but you follow it down to where allen made his patch and it gets a little wider alan walk me through what you're going to do well kevin this has been anything but typical we have nine guys attacking this thing at one time normally when you build this patch you would have the door on the truck yeah but due to the problem of people being on this vehicle at the same time i had to do the door off the truck so now i just snuck over here while nobody was looking and stuck the door on here and i see we have a gap problem so what i'm going to do is come in and weld this up and close in the gap and smooth it off and be good as new [Music] with the ultra thin layer of bondo blocked out and blended into the rest of the door perfectly these guys were ready to move on to the next step and that meant dragging a lot of the exterior panels and the doors into the paint booth for a heavy coat of black polyester primer now brian finch is spraying the cloths in primer but brian smith of auto body color and supply hooked us up big time with all of our paint and body material jesse and tim started over with brand new sheet metal for the passenger side of the bed but they still had to figure out how to make room for the matching dually fender what we're doing is figuring out the location of this fender where it is and put it over on the other side we run a straight edge along these body lines which are factory measured from flat over locating point same here locating run a straight edge across this body line down through the center line of these trim clips which are the same locations from the factory on the other side measure down give us points and then we go and transfer them over to the other side and although tim strange is pretty handy with the welder elf is called and he wants his belt back now with the first round of primer dry and ready to block brian and alan attacked it with 100 grit which is very aggressive sandpaper but most of the primer is going to end up on the floor since this is the last stage of your filler work [Music] and here's why i had faith in tim and jesse with the precision tig work they did it took very little body filler to make our new dually fender seamless the auto body thrash was a week-long exercise in an unbelievable amount of activity and there was no pretense with any of these guys everybody had fun got along great and when one job got finished well everybody just tag teamed up on the next one until piece by piece section by section and project by project super dually really was starting to take shape and even though it may look like a tv studio smashed into a body shop real progress was definitely being made [Music] done up next super dualies coming together stick around [Music] there you go [Music] welcome back to trucks but with hours and hours of filler work done we're finally ready to throw some primer onto the cab now with a half acre of sheet metal on the roof panel and 30 years of life as a work truck well guess what you're going to have a little bit of filler build up but it's okay because it's very thin and it's going to level out the surface where it'll take primer and be able to be blocked out quite easily the surfacer that we're using again is clawson all you need high build polyester primer surfacer and it is literally spray bondo it's the next stage in the body work process and the final stage of the filler since we had so many different highly qualified people we kind of traded off on some duties this is the second coat of primer after blocking on the doors and the first coat on the hood eric wanted to shot and shoot in the poly through the giant 2.5 orifice on the unesco water spray gun so he went to work laying down a fat coat of poly primer now after these panels have been blocked once and re-primed again you can really see the fact that these cats know what they're doing the reflection of the wet primer shows that these panels are laser straight and really are ready for paint now the bed assembly was probably the most ambitious section of the body work with both bedsides being beat up and rusty and not having any dually fenders well it was a very aggressive project tim and jesse did an awesome job grafting in the lmc steel fenders into the bed in true street rod style and it shows up in randy's primer since this project took place over several days we had plenty of time to allow the primer to dry completely once it was we strapped it up to our crane using several heavy duty ratchet straps with the help of five or six guys we carefully lowered it down onto the frame check it out it's the first time we see super duty with all the body work done we get to see it as a truck again these guys work fast so pay attention we're gonna split up into teams have people start hanging the doors i'm gonna get the doghouse assembled on the front hang the fenders on it set the hood and then last thing is we'll grab the bed set the bed on good as new [Music] now we were focused mainly on the exterior body panel and we'll get the inner fenders under hood and the inside of the cab painted completely once we're a little further down the road now the reassembly along with the rest of the project was a complete and total team effort with everybody gelling and working side by side like they've known each other for years and we'd have these guys back in the truck shop any day of the week [Music] now this is just one of the many many times we're gonna have this thing disassembled and reassembled so the gaps aren't perfect but yeah it's air it's cool [Music] hey guys welcome back to the shop check it out the primer's barely dry the body's reassembled and sitting back on the chassis and all the hard work that our all-star crew put in has paid off big time this thing looks flat out mean with over 200 years of collective experience the team managed to stuff in over 400 hours of labor in just under five days we're not kidding and check out we've got cool custom dually fenders the panel gaps are right the panels are straight all the rust is gone and this thing's in final primer ready to sand shoot some color on we know this thing's well on its way to becoming the cool project that we planned out on paper but don't forget you can get any one of these guys to help you with your project as well just follow the web link on the trucks and power block websites and look them up just don't hire them all at once now on behalf of everybody here at truxx tv we wanted to send you home with some stuff so we got you a cool truck's t-shirt in your size a license tag some neat stickers and some licorice which needs no explanation whatsoever on behalf of our friends at anesta water spray equipment we're sending each one of you home with one of their brand new supernova spray guns which is designed by peanut farina nice piece of gear now in all seriousness guys thank you so much for your hard work and time if you got any questions over what you've seen on today's show or you want to get in touch with these guys go to the power block website truckstv.com check it out thanks for watching trucks see y'all next time who's licorice you today we're spraying sound insulation inside the cab of project super dually and we're adding a diy bed liner and we've got some painting tips to help you get a perfect paint job finally we'll give super dooley some chrome it's all today here on trucks it looks pretty tough hey welcome to trucks well project super dually is going to be a one-of-a-kind vehicle now we were going to submit a request for a brand new diesel dually tow rig that we could use as a parts chaser and to pull our rigs around to off-road events and things like that but then we started thinking about it and you know what we don't buy trucks we build trucks so that's exactly what we said about to do but instead of getting a used rig used dueling fixing it up we decided to go a different direction and get two completely different vehicles and mash them together and this is what we ended up with super dually is a 79 ford body sitting on top of a 97 dodge dually chassis and we had seven of the baddest metal masters in the land come and help us straighten out the wrinkles in the body work and in less than a week these guys brought this truck back to life [Music] man those guys did a great job on the exterior of the truck getting it ready for paint but there just wasn't any time left over to pay any attention to the interior so that's what we're going to do today now this is a 70s era pickup truck and back then they just didn't focus that much on sound deadening and insulation you combine that with the fact that we're running a 12-valve cummins diesel and they're not exactly known for their whisper quiet operation and you can easily see how it would get kind of loud and boomy here in the cab so we're going to address that and try to keep the diesel clatter and road noise on the outside of the truck keep it comfortable and quiet here on the inside now inside the bed other than a few places where we've patched to replace some rotten metal well it's almost exactly like we found it but remember this is a work truck not a show truck so it's a little rough but that's okay we're gonna prep the surface not worry too much about a few little dents or pop nuts here and there and throw a fat coat of bed liner in this thing now inside the cab we're going to use a product that the guys over in horsepower have had really good luck with in the past and it's lizard skin spray-on sound insulation now we've had success with the adhesive sound deadening mats before as well but there are some advantages to the spray on insulation now they've got a couple of different formulas first being their sc or sound control formula and this stuff is really going to reduce the noise and vibration inside the cab it's also going to protect all the surfaces from continued moisture and corrosion any rust issues that we'd see this stuff's good to about 300 degrees fahrenheit now the other option is their ci or ceramic insulation formula and it's good for higher heat applications as it can withstand temperatures of about 500 degrees it'll also reduce engine and heat transfer by about 25 degrees and since it's water-based while it's easy to clean up it's environmentally friendly and you don't need a respirator to apply it now another advantage to both of these coatings is they go on really really thin just 40 mils are one millimeter thick and that'll prevent you from altering the fitment of your interior panels saving you extra work and a big fat headache now you can use both of these products on the same panels but if you do make sure you apply the sound control formula first now to spray it on you're going to need a gun with a rather large orifice or opening now since we're going to be focusing on the interior today we're going to go with this one now this stuff's a pretty thick consistency so use an electric drill with the paddle mixer and go ahead and mix it for a good little while if it helps you count to 100 you want to make sure it's thoroughly mixed now once you're happy that everything is evenly mixed and you've saved as much of the product as you can go ahead and dunk the mixing paddle in water that is if you want to reuse it once the lizard skin sets up it's going to be very difficult to remove at least i'm not making a mess now this stuff sprays really easily especially if you use the spray gun that they offer but if you're using a spray gun that you already own just remember to change out to a larger diameter tip before you start now it's always a good technique to use an overlapping pattern whether you're spraying paint or laying down an insulation type product like this but this stuff's a lot more forgiving we're also applying some insulation to the rear cab panel because basically this entire huge cab is just one big steel drum and the more places we can spray on sound insulation the better now spraying the grayish colored insulation against the contrasting brown paint makes it really easy to tell when you have full coverage there's no need to pile this stuff on real thick and if you're not really happy with the texture of the final product well just remember this stuff is sandable and paintable as well so if you got any exposed panels don't be afraid to use it on them too [Music] and with the cab just about finished up time to pay some attention to the well-used bed we've got the scaly surface rust knocked off the bed floor with a wire brush and all the dust blown out so we're ready to rock and roll now we've shown you prepping rusty metal with the chemical to set it up to be able to put a bed liner on it in the past but there's different ways to go about this we're going to do it different this time with por-15 it stands for paint over rust and basically it bonds with the rust creates a solid coating that you can then put your bed liner over top of now just like the bed liner we're going to put on top of it por 15 is a moisture cured urethane meaning it doesn't need a catalyst to cure it uses moisture in the atmosphere now i'm not using por on the good metal that'll take a different primer [Music] up next we'll roll on our diy bed liner and later painting secrets revealed stay tuned and you can see the perfect impression of my hand on the steel hey guys welcome back to the shop well our lizard skin spray on sound insulation is dry to the touch for the most part but like most spray-on coatings it does need a full 24 hours to completely cure so we can't crawl up in here and get any work done but the good news is there's plenty of work to be done in the bed that's right there is plenty of work to do on both of these projects but they're both easy to do making them great diy projects that you guys can do at home now i've gotten a little bit of a head start here by throwing some seam sealer in some of the gaps and coating the bare steel with some duplicolor primers since the bed liner system we're putting in here likes to sit on a coating rather than bare steel now this is something fairly recent from dupli-color they're calling it their bed armor diy bed liner kit and it's a little bit different than what they've had before in that it's a moisture cured urethane which means that it uses good old-fashioned h2o or moisture in the atmosphere to lock it together and make it a very strong coating now one thing i like about duplicolor is that they know how to assemble a kit and they've included everything you need here including a tray an applicator that's going to create the right texture and look great a stir stick a prep pad for surface prep even a touch-up brush to get in those hard to reach recesses and areas that you can't reach with a roller oh yeah [Music] providing your bed surface paint and everything is clean like ours is a red scuffing pad is all you need to create the tooth or texture that the bed liner needs to sit on now diy obviously means do it yourself so get ready to burn some calories because the sacrifice for not paying somebody to do it is a little bit of hard work that's it [Music] now with paint prep there's no such thing as too clean and the thin layer of dust that i'm blowing off well it would interfere with the adhesion of the bed liner so you better make sure your substrate is clean we're going to follow that with a final wipe down of dupli-color's paint prep in an aerosol can this makes sure that all the wax and grease and contaminants are off of the panels and will further aid in the adhesion of our new bed liner now the piece of masking paper that i'm using to sit on just make sure i don't drag anything else into what i'm trying to coat over top of it just keeps things cleaner [Music] now there's no real technique in putting the first coat on but the roller gives you the opportunity to smooth out any runs or clumps that are in the coating [Music] now another benefit to using the piece of paper is that i can paint myself out of the corner and not get trapped [Music] now the first coat doesn't look like much but that's okay it's not supposed to it's got a single purpose and that is to hang on to the second coat of bed liner the second coat is what has the mill thickness and the strength and the texture and look of a bed liner [Music] now the second coat is where the magic happens and where you get the look of a professionally applied bed coating now two coats will give you a strong coating but if you have to apply three well that's not a problem either this is recoatable and repairable unlike a vulcanized coating now you may notice that we're putting the coating over top of dents but that's okay because this is going to be a work truck and we're going to use it for one it would probably take 30 or 40 hours of body work technique to get the inside of this bed smooth and quite frankly it's just not worth it when it's going to get beat up all over again now from the time your bed is prepped it's probably going to take you an hour maybe an hour and a half to apply it but it's time well spent because it's a good looking coating and hides a lot of sins there you go the second coat sure gives it the texture and the strength that you want another good thing is that like we said before it's water-based so if you mess up like i did right here kind of went over my masking tape it's a simple water cleanup done up next it's proactive painting tips and later we'll try on the biggest piece of jewelry in the shop stick around hey guys welcome back to trucks we're getting closer and closer to being able to put paint on super dually now that we've got the lizard skin on the inside of the interior and the bed liner inside the bed we can finally focus on the exterior panels speaking of we wanted to show you the paint scheme that we picked out for the truck this is summit racing's new line of base coat clear coat paint systems this is their bomber blue and gunmetal metallic we think the color combination looks great the clear has a nice gloss hold out it's going to look fantastic on that truck now speaking of a paint job you always want to strive for the perfect paint job well the secret to a perfect paint job is actually not a secret at all it's technique and it's not just one technique it's a bunch of different procedures thrown together and it's being conscientious every step of the way so what i wanted to do is show you some things that are going to really help you achieve that perfect paint job now you're always going to see me painting with some kind of a monkey suit or a paint suit on gloves and a good breathing apparatus and as important as that is to safety it's also important for controlling contamination contamination is your enemy in a paint job stuff falling into the paint coming off your skin or off your clothes and it's very important especially to wear gloves and here's why now this is a piece of bare 20 gauge steel that i laid my hand on and kind of held it there a couple of weeks ago for about oh 15-20 seconds and you can see the perfect impression of my hand on the steel that's because the acid and oil that secreted from my skin deposited onto the steel and reacted this will get trapped on your surface between your primer layers between your paint layers especially on bare steel so it's a great idea to wear gloves now these blue gloves are nitrile we get them from kimberly clark and they're really good protection against depositing contamination into your work these latex gloves don't hold up as well under solvent but they're better than nothing now contamination can come from your equipment as well so it's kind of a no-brainer to keep your paint guns clean but here's something you don't want to do you don't want to get solvent inside the air inlet the reason is is that the inside of these passages aren't coated like the outside and they'll actually rust or corrode from the inside with the moisture that's insolvent so here's a good idea this is just a simple cheap vacuum cap plug the end while you're cleaning your paint gun keep the moisture and the solvent out of the inside air passages of the gun while you clean it now after your spray gun is clean use a dedicated spray gun lubricant these won't react with paint just a drop in all the metal on metal areas that's all you need that way your gun's ready for you the next time you pick it up and resist the urge to use metal objects to clean the inside passages of the paint gun like a paper clip or these welding files these can damage the highly machined internal surfaces and ruin a paint gun only use products and equipment that's dedicated and specifically made to clean out a paint gun these won't break down under solvent either now another area you can get contamination or dirt in your paint job is from the air hose itself so whenever i do a paint job i'll prep the hose with some wax and grease remover and give it a wipe down the first three or four feet of the hose that way you know you're not transferring dirt or contamination onto the panel which is actually really close to the paint gun now here's something old school now think of your car in the paint booth as a big giant magnet and all the dust particles floating around in the air as pieces of steel that are going to get sucked down into your magnet and it's your wet paint well here's an old school trick that's very easy to do grind off the paint or the rust in this case off of a frame chunk and simply bolt a chain up to the frame make sure it hangs down onto the floor on a clean spot too and what this is going to do is discharge the magnet and really help to eliminate the static cling that's going to draw that stuff and all that other contamination that you don't want to buff out of your paint job into those panels now each one of these tips by themselves well they'll help but stringing a lot of different really proactive and good tips together creates a mindset to where you're going to have a clean atmosphere and you're going to be careful doing your procedures because remember the perfect paint job well it's all in the details and every little bit helps [Music] hey guys welcome back to the shop well project super dualies getting closer to being ready for that blue and gray paint scheme that kevin showed you earlier but once we get it done we're not going to throw the beat up and dented factory grille back in this thing we're going to upgrade to something a little bit cleaner a little bit meaner now this is a factory replacement grille shell with a billet aluminum insert it looks pretty tough now i've measured the factory dodge radiator condenser and intercooler setup and they require about seven and a half or eight inches worth of room now if i measure from behind the grill to the face of the fan clutch well it looks like we've got a little over nine inches of space to deal with now we'll obviously have to remove the center post from the factory radiator core support but we'll reinforce it with something else it's going to be a tight fit if we need a little bit of extra room well we'll just remove the mechanical fan and replace it with two slimmer electric fans either way i think we're in good shape today project super dually gets a new paint job we've got some of our auto body thrash friends back in the booth to help get this behemoth looking even better than it did when it was brand new it's all today here on trucks hey guys welcome to trucks well project super dually our 79 ford body sitting on a 97 dodge chassis is taking up just about every square foot of our brand new prep station and it's just about ready to spray some color on but this project didn't start out looking this clean if you remember it was quite the thrash to get this once rusted out hulka sheet metal looking like it does now this old ford had been sitting in the weeds for at least the last 15 years while it was all there well it was definitely rough and that required lots of patch panels to replace the rust with solid sheet metal but we had plenty of qualified help in the shop these guys knocked it out in a big way they helped us achieve our goal of having the truck buried in a fat coat of high build primer and ready for paint [Music] now i know you guys remember randy borchardting from paint house from the auto body thrash show well he was kind enough to fly all the way out here from houston texas to give us a hand prepping this thing and quite frankly it's nice to have the help because this thing is the size of a small house now obviously some work has happened since the last time you saw super duty it was in black primer when we finished it up with the thrash and now it's in gray primer what i did was block it with 100 grit followed by 180 to level out the surfacer one final time then we sprayed some of summit racing's 2k gray urethane primer surfacer to get it ready for a cool bed of paint but i used a different system in a different set of sanding blocks than what i usually use to prep for paint this is what we reached for these are soft sanders from the skyline corporation that we picked up at our local matco tool distributor yes they're soft and flexible but interestingly enough they've got different shapes molded into the sanders to be able to contour and to block effectively the different shapes and coves on all these different vehicles which is perfect for our dually because there's all the different shapes in the coves and the hard lines now we also use the style line sandpaper and although these are flexible and will contour the benefit is using both of these in a system now here's how the soft sanders work normally what you do is take your sandpaper and apply it to the block stick it down and you've got a sanding board but when you go to contour you see these folds what those folds do is they raise edges and of course this is exaggerated but those edges well they're going to dig into your primer or your paint not good here's the magic of the soft sanders you take their paper you lay it down on the contour first [Music] you take the soft sander contour it to the panel and you've got a convex or concave surface that matches the panel that you're blocking with no crinkles no wrinkles and nothing is going to dig into your paint and what this does is give you a very effective tool that's custom made to exactly mirror image the panel that you're blocking it saves time and it's going to have a better outcome we'll see how it works on the whole truck [Music] now randy's no stranger to pushing a sanding block and we both agree that blocking out a vehicle is one of the main components in getting a nice paint job we're wet blocking with 320 grit super flex paper [Music] now coming down the road at you this truck is going to look like a big square box but trust me there's not a flat panel on it far from it but you can see how these soft sanders fit into the contours and they'll literally keep you from digging ruts into the paint that'll show through on your top coats this little guy fits in this curve right here the bottom line is all about the tools and having the right tool for the job these will get it done [Music] using a guide coat well it's obvious what it does it shows you where the low spots and high spots are and having lightweight sanding boards that are a bunch of different shapes is a huge benefit especially on this truck or any custom project that's not just flat panels for wet blocking with sticky back paper it just hasn't been possible until i found this stuff now with conventional sandpaper the grit let's go when it gets wet and the adhesive doesn't work at all it destroys the sandpaper but styling sandpaper obviously we're using it wet and the adhesive stays active that's pretty cool and when you're pushing a sanding block against the panel it really helps to have that panel still attached to the vehicle it just gives you something to work against and even though we spent our time wet blocking the sides we decided to hit the roof with some d.a sanders just to knock it down because the truth is the only people that are going to see that roof are the weather helicopters now with the cabin doghouse blocked out and ready for paint well we got to blow it apart again because remember this is a complete color change and we have to paint the insides and before they can be painted well they've got to be prepped like everything else [Music] and now we have more sanding [Music] now one of my favorite sayings is the harder it is to sand the more important it is to sand it so the backsides and all the cracks and crevices get prepped as well and these red norton scuffing pads do a great job of conforming to all the tight contours and it's a coarse enough grit where they'll give the sealer plenty of tooth to grab onto [Music] now with the help of randy our soft sanders and style line superflex sandpaper we're making great progress on super dually so let's talk about paint we've shown you our spray out panel with the two colors that we've chosen for super duly's two-tone using summit racing's brand new two-stage base coat clear coat paint system now this is a professional grade system at a budget price they've got different clear coats different speeds of hardeners different reducer selections base coats epoxy primers primer surfacers and even the chemicals that you need to clean it up so it's a complete system but more importantly you get these downloadable p sheets that are available on summits websites for free they go over everything mix ratios application guides dry times all the information that you really need to use these chemicals properly so it's not just about the chemicals it's about knowing the rules and that just makes it a lot easier up next we're finally spraying paint and randy's creating an awesome ghost logo and later painting the cab and reassembling super dually stay tuned [Music] hey guys welcome back to trucks well it's safe to say that super dually is a big truck so a paint job is a monumental undertaking but doesn't mean you can skimp on the details like this pinhole that's right in the line of sight at the top of the bedside and no matter how much time it takes you have to commit to taking care of the details at this stage and that's what makes the difference between a splash job and a really good paint job and it's fixed the paint job itself the time in the booth pulling the trigger on a gun is probably not even measurable in in percentages if you're really smoothing out a vehicle especially a large one like this we've got a lot of time in the panels multiple primings and blockings and it just it takes so many hours hundreds even thousands in the case of show cars before you might paint for three or four hours and with everybody signing off on our progress we're ready to move on to the next step which is a sealer coat we're using the summit brand epoxy sealer now epoxy is literally a spray glue it sticks to everything and everything sticks to it so with the proper mix ratio not only does it guarantee that our ground coats our paint coats are going to stick to the surface but also that we have a uniform color in which to spray our paint on which is really the primary function of a sealer coat in the first place now it takes about 30 minutes before you can spray the base coat onto the sealer which is just about the amount of time it's going to take you to clean your equipment out and mix up your base colors we're starting with gunmetal metallic out of the summit racing color palette now once you've downloaded your p sheets they're going to tell you to catalyze the base coat this does a couple of things it makes the base layout a little bit smoother and it gives it a chance to chemically cross link with the ground coat and for the clear coat to lock into it which is pretty important and makes it all one continuous coat instead of a bunch of layers stacked up now there's a specific technique that we're using that we all agreed on for this paint job since it's completely disassembled and that is following the same recipe for every part regardless of where it is or when you shoot it and it starts with using the gunmetal gray on every bit of the panel even though it's going to be two-toned what this does it sets up a repeatable pattern that we can transpose onto the rest of the panels and that will guarantee a color match combined with the right technique now we didn't want to let randy's custom painting talent go to waste while we had him locked in here so we set him to the task of creating a cool ghost effect with the super duly logo in the top of the bedside and he came up with something really simple but very cool a candy with some pearl added in it sprayed over our blue gives it a ghosty effect where under some conditions you won't see it and under other conditions it will just jump out and be obvious it's got two effects one where it disappears one where it appears now with randy burying his graphic and clear another member of the auto body thrash team showed up to give us a hand brian finch came ready to get to work and wasn't shy about sharing his point of view now brian's got a bit of an opinion here this is the inside of the door that i messed up that's the one that he messed up so what what's your point you get what you pay for [Music] we're not paying you now with all hands on deck we set up a real production environment so we could get this job done now if you use a recipe or preset guidelines you can get away with using different painters and get the same results which is pretty important in this case because we're trying out a brand new paint system now summit calls this a budget paint system but you'd never know by spraying it and it was cool to get some feedback from these guys the paint covers really well the first time it lays down nice it's very forgiving you know for for somebody who may not be an expert in gun setup or proper technique the paint just just goes on and does what it's supposed to especially the clear coat the clear coat you know laid down nice um it had it had a good flow out but you could you could hammer it down and it wouldn't run right so you know very very impressed for for what it is i'd use it now painting super dually the way we're doing saves you a lot of time on masking in certain preparation but the price you pay well it's multiple painting sessions and having a place to store the parts even with all of that it's still easier than trying to wedge that entire truck into the booth [Music] we just physically couldn't fit that truck in the booth at the same time plus if i had to shoot that truck all at one time my arm would get tired i'd just go home up next putting humpty dooley back together again stick around swing open [Music] hey welcome back to trucks but we're knee-deep in the paint job for project super dually some parts are shot some parts are primed some parts are masked but there's still a ton of work to do for all three of us now obviously any paint job constitutes a whole lot of work and a substantial learning curve now if you're trying to weigh the difference between farming this out and paying somebody to do it or doing it yourself think about it like this we've got three guys working it's about 60 hours worth of work and that doesn't even consider the bodywork that was done prior to what you're seeing now that's just the spraying of the paint that doesn't consider also disassembly and reassembly after the wet work is done so again just for the paint job you're gonna have about four thousand dollars labor at any body shop across america plus about fifteen hundred dollars charges in materials so if you want to weigh that against a little bit of a learning curve and figure out how to do this yourself well you've got options because you can either save up some money and pay somebody to do your paint job or invest a little bit of money and a lot more time do it yourself or just look for a project that's already got a clean paint job on it now with all the high-tech prep stations and paint booths and hvlp this and modern efficient that the process of painting itself hasn't changed much since they moved away from brushes to spraying paint in the first place and that was back in the 20s now a spray gun is essentially identical to a carburetor where a liquid is mixed with air breaking it up into small particles or atomizing it so it can be applied smoothly and evenly onto a surface now over the years spray gun technology has become very sophisticated even so when you're like randy if you've been spraying paint for more than 20 years sometimes tried and tested reliable technology is kind of what you stick with such as the case with his accuspray siphon feet gun i call it old faithful it sprays everything perfectly the first time i don't have to go back and fix striping problems or uneven metallics it works every time and i don't see a reason to change that yeah it's a little harder to clean it's a little more awkward at times but the finished product more than makes up for that and if you've seen some of the award-winning flawless work that randy kicks out over and over again well it's kind of hard to argue with that kind of success how does it look good so far get up here now with the over spray cleared out the paint dry and everything laid down smooth as glass it's time to get to the fun part reassembly now this is the last time that we're ever gonna put the doors back on the cab so of course we're spending a little bit of time making sure we don't bruise the paint but also that we get nice panel gaps and a good alignment save it out now the doghouse well that's a different story because not only have the aprons and the back of the firewall not been painted we've still got to do things like figure out our steering linkage which steering column we're going to use what kind of brake booster we're going to use so this is purely a mock-up but i got to tell you after all the hard work and all the time that it's taken to get here we can't wait to get this thing assembled hey guys welcome back to the shop now the last time we showed you this shot we were revealing recent bodywork and fresh primer but check this out kevin randy and brian put in another long week's worth of work to give project super dooley this super slick blue and gray two-tone then buried it and clear and we can't thank those guys enough for kicking in and working their butts off heck randy even laid in the super duly logo on the upper bedside for a nice cool custom touch now we tried two different things here the first one was a new unconventional sanding block system that really saved us a lot of time in prepping super dually the second was the so-called budget line of paint from summit racing and the base colors well they laid out great the colors are even and consistent and even though this truck was painted by three different shooters completely disassembled everything matches when you put it all back together and the clear coat well it speaks for itself the gloss and depth is beautiful so in my mind two a-pluses for both of those systems and what that does is get super duly ready for a whole new set of projects hey welcome to trucks we're making great progress on project super dually getting the doors built up glass installed but as you can see well there's no driver control so essentially this thing's a glorified tv prop until we figure out a way to get this classic body to communicate with the new modern chassis and a big part of that is the cooling systems for the engine turbocharger and passengers in the form of the radiator intercooler and ac condenser now we definitely want to try to reuse all these stock pieces it'll save us big bucks and we can avoid going to the aftermarket for some custom units now if possible we'd really like to use the stock dodge core support it's got the mounting locations built in along with the correct spacing between the intercooler condenser and the radiator plus it'd be nice to drop in one modular unit like that now the radiator well it was damaged in the wreck the mounting pegs are broken it's leaking and well it's just kind of in rough shape but it's perfect for mock-up because we don't have to worry about damaging it now all we have to do is try to make this stuff work [Music] after a careful disassembly of our freshly painted truck we could move on with what we refer to as plan a now we were trying to keep as much of the ford factory sheet metal as possible i'm trying to make the dodge components all work um yeah okay the good news is we have clearance between the fan clutch and the radiator core the bad news obviously the radiator is just too wide so we're at a crossroads we can do a design a complete custom cooling system for this truck and spend a lot of money that we don't need to or b recycle the dodge system which is designed to cool this engine in the first place and work with all the other system components that we're going to reuse on this truck so at this point it's a lot cheaper for us to reuse the dodge stuff and recycle and trim a little bit of sheet [Music] after verifying that our sheet metal surgery was successful and the radiator fit well we tried to mock it up on the vehicle after hanging the inner aprons in the header panel we dropped the radiator down in place and even though it fit well it was quickly becoming apparent that we weren't going to have enough room for the intercooler and ac condenser we were also going to have issues with mounting locations and clearance for the radiator cap it's just going to end up being a hodgepodge of parts so it was on to plan b so after removing the ford header panel we quickly assembled the dodge core support with the radiator condenser and intercooler feeling lucky yes okay okay a little more trimming on these inner fenders we'll be able to pull this up within a half inch of that fan and uh figure out how to match the hood later i see hood pins in the future i think so and with the core support sitting in the stock dodge frame mounts we took a measurement back to the fan then we took that measurement and got to work relocating the body mounts now we use the cutoff wheel as much as possible for a nice clean cut now since the frame tapers in just past the stock mount we knew we had to flatten it out and that involved some rectangular tubing and a little bit more cutting [Music] yep i'll take two of them please [Music] now kevin's method of cutting a slight curve into the tubing using the cutoff wheel is a smart one he's doing repetitive grooves a little bit deeper and deeper each time you don't want to force the blade in there and try to turn it the wheel will shatter and become a spinning wheel of death and destruction now prior to cutting the stock mounts off we took some before measurements not only to get the correct setback of the mount but also so we could place it at the correct height you don't want these going on crooked it'll just affect everything else you stack on top of them that ought to work nice that clearance and everything hey guys welcome back to the shop well with our cooling systems in place we went ahead and hung the fenders so we could try to reinstall the grille make sure everything lines up across my fingers my side's in good shape well it looks like the only thing that's keeping us from a perfect fit is this flange right here on the grill it's coming into contact with the condenser we can trim this down and it's going to be great we're gonna have plenty of hood clearance and our module from the dodge works perfect in this ford dog house that's awesome get lucky every once in a while yep well now that we've established that our cooling setup's gonna work and the grille is going to fit with a little bit of modification we've still got another issue we've got to tie the inner and outer fender together and come up with a way to attach it to the dodge core support so what our plan is is to cut some sections out of the ford core support that'll tie the inner and outer fenders together slight modification and it'll bolt up to the dodge core support add a few gussets we'll be in good shape but in typical hot rodder fashion one solution led to another problem now we've got to figure out a way to incorporate a hood latch across that bridge later now you may have noticed we weren't very careful trimming these inner fenders or aprons out that's because they're beat up they're damaged they're rusty and they're stress cracked and they're done so we got a new pair from lmc truck the ship just like you see them they come with the edp coating already on which stands for electric deposition primer which is electrostatically applied to the metal making it very strong and a very thorough corrosion protection so these will probably outlast the vehicle and we're going to utilize the existing bolt hole locations that way if we have to do any service on this vehicle it's a simple procedure [Music] now this is a process i refer to as whittling because you don't want to cut too much off now we're saving the upper tie bar for a couple of different reasons number one it houses the latch number two it gives us the correct spacing between the fenders after loosely bolting in the ford core support to retain our fender spacing we set the dodge cooling module up into the relocated mounting tabs and do a trace line around the outside edge so we can see what else we have to trim off the ford core support basically this is a process of refinement and a lot of trial and error [Music] now following our trace lines we're trimming back a little bit more to get a flush fit from the ford core support to the dodge radiator support [Music] the other piece of real estate that was keeping us from a flush fit were the ears that mount normally to the dodge fenders they're going away [Music] we want to go up and in with that cap [Music] so after a quick test fit we decided that two tie bars weren't going to work and the ford one had to go it's uh yeah no and after whittling down the ford header panel even more we made two separate pieces and kept the sections that fastened to the fenders and the inner aprons now as far as attaching to the dodge core support goes well we're still working on that plant just like that [Music] well that mocked up great we'll clean this up cap these off weld our forward support to the dodge support our upper tie bar is still removable this is working out really well hey guys welcome back to the shop now we've got our dodge cooling system roughly grafted into our ford sheet metal but we still got the factory ford steel inner aprons in place that's because we've got some work to do to the firewall we've got the steering column and brake booster and master cylinder to install along with the clutch master cylinder and even the wiring harness and there may be some interference between those items and our inner fenders here so we may have to do some trimming for clearance and once we do all that and get it all mocked up we can transfer our measurements over to our lmc replacement inner fenders and get them installed and speaking of steering columns check these out now despite these steering columns being separated by about 20 years they're actually quite similar with just a few subtle differences they both have mounting brackets that attach to the pedal assembly and to the firewall and luckily for us the distance between the steering wheel and this mounting flange is just about identical on both columns meaning we won't have any awkward steering wheel placement issues it'll sit right where it needs to now the dodge column well it's a tilt wheel it's got the combination wiper and turn signal switch the ignition switch is built into the column and the steering wheel even has the cruise control switches right on it making it really convenient but before we start installing this we've got some work to do on the wrecked dodge cab what we're doing is removing this reinforcement plate now the reason manufacturers use these reinforcement plates because even if they used a thicker single layer of sheet metal for the firewall but repetitive use of the brake clutch and throttle would eventually fatigue the sheet metal causing it to crack and they don't want it going anywhere either after drilling out the dozen or so spot welds we eventually pried it off the firewall it wasn't so hard got it before installing the reinforcement plate we had to clean up the firewall a little bit and that meant getting all the wiring harness from the original ford out of the way so we had room to work now the ford firewall has the same double reinforced panel we're just going to trim the ears off and put the dodge piece right over top it's pretty obvious this is going to work out fairly well but we do have to trim the dodge piece at the ford's pitch well now we created a horizon line to make sure that everything sits on the firewall level this is no big deal this is just a little more whittling and trimming now with the plate in its final position using the studs for the internal pedal box as a locator we can do our final trimming for the brake booster and for the steering column now if you're keeping up with the tools that we're using to perform this surgery you've probably noticed that short of this pneumatic saw they're all matco tools that you probably already got in your toolbox so it just goes to show you that the most important tool in your shop is probably between your ears [Music] [Music] now with the location of the reinforcement plate locked in the next thing to do was to drill out the holes through the firewall that mount the power brake boost now that's going to allow us to finally do a test fit on the hydro boost bracket the master cylinder and the steering column to see what kind of clearance we had in the engine bay all right well our hydro boost brake booster and master cylinder are going to work but barely we only have about a half of an inch of clearance between the master cylinder reservoir and the air intake and the way this diesel engine is going to move around under torque we're going to want a little bit more clearance than that so we're going to have to get creative and see what we can come up with either way this reinforcement plate from the wrecked dodge is saving us a lot of time and a lot of fabrication work hey welcome back well now that we know where our cooling is going to be we went ahead and committed to locking it in place and welding the ford support to the dodge cooling module framework and we did a kind of a cool old-school custom trick by blending the two pieces in making it look a little more factory using quarter inch steel rod and 20 gauge sheet metal now the first thing i did was to place the steel rod bend it by hand and tack it in place on the edge of the support then what you do is take your 20 gauge and you tack it on top of the rod the important thing to remember is to leave as much of the circular rod exposed as you can that way you take advantage of that perfect rounded rolled edge and it creates a stamped look now we'll prime and block that and paint it with some semi-gloss black paint and it'll look factory original now back here we've got the hydro boost mounted to the dodge backing plate which is rosette welded to the ford firewall and the steering column and steering shaft are installed but as you can see the shaft is not quite long enough not a problem because it's round right here we can sleeve it to the length that we need and still retain the slip shaft feature which is a nice safety feature just in case something bad happens but where this really starts coming together is inside the cab take a look now the dodge pedal box is a cast aluminum piece that's held in place with the four studs from the hydro boost mount that pinch the firewall in between the two the steering column is bolted to the pedal box and again to the three studs from the backing plate that we pulled out of the dodge cap but the cool thing about all of this is the pedal placement and orientation to the steering column stays exactly the same just like the factory designed it so we don't have to re-engineer any of this stuff and if you're thinking that this looks a little goofy with the column sticking out too far we'll check this out now the four dash set into place you can kind of see where we're going and if you remember the dodge cluster fits inside the ford dash the important thing though is that the steering wheel is exactly where it needs to be i've got plenty of room between me and the column and the wheel itself and i can see straight out the middle of the ford windshield just like the factory intended obviously this crusty seed is going away and we're going to do some other interior improvements to get rid of the uh rats nest look in here we're going to modernize this truck and make it way cool so the name super dooley it's not just a name today our ford dodge hybrid tow rig is getting even closer to reality we're putting in an extended steering shaft new headlight buckets paint under the hood and planning out a new exhaust for project super dually it's all today here on trucks hey guys welcome to trucks well we've got our little super dually back in the shop that's because we've made good progress on our other long-term projects our 49 chevy classics is just about finished up and rolling thunder is coming along nicely but we didn't want to get ahead of ourselves because we're going to need something to tow it with so that's why we made some room for our hybrid ford dodge pickup truck now we're going to get started by trying to hook up our swapton dodge steering column do something about this mess of wires and see if we can get our dodge instrument cluster fit into the four dash and just because we got a nice slick coat of paint on the outside doesn't mean that we're done with the painting because we want it to look as good when we open the hood as it does with the hood closed so we're going to replace these nasty hold up wrinkled aprons with some brand new ones we got from lmc and our hybrid core support well it needs a bit of primer and a bit of paint also some of the early 79 trucks had the round headlights as did ours we want to convert to the square to the square headlights so we picked up these buckets from lmc but because we got a little bit of a mixture here we're gonna have to do some fabrication it's no big deal we'll show you how [Music] now with the doghouse out of the way it's a lot easier to get to these parts now if you remember the steering column that we swapped into this old ford was the dodge steering column we've got it attached to the dodge steering shaft we've obviously got the dodge steering box down on the frame now the steering shaft itself is collapsible and that's a safety feature should you ever get into a head-on collision well that steering shaft will collapse instead of sending it through the cab and turning you into a steering shaft kabob so that's definitely a feature we want to retain it should be pretty simple just going to come in here lengthen the lower portion of the shaft by about five or six inches should be a piece of cake now when picking a spot to make the cut on our steering shaft we couldn't just pick it at random we had a couple of things to consider first we have to leave room for the steering shaft to actually collapse and second this joint is isolated by rubber to dampen vibrations we're obviously going to have to do some welding so we don't want to put too much heat too close to that rubber now since steering is kind of an important part on a vehicle well we don't want to skimp on this fix so we picked up some dom that matches the outside diameter of our steering shaft and then sleeved it with some smaller diameter tubing that way we can both plug weld it and perimeter weld it making this fix stronger than the rest of the steering shaft and something we can feel secure with now just like a drive shaft a steering shaft's u-joints are indexed and we want to make sure it goes back together the way it came apart so we drew a line down the steering shaft so we could make sure it did now the plug welds are obviously from a mig welder but we switched over to tig welding to do the rest of it and that's for a couple of reasons one we want to limit the heat input remember we've got a rubber isolated u-joint and two well it limits the amount of post-weld cleanup we don't have to sand this down to make it look good a quick coat of paint will handle that now we could have ordered up a custom steering shaft but that would have cost money this just cost us about 30 minutes of our time and some scrap materials and don't forget your loctite on bolts like these you're going to need it cool now like we told you we're updating from the rounder early 78 headlights to the more modern and more visible square headlights and normally this would be just a bolt-in thing we wouldn't waste your time with it on tv however with our hybrid core support it becomes a little bit more of an issue check it out now we know our headlight bucket's in the right place because of the tab on the grille and the bottom bolts locating it but these two tabs normally bolt into the top of the ford radiator support which has changed so what we're going to do is get rid of these guys make a nice top cover plate and bolt it into these two existing bolt holes and try and get a factory look out of it with the tabs cut off we're going to make this really simple just using a simple card stock template i'm going to locate onto the two existing core support bolts even though this is simple it's going to be very effective and do exactly what we want it to do but first we'll grind the top of the headlight bucket to bare steel because we're attaching our support plate with rosette welds now utilizing existing bolts is nothing new it just makes things easier and it keeps you from guessing where those bolt holes need to be and making sloppy adjustments with it tightened down we know exactly where our rosette welds need to be [Music] once we know the welds are good we'll dress them down with a 24 grit disc just to tidy it up and make it look a little more finished so now our headlight bucket is mounted rock solid with factory fasteners and more importantly we can aim it so we can see at night and the bucket itself is removable and it didn't really take us that much longer to do it the right way hey welcome back to trucks we're working on project super duly making sure that when we open up the hood everything looks as slick shiny and professional as the rest of the paint job now we like it when you guys comment on the shows we listen to it because it helps us make better shows one comment that we hear out on the street over and over and over again is that you make it look too easy on tv well we're taking that to heart we're gonna slow down and show you the process and show you the problem solving because even if you have all this big bad equipment you still run into trouble and i've always said that the biggest difference between a paint gun owner and a painter is the ability to solve the problems that you run into so we're going to take a little more time show you all the steps that it takes to eliminate the problems before they start and that starts with these panels right here these aprons are brand new from lmc and they come with this edp coating on them you might be saying to yourself why prep that it looks like a top coat well a couple of different reasons it's very thin it's a good primer but it's a thin primer look right here even with the scuff pad i'm burning through the edge and right here this scratch when i go to feather and level that scratch out well i'm down to bare steel so don't listen to the internet forms and say you gotta strip all of this to bare metal you don't but you do have to prep it properly and get it ready for a coat of sealer and then paint now these hood hinges are prepped in the media blast cabinet we've got aluminum oxide beads that profile the metal nicely and strip the paint they're prepped completely so we don't need the red scuffing pad on these however i'm wearing gloves your bare fingers will leave skin oils and acids on top of this stuff and it'll cause hot spots fingerprints coming through and it'll make a mess your paint could literally bubble and flake off so whenever you're handling fresh blasted parts or raw steel parts wear some gloves now these are new headlight buckets and they consist of e coated metal and raw steel that we use for the top mount of the bucket itself now we need to cover these up with a primer that's compatible to both surfaces and we'll talk more about that later but check this out right here is where i marked to drill my holes for the mounting bolts now we used an ink marker for these we use these a lot in here and i use it a lot in my shop at home however i've learned the hard way that if you prime over top of that that ink is very strong and it can wick up through your paint like i said i've paid the price for that lesson so if you're going to use an eight marker for marking out and templating that's fine you can use it all day long just make sure that you get rid of that ink before you go through the painting and priming process now this is the factory intercooler that's going back in super dually it's powder coated from the factory doesn't look too bad but it's got a couple of nicks on it so we're going to shoot it just for good measure so it looks nice however before you touch it with a scuff pad remember this thing's been in a diesel truck with over a hundred thousand miles on it it's coated in this schmutz this diesel fuel stuff is gonna react with your paint so before you prep you gotta pre-clean now every paint manufacturer known to man has their own version of a pre-cleaner so to summit and it's a good one but we're going to use it in this pump sprayer instead of out of the can so we don't pour it all over the floor pump sprayer is really nice because you can build pressure it's non-aerosol so it's environmentally safe and it allows you to do this and soak that layer of contamination off your parts look at that that's diesel fuel you do not want to put paint over top of that look at that so what you want to do is repeat that process until your rag is completely clean when you pull it off of there and then only then are you ready for a scuffing pad now i've prepped every single piece that we're going to spray short of the sandblasted stuff with a red scuffing pad these are color-coded the red being the most coarse it's going to give us the tooth that we want for the primer and then the paint to stick but there's some other tools that you might want to keep around your paint or your body shop single edge razor blades well they can really come in handy for detail masking like we're going to have to do on these id tags we want to preserve this information so we'll just trim the masking tape around them next time you see these parts we'll show you how to put a great paint job right over top oops got a holiday see problem we showed you hey welcome back to trucks we've got all our parts mounted wiped down scuffed down tacked everything's ready to shoot now let's talk about what we're going to put on top of it since we've got summit racing's paint system on the body of super duly we're going to stay with that theme starting off with their epoxy primer which is a great ground coat coating for both bare metal and prepped painted parts on top of that we're going to use their hot rod black which is a true urethane meaning it's got a catalyst so it'll be really strong plus with a semi flat it'll have a nice sexy sheen it looks really good i've already got my sealer mixed into the cup we're ready to shoot one more thing this oh it's a good dust mask it's not paint protection okay i've got all the parts tacked off but look at this paint booth look at the hose look at the filters between rick and tim strange with search and restore and muscle car messy marvin's sorry guys you just are use an old tack rag tack your air hose off epoxy makes a great sealer for a couple of different reasons not only does it stick extremely well to both painted powder coated and bare steel parts but it's also got a several day long open window to where you don't even have to sand it to top coat now whenever you're painting a radiator or an ac cooling system like this don't over coat it give it a mist coat you want the paint to stick you don't want to restrict any kind of an airflow so use a light touch now we're getting great coverage with just a single coat with this sealer so there's no need to double coat it just adds time to the drying into the curing process however when you're working with bare steel parts like these hood hinges make sure that you flex the hinges and cover all the bare steel you've only got one chance to seal and the top coat may not stick to the sandblasted metal and as much of a fashion statement as the sexy blue gloves are they're there for your protection just get used to wearing them the sealer needs to sit for 30 minutes before we top coat that's just about enough time to clean your paint gun and mix your paint which is a three-step system paint catalyst and reducer in a four to one to one ratio it's four parts paint one part catalyst one part reducer and i don't guess it's a hundred percent necessary to tack off these parts just because they're under hood parts brackets and stuff it's a great habit to get into to run a tack rag over your work pieces because it gives you one final opportunity to make sure your parts are ready for paint and give it one final inspection now with this paint of course it's black it covers extremely well but we're putting two coats on because that's what the p sheet says now just like with the sealer on the intercooler and the ac condenser i'm just painting the hard metal parts and staying off of the fins you don't want to build the paint up or restrict airflow the rest of it two full wet coats that way it flows out nicely and you get the strength and protection that you need from a two coat catalyzed system now as goofy as the safety gear looks it allows me to focus on painting and that's what we're doing in the paint booth think about it [Music] okay here's one of those instances where not everything goes right i'm out of paint and i'm not done painting a quick little over mix and we're going to be fine it's fresh enough to where it'll blend back in but you know you just got expected sometimes hey guys welcome back to the shop now this blower cover plate that kevin was painting turned out great the problem is while he was out there making it look good i was in here making the executive decision that we were going to ditch this entire ford hvac box so kevin good operation with the patient died now we're going with the dodge hvac box for a couple of reasons one it's a lot more compact than all this ford mess and two we're going to have direct connections to both our ac and our heater lines and more importantly the wiring harness so the only challenge we have is making this fit in the ford firewall now speaking of wiring harness check this out like we told you we want to keep the steel for dash but we also want to use the dodge instrument cluster because the wiring harness plugs right into it so we've got to come up with a weight for the two to work together what we did we trimmed the bezel portion out with the rest of the dodge dash and we can use it come in here make a flat filler plate so we can recess the cluster and this trim panel into it we'll have a little extra real estate over here maybe we can put a couple of gauges or a dash vent in there either way it should look pretty sharp for now we want to show you something else we want to add to this cummins ford dodge truck now on our 97 dodge here's all that's left of the factory exhaust system it's just the down pipe not even a muffler now it is three inches in diameter and that sounds like a pretty good size especially you guys used to gas engine exhaust system sizes but diesels flow a lot of air and we plan on making a fair amount of power so we wanted to upgrade to a four-inch system from flowmaster that we picked up from summit racing now the flange will hook directly to our factory installed turbo but it quickly next up to the full four inch diameter now for a muffler we picked up a four inch flowmaster pro series and with its cool shell design it will keep the heat inside of the exhaust system instead of radiating and heat soaking everything around it this pro series muffler will also give us moderate to aggressive sound levels outside of the truck but it will limit interior resonance now if you've ever spent any real time in a car or pickup truck that has a lot of exhaust drone that can wear you out make you tired and drive you crazy so that's something we want to avoid since we're going to be spending a lot of time inside this ford pickup and since this 4-inch aluminized system is completely mandrel-bent it should support multiple power levels including where we are right now the factory 5 9 and the 97 pickups is rated at 215 horsepower and with the mild modifications we've made to the engine so far we should just be a little bit better than that now since we're not making a competitive sled puller out of this truck we're just after a solid but powerful tow rig the four inch system should be plenty now to finish things off it's got a nice polished five inch tip which makes it almost as big as your teenage neighbor's four-cylinder honda muffler but it should look nice especially alongside our super slick gray and blue paint job guys thanks for watching trucks see you next week and check us out on powerblocktv.com today we're working hard wiring plumbing and installing gauges on project super dually our 79 ford f-350 body that we've mounted on a 97 cummins powered dodge chassis that's been converted to a dually it's all today here on trucks hey guys welcome to trucks well today we're back on project super dually our 79 ford crew cab body that we've got sitting on top of our 97 dodge diesel chassis now we're at the point in this project where all the big pieces are there and we've just got some finish work to do hooking up the steering and the brakes and doing some plumbing and wiring now those things tend to soak up a lot of time but the good news for us is we've got some help in the shop today now you guys remember tc pedic from bay one customs well tc did such a knockout job on project class six that we somehow managed to talk him into coming here to the truck shop and helped us out on super duty cause like ryan said even though 80 of the big chunks are on the last 20 percent take 80 percent of the time it sure is nice to have a skilled set of hands here helping us out now to fill in the ridiculously large vacancy the ford heater box left tc decided to use 20 gauge sheet metal by the time this is all cleaned up it'll look a lot like the factory roll that's around all the factory holes in the firewall all right good enough the rolled edge not only looks original but it also builds strength into the metal that fits pretty good man like it was made for it huh now tc is no stranger to custom work in fact he can do just about anything he sets his mind to and the first order of business was to mock up the dodge heater box in the ford dash figure out where the outlets go with that all done and a little bit more strength rolled into the metal a coat of paint makes it look oe now you can always find a way around a two-person job but it's actually nice to have two people sometimes to finish it off we put a coat of seam seal around the inside edge to keep it weatherproof now this is the original radiator from the dodge pickup that we got to do this conversion it was front end collision damage and frame repair that needed to be done and you can see signs of that here's the clutch fan here's the marks from the blades and obviously it's gotten into the core into the veins and right here you can see that it was actually leaking we knew this going in now it's time to get a new radiator so we called rockauto.com and got this drop-in replacement since we're using all of the original dodge cooling module now this is something you're going to run into if you're working on vehicles that have been wrecked before or you just lose something in the process of a project that takes a long time this is the bracket that holds the intercooler into place it bolts in to the bottom of the core support now there's left and right in their mirror image so since i don't have one and i don't have time to go down to the parts dealership and buy one i'm just going to make it that process is pretty darn simple what you do well it's pretty obvious you can take cardboard template it and then flip it around and basically you just make your mirror image to where between the two pieces like this now i've got my left and my right so from there trace it up flat onto some flat stock use the dimple die to make the strength viola new dodge parts using a heavier 18 gauge steel we made the hole stronger using a flared hole die or a dimple die we picked up from light racing then it's off to the brake to make the bends the whole time we're paying attention to our template and checking it against just to get the correct angles now if you don't have bending breaks and dimple dies you can still do this a bench vise and a hammer will get you just about anywhere you want to go go to paint and test it show us that this is actually going to work very nice well thank you now it feels pretty darn good to know that we've gone past the mock-up phase and that this is actually our final fit our cooling module is locked into place including the brand new radiator but the radiator is not the only thing we got from rockauto.com we also had him send us a new heater core and brand new oe style replacement power steering hoses as well as these molded radiator hoses from gates and that's one of the cool things about rockauto.com and our truck since most of the drivetrain is factory dodge running gear one phone call to rock auto gets us everything we need first thing we got to do put this heater core in before we can hang the hvac box tc you ready if you've ever replaced a heater core you know that it's much easier to do with the whole hvac box out of the vehicle so the timing couldn't be better for replacing the heater core in this one with the ports for the hoses drilled and the mounting locations secure in the firewall now is the time to finally hang the heater box hopefully for the last time one final test fit is putting the old dash over top of the newer more modern heater box and with a little bit of whittling and trimming this seems to fit pretty good too nobody's going to be able to tell that's all that modern stuff under there it's been quite a quite a bit of modifying there but it looks good we'll even have a glove box won't we oh we will cool cool cool nice work man hey guys welcome back to trucks where we're buttoning up some odds and ends on project super dually now with the ford bed sitting down on the dodge frame we weren't able to completely install the fuel tank because the top of the tank was hitting this bed support rail and rather than pry our wallets open and spend big bucks on a custom fuel tank just to avoid this clearance issue we took the easy way out just made a relief cut in the support rail then we'll just come in here use this bent piece of sheet metal fill it in we'll have the clearance we need and we can run the stock tank now this project here is metalworking 101 just a simple piece of flat sheet metal bent to follow the contours that i've cut in the bed rail and then tack welded all the way around the perimeter and the great thing about a project like this is that it's on the underside of the bed if it doesn't turn out perfect no big deal now the top side of this bed was all taken care of when we did the auto body thrash but the bottom side was kind of neglected so i've knocked the big chunks of scaly rust off with a wire brush and a scuff pad i'm going over top of it and brushing on some eastwood rust converter that's going to transform this rust into a paintable surface and once it dries we can go over top of it with some sort of bed liner or undercoating and lock it in this stuff brushes on pretty easily and you don't have to be too careful now one spot on the bed floor we didn't have to treat was right here in the middle it was preserved by a leaky pinion seal that didn't allow the metal to rust now with the rust converter completely cured you can see that it's turned the bottom of the bed floor from rust red to a black color and that means it's converted the rust to a zinc phosphate which is safe to coat over top of and that's exactly what we're going to do using this dupli-color bed armor now this is the same material we used on the inside of the bed but this time we're going to use it as an undercoating now we could have just painted the bottom of this bed with some spray paint but undercoating not only covers up imperfections but it also absorbs impacts a little bit so any rock chips will just deflect instead of chipping off paint leaving exposed metal now we've sprayed bed liner on the inside of our fenders as well and that'll prevent any rocks that get thrown up from our tires from causing damage to the sheet metal and causing a paint chip [Music] now before we drop the bed in place we want to make our final connections to the fuel tank electrical and fuel lines now the fuel lines in the engine bay have been capped and protected but these ends back here have been open to the atmosphere so just in case any dust or debris got back in the lines we want to make sure they're blown out flushed and clean so we're going to blow some pressurized air through them and make sure they're flushed out now diesel fuel doesn't evaporate quite like gasoline does like i said these been open for a while well we hope there's not too much fuel in them either way they've got to be flushed before we hook them up to our kind of expensive diesel engine that should do it one two done and now we've got all the clearance we need and we still got to use our stock tank hey welcome back to trucks well now it's time to start wrestling with the wiring harness but we got a little problem to fix first well the good news is that the radiator and location of the engine is in the right place all the hoses fit and the boost tubes it looks like we're not going to have to change or alter them the bad news is the boost tube is hitting my fresh painted apron i hate when that happens however this is a single wall panel and you know a little bit of trimming we can get that fixed put some kind of an edge around there make it look nice and neat solve the problem [Music] now sometimes no matter how much planning and mocking up you do you still have to do a little bit of trimming so that's what we're doing here now the masking tape is to protect the painted surface while i bring my saw around the corner keep this in mind you can always cut more off i'm trimming the bare minimum here hoping i can get by if not i can trim some more it's a lot harder to put it back and obviously i need a little more space [Music] one of the great things about that giant truck we're working on is that we didn't really have to disassemble anything to have enough clearance and room to make the cuts we needed on a smaller vehicle this wouldn't be the case but we kind of lucked out here [Music] the boost tubes and the couplers are stock and they're in great shape so they're still tight a matco radiator hose tool really does the trick when we're reassembling [Music] that gives me the clearance i need a little piece of vacuum line on this hard edge we're done now back when we disassembled our donor dodge pickup truck we were smart enough to label a lot of the connectors on the harness and label where the harness lays out in the engine bay but we didn't label everything and we wanted to make sure we've got it correct so we bought in this 94 dodge it's virtually stock to use as a reference now engineers spend a lot of time laying the harness out in the engine bay so it doesn't rest on anything hot or hit anything that moves so we wanted to mimic that and save ourselves any potential headaches in the future for me to simplify it a little bit as i start with what i know and and then you just work your way out from there you know as you go along you'll find your headlight ends your alternator wiring and you can lay it out and and the more you install the easier it gets because every line is every wire is dedicated to a certain spot hey welcome back to trucks well it feels great to have project super dually so close to being a functional vehicle again one of the last details that we're doing on this truck to make it a complete vehicle is to lay the dodge wiring harness the whole thing inside the ford body which is a solution in itself however it does create a couple of problems and a couple of challenges here's what i'm talking about now this is the original 79 ford gauge cluster out of the cab that we've got now it's obviously a challenge to get all of these gauges to read the senders from the dodge especially since it's a computerized vehicle and the ford was not especially when it comes to the speedometer this is a mechanical speedometer our dodge has an electronic speedometer now i guess you could use part of the ford wiring harness and splice in and read your schematics and i'm sure somebody out there has done that however it just makes that much more sense to use the dodge cluster especially when you consider that there's two multi-pin connectors that automatically connect all these senders and gauges together including the speedometer making it just a shoo-in especially since we're using like we said the entire dodge harness now mounting this into the ford dash well that's a bit of a challenge and that's where good old-fashioned hot rodding comes into play here's something i wanted to show you and the way we solved that problem plastics of some kind have always been used in vehicle construction as vehicles have gotten newer the composite and plastic content has gotten greater case in point this is the bezel from the gauge cluster of the dodge truck which we trimmed from this piece here the truth is most of the interior off of that 97 dodge was made out of this plastic so we want to take the cluster and install it in the four dash well the four dash is mostly metal and you know you can't take a mig welder and weld up metal to the plastic so there's your challenge how do you join these two pieces together well there's an answer for that if you remember the second chance silverado we literally glued on one of the bedsides when we did that vehicle it's called panel bonding adhesives and they're just as strong as a weld if you prep it correctly this is a pba that we're using this is a norton speed grip this has got a 40 minute set time flows out nicely and it doesn't even matter what brand there's all kinds of brands and options for you and literally this is what we did i used a combination of mig welding and bonding adhesives welding when i had a metal to metal joint bonding adhesives with a plastic to metal joint and it creates a combination of the tooth that is permanent attractive and very strong now this is the simplest of techniques literally is a bolt through a hole on some 20 gauge tack the end grind the head off make a nice flange and it allows me to now mount my switch plate and house the hvac controls now over on this side we house the headlight switch which is screwed in from the back side of the dodge truck so i just used a measuring tape made a flange here some basic sheet metal bending skills welded it together utilize the holes that are in the existing switch and now it's removable and permanently installed now for the cluster i've got a simple tab on either side on the bottom that just holds it in place and it gets bolted in at the top here and here what you have is a removable finish cluster with all the controls we need now as fun as this looks here it looks even cooler in the vehicle now with the dash cluster in place you can kind of see how this is starting to play out it looks like it's supposed to look the dash pad covers about a third of it some exposed fasteners will be very forgiving and it looks like it belongs there and everything is going to work just like the chrysler engineers had intended it to work down to the cruise control buttons and the horns heck we could even put a airbag in there if we wanted to but here's the real message here don't be afraid to try stuff try some adhesives try some welding techniques break out your fab equipment this is not that difficult all it takes is thinking it through and following through with your thoughts it's hot rotten hey welcome back well since we're on kind of a diesel theme we thought it was high time we got back to work on project super duly our body swapped 79 ford sitting on top of a 97 dodge chassis with the bulletproof 12 valve cummins turbo diesel under the hood now we're almost ready to fire this thing up with the exception of a few housekeeping duties one of them being some kind of an air intake system now the mashup of these two trucks has worked surprisingly well with a lot of stuff falling into place or nearly so with the exception of this area right here which was taken up by the huge hvac box from the ford cab now obviously ford didn't factor in the presence of a giant inline six with the turbo snail hanging off the side so the box had to go away fortunately the dodge system fits under the dash conveniently behind the ford's firewall now we have room for the turbo but the factory intake system for this turbocharger interferes with the ford apron so we find ourselves again having to do something a little bit different now we had such great luck with the airaid system on the c10 swap that we thought we'd go back to airaid and see what kind of options they gave us for super duty the first one being this standard cold air kit for 94 to o2 dodge cummins trucks it comes with your plastic duct work an isolator and an additional heat shield since it's so close to the turbo all the hardware you need to mount it as well as this giant honking reusable air filter that has the correct amount of surface area to get the proper amount of air into this engine besides the fact that this system is carb certified if you need to pay attention to that but it's not the only option that airaid has for us or you airaid has just recently come up with their ubi system which stands for you build it it comes with everything you see here including a giant filter a filter mount several different coupler options a bag of hardware brackets and clamps that you can use to create the system that you need but the coolest thing is right here this is a high strength abs plastic duct work with different shapes and different angles with these ribs engineered in what you do is cut in between the ribs and you've got something to where the coupler can clamp to and it won't slip off obviously you've got tons of options to create the system that you need in a unique application and by the way if you send them a picture of the system that you created they'll send you some free swag now this is a great option but what we're going to try and do is make the oe system fit first now what's good about something that fits the original equipment is that we know 100 percent that it's going to fit the turbo and clear the alternator and like any other mock-up we're going to leave it loose so we can move things around for the best fitment the oe cold air kit comes with an isolation box but we're going to leave that off because we know that real estate is drastically different under the hood now now the good thing about this airaid filter is that it's not symmetrical and we can fool around with the shape of that to make it fit the clearances that we have to work within now somewhere in there that that gives us the option we want we can create a mount up here though we filter boxes out of the question so we're going to have to figure some kind of isolation between the turbo and the filter but we deal with that later for now this works today we're back on project super dually we're adding running lights and getting our ford head and tail lights to operate using our dodge wiring harness it's all today here on trucks guys welcome to trucks well today we're back on project super dually and we're finally making some real progress on this beast in fact it starts and moves around the shop the last time it did that well it was a long time ago and kind of looked a little different now with the right front wheel being stuffed into the cab we kind of had our suspicions about maybe a slight bit of frame damage but despite all of that this truck runs great and pulled itself under the lift no problem so now that we've got this truck up and running it's time for us to start focusing on the things that'll make it road ready like merging the dodge chassis wiring harness with the ford lights we also need to get some clearance lights on this thing across the roof and on the dually fenders and we obviously need to hang a couple of bumpers off this thing so got some work to do now clearance lights give us a heavy duty look that quite frankly we just wanted for this truck but clearance lights on the dually fenders well it's a regulation so it's important to have but across the cab we went to lmc truck and got this kit here it comes with cool looking lights gaskets the lights have their own bulbs and harness as well as a switch that kind of matches the dated look of the four dash with screws and a fuse link everything that you need to install but you can't just go randomly screw it holes into the top of the sheet metal you got to start with the layout and that starts with a marker some tape [Music] obviously we want a balanced look which means finding the center point of the roof and doing our layout based on that here's an easy way to do it don't stretch the tape but utilize drip rail to drip rail fold it in half and your center point reveals itself now we're using a standard configuration of lights on a lot of dually cabs which is a grouping of three in the middle and one on each corner so we're simply laying out the gaskets to see what looks good now sometimes when i'm talking to myself the director asked me to repeat what i said for the show it's ten and a half inches right here kevin say it again that's ten and a half inches between these two lights here so we'll just repeat this measurement on the other side now laying out the lights on the top of the cab is not really rocket science to tell you the truth sometimes this job is a bit of a pressure cooker with a lot going on at one time and more than once it's manifested itself right towards the camera following the profile of the sheet metal style line on the front of the cab we're gonna go six inches from the style line to the placement of the light sometimes we goof off a little just to break the tension but the truth is this is kind of serious stuff because you don't want to damage the paint so layout is really important on a lot of levels now this first initial hole is to feed the power wire down through the sheet metal the rest of the placement well it can be adjusted and fine-tuned on a smaller level by the way the headliner is out of the vehicle so we don't have to worry about damaging that we've got a quarter inch hole with a rubber grommet that's going to go inside it the grommets came from industrial depot and the rtv sealant is locked tight now between the grommet and the rtv we've got a weatherproof and waterproof seal and it also allows the light to sit flush so we can fine tune the final placement [Music] each marker light in the lmc kit comes with its own screws one screw is connected to the ground and grounds the light chassis to the sheet metal of the cab completing the circuit we'll seal that from the bottom later on now technically these are actually clearance lights but for us pages flat out make it look like the true f-350 dually that it is complete with a diesel engine [Music] now these are completely custom dually fenders because ford didn't make a dually in this body style pickup truck so when it came time to pick out some fender lights well we couldn't just go to a catalog and pick up some 79 ford dually lights they don't exist so what we did do is we went to summit racing and picked up some of these 99 to 07 super duty led fender lights they're kind of small and they're oval so they ought to blend in pretty well with our rounded off fenders now out of the box these lights are clear with a bright silver reflector and they stood out a little bit too much so what we did was mute their appearance a little bit with a couple of coats of dupli-color nightshades lens paint and that way they'll blend in pretty well with our fenders now just like the lights on the roof of the truck we want our fender lights to be symmetrical so we've got a bar going across the top of the bed rails that i measured down from and we measured out from the style line about five inches and mark our hole then it was simply a matter of drilling a hole large enough for the base of the light to pass through to do that we're using two different step bits you can use a regular old drill bit to accomplish the same thing but a step bit works really good on thin sheet metal at creating a nice clean opening and since we exposed some bare steel on our fresh paint job or relatively fresh paint job we went ahead and sealed up the metal just with a little bit of touch-up paint that way we don't have any rust running down our fenders now the lights on the super duties well they sit horizontal but on our rounded fender it's not going to fly so we just made them vertical and they'll look fine remember the amber lights go to the front of the fender the red lights go to the rear also make sure the paint is clean so the double-sided table stick hey welcome back well if you're just catching up with us obviously we're back on project super duly and it feels great to have this thing almost road ready the last time we were under the hood we showed you the new airaid cold air intake which works perfectly for the different confinements and space configurations of both vehicles being mashed up together and we also talked about the need to isolate the heat from the air intake charge from things like the turbo and the manifold and the smaller under hood area that's going to force hot air into the engine well we have found a great solution for that check this out the manifold shield and turbo blanket come from a company called heat shield products and we pick them up from summitracing.com they're made specifically for the stock 12 valve cummins turbo diesel and come in a couple of different finishes but they're both designed to reduce under hood temperatures as much as 50 percent now heat shield products doesn't just have stuff for diesel trucks they've got an entire product line that covers just about every need you could imagine for thermal insulation including some pretty cool solutions for in and around the shop that come in really handy now as far as power needs go super duly has the standard dual battery configuration that you find on most passenger diesel trucks and we're going to go with this until we found out about a product that replaces both of these batteries in a diesel truck with just one battery pretty cool the lead acid battery was invented in 1859 and it's been the standard battery for cars and trucks well as long as you and i can remember but just because it's always been what was used doesn't necessarily mean that there's not something better in fact there is something better this is the never die battery and it's a lithium battery and despite weighing in at only 19 pounds this is not a mock-up this is the actual battery this battery will outperform two lead-acid batteries in the truck give back-to-back restarts and a whole lot more features a lithium battery is 99 charge efficient that simply means it has more stored energy available that is easier to recharge and reproduce this is totally redesigned battery technology and with our dually it gives us a 90 pound weight savings over traditional dual lead acid batteries now since there's no lead in this battery there's no need for lead terminals lead is a very non-conductive metal it's about seven percent conductive these aluminum terminals well aluminum is 65 conductive so it's going to get the energy out of the battery into your vehicle a lot more effectively now this right here is the never die feature if for some reason you run your battery down with the stereo or the winch all you have to do is hit the power reserve button and it'll get you back started again to where the alternator can kick in and get you out of trouble so essentially the never die well it's got a reserve tank and that can help out big time now you may or may not know this but it typically takes about 20 minutes for a lead acid battery to recover after a single start with the never die it's about five minutes so you can see where that benefit would kick in if you're having trouble starting on a cold day or something like that now a full battery discharge typical battery you're looking at a trickle charger for a day sometimes longer than that with this it's an hour maybe a little bit better than an hour speaking of chargers they also have several different battery charges to suit the battery and to suit the need whether it's rv whether it's marine whether it's atv high performance car whatever check out their website and learn about the battery charges and by the way if you think this is some fragile high-tech device think again this battery is tested up to 150 g's that's 150 g's of impact without failure and if you're putting your car through that we've got different things to think about than the battery's surviving let's see how it works in the dooley [Music] even though it's a big heavy torquey powerful diesel losing a little bit of front end weight well it never hurts just keep in mind that when you're losing a second battery you've got a ground circuit that you've got to complete we had to ground our engine block back to the chassis now the battery trays in the old ford were rusted out so we got two more from lmc truck but probably send this one back the never die batteries come in a bunch of different configurations and sizes both for physical size and for power output so you can go to their website and find one that will suit your vehicle [Music] yeah go for it [Applause] hey guys welcome back to the shop now we finally got our big diesel fired up and we're in the process of getting it drivable and that means combining the dodge chassis harness with the ford lighting now one tool that makes that a lot easier for us is the power probe hook we don't have to have separate wiring diagrams for the dodge and for the ford to combine the harnesses we can use our power probe hook and it's smart tip to help identify the circuits whether it's a ground circuit high beam low beam marker light whatever you don't have to come in here and change the dial on your multimeter to figure it out just touch the tip to the circuit and it tells you what's going on now one other cool feature check this out now the cab light kit that kevin installed came with its own rocker switch and wiring and all that mess but we want to keep things simple and just tie the cab light wiring into the existing dodge marker light circuit but we don't want to overload the circuit doing so and powering up these five additional lights now you guys may or may not know that you can use the hook to power up and energize circuits for testing purposes with the push of a button powered all five of them up and it even shows us that we're only drawing 1.1 amps by powering up these five lights so we're well within the margin of error we can add a one amp draw to our existing circuit and know that we're not going to pop a fuse every time we turn the headlights on now we wanted to show you the amp draw difference between the filament style bulbs on the cab and the led style lights that we've got here in the fender now keep in mind the hook is attached to the battery at the front of the truck and we've got plenty of slack in the power leads all the way here at the back now we had a 1.1 amp draw for our filament style bulbs and for the fender lights we've got only 60 milliamps it's a pretty stark contrast now say you need to energize something that takes a little bit more power well the hook can do that too so you've got an electric fan on a 30 amp circuit and it's intermittently popping fuses you replace the fuse and it's good to go for a little while until it pops again and it drives you crazy well you can use the hook to power the fan up and monitor the amp draw [Music] now our fan is only pulling five amps it's obviously in good shape maybe the one giving you a headache spikes to 35 amps on first startup or after it runs for a while and gets hot pulls too many amps well you've quickly and accurately diagnose the problem replace the faulty part and you move on now the hook has an adjustable circuit breaker and goes anywhere from two up to 65 amps that's pretty impressive out of a small little tool like this making this a nice tool to have in the toolbox [Music] hey guys welcome back to the shop well project super dually is really coming along we've got our clearance lights installed a fresh battery drop down in this thing and it starts and runs and moves around the shop at least underneath its own power now we've done a little bit of work merging the dodge wiring harness with the ford lights but when it came time to put the lenses on the lights we fished through a few boxes and this is what we found lenses that are broken beat up and all in all in rough shape now even if the lenses themselves weren't beat up look at the difference in the color and the new ones we got from lmc truck not to mention that the new ones are going to look great up against the new paint once we have these things installed they're going to give us the safety and visibility that this truck had when it was brand new now some of you guys may even notice we've got the third brake light from the 97 dodge grafted into our 79 just in case you couldn't see this giant truck stopping with just two brake lights now bringing this truck more into a modern era are the led marker lights on the fenders and the high visibility halogen headlights in the grill which helps to blend the vintage styling and modern technology today we're cleaning up the interior and protecting the exterior on project super dually inside we're reviving the door panels and adding new carpet outside we're adding some serious custom built bumpers it's all today here on trucks hey welcome to the shop well there's a saying that's pretty common among the hot rodding world and that is the last 20 of the project takes 80 of the time that's pretty much where we are with project super dually and one of those time sponges is while quite frankly the interior but the good news is that all the gauge cluster all the electrical systems well they're all hooked up and they're all functioning perfectly now the truck just like the dashboard is this hybrid mashup of two different vehicles the dash uses the steel stamped housing for the original cab because that's what fits in there but the cluster fit into this plastic bezel that came from the dodge truck and of course you saw us join them together with a bonding adhesive but since then i've finished it with some filler used a textured paint and some dupli-color semi-gloss black to make it look like a stamp steel piece the vents over here well they're the original ford ones and we just sort of gave them a shot of paint and they're going to blend in just fine this dash pad it's obvious that it's new here's why it's new this is the original dash pad from the old ford truck and as you can see it's pretty beat up the brows messed up and look at all the cracks it's just rotten each one of those cracks represents about an hour's worth of repair so it just made more sense to us to reach into the lmc truck catalog and order a brand new one now speaking of the lmc truck catalog there is a lot of interior components from those guys for this truck check it out now there's absolutely no doubt in our mind and probably yours by now that this truck was a work truck now if the four-door cab didn't give it away well the condition of the interior probably should it was abused and that's okay for a work truck but we're trying to revive it these trim panels they're kind of beyond it they're busted up they're dry rotted cracks they're just not worth saving so thanks to lmc truck we've got direct replacements at least for the front doors now for the rear we've kind of got a bit of a problem because the rear doors are odd they're a little bit narrower and well frankly nobody pops reproduction panels because they're just such limited production that nobody makes them so we could do a little bit of repair and save what we got now these are the rear door interior trim panels and actually they're not in bad shape but we had to do a small repair here we just used some two-part epoxy repaired the back side where the crack was and it's good to go now this looks a lot cleaner than this guy here this is how it came out of the box after being torn down and it needs to be prepped as you can see it's prepped very well and this is this is what we end up with this it looks like a brand new one and that's thanks to this vinyl and plastic die from lmc truck it's called colorbond and well it matches the color of the oe trim panels that we got from lmc and it sprays on beautifully makes them look brand new now typically when you prep you use a scuffing pad you get in all the cracks and crevices but look at all the lines look at all the tight spots in here you're not going to stuff this in here and it's going to take hours and hours and hours to prep this so we found a way to prep this stuff that's non-invasive that gets absolutely a great job done of all the cracks and crevices and it's really really easy to do very time efficient too so if you or your buddy has a b blast cabinet with some aluminum oxide or glass beads well you can make short work of this stuff here's how now the blast cabinet nor the media really cares what you're doing with it so reduce your pressure down to about 20 pounds and you can safely blast this plastic without eating it up you can see the short work that it makes of getting rid of all the schmutz in the top layer of that textured plastic this trim panel took about 15 minutes to blast and about five minutes to blow the dust out of the cracks once that was done well you're ready to go it's prep so i'm putting on three fairly substantial coats of the colorbond paint and letting it dry for about an hour probably an hour and a half make sure it's good and dry to the touch and that it won't roll off on your fingers now in any restoration job you're going to find stuff that you just missed and the good thing about the colorbond interior paint is that it's easy to use and requires minimal prep and you don't have to set up a paint proof to use to install your door trim panels requires push pin type clips on the rear doors there are spring steel clip on the front doors they come with the lmc trim panels ours since they were steel were reusable i got a little slap happy putting them in but after a while finally listen to what i was saying now the door pulls receive the same treatment as the trim panels except for the chrome ends which we wanted to keep chrome the fasteners are hidden by a push-in cover and the door pulls as well as the window cranks we're in good enough shape to save we just cleaned them up with a little steel wool and some metal polish from mothers and with this door completely finished it's one more thing off the list for super duty hey welcome back well test fit and mock-up is critical when you're building a vehicle especially a custom vehicle where there's several different things at play and the interior is no exception for us we've got lmc truck on our side and the carpet availability even for this oddball truck with a club cab we've got the rear carpet section with the foot wells and it's combined with the jute backing so with the jute with the nice carpet and the lizard skin spray ceramic insulation we've already got laid down on this floor we should be good to go and it's just a simple matter of doing a little bit of trimming making sure the foot wells and everything lines up which we're good to go here but the front section with the new dodge shifter and the pedals and a couple of other things that we gotta account for such as where it comes up into the toe boards well i've got some trimming some measuring and some trimming and some measuring and some trimming and some measuring some trimming and some measuring and some trimming and measuring all right while kevin's been doing some interior work and cutting and measuring carpet i've been building some custom bumpers for our super dually because ordering a pair of them out of a catalog just isn't going to work they're either going to fit the ford body or the dodge frame they're not going to fit both so we had to make our own we started with this cardboard template after mocking things up in cardboard we transferred those measurements over to our torchmate cnc plasma cutter which made quick work of cutting out the plates now we realize you probably don't have one of these torchmates at your shop or your disposal but you can get the same job done with a magic marker a straight edge and a bandsaw or even a cut off wheel on your angle grinder it'll just take a little bit longer now we're going to incorporate a step into the rear bumper and these dimple dyed holes will add a little bit of traction style and strength to this otherwise flat piece of eighth inch steel then it's time to weld all this mess together and so we don't concentrate the heat in one area of the bumper too much we weld welded around the bumper in different areas in four to six inch beads same with the grinding [Music] and after all that cutting and welding here's what we ended up with we made this front bumper at a 3 16 plate steel we've got cut out holes for fog lights and cut out oblong holes in the center to help with air flow all right now for the rear bumper it's more of the same mostly 3 16 plate steel except for the step portion where we used eighth inch plate just because it was easier to bend and work with now most of it is mig welded and ground down but this weld here well we went ahead and tig welded it because it would have been difficult to get a grinder in there to smooth it down and make it look nice we've also added a couple of holes for license plate lights as you saw we added a couple of dozen dimple die holes for a little bit of a traction on our step and since this is a work truck and we're going to be dragging a trailer pretty often but we obviously needed a trailer hitch so we went to summit racing and picked up this v5 rated hitch it'll allow us to drag a trailer up to 10 000 pounds or 12 000 if we've got a weight distribution hitch on it now just like everything else on this truck that had to be modified to fit so we cut the center loose from the end plates moved it up and tucked it in a little bit so it fit our frame a little bit better [Music] that looks good man cool [Music] all right all right i'm not gonna fall off now all right now with the front bumper installed you can see that these openings aren't just to break up the design of the bumper they're going to be functional once we trim this lower grille shell now that'll allow air to flow through here off this little sheet metal panel and cool the bottom of the ac condenser intercooler and radiator helping this work truck run nice and cool now we've left enough space down here for a truck's tag and we'll be able to throw some fog lights in here once we do a little bit more trimming of that grille shell but needless to say we're plenty psyched how this bumper turned out hey welcome back well what a difference a carpet kit makes into the interior of a vehicle this thing looks like a brand new truck again and as well as the two-piece carpet kit we also have kick panels to install want to bring your attention to something else these are the pockets that go underneath the door trim panel on the front doors well you know what see ya worn out not gonna happen since the two-piece carpet ended here we had a lot of extra left over so thanks lmc what you've just given us is the ability to make a nice upholstered panel go under that trim panel here's another thing that we got these threshold panels are brand new they're available for the f-150 as well as this club cab truck but the transitions on the back well not so much but here's where our buddies from mothers come in handy this is their metal polish a little bit of steel wool backed up by a microfiber and voila we make our old thresholds and transitions look just as good as the new ones since these aren't available well thanks mothers kind of saved our butt [Music] now we made our bumpers out of hot rolled steel and with that hot rolled steel comes this grayish mill scale that's a slick kind of hard to remove surface that's difficult to get paint to stick to now if these were just jeep bumpers well we wouldn't worry about it they need touch up anyway from getting beat up on the rocks but for this truck we wanted the paint to stick for a good long time and luckily we've got a blast cabinet large enough to stuff this entire bumper into and we can sand blast the mill scale away it's really one of the most effective ways to do so now there's also chemicals you can use to try to strip it off but if you don't have a blast cabinet and you don't want to fool around with chemicals we wanted to show you five different ways to try to mechanically remove this mill scale with varying levels of success you can pick out which works best for you now the first thing we're going to try is a wire brush attachment on our four and a half inch matt kill angle grinder and while this tool is usually pretty effective at removing undercoating and crud it doesn't do anything but polish the surface next up was a pneumatic die grinder with a medium grit reconditioning or resurfacing disc on it and again with the same results just made the metal shiny then we moved on to a medium grit sanding disc on a pneumatic grinder this started out looking pretty promising the disc was making quick work of removing the scale but things kind of went downhill after that as the paper quickly clogged up with the tough mill scale and it was just kind of rubbing on the metal and polishing it but at least we were on the right path then it was back to the angle grinder and a coarse 40 grit flap wheel from industrial depot this started out looking pretty good too due to the layers in the flap wheel and the overall grit of the flap wheel we were making pretty good progress it wasn't doing too much damage to our flap wheel this could get the job done then we tried a stripping disc that's not something we use around the shop that often but it is pretty effective if you're wondering what a stripping disc is made of it's basically individual abrasive grains interspersed throughout an open web of nylon fibers i think the stripping disc does the best job it removes the mill scale without creating 40 grit scratches everywhere now all i got to do is if any strip in it so kevin can paint hey welcome back well super duty is close enough to being road ready where it was time to discuss wheels because simulators on the old steel wheels were not going to cut it so we gave the guys at nashville wheel company a call talked about some designs and this is what they sent over check it out this is a super strong forged and polished 195 with standard width it was custom cut by greening auto company comes with a billet aluminum center cap and they even took the time to mill in the super dually project name now it's not just the fronts we had them send us the whole set of six and the rear wheels well they're polished just as perfectly as the fronts got a cool center cap and again they milled in the project name for us so they can offer you the same custom features now a 19.5 is big enough to look modern but still gives us enough sidewall to where we can actually put this truck to work and have a smooth ride but for you guys who want larger sizes check these out nwc offers wheels up to 26 inches in diameter so you can go to the nashville wheel company website and either order off the shelf pre-designed wheels or work hand in hand with them like we did and come up with your own design these wheels are 100 percent american-made and they even offer matching trailer wheels so go to nashvillewheelcompany.com check them out the prices may even surprise you today we're finally taking project super dually out on the road i expected it to be a little bit more uh 1979 and a little less 1997. but first we're updating steering components doing a wheel alignment and fixing our instrument cluster and now 0.2 ohms that's perfect then we're hitting the highways and the byways to see if all our years of hard work have really combined a 79 f-350 body and the 97 dodge frame into one really cool work and tow rig it's all today here on truck [Music] tech hey guys welcome to truck tech well the day is finally here to take project super dually out for a test drive now we've been working on our hybrid 97 dodge chassis 79 ford bodied work truck for quite some time now and there's only a few things left to do before we can take this thing out and see how it drives and how it tows now there's no doubt about it this was a very ambitious project that required a lot of work but in the end we got a cool and unique work truck that i'm itching to test drive but like i said we've got a couple of things to do first the steering linkage on our dually was original to the donor truck and by looking at all the mud and crud on this thing well it looked like it lived a pretty rough life and the wear and the steering linkage indicates that as well so we're gonna replace all of it now the idler arm was the main offender but we had some play in some of the tie rod ends as well and any play in the steering linkage can affect an alignment and you can't get a good alignment until you get that stuff taken care of now to remove the pitman arm we're using a puller from matco preload this thing a little bit and give it a couple of wraps with a hammer our puller's a good quality tool but if you're borrowing from the local parts store quality may not be up to snuff and you can help save the tool by applying a little bit of preload and hitting it lightly with a hammer to break it free now replacement steering parts came from lmc truck we picked up a new pitman arm idler arm inner and outer tie rod ends and adjustment sleeves but we are reusing our original center link it's nothing but a solid chunk of metal not a wear item we're also reusing our original steering stabilizer because it appears to be in good shape now these adjustment sleeves sometimes you can salvage them from your original linkage more often than not the threads are gummed up and they've seen some corrosion so we picked up new ones i also applied a little bit of anti-seize to the threads not only to fend off corrosion but to make adjustments that much smoother [Music] now you can install these parts on the trucks one piece at a time but i like to do it on a bench top so i can install it as an assembly now some of these parts came painted some didn't but i did take the time to paint the ones that weren't and before i threw away the old worn out steering linkage i went ahead and matched up the length of the tie rod assemblies so we'll have a minimal amount of adjusting to do once we get everything installed now most of these rod ends come pre-greased but it's always a good idea to add a couple more shots of grease before you hit the road [Music] so [Music] [Music] now after replacing steering parts you probably already know the next step is to have an alignment done and we've showed you guys how to use a couple of tape measures to rough in the toe and alignment so you can limp to the local alignment shop and have them finish things up but if you can replace your own steering linkage parts well you're probably capable of doing your own alignments if you've got the right tool these quick trick alignment tools really simplify the process of the alignment they attach to the wheel so you can measure the three alignment variables caster camber and tow by using the wheel mounts level and supplied tape measures [Music] i like the fact that it clears the dually wheel stick out and by doing it ourselves we don't risk the guy the alignment shop damaging our rather expensive custom wheels all right now once you have the fixtures attached to both front wheels you can use the supplied gauge or level attach it to the fixture and go through the process of rotating the wheel a certain number of degrees to get your caster reading to measure camber you're using the same gauge and you don't even have to have a level working surface simply set it on the ground in front of the tire you're working on zero the gauge out and it takes any slope into consideration when making the camber measurement to measure toe we simply use the tape measure supplied and put them in the slots before and after the wheel compare the difference and if you have to make any adjustments we simply rotate those tie rod adjustment sleeves to get it where you want it once we get this thing dialed in we finally get to hit the road up next we've got just one more fix to make all right less than one over resistance that's pretty good for a liquid and later super dually finally hits the road hey guys welcome back to truck tech now we got our alignment finished up we're just about ready to hit the road but after turning the key on and firing up the engine i noticed one last nagging problem that i'm gonna need this to fix all right with the engine running it's pretty evident that the oil pressure and fuel level gauges are functioning correctly but the tach volt meter and water temp gauges are not here's what i did to diagnose the problem now the voltmeter is the simplest to diagnose as long as you've got system voltage going into it and a ground connection on the other side well it should function correctly now pin number eight the green and yellow wire is our battery or system voltage point and we're good we got 12.38 volts so we switch the meter over to a continuity test attach the other lead to a good known chassis ground and complete the test and it's pretty obvious we've got a good connection all right well now that we know the problem is isolated to the instrument cluster let's take a closer look now on the back of the instrument cluster is the printed circuit or the circuit board for the instrument cluster and these squiggly lines are called traces and they're what carry the current to the bulbs or gauges now this is what a good trace is supposed to look like it's basically a flattened copper wire laminated in plastic this trace here obviously has some problems there's definitely a continuity issue here this one looks like it needs some repair as well here's another bad one right here and it's the main power supply for a lot of the bulbs that aren't functioning now to fix this stuff you've got a few different options and none of them are that complicated all you're trying to do is essentially complete the circuit where it's partially damaged now in between these two terminals there's no continuity we've got a dead spot here in the trace so we're going to fix it with a simple jumper wire [Music] our little red jumper wire is basically just providing an alternate current path [Music] and now 0.2 ohms that's perfect another option is this rear window defroster repair kit this is a conductive liquid that brushes on and when it dries it acts very similar to a wire a little fine line tape will keep me from painting outside the lines now this spot does have continuity but it's clearly been damaged so we're just going to reinforce it first get rid of the plastic get down at the copper we just want to isolate this trace from the others now the other traces are laminated in plastic and somewhat protected but i want to keep the repair confined to this area and give it a few coats and we should be good a little extra material will make sure that the repair can handle the current load [Music] now the repair in this burned up spot is definitely a little bit more aggressive this is asking a lot of liquid but we'll see how it does i'm probably being a little excessive here but it's got to carry current so i'm going to give the best shot it can now the repair is not the most aesthetically pleasing but in this case it's definitely function over form all right lesson one over resistance that's pretty good for a liquid and just like insulation protects a copper wire a little bit of clear packing tape will help protect our repair and give us the best chance at success all right now parts of that repair weren't that pretty but it's hard to argue with results check it out we've got bulbs lighting up that we didn't have before and our gauges are working pretty cool and it sure beats forking over about 300 bucks for a remanufactured cluster mission accomplished when we come back it's payoff time for project super dually stick around hey guys welcome back to truck tech where we're finally getting some sea time in this monster of a truck project super dually love that turbo whistle [Music] man after working hard on this thing for a few years off and on again it sure feels good to get some seat time finally i'm actually really surprised how smooth this thing is riding down the highway i expected it to be a little bit more uh 1979 and a little less 1997. tires and wheels must have balanced out good there's no wheel shimmy no brake shimmy a little bit extra wind noise but you can't have it all right these 12 valve cummins engines are all mechanically controlled there's no tuner no electronics so if you want to make modifications or upgrades you got to get your hands dirty but they're really fun to tinker with and they respond to modifications really well the power gains are really impressive a few minor bolt-on modifications we made to this truck really woke it up the fuel plate governor springs allows the engine to rev and gives it plenty of fuel let that turbo do its job our diesel engine is backed up by an nv 4500 five-speed manual transmission i know some guys prefer to tow with an automatic but i actually prefer to tow with a manual i feel it gives me more control and you're not looking at a three or four thousand dollar overhaul bill when it comes time for a rebuild put a good clutch in it like the south bend clutch we put in and call it done we've also fixed the fifth gear nut issue that plagues these transmissions so we should be good to go on maintenance for quite some time got the turbo spooled up all right now our enclosed trailer is empty you guys the tow a lot knowing closed trailers well half of it is wind resistance not necessarily the weight that's inside of it so it's pretty good representation of a loaded down trailer that he doesn't know we got a cummins under the hood now who's got the cooler truck his is quieter ride smoother probably a little bit nicer but ours is cooler hands down our crew cab truck isn't very common but it will hold four people and some gear as long as they're not nba players now there's no doubt it won't compete with a late model mega cab for creature comforts but it's still a nice truck and kind of hard to find our aluminum wheels are from nashville wheel company and it's a great modern twist of a classic dually style and they're wrapped in commercial grade rubber that ought to last over a hundred thousand miles that might ride a little rough compared to most light truck tires but that's the trade-off you get with such durability now the interior of this truck got freshened up as well it's got new carpet a new headliner and the mash up ford and dodge dash the front seats are out of the dodge as well but the rear is the stock ford bench that kevin just applied a little gray dye to to closely match the rest of the gray in the interior and it turned out pretty good [Music] this thing rides really good just like my 94 dodge does i thought the body would make it ride a little bit rough or add some extra wind noise but so far so good [Music] i did pretty good on the alignment tracking pretty straight no wheel shimmy wheels straight ahead yes sir this has got to be one of my favorite body styles of all time this makes for a cool toe and work rig see how much boost we make here the fourth gear a little bit of load all right you got boots got all spools up making 30 pounds of boost egts are in check rolling like a freight train now these dodge trucks have an overkill cooling system it's definitely working on this truck 90 degrees out ac on running nice and cool looks like we did pretty good on the engine adjustments too we're not getting a lot of extra black smoke no point wasting fuel [Music] our crew cab dually from the 70s is definitely one of a kind it can haul four people and a house down the road and with the blue and gray two-tone paint job and the diesel under the hood our super dually is 100 american awesomeness [Music] hey guys welcome back to the shop now today was definitely a good day it always feels really good to put the wraps on a long-term project and have a successful day out on the road testing things out now on a big ambitious project like this usually by the time you get to the end of it there's a few things you wish you would have done a little bit differently this truck's no exception the air conditioning was working great but it could use some help from some tinted windows and these side view mirrors they look cool but while towing i do wish i had a little bit more rearward visibility these are minor changes and easy fixes now we've done some cool and unique projects over the years but this one seems to have gotten the most attention i think people just dig the body style of this truck speaking of which having a 79 ford crew cab body sitting on top of a 97 dodge chassis gives us modern suspension brakes and drive train so it's the best of both worlds and in the end truck tech ends up with a very cool very unique one of a kind work truck and the fact that we didn't drop 40 or 50 grand on it makes it even better you

Channel: Gunpowder & Gasoline

Views: 5,815,581

Keywords: powernation, powerblock, powernation tv, powerblock tv, how to, cars, trucks, do it yourself, full build, ford, dodge, super dually, truck, '70s Ford Crew Cab, Dodge Cummins Turbo Diesel, diesel, cummins

Id: 4s38SUoNY8U

Length: 218min 33sec (13113 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 05 2023