Full Build: Junkyard Square Body Tow Truck Is Restored And Modernized

today on carcass we go hunting for a new project vehicle and what we find at the junkyard isn't in the best shape but will it run we'll find out today on carcass [Applause] [Applause] [Music] jimmy and i are in car guy paradise we're at bobby white motors here in columbia tennessee and pretty much everywhere we turn there's something interesting to look at kind of like this spider-man firebird thing [Music] kind of a lost cause the cool thing about salvage yards is you can pretty much find any part for any car that you're working on i have an obs gmc truck that's very similar to these gm full-size suvs and like on this tahoe you got a really good front fender you have a nice hood other than the paint and you even have a good core support and if you haven't been to a salvage yard like this they're actually really organized like just in this throw you have full size gm suvs and trucks you have full size gm cars in one spot over there and by jeremy you have full size four trucks we're pretty much two kids in a giant candy store out here and jimmy and i just keep walking around going why would anybody scrap that out or you could completely build this truck take this old ford yes the motor's missing but the hood is actually in the back of the truck you could easily pluck this out of the salvage yard put an engine in it and put it back out on the farm for good use you could even teach your kids how to drive but i really don't think this is what we're looking for yeah we're really looking for the right vehicle for our next project and hopefully we can find something pretty interesting you know i hate to say it but there's an awful lot of forts out here [Music] 17 18 19 you know we could put a jeep together with this entire row they got three quarter ton axles up near the front too but it's still just a jeep yeah i don't think so [Music] jeremy and i couldn't really decide what we wanted to take home with us and then we ran across this crusty old square body yeah it's mid 70s late 70s c30 somebody's got a wrecker body on the back of it i don't know this thing's got a ton of potential and the nice thing is is that this is probably one of the most complete vehicles in the salvage yard we've came across a few that could maybe run and drive under their own power but i think this is our best option [Music] this truck checks all the boxes that jimmy and i are looking for it's a square body chevy pickup it's got the classic patina exterior and it's one of the most popular trucks being put back on the road [Music] looks like it's got an old tried and trued small block in it it's missing some of the parts um alternator's gone but we don't really need one i guess a battery obviously carburetor yeah find one of them the biggest upside to this one it's got all the tires on it yeah i think they're all holding air too i didn't see a flat one which is good i think we're good it's rusty but it looks complete at least [Music] so the dash is cracked the seats kind of ripped up and hopefully you can see this there's like a giant like giant hole on the floor and obviously that's unsafe for a bunch of different reasons but i think if we kind of leave the outside as is and just spruce up the interior make it safe and nice that's probably a pretty good way to go about it well the outside tire's flat but the inside tires holding there oh we got some big big issues on the chassis there's a giant hole cleaned through the frame right where the leaf spring hanger rivets right to the chassis and being from the rust belt that's something i've seen before but there's a good reason why this truck's in the junkyard like at any point in time the chassis could literally just v right in half and lay this thing right on the ground but you know it's something jimmy and i can completely handle i don't know man we got some major issues with the chassis uh i see you found a giant hole in the passenger floor the truck is complete is this really something we want to tackle maybe i mean this is the most unique thing we could have found in a salvage yard right so it's kind of like how different do you want to be no totally i i'm on board if you're on board yeah i mean we'll take a shot at it it should come out pretty nice i think so i think it'll run too right here i bet it'll run just needs a couple things yeah so we really need to get this thing going i think is a battery we're missing the carburetor so we'll bring one of those some fuel a hope and a prayer and we'll bring the trailer back tomorrow we'll try to get this thing back to the shop up next we find out if our 1977 c30 tow truck has any rumble left in it you're watching carcass [Music] jeremy and i took a night to think about it and we're back with the truck and trailer because we're ready to take on our next challenge i hope she runs we've been hunting through bobby white motor salvage art in columbia tennessee and i think jeremy and i have finally found our next project this is a 1977 c30 with a wrecker body on the rear and this thing needs some work a lot of work but it's such a unique find we're determined to get it running so we can take it home well we popped our head underneath here yesterday and we knew we needed some parts so we grabbed that from the shop so let's get the carburetor on it we'll throw an alternator at it and we'll put a battery in this thing yeah we'll check the oil too make sure we're not running it dry and to be honest like we only need to run this thing for a couple minutes just to get on the trailer and worst case is we're on a hill anyway so we can kind of coast it down and then just winch it up yeah we'll make sure we check the brakes too yeah [Music] [Music] i hope these are wired right [Music] it's going to last a little bit can you check the fluids quick it does have oil it's brown it's clean it's actually not as dark as i thought it would be but as long as it's something that's a rustic clamp [Music] i think the filler's over here come on the other side or it's on that side too don't spill as much that should be enough all right moment of truth hop in jimmy brakes-ish um no not really they're hydro boost so okay they're not really going to work and i'm gonna stand on this side crank on it a little bit um e-brake might work i would be shocked e-brake works are you kidding me yeah it actually works all right cool go for it cranks [Music] hey there's fuel up in the fuel filter keep doing that [Music] all right it runs it runs [Music] wow dude actually it's idling by itself like it actually runs yeah i wonder if they just brought it here because of the chassis maybe somebody took parts off it i mean it's loud it's got exhaust leaks and all this other stuff yeah wow it's a little bit lumpy should we see if it moves huh you wanna see if it moves yeah you wanna close this stuff up from under the hood but let's see if it moves yeah close the hood and we'll see oh nice hood it sounds terrible wow look at this thing there she's a rocket ship wow all right i'll go move the truck and trailer okay i want to see if the let's see if the wrecker works oh i never thought of that will this sit here without rolling away yeah i got the e-brake on oh no that's right it works um yeah all right um i think this is a clutch lever i don't know oh all right that whatever you did was the wrong one um hold on oh wait wait here i got it pull this one back pull that into gear this goes in here you got that all right now let that one out all right before it breaks okay here come on that will go down i think okay go down that's cool there's no way we should tow a car out of here yeah another project one's enough no yeah [Music] let's take her back to the shop up next we dig into our patina tow truck and what we find is not surprising [Music] we brought this junkyard find back to the shop to give it a good top to bottom inspection to see if we missed anything at bobby white motors needless to say this truck has some character and a lot of rust some of it contributes to the patina look that both jimmy and i like but in other places well it's going to cause a few headaches rust aside we have some ideas for what we want to do with this unique find like what we plan to do with the doors we partnered with wyotech to do some rebranding on this work truck so we shipped the doors off to be worked on while we brainstormed some ideas for this truck and here's what we came up with our goal is to get this old square body back on the road and make it safe again so the first thing we're gonna have to do is address the rusted out chassis under the bed out back those are the danger points and those are the most important things to get fixed first then we'll pump this old square body with a little more power and an automatic transmission to match after some power upgrades we'll move to the inside and spruce up this 50 year old interior we'll do this by tackling the floor repairs first then we'll throw in a new dash new instrument cluster a steering wheel and a nice seat to match finally we'll tackle the wheels and tires with a rattle can refresh turning back the clock on this old work truck well at least in the wheel department this all starts with some disassembly removing the wrecker body out back will take a little more work than just a normal pickup bed would take we have to completely disassemble the tow rig before we can separate it from the truck for starters we need to unhook the suspension cables that hold this arm in place [Music] then with it lowered we can unbolt it at the hinge points [Music] with it loose jimmy and i can slide it out [Music] and set it aside for now with the arm out of the way we can put our focus on the triangular frame support with 50 years of rust this created some challenges with the bolts and in some cases we found it easier just to cut them off rather than to try and unbolt them in those tight areas what you can't see here is a puddle of molten metal forming as the torch heats up the nut once you see the puddle form you pull the trigger and the oxygen not only raises the temperature to make the puddle flow but the pressure also helps clear the slag with those hard to reach fasteners out of the way we have a couple more mounting bolts to break free all right so the last thing the rear leaf spring hangers are welded to the back of the box yeah the seniors is that put this together thought that was a good idea so we got to get those apart yeah i think the easiest way to do it is we'll just grab the old fire stick again we'll just torch out the back it's going to be way quicker to deal with it with the box off then we'll figure out how to fix it after that yep all right the box out back is made of 3 16 steel and a torch will make quick work of cutting out a section so we can finally lift the box off the chassis and get a closer look at what we're working with with both sections cut out on the back we're going to use the lift to help us raise up the bed [Music] yep let me show you guys why we had to cut the wrecker body off of the chassis now the wrecker body is a universal fit body it fits many different makes and models and when they put it on the back of our chevy truck they actually cut the back of the frame off by doing that they cut the rear leaf spring hanger off as well now to give it a little more support when they put the body back on this truck they welded the wrecker body to this rear leaf spring hanger in a bunch of areas that jimmy and i just couldn't get to so that's why we had to make this big cut to get the body off the truck and now that we have the box off the chassis jeremy and i can get a much better look at the rust and it's a lot worse than we originally thought this whole side of the frame rail right here is just completely wiped out so what we were thinking is maybe cut this section of the frame rail out and replace it but now we actually think it'd be easier to cut the chassis somewhere back here and completely replace both frame rails coming up we're cutting out the rust but before we can do that there's more we need to strip you're watching carcass [Music] our 1977 tow truck is a unique find but all those years spent rescuing vehicles on the side of the road were not kind to this old money maker the key word here is rust anywhere water was able to sit and touch metal left to mark and i'm sure that dirt and debris like this did not help this old chassis the patina look of this truck is why jimmy and i fell in love with it that's why we pulled it out of the junkyard but the question here is what are we going to do with this thing well we're going to give it a second chance at life we're going to put it back on the road and the front is going to get a bunch of horsepower the interior is going to get all spruced up be nice comfy and cozy in the back we're definitely going to make it safe again and heck we might even tow with it but the real issue here is rust there's a big difference between cosmetic rust and structural rust well how are we going to fix that well we could just go out get a whole new frame we could come in cut the bad metal out replace it with some good steel or we could just cut the back half of this truck off and start over again and that's what jimmy and i are gonna do but before we get to throwing any sparks there's a bunch of parts and pieces and we gotta get off this thing we'll start with the drive shaft decades of rust have made it difficult to remove the bolts and pry the sucker loose a pry bar helps free up the u-joint and since this is a two-piece driveshaft with a hanger bearing we also have to unbolt the connection to the transmission with those loose we can wiggle it free [Music] and slide it aside for now next we need to remove the gas tank a quick tip if you can empty the gas tank before you remove it [Applause] it's a lot easier working with your co-worker when you don't stink like old octane for the rest of the day [Music] the last thing we need to do is cut the winch linkages that span the length of the truck like jeremy mentioned earlier there's a couple different ways we could go about repairing the rust in this chassis the first way is to cut out this section of the damaged chassis and try and recreate it the problem with that is the metal around it is so bad that we'd have to extend that section all the way up into this radius portion trying to recreate this radius would take so much time and effort to match it perfectly that i think our time is better spent elsewhere so we're going to opt to cut the entire back half of the chassis off and recreate it using c-channel and rectangular tubing we're not going to get there today but we still need to cut this chassis apart so now where exactly do we cut the chassis looking at this bottom surface i can see that the metal is really pitted and it's just not structurally sound but the closer that we get to the back of the cab the metal becomes relatively less pitted or not pitted at all and that's a great starting point for us to make a cut there's a little prep work we need to do prior to making this cut first we'll take a pinion angle measurement while the truck is sitting on level ground next we need to get a wheelbase measurement we do this by measuring center to center of each wheel with that out of the way we're ready to cut we're using an acetylene torch to make this cut and there are a few things to note about the cut you get with a torch like this first you won't be able to weld immediately after this cut the slag left behind from it leaves a rough surface and is very porous so expect to do some grinding to clean it up second it's really tough to freehand a straight line so expect to do some cleanup with a grinder once you get the two pieces separated [Music] oh yeah easy peasy our tow truck is now ready for a new rear end and if you would like to follow along with this build go to powernationtv.com today on carcass we recreate the rear section of the chassis on our junkyard fine tow truck how we rebuild this crusty c channel giving this tow truck a second chance at life you're watching carcass [Music] [Applause] so [Applause] we picked up this 1977 c30 tow truck in a local junkyard it was mostly together with a few things missing under the hood and a flat tire out back we fell in love with this rusty old work truck and with a little work getting it started we decided this patina's moneymaker would be our next project vehicle when we brought this thing back to the shop we tore right into it looking for the problem areas yep and boy did we run into every car guy's nightmare not only did we find cosmetic rust but we also found some structural rust jimmy and i were just glad this thing didn't break in half as we rolled it into the shop we thought long and hard about what to do with this chassis and we agreed the rust it had to go so we fired up the torch and nixed the rear section of this frame we made cuts on either side just behind the cab dividing the truck in two now we have two halves of a truck we kept the rear half so we can pull a measurement later and as for the front if the truck wasn't roadworthy before it certainly isn't now the plan is to rebuild the back end of this chassis and that involves us forming new sections of c-channel the new sections will replace the old sections from about here to here everything behind that we're going to use four inch tall rectangular tubing and because the tubing is so much shorter than the new channel we'll have to gusset the tubing to the channel to ensure it's a strong joint we plan on building the entire back end on a fixturing table to make sure everything is square and true so the first step in this process is to grab some measurements and bend up our new c channel all right let's see seven and three eighths two and three quarter to build our c channel we're going to be using 3 16 sheet steel and if you add up our measurements from the original chassis you get roughly 13 inches and we're replacing 30 inches before we transition to the rectangular tubing we'll connect the dots giving us a cutting line to follow with the plasma torch [Music] we're going to use a straight edge to help guide us along this cut we'll line the tip of our torch up with our cut line and just clamp the straight edge in place butting our torch up against the edge of our yardstick we can begin cutting after our first cut we'll reset the straight edge [Music] and finish the cut we'll follow that up with a seven inch grinder to clean up the jagged edges that were left behind by the plasma torch [Music] while jeremy cuts out another piece for our other piece of c channel i'm going to show you guys how we map out the bends [Music] for our new chassis section we're going to be nesting a new piece of c channel in the existing piece of c channel on the truck and to do that we're going to need to know one very specific piece of information that's the inside radius of the bend that comes off the brake the reason why we need to know that is because there's a specific amount of material taken up in each bend and for us to accurately place our bend lines on our flat sheet we need to know what this radius is so to figure that out we need to make a test bend and grab a set of drill bits [Music] now that we have the test been made the best thing to do is just grab a really big drill bit and take the shank of the drill bit and put it on the inside radius of the bent i'm going to look up at the light and the drill bit is so big that there's an air gap between the inside radius and the shank so what you're going to do is just keep going down in drill bit size until that air gap is no longer visible i've already done this with our piece so i know that a 17 64 drill bit closes that air gap again i know that because i look up at the light and the air gap is no longer visible but this is a diameter and we need a radius so 17 64 divided by two is 17 128 and that's going to help us figure out where to place our bend lines on the flat sheet [Music] we know that the height of our new c channel can be no taller than seven and three eighths of an inch we know this because we took a measurement off the truck chassis earlier but there's a couple things we need to consider to get this right the first being the thickness of our material we're just using 3 16 sheet so we know that each flange is 3 16 of an inch tall the second thing we need to consider is the height of the bend itself now we used a drill bit to figure out what the radius of the bend was and from that we can figure out what the height is and now just using the information we know about this drill bit i'm going to show you how to figure out the height of your bend and where to place your bend lines the diagram i just drew is a blown up version of the bend in this diagram right here the circle in blue represents the drill bit we use to figure out the radius of the bend we know that the diameter of the drill bit is 17 over 64 which means the radius is 17 over 128 but what we're really interested in is the height of the bend and by looking at the diagram it actually turns out the height of the bend is the same as the radius of the bend at 17 over 128 but what we're interested in is figuring out where our bend line is so what we actually have to do is take this value and divide it in half and that will help us locate our bend line all right so now we'll actually show you how to lay out some lines on your metal and remember the total height of our channel can be no greater than seven and three eighths but half that is three and eleven sixteenths that's a really important number for what we're about to lay down we're going to mark the center line on this piece of metal and make all of our measurements off of that using that center line we need to find our bend line the total height from the center is 3 and 11 16 inches but we need to subtract the thickness of the metal and the height of the bend which lands us at about 3 and 7 16 inches for our bend line [Music] up next we take what we learned and build a replacement chassis for our vintage tow truck [Music] during the break we built one chassis rail of our back section using the c channel we made a straight piece of rectangular tubing and we added a gusset for some strength and currently it's sitting upside down on this table and there's one thing i wanted to point out this section is a straight piece of tubing on a stock truck chassis there's a kick up to give clearance for the axle as the suspension travels on a stock truck at least on ours it's about nine inches between the axle and the chassis so by using the straight section we lose some of that room but there's still plenty for the suspension to travel but this is only one half the equation and we're going to show you how to build the other half [Music] for the straight section that will go over the axle we're using a piece of four by two eighth inch wall rectangular tubing and we're cutting it to 56 inches this will allow for some overlap when we weld it to our newly made c channel now to determine how much of an overlap we'll need to pull a measurement on the original chassis the leaf spring hanger has been cut on the old chassis so we're going to add a few inches to avoid doing this with our new setup with our measurements in hand we'll adjust our overlap and secure our pieces so they can lay flat against each other as with any fabrication project we're going to tack our pieces first making sure we're happy with how they sit then we can make our straight section of tubing a permanent part of the c-channel [Music] [Music] now that we've attached our rectangular tubing to our c channel we need to make some gussets we're going to make these out of 3 16 steel and cut them out on the bandsaw [Music] there's one this process is a lot like a puzzle we'll need to cut one piece at a time to ensure each subsequent piece fits perfectly against one another [Music] making gussets is not an exact science this gusset could have been twice the length i think this length is fine but there's a few things to keep in mind triangles are strong and you should box things in if you can we have all of our pieces laid out now and it's time to weld them up [Music] [Applause] [Music] with our gussets getting their final welds we'll need to line up our new frame rails so we can build out our cross members now these are sized based on the original frame width minus the thickness of the materials we're working with for our first cross member we're using the same four by two tubing we've been using throughout the process [Music] we're adding a second one inside of the c-channel so this will require a different length of tubing [Music] before we tack this crossmember in place we need to check our measurements to ensure everything is square 91 and a half [Music] 91 and a half all it in there's one last thing we're going to add before we can call this done a gusset made from 3 16 steel that will help add some strength around the leaf spring hangers [Music] holy cats man that looks pretty good yeah i'm done so i need some help moving it for a test fit that sounds good which way left or right uh that way this way wait that's my left is your right though sure right it all comes down to this all the math the measuring cutting and welding just to get some weld gaps right right not to mention you already prepped the chassis so we know where we're going to weld it's going to be nice and strong we don't have giant holes in the frame rails so it's going to be a whole lot safer and we just got to pull a quick measurement to make sure that the front and the back are nice and straight before you weld it in awesome [Music] with our new frame section in place we'll pull a quick measurement to make sure that the back half of the chassis is straight with the front half [Music] 97 and three-quarter welded up the last thing to do is weld this chassis together making it just as strong if not stronger than the original and this gives us the perfect platform to set the wrecker body back on this truck and one step closer to getting it back on the road coming up how we position four tires and a leaf spring suspension using one helpful measurement all right well the new frame sections in the back of the truck jimmy welded it up it's a lot stronger than it was before and it's nice and straight so now all we have to do is get the front and rear leash spring hangers on and we have to do shock mounts yeah um we should probably put all the suspension on the rear axle before we slide it underneath here yep i'll get the leafs and meet you back there it's good the new springs that we're installing on the tow truck are definitely heavy duty enough to tow a vehicle these are nine pack leaf springs with a 3 500 pound rating for each spring pack and we're installing these reusing the stock u-bolt plates but we're replacing the u-bolts and nuts and just snugging them up for now we'll torque these to spec when everything is sitting pretty under our chassis we'll also loosely install the shackle which will help us install the axle later with our axle prepped we can prepare the front and rear leaf spring hanger mounts for a test fit we're doing this because we're going to weld them to our new frame rails instead of riveting or bolting them to the chassis [Music] many hands make light work when rolling a giant dually axle under a truck now we measured the wheelbase prior to cutting off the rear end of the chassis so we have a good idea where to set this for now [Music] okay what do we need 22 and a half right 22 and a half to the center we're measuring from the cut line to the center bolt hole of the leaf spring hanger this will ensure that we tack the leaf spring hanger in the same area as our rusted out frame section should we see if it fits they're too narrow i think it's um these are for a four wheel drive truck we've been trying to test fit the leaf springs into the hangars and we ran into a bit of an issue and here's what we found they don't make every part for every vehicle there's not a bunch of reproduction parts out there for a cab and chassis truck so we couldn't find a set of front leaf spring hangers for our tow truck but what we did find was a set of spring hangers for a four wheel drive three quarter ton truck what we did is welded them on but then we found that there's an issue this spring hanger is about an inch wider than the cabin chassis spring hangers so that's just not going to work for what we have to do so what we're going to do is take these back off we end up cutting about an inch out of the spring hanger and then we're just going to weld them back right to the chassis because that's what we were going to do in the first place with the bracket trimmed down we'll set these back at the 22 and a half inch mark that we had them at earlier go this way yeah check that out that's perfect awesome all right how close are we to the wheelbase on the other side that's pretty spot on nice [Music] 55 and a half same as the original chassis attacker on [Music] this actually wasn't as far as i thought it was going to be and like everything fits pretty well yeah and it was way easier to just rebuild the back half of this than it was to just fix the old part of the chassis but uh we better get this welded up because we still got to get the box on it yeah [Applause] each of the leaf spring hangers are getting welded all along the outside we're also going to burn in as much of the inside edge as we can get to this is probably overdoing it but over engineering this kind of stuff is always better than the alternative [Music] up next we reinstall the towing rig on our patina tow truck you're watching carcass while you guys were on break we went ahead and took care of the shocks all we did was whip up a couple brackets welded them to the chassis but now it's time to do a test fit to see how that wrecker body is gonna fit on here and once we have the body on here we have to figure out how to attach it whether that be welding it directly to the chassis or making more brackets and bolting it but we don't have a drive shaft so i guess we got to push it under there [Music] to mount the wrecker body onto our newly built chassis we're basically going to mount it the same way it was before because let's face it i'm sure this record body had been on this truck its entire life and it held together that long so in the rear we're going to make some basic mounts kind of like they were before and in the front we're actually just going to reuse the mounts like before but uh i don't want to work in this tiny little area so we're going to roll the truck back get rid of these tires so i can take some measurements [Music] all right let's go about nine inches tall and the plate on the top will be about eight and a half inches long and three and a half inches wide now to mount the bed to the chassis we're going to be using two existing bolts in the towing assembly now essentially there's two sets of bolts that hold that towing assembly to the bed and then hold the bed to the chassis now the original chassis had a piece of angle iron that held this all together well that's not gonna work for us because our chassis is about a half of an inch narrower now and there's a big piece of channeling that runs the length of the wrecker body so if we were to use a simple piece of angle iron it would just merely contact that piece of channeling so a simple solution would be to cut out a set of brackets like this that have a notch in it to go around that piece of channeling then we'll use a piece of steel punch out a set of holes that match the holes in the towing assembly [Music] [Music] you want to hold the bolts for me jim we're bolting the top plate to the bottom of the bed first because we already have the bed sitting where we want it this will ensure that when we go to weld everything together the supporting pieces will be located in the correct position we're going gonna wait to finish weld the rear mount so we can make sure the front mounts work like they're supposed to we're gonna be using the stock mounting plates from the original chassis and some threaded rod to make sure everything lines up the stock plates just hooked to the inside of the sea channel and the threaded rods are fed through them and up through the floor of the bed there they got it then they're held down with a few washers and a nut well now that we know everything lines up we're gonna unbolt everything pick the bed off of the chassis weld up our rear mounts and give everything a nice shiny coat of paint [Music] with everything welded up we'll slap on a coating of paint to prevent rust and reassemble the rear end of our tow truck returning this crumbling work truck to a road-worthy state we have a lot more in store getting this tow truck back on the road follow along with us on this build at powernationtv.com today on carcass our junkyard tow truck breathes new life with a jump in power plus we repair even more rust [Applause] [Music] let's get you all caught up on our junkyard tow truck that we're giving a new life through some fabrication and a little imagination we had to dream big here with all the rust and lack of material left on the rear half of this frame so we got straight to work cutting out all the cancer and fabbing up a new section of our own design with all that metal work out of the way we bolted up some new suspension parts to our dually axle and positioned it to where it would make this truck whole again that's perfect awesome we followed that up with the bed and towing assembly bringing back that vintage tow truck look that we fell in love with that leads us to where we are today where this thing is going to live again but with a little bit more horsepower that's right we've got about 350 horsepower to go underneath the hood of this thing we're going to back that up with a 700 r4 4-speed automatic transmission and the goal is to have this thing fired up by the end of the day and we've heard this engine's rumble before you may remember a project from last season that we called franken regal we had a lot of fun doing burnouts and we even drove that thing through the mud so we figured we'd take the engine out of that project and put it in this one and to finish off the front end we're going to be doing a bunch of steering upgrades and inside the cab well that's going to be a task of its own the rusted out floorboards need a lot of attention and i mean it's gonna be a ton of work but before we fight that uphill battle let's do the fun stuff first and get the engine in this thing yep that sounds good the engine in our tow truck is a 305 that's similar to the one that was in our autocross camaro project from last year and if you remember that vehicle when it was stock it didn't have a whole lot of pep in its step and let's face it this thing came out of a junkyard we don't know if it's ever been taken care of [Music] clear yep get that junk out of here now the motor came out of that pretty easy but now we gotta scavenge the motor out of frank and regal and you think that motor came out fast this one's only gonna take a couple of minutes [Music] we've had the 350 chevy in our franken regal since the beginning and we know exactly the conditions it's been operated in and how well it's been taken care of now this skeleton of a vehicle has just been sitting in the warehouse collecting dust and we know the engine runs and we know it runs well so we have no problem dropping this guy and our patina tow truck [Music] all clear yep [Music] jimmy and i are chevy fans and there's a good reason for that we pulled the 305 out of the tow truck and we're going to be replacing it with this 350 and we know that's going to work for a couple of reasons the first is that gm didn't change the geometry of their v8s from the mid 50s all the way into the 90s take our old tow truck for instance this old square body could have come with a v8 like a 305 or a 350 but it also could have come with a diesel option or a big block option so knowing this gm set up their engine bay to handle all of those options the other thing they did is they kept the bell housings on the transmissions the same so if you had an automatic or a manual transmission it would bolt up to any engine that was offered in that vehicle so like in our tow truck when we switch from a manual to an automatic transmission the only thing we have to change is the transmission itself this makes swapping pretty much any gm power plant into any full-size gm vehicle a breeze and when they switched to the ls engine they even kept the bell housing the same so you can run almost any gm transmission behind it we're so close just not lining up perfect we're off by like a third of the bolt hole we're so close this engine didn't go in as easy as others have in the past we were able to get one bolt through one of the mounts but the second was being stubborn our solution is to loosen the chassis side of the mount so we can feed the bolt through with them all lined up we just snugged everything down with our engine finally mounted it's time to install the b m transmission that we picked up from holley performance now to get this installed we removed the old transmission crossmember giving us plenty of room to maneuver our matco tools transmission jack makes easy work moving the 150 pound transmission and with all the holes lined up we'll marry the trans to the engine we have one more step left to do and that's to install a compatible cross member for this transmission we picked up a universal cross member from summit racing we were able to use one of the existing bolt holes from the original cross member but we had to drill the remaining bolt hole out with a 3 8 drill bit allowing us to snug up the cross member and since this one adjusts to the width of the chassis we'll need to weld up the ends before calling this job done [Music] up next we get this rusty old tow truck safe for the road with some steering upgrades well the engine and trains are in the truck i would love to fire this thing up but there's one issue our gas tank just hasn't come in yet and also for the short time that this truck was running and driving there was a lot of play on the steering wheel and that's actually coming from down here all these steering components are so worn out they need to be replaced so while the truck is still on the lift we thought we'd do it now yeah that idler arm's completely worn out yeah we got to tear this stuff out [Music] if you've been following this build you'll know that we've been dealing with a lot of rust on this vehicle and the suspension and steering components are no exception they all have castle nuts with cotter pins to promote safety and to make it impossible for these essential fasteners from coming loose well with all that rust it also makes it nearly impossible for us to remove them too after poking and prodding pulling and hammering we had enough so we used a punch to drive the pin halfway and we cut the other end of the cotter pin off using an air impact we remove the castle nut which essentially sheared the rest of the cotter pin off in the process [Music] now we need to stress one thing the way that we took the nut off the tie rod end should only be done if you're replacing the tie rod end itself because what happens is what's left of the cotter key gets rolled over onto the threads making it impossible to put a nut back on it but since we're replacing all of the steering anyways well that was the easiest way for us to get this out of the way continuing on with our steering disassembly we'll tackle the pitman arm next this has a massive inch and 5 16 nut holding it onto the gearbox then with a pitman arm puller will free it up with that loose we can remove the steering linkage at the idler arm that unbolts quickly and with a ton of hefty hits it comes loose this frees up the steering linkage allowing jimmy and i to slide it out from behind the sway bar oh it's just disgusting the steering box is all worn out so we're replacing it as well we'll drain all the fluid in the power steering pump before cutting the hoses getting the pump out of the way for now next we can tackle the gearbox we'll unhook both hoses then we can remove the pinch bolt attaching the rag joint to the input shaft with it loose we'll use a pry bar to slide it off the shaft working from underneath the truck we can finally remove the four bolts attaching the steering box to the chassis [Music] with our steering out of the way we're going to tackle these worn out shocks we're replacing them with a set of bill steins that we picked up from summitracing.com these are direct replacements so they slip right into the existing mounts with a little help from a hammer and a pry bar we just got done installing our shocks and it's time to move on to the rest of the steering linkage but as we were under here we noticed that the sway bar bracket was bent out of shape and upon closer inspection it's actually cracked so we're going to have to make a new one but that's a project for a little bit later so for now we're just going to take the sway bar out and move on to our steering linkage this will be a little hairy coming out because one of the bolts is bent a few taps of the hammer seems to get it somewhat straight but a cutoff wheel makes this go a whole lot quicker i've been working on installing all our new steering pieces that we got from rockauto now the idea is to set this back in the truck as one assembly minus one piece we're going to put the pitman arm on the gear box to make sure that it's clocked in the right direction but here's a little tip when setting up your tie rod ends all you got to do is measure between the two points and then transfer that measurement over to your new one then we'll just assemble everything and set it back in the truck and that should get us pretty close and at the end we'll just set it on the ground set it out for an alignment but the first thing i got to do is make sure this one matches out [Music] while jeremy was working on the steering linkages i was installing the gearbox all right i'm gonna grab that side we'll first bolt up the idler arm this will be kept hand tight until all the components are put together before we go any further we're going to install the pitman arm this is the only component that we'll tighten up for now the linkage gets attached to the pitman arm with a castle nut and then each knuckle receives each end of our linkage assembly with everything loosely attached we can start tightening all the castle nuts [Music] lastly we'll add the cotter pins and finally snug up the adjustment sleeves with a little grease added to each ball joint our tires can go back on resulting in a better handling tow truck when we take it for its first test drive coming up we put the finishing touches on our engine and start hacking away at the rust in the cab next on carcass we're back to work on the powertrain of our 1977 c30 tow truck you may remember that our gas tank hadn't arrived yet so we moved on to replacing the steering components on the front end well while you were in the break the big box arrived that's right but before we got to our fuel system we wanted to button up the front accessory drive things like the cooling fan power steering pump and the belts were all installed we also threw in a brand new starter and some headers that we picked up from summit racing then we added some plug wires that we got from holley performance a radiator got thrown in the mix getting it bolted in and plumbed up all of this before we finally got to our fuel system our new tank from summit racing slips right in and we hooked it up to the fuel pump with the flick of a key we were able to crank up the engine and give it a couple pops of the throttle [Music] well the motor runs great so that takes care of the front we fixed all the rust in the frame that takes care of the back i think it's about time we focus on the middle if we can take care of the floors and the crusty seat and the crack dash i think we'll be in pretty good shape yeah but i think before we get in here and start throwing a lot of sparks let's get the seat out of the way mm-hmm all right [Music] oh check this out what would you find 50 51 tennessee plate holy cow that's old that's cool i love the it's the profile of tennessee that's neat hang that up somewhere yeah put that in your shop totally [Music] [Music] now there's no getting around the fact that the floor inside of this cab has seen its better days and that's something jimmy and i had noticed when we picked this thing up from the junkyard now we knew we'd have to replace some metal inside of the cap we just didn't know how much now after doing a little bit of digging and a lot of cleaning this is what we've come up with we're going to end up replacing the floor pans the floor braces the lower part of the kick panels the inner and outer rockers on both the drivers and the passenger side of the truck but as you can see here somebody has already replaced the outer rocker panel the wrong way first of all they never did install the inner rocker panel and secondly they never checked to see that the door would fit the opening so when jimmy and i picked this thing up from the junkyard the door would barely close and it wouldn't even latch but what does that all mean well before we get to cutting out and replacing any metal inside of this cab we got to make sure that the door fits the opening and that it will close now our doors may look a little bit different than when we took them off at the beginning of this project that's because we sent them out to our friends at wyotech an automotive vocational school where instructor mike fisher put his expertise to work doing some airbrushing and adding some gold leaf blending our logo and tagline onto the doors like it originally belonged there well that ain't gonna work [Music] now that the doors fit and they close we're going to add a brace to the opening to make sure that it stays in this position before we get on to cutting out the floors and the rockers [Music] well now it's time to cut and this could be pretty intimidating for a lot of you guys out there but it's pretty simple if you follow a couple easy steps the first thing we need to know is where to cut we picked up these extra large floor pans from brothers trucks now they're 25 inches wide 35 and a half inches long they're stamped to match the original floor pans plus they're made out of thick gauge sheet steel now these should fit perfectly inside of our tow truck the extra large design will help us cut all of that rusty metal away and get us to some nice clean metal so we can weld these things in plus brothers trucks also sent us all the other sheet metal pieces so we can clean up our entire tow truck [Music] now the reason i pulled these out is because they're going to tell us where to mark out our cut area if we just line up the new pan over the old area it's replacing well that will give us our outline and once we have an outline we'll come back and make a second mark about an inch and a half to two inches in from the first line this will give us our cut line and more importantly give us a flange to weld in the new floor pans [Music] after the break piece by piece we put this rusty rig back together again you're watching carcass we're back on the rust repair for the c30 tow truck but before we can install our floor pans that we got from brothers trucks there's a couple things we need to take care of like removing the old kick pan well now that we have all the rusty metal cut out of the cab it's time to start replacing it with all the new parts that we got from brothers trucks now we're going to do this in the reverse order that we took everything out first we're going to start by replacing the lower kick panel so it looks like it was installed from the factory then we'll grab the floor brace set that in position make sure it lines up with the cab mount then we're going to bring in the big floor pan and set that in place now we're not going to weld anything in until we know that everything fits we'll use the original fender mounting hole to help locate the kick pan clamping it into place for now we'll also clamp in the floor brace before bringing in the floor pan for a test fit now our new floor pans we got from brothers trucks fit really well but that may not always be the case so don't be afraid to grab a hammer or a dolly or even a screwdriver and help massage the new floor pan to match the old floor but for us in our case these things fit perfectly we're still not ready to weld these in quite yet because we have to take care of the inner and the outer rocker panel on this side of the truck [Music] yeah that fits pretty good we'll take the inner rocker panel out for now so we can cut the previously installed outer rocker panel free [Music] this will let us bring in our new outer rocker panel temporarily clamping it into place [Music] all right well we're finally ready to start welding in our floors but there's a couple different methods we could use and there's a couple different considerations to each one of those methods first method being we could come in lay the floor over the top of the old floor and weld up this entire seam second method is we could come back make a trace line cut out that piece of metal and then butt the new floor to the old floor weld that up solid and that would give us a nice clean finished look in the truck but we're not looking to restore this truck all we're looking to do is get rid of the old rusty metal and replace it with some new stuff and make it nice and strong again so there's one more method that we're going to use [Music] a third method to welding in these panels involves punching or drilling out a series of holes in each of our new panels [Music] then with our welder set up to match our 18 gauge material we can weld in all our other parts starting with our kick panel each hole gets filled in completely bonding the new metal to the existing substrate this is a repetitive process but this is similar to how these panels were originally installed from the factory [Music] and this rosette style of welding is the method we've chosen to install all of our panels and our floor panel all in all we have 250 rosette welds holding this new floor together but we're not done with this cab yet if you would like to follow along with this build check us out at powernationtv.com today on carcass we update the interior on our junkyard fine square body and we finish off the bed with a little fab and a new winch before hitting the road [Applause] [Applause] our 1977 tow truck may not look like it's made much of a transformation but below that rusty exterior we've made a lot of progress our goal with this junkyard find is to give it new life and get it back out on the road but with safety in mind there were big structural concerns with the rusted out frame on this truck and the floors in the cab weren't looking much better the only solution was to cut out the rust and reconstruct the rear end of the c30 chassis this took some careful measurements and a whole lot of welding but it made for a sturdy platform to affix our updated suspension and that reliable axle perfect awesome with the frame in good condition we shifted our focus to the front end of the vehicle we started with the power plant removing the old 305 and replacing it with a 350 chevy that makes 355 horsepower easily doubling what we had in there before with all that extra power we're going to need this truck to drive straight and all that playing the steering wheel wasn't gonna cut it so we upgraded the gearbox and the steering links up front this left us with only the cab being untouched we had a huge hole on the passenger side floor and we even discovered that parts that had been replaced weren't done right so we cut out a lot of the floor and called on brothers trucks to get some replacement pans for the cab with about 250 rosette welds we were finally finished replacing the floor in the cab and now it's time to call on brothers trucks one more time to finish off the interior we're gonna pull out the old dash and replace it with a new updated vinyl one we'll throw in a new seat and a mat to make this thing a comfy work truck again in the rear we'll drop in a new electric winch since the current one won't work with our upgraded transmission and finally we'll patch up the giant holes we made in the bed to accommodate the chassis fix we made earlier now we've chosen to go with brothers trucks for our interior refresh because they house thousands of high quality classic gmc and chevy truck parts from 1947 to 1987. and since our cab is in 1977 it seemed like a no-brainer now the dash inside of our tow truck looks like it has been there its entire life so we picked up a bunch of pieces to update the inside of our cab like a new dash pad that's made of foam and a high quality vinyl a new instrument bezel with a new lens so we can see our gauges again and a whole bunch of new gauges so we can give our truck that factory fresh look and finally we picked up a classic style steering wheel and some door seals to help keep the noise and the elements up now there's a couple pieces of the interior that we are going to keep so before we put anything together out here we're going to ditch that worn out interior [Music] to get to the instrument cluster we'll need to remove a few trim pieces including the instrument bezel [Music] the dash pad comes off next but this is one of the items that we'll come back to later now we can finally tackle the instrument cluster a few screws hold it into place but on the back side we'll need to unhook the electrical connection the oil pressure line and the speedometer cable lastly we'll use a steering wheel puller to remove the steering wheel before giving our column a rattle can paint job [Music] at the bench we're going to go ahead and install the new goodies we got from brothers trucks to gain access to our gauges we need to remove the front lens and the gauge bezel tackling the speedometer first this is a quick and easy replacement using all the existing hardware in fact all these gauges are all easy to replace each one fits in the old location using the existing electrical tabs and original hardware [Music] with our gauge cluster wrapped up we're about ready to install everything back in the truck but there's one thing that we want to transfer over from the original dash the original molding still looks great and we thought it would look good in our new vinyl dash that we got from brothers trucks before we put anything back in the cab of our tow truck we're gonna freshen up the floor with some truck bed coating this will go well with all the new trim pieces we'll be putting in here now we'll put everything back in the vehicle in the reverse order that it was taken out that means the instrument cluster is first we'll need to hook up the wiring harness the speedometer cable and we'll need to tighten down the oil pressure feed line so now the back of the dash needs to clip in up here oh like this like that oh that was simple enough yeah that's it right there with our vinyl dash in place we can add the instrument bezel it sits snug under the dash and against the lens [Music] to finish off our dash we'll add a new steering wheel we picked up from brothers trucks it's snug down with a 7 8 socket then we'll add the bracket for the horn button along with the cap one of the last pieces is a rubber floor mat which fits our floors nicely and the last piece to finish off the cab a brand new bench seat we picked up from summit racing there we go that finishes up our upgraded interior leaving us with a beautifully stitched seat a renewed dash plus an upgraded steering wheel and instrument cluster up next we fixed this mess out back with a little bit of fab work if you remember back when we worked on the chassis we cut two huge holes in the back of the bed the reason why we had to do that is because the rear spring shackles were actually welded to the back of the bed and we didn't address it at first but now that the truck is almost done we have to fix it so instead of just patching these holes or building a box to go around the shackle we're just going to cut off these three leftover sections and completely rebuild the back end using a similar material 3 16th steel so the first step is cutting to make this cut we're going to use our metco 20 volt grinder with a cut-off wheel now we aren't going to immediately plunge the grinder into this 316 steel we're going to first score a line creating a nice guide for us to follow when we come back around again with a final plunge cut there are a few safety tips when making cuts like this first we always orient the grinder so the disc is cutting away from us in this case it's making the cut in a downward direction this is not only safer but helps direct sparks away from you second when cutting metal or any material for that matter you need to be aware of stresses in the material when things separate that's a good thing but when stresses cause your material to pinch your cutting disc well that's where you can run into trouble lastly you should always watch where your feet are there's nothing worse than a broken toe from a hunk of metal that slips from your hand as you set it down with safety aside all we need to do is clean up our edges with a flap disc and we're left with a clean plate to form our back end we're going to use 316 steel to build out this rear end and that starts with cutting a 48 by 17 inch piece the first piece is what we'll build everything else off of so to secure it we'll tack it to the frame but we're placing the tacks in an easy location for the future owner to easily cut away later with that in place we can cut out the left piece with the same 3 16th steel plate we'll cut a 15 by 17 inch piece and fit it to the driver's side with that tacked in we can tackle the passenger side this will receive a number of tacks as well [Music] now that we're done with the main panels it's time to cap off the top with some smaller pieces to make it look complete we're going to make the top out of three separate pieces one for each end and one in the middle these pieces are going to be kind of irregular in shape so it'll take some time and test fitting to get it right so to start we're going to make some templates out of cardboard [Music] we traced our cardboard shapes on some more 316 steel and we cut them out of the bands off cutting on the inside edge of the line with it cut out we can test fit our piece [Music] and tack it in now projects like this don't always line up perfectly and some brute force is expected to close some minor gaps just be mindful of the material that you're using to help do this you don't want to melt something or have something catch on fire from the heat of the weld [Music] with our tougher pieces out of the way we have one more piece that's going to be about 39 and 7 8 inches long and it'll pretty much be a rectangle but because this edge i did a freehand cut on it'll take some grinding to get it to fit just right and also while i'm doing that i'm going to show you a little grinding trick to help you with butt welds we cut out a 39 by three and a quarter inch piece of 316 steel cleaning up the edge with a grinder [Music] gotta take a little bit there knowing where we need to trim back our piece to match the profile of the bed we'll grind back to our line and give it another test fit that looks pretty good so this plate is fitting pretty well now but there's one thing left that i have to do i'm going to put a chamfer on all the edges where there's going to be a butt weld and there's a reason for that once you weld over that it'll allow the weld to lay a little bit flatter and it'll look a lot cleaner something to note while you're welding if you're using magnets like we are here you're going to want to remove them when you're welding near them these things like to disrupt the arc and give you all kinds of headaches let me show you why we put a bevel on the pieces in a butt joint and to first illustrate that i'll show you an open corner joint an open corner joint is nice because there's a lot of area for the filler material to go and it gives us a nice line to follow when we're welding but with a normal butt joint we don't really have that benefit because when you try to weld it the filler material kind of builds up on top of it and it doesn't look that great so when we put a bevel on it it gives us a nice line to follow and it gives a good space for the filler material to go you'll notice as we weld up this butt joint the filler material caps off the beveled area nicely leaving a flatter profile than if we were just to butt the two pieces together this part of the project is nearly done and we have a ton of welding to do merging each gap with good strong welds [Music] rebuilding the chassis of this truck was necessary and it left us with a less than ideal situation but now with the back of this truck closed off we're almost ready to tow some cars coming up we yank out the old mechanical winch and replace it with an electric variant [Music] [Music] this truck is almost ready to hit the road again but we have to address one important feature to make this truck fully functional and that's the winch system the original winch on this truck was powered by a pto or power takeoff shaft coming off of the manual transmission since we swapped over to an automatic it doesn't have that feature so what we're going to do is replace this winch with an electric winch which is nice because all we have to worry about is a battery the original mechanical winch was controlled by these two levers in the back of the truck jimmy and i love the fact that they're still back here makes this truck pretty nostalgic but what we want to do is find a way to use these two levers to control our electric winch now we've got a little bit of investigative work to do before we figure this all out [Music] all right so red and white should put the winch out got it [Music] alright so this is what we have figured out if we jump the red and the white the winch goes out we jump the red and the green the winch comes back in and if we flip this switch and jump the white and the blue the compressor turns on just like that now all we gotta do is figure out how to put this in the truck [Music] that thing is so heavy [Music] can you grab that side you're good there yeah i think so oh okay come on he-man [Music] holy cow with our old winch gone we got to come up with a way to install our new winch that's going to be as simple as a couple of plates and a couple of gussets so what we're going to do is bolt these two brackets to our new winch we'll weld them onto the channel that the old winch came off of and then we're just going to weld on a couple gussets for some strength [Music] [Music] to make the original levers work in the back of the tow truck we're going to be using a set of switches that we got from autozone now these duralast switches are a basic on and off switch so when we push the button the winch will engage now these switches have a protective rubber coating on the back and a waterproof cap and they're reliable even under the harshest conditions so these switches will work great in the back of our tow truck when they're exposed to the elements [Music] [Music] [Applause] check this out this thing's going to be functional and it's gonna look cool too yeah dude nice job painting that to match the truck that's awesome [Music] all right hit it check this out we got a fully functional tow truck again and we're almost ready to hit the road ah that's a nice piece [Music] after the break we hit the road in our square body junkyard rescue and we're bound to get our hands dirty our tow truck is just about ready to hit the road but there's one little change that both jeremy and i wanted to make to the patina exterior we wanted to strip down the wheels to bare metal and give it a little rattle can refresh to make the outside look like they just came fresh from the factory and the tires that we chose to wrap them with are an armstrong true track ht that we got from tire streets they have a special engineered tread design that provides greater towing ability on the highway the curved profile of the tread also increases rigidity and there's a noise blocking bar on the tire shoulder that delays premature wear and results in a quieter ride [Music] wow look at that thing you ready to go yeah but if it's cool with you i think i'm gonna drive this time yeah that's fine awesome and i totally claimed this a parking spot oh that's neat [Music] well the truck is done and we're actually driving it now it drives out good it's got way more power than it did before yeah not that we could really base it off of much because we drove it onto the trailer but yeah i like it yeah me too [Music] it's safe it's definitely safer than it was before obviously this truck isn't worth fully restoring but you know if you want to make it drivable you know the chassis stuff and everything and putting floors in it that's really as far as you want to take it otherwise you know it's just kind of too much time investment for what you're gonna get out of it right so really the truck for what it was was worth putting some time and effort into to get it back on the road but to make it perfect just buy a better truck you just buy a better truck yeah i love the build love the idea that we pulled it out of the junkyard yeah and resurrected it if you will well the truck made it back with flying colors but what in the world who is parked in our spot i believe that's mr tommy well we can take care of that we got to tell trump come on back crank it [Music] we're good [Music] tow truck pretty convenient [Music] [Music] it's our parking spot now i guess yeah there's a sign there isn't there yeah right for more builds like this check out powernationtv.com

Channel: POWERNATION

Views: 2,826,683

Keywords: Car, PowerNation, howto, how-to, diy, automotive, cars, trucks, automobile, do it yourself, automobiles, auto, powerblock, 1977 Chevy C30, square body chevy, junkyard, tow truck, restoration, full build, carcass, c30 chevy

Id: OnUDI-Nm7oQ

Length: 85min 42sec (5142 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 19 2022