FULL Build: Suburban Gorilla - H1 Hummer Inspired Ultimate Off-Road Tow Rig

today ian and jesse have built their buggies now it's time to craft the ultimate tow rig to get them on and off the trail it's part one of project suburban gorilla welcome to extreme 4x4 you know it's hard to believe that we've been making this show for almost a year now and wow what a ride it's been even though we've had a crazy hectic schedule we have had so much fun building all these trucks like the hardcore no budget aluminum jeep the five thousand dollar budget cheap sheet the race steam baja style ranger that we dragged out of a wrecking yard and then the latest one the full tube chassis poison spider rock rod we even have the opportunity to get out of the shop and go to a couple of events these are the competition trails at jellico tennessee during a wee rock event this is ian and i's first time to be able to compete on an official course with official scoring when our buddy howard from rhino off road invited us for a celebrity rock crop so after some tips jesse climbed in the seat and took her first trip through the cones and driving these competition trails aren't as easy as it looks but the rhinos handle them with ease even when you hit some cones and although jesse knocked over a cone it was my turn then to climb in a rhino and hit the same trail under the same conditions and it worked great the rhino crawled over everything but when the rain came down and the mud started to get a little slick and you don't pay attention to your spotter you're gonna knock over a cone as well now driving those rhino buggies was a blast and we've had a great time wheeling everything else we've built so far but all of our projects have one thing in common before you can hit the trail they have to get there on a trailer which brings us to our newest project that we get requests for on our website all the time the ultimate tow rig we did all our research and this is what we came up with a 2006 hummer h1 alpha you don't get more extreme than this this thing turns heads all day long toes like a beast and the best thing is if something happens to your trail rig when it's out on the trail this thing is capable enough off-road to get in there and get it out for you the heart of the h1 is the powertrain 6.6 liter v8 turbocharged duramax diesel with 300 horsepower at 3000 rpm and 520 foot-pounds of torque at 600 rpm before all that power hits the ground it first has to travel through the h1 portal box and that's going to allow the drive axle to enter the wheel above the wheel center line and that's going to give this truck increased ground clearance as well as a gear reduction right at the hub now when you're talking gear reductions in one of these you got to talk about the transmission this thing's packing an allison 1000 that's a five-speed automatic transmission with a tow feature with a flip of a switch this thing can haul over nine thousand pounds and with a first gear ratio of three point one to one this thing ends up with a final crawl ratio of forty five point one to one and inside this truck you're gonna find all the creature comforts that you would find in a brand new suv rear ac power windows power locks leather seats there's only four of them what if we want to go wheeling with more than just three other people and when we head out we usually do but behind the wheel of this thing you feel like king of the road with a full complement of gauges switches for the lockers front and rear the ctis tire inflation this thing's a blast to drive but what if you want to build your own truck and you don't want a truck that looks just like your neighbor's truck well you can do exactly what we're gonna do we're gonna build our own like this one right here but a little different [Music] and it all starts with an 87 chevy suburban and we picked this up online for 600 bucks and then called the guys at 4x4 bodies they sent us this urban gorilla body kit now this is an all steel body it's 14 gauge then laser cut and then hand laying over a tubular substructure for strength now they have these in a bunch of different style they've got two door pickups soft top models and we chose this four door hard top so we could still have a little bit of a bed in the back and the best thing about this thing you don't need a great big fancy shop like we have here this kit is honestly designed to be done by the average guy in his garage all you need is a donor vehicle and one of these this complete body kit comes with everything from the fiberglass front end with the doors the quarter panels light kit wiper kit hinges latches basically everything that you're gonna need to make your donor vehicle into an h1 inspired truck so pretty much we're gonna save absolutely nothing because we're gonna be replacing it all with brand new stuff first thing you gotta do is make sure that everything that attaches the body to the frame is disconnected ah it's all right it's 12 volts we should unplug that okay now go up keep going keep going okay whoa good job with the body removed jesse and ian can start stripping the frame we're back on extreme 4x4 where we're in the process of tearing down this junkyard suburban so we can turn it into a humvee inspired tow monster step one's done with the body off and now we're going to strip all the factory body mount locations off the frame and anything else that we don't need which is pretty much everything so we can slide it under and find the new location for our new body mounts [Music] with the frame strip we can simply slide it underneath the body his body was designed with a really long firewall designed also for it to be cut out so we have clearance fire transmission so it's gonna cut it out the body mount brackets that come with the urban gorilla kit reuse the suburban rubber isolator and bolt assembly and we'll probably replace these later with new units once we get this thing final assembled now the body's sitting on some wood so we know it's at the right height above the frame rails and all we're going to do is mark the hole for this body mount then we can drill it bolt it in and then weld this piece to the frame when we were stripping down the frame i had to trim some of the rear frame rails off to get rid of the bumper but to be able to weld on the new bumper i'm going to have to cut more off or it's going to sit way out here that's going to look funny that's why it was only six hundred dollars [Music] with the rest of this drivetrain out we can start putting our attention towards this engine now the stock 350 that sat between these frame rails might be okay for a regular off-road truck but we want more and when you want ultimate power you might want to start looking into diesel performance engines they're big news lately and with gas prices you can't shake your head at horsepower ratings and torque curves that peak at 700 and still get 20 30 miles per gallon oh all right so the decision was made out with the gas in with the diesel but that led us on a real quest we had to find someone who was big into towing big and diesel performance and we knew that it was going to take more than just a fuel computer to fulfill our dreams in this truck and when you add up all those requirements the road leads you to gale bank's engineering when we called him with our idea he jumped on board and hooked us up with this gm duramax for our mock-up and then later we'll trade this engine for a brand new duramax full of all sorts of internal goodies like an upgraded crankshaft new connecting rods and new pistons then here at extreme we'll trade out the top end for some cnc cylinder heads and an upgraded twin turbo system all designed by gale banks engineering but the question everyone seems to ask is why is a heavy hitter hardcore diesel engine like this one better for towing than a lumpy old gas engine like that the answer is horsepower and torque curves we built this dodge sidewinder pickup with gale banks engineering and gail even spent some time at the extreme shop talking about the benefits of diesel power even though they require a different fuel source and higher compression ratios they're very similar to a gasoline engine you can modify them the same way if you look at the torque and the horsepower curves of a conventional gas engine you can see that the power increases as the rpm increases the diesel is very similar except it increases at a much more rapid rate and that's due to the engine design and its ability to produce more power at a lower rpm you'll also be able to see that the curve is more flat and higher at a lower rpm every vehicle requires a certain amount of power to take off and that's called road horsepower now you can also see that on this graph in a four-speed transmission the power peaks and then it drops off that's because the truck's gearing is forcing that rpm drop but as you speed up that drop is less dramatic because at higher gear ratios they're often more closer to each other allowing the truck to perform in its peak curve so the more gears you have the less violent that drop is going to be stay with us and we'll show you what transmission we picked to keep our truck running and its peak power curve welcome back to xtreme 4x4 where we're getting ready to shove a pretty serious drivetrain in between the frame rails of our urban gorilla project and a new drivetrain means new mounts so those factory crossmembers gotta go now the duramax diesel is a pretty healthy engine just in stock trim but by the time we get done with it here we're gonna be pushing some pretty serious numbers at that flywheel so we're gonna need a heavy duty transmission and you don't get any more heavy duty than the allison 1000 this is a full helical cut automatic transmission with five forward speeds a lock up torque converter two live ptos and computer controlled this transmission is capable of towing over 26 000 pounds and that's in stock trim now we created up this transmission and shipped it off to hill killer transmissions now they specialize in heavy-duty pulling and diesel performance transmissions and we told them the numbers that we expected to pull out of this duramax and the weight we're going to pull with our urban gorilla and they custom built this transmission using heavy duty kevlar clutches choline steels and a triple disc torque converter then they dynoed this thing out at a thousand horsepower and 1200 foot pounds of torque so we're comfortable in knowing that this transmission is going to be able to stand up to whatever this duramax puts through it not only is that drivetrain powerful but it's huge and for us to be able to fit in our turbos and our intercooler we're going to want to push that duramax back so what i'm going to have to do is make some modifications to the firewall by cutting out this huge chunk i set the interior fiberglass in place to get an idea of how much modification will be possible without affecting the passenger compartment [Music] then i built this new subframe out of one by one tubing and welded it to the urban gorilla floor for added support with the floor supported i will do a rough cut with the plasma cutter and i will clean up the cuts with the grinder and weld the seam with the mid custom engine will require a custom mount and after cutting some quarter inch plate i'll drill the mounting holes i will use these new prothane engine mount bushings inside some two inch quarter wall dom tubing with everything tacked together i can tig weld the entire engine mount now since the turbo system for this engine is going to be custom we're going to design that next time we're going to wait before we slip that between the frame rails that's all we have for you today so come back and play with us next week when we finish this drivetrain with our transfer case or should i say transfer case says and i think i got the name see suburban urban gorilla suburban gorilla that's right we'll see you next week bye now welcome to xtreme 4x4 you guys are gonna love what we have in store for you today yep our latest build is the ultimate tow rig and recovery vehicle using a hummer h1 alpha as inspiration we are taking this rusted out 87 suburban off its frame and by adding an all steel body from 4x4 bodies we're building a suburban gorilla can you tell he's excited we've already got the body on the frame with a few firewall modifications so we can squeeze in our duramax engine and our hill killer allison transmission today we're going to be working with our dual transfer cases and working on our custom turbo setup since the donor vehicle for this truck is an 87 suburban the first call we made when playing the four-wheel drive system was to off-road designs now they specialize in parts and information for gm k series full-size trucks or anyone who's running that type of running gear the product ord is most well known for is their transfer case doubler kit this package allows you to put two transfer cases together to end up within all helical gear multiple range cast iron case it comes with a billet 6061 t6 adapter housing all the gaskets all the hardware and a fully heat treated chrome molle shaft before we start bolting everything together let's have a look why this swap is so popular this is the range box portion of a new process 203 transfer case it originally had a giant chain drive section on the back of it to connect the transmission to the axles in constant four-wheel drive when you wanted four low you'd simply select the lever to engage this range box to give you that two to one gear ratio now the chain drive portion of this transfer case is weak and essentially useless so useless in fact when you start looking for a used one of these you'll find most guys just strip off this range box portion and ship only this part to save on costs and that's what we had done here this doubler will attach that range case to an mp205 one of the strongest factory cases out there this is a full cast iron unit with huge helical gears inside this one happens to be from a ford truck and when you start to source used parts it's a good idea to give off-road design a call first they gave us great advice on what we needed for our application including a two-inch up-rotation version of their doubler kit for better ground clearance can you help me yes thanks ready yep the old 205 needs some cleaning so into the blast cabinet it goes and it comes out looking almost new the first step of the 203 range box is to change the gear and shaft assembly and then we'll install the bearing into the doubler housing with the 205 cleaned off i can screw the studs into the housing a little loctite here is a good idea the 203 range box will need a new fill plug so i will change out the pto cover then i can bolt the doubler to the 203 range box then the 205 bolts to the doubler just like it would bolt on to the back of a transmission now shifting this unit is going to take three levers inside the cab of the truck but here are some of our options we can have the range case in high for a one to one ratio in either two or four wheel drive or we can shift the range case into low for a two to one ratio in two wheel drive and that's where the cool ranges come into gear when you got the range box in high and the 205 and the low you're gonna have a two to one ratio for each axle either front or rear independently and then if you put them both in low that's when you get your four to one ratios now all in all this is one of the strongest setups you can build using factory components but it is heavy so heavy in fact that ord suggests adding a second cross member to handle this kind of weight in the truck ready let's get the crane during the break our dynamic duo will marry the two transfer cases to the allison for more information on anything you've seen today check us out online extreme extreme4x4tv.com welcome back to extreme 4x4 in our suburban gorilla project we got our drivetrain in and now it's time for us to start planning our turbo setup now we could have left the stock 350 small block turbo 400 and transfer case in this truck and it would have made this job a lot easier but we're going to be asking a lot of this thing it's going to be a tow serious loads to the trail and then if something happens to one of our trail trucks when we're there this thing's got to go in and get it out and this is where we had to start calling in some favors our gm duramax diesel was designed with the turbocharging system from the factory but we're going to push it to the next level by building our own custom twin turbo set that's something we've never done before this is a little bit more in depth than just upgrading a factory turbo or installing a turbo kit we're actually going to have to design and build this whole thing from scratch so just like you guys would do at home we called up a friend to give us a hand now don't hate us because we have gale bank's cell phone number on our speed dial but this is the man with the plan he brought some goodies for us right yes i did what you got well first of all i've got bob robe with me he's our chief of design he'll be helping us mock up the system and then i've got a pair of twins here bank sidewinder turbos a pair of big head wastegates a pair of exhaust manifold castings some tubing flanges an extra large bank's technicolor intercooler and some really trick prototype big horse intake manifolds now we've got the engine sitting pretty much where we think it's going to land in between the frame rails so what do you think gail well i think this thing is big and i think it's going to be bad and with the duramax in here now we can lay out the twin turbo system and make sure that everything fits underneath the hood well let's build some turbos the intakes are going to be the tallest part of this engine we'll set them in place and then bring in the one-piece front end yep oh that's perfect yeah fat city we've got a lot of room and we get lots of space up here for the intercooler and and for the red i like how you say rad gear oh that's good so with the engine mounted this is a good point for us to begin our twin turbo setup and it all begins with our exhaust manifolds because the basic principle when it comes to turbos is the exhaust gas that exits out of the engine spins the turbine will to provide the boost yeah and since uh durability is our goal on this project we're going to stay with the factory cast manifolds instead of race style headers we're going to face the outlets forward so that they'll feed directly into the turbos and then we're going to go inside and extrude home and port these babies to kick up the flow the next step for us is to install the turbos themselves thanks jess now we're using the turbo from the 7.3 ford banks sidewinder system but of course instead of using just one on this engine we're using two you got it in now we built these turbochargers originally for good low speed response which would be great for this gorilla by using two of them we're going to have awesome top end power as well now bob has removed the snap ring on a compressor cover so we can aim it and point it where we need to how are we going to get the air back to the engine well i'm thinking we'll point the compressor outlet down route into the bottom of the intercooler flow to the top and then on into the intake manifold all we got to do now is mock these twin turbos into place with some flanges and some tubing now that we got our turbo positions knocked out stay with us while we add some more goodies to our turbo setup for more information on anything you've seen today check us out online extreme4x4tv.com welcome back to extreme 4x4 we're honored to have gail banks here to help us build the first ever twin turbo duramax well you guys built some radical vehicles on this program and we're pumped to be part of it banks and duramax i think we're more stoked to have you here because what you guys don't know is that as soon as we're done doing the r d on this setup gail banks is going to put it into production absolutely so is that what's next there joe yeah this is a big head wastegate our turbos come with wastegates built into them but we need a larger one for this high boost high output setup what a wastegate does is it bypasses a little exhaust past the turbine and controls the boost output of the turbocharger this one using the bigger head keeps a valve on the seat so it doesn't blow off prematurely which kind of limits torque so good advantage there now it looks like we're going to probably mount them under here and do a weldment out of stainless to mount the turbocharger and flange the wastegate right off of it with the stock bumper removed and the factory frame horns exposed we'll cover them up with the bumper cap that came in the urban gorilla kit now we can talk about a massive banks technicooler to build serious power you need serious air density and a large intercooler is just the ticket you've seen these guys driving down the road they get in the throttle big smoke they think they're cool well they're not cool smoke is power you can see but you can't use if you want to make the power in the engine you've got to cool the air you've got to compress the air so this gets us there but this is not the intercooler that we're using this is one of my big dodge intercoolers what we'll end up with is a pair of intercoolers as if you split this down the center one for each turbocharger this is obviously sitting too high too right yeah i think a good way to go here would be to section a hole into the top of this bumper drop it through and then open up the front of the bumper to allow airflow into the intercooler carry off all the heat we're going to produce bank's chief designer bob robe turns concepts into working prototypes he starts with the layout in this case a 6.6 liter duramax then adds bank's components by freehand sketching next exact measurements are taken which are later turned into layout or 3d cad drawings depending on the component eventually prototypes are cast which will be finished products for production tooling with all our measurements done we know that the air is going to leave the turbo through the tubing into the bottom of the intercooler up out the top and right back into these intake manifolds and speaking of manifolds here's the stock setup it's okay for the stock engine but a bit tortures and we'd nev never ever get the air through this that we want to make big power so we're changing the intake manifolds to a tuned banks big horse setup and here we've got eight individual intake ports all port matched to the cylinder head so the air flows nicely into the heads as compared to this cavity that just flows it in randomly i can't wait to see all these pieces that we mocked up today in their final form and these intake manifolds to come back as aluminum instead of plastic yeah that'll be cool but there's more we're going inside this engine we're going to the center line of the crankshaft and we're going to start out from there we're going to knife edge it we're going to polish it we're going to upgrade the rods pistons pins cam roller lifters push tubes rockers springs retainers will all be upgraded the heads will be cnc ported and the exhaust valves enlarge and the whole thing will be blue printed and balanced after that it's on to the engine dyno where we'll calibrate it then into the gorilla for a final tune using the bosch edc 16 engine controller and full fuel injection system we are going to punish those 38s what kind of numbers can we expect on this thing i'm looking for 750 horsepower and a thousand pound-feet of torque thousand thousand welcome back to extreme 4x4 where we've been working on the poison spider our first ever tube chassis all we got to do is tie up all the loose ends and this thing's ready for the trails but before this thing can hit the trail or anything else we build for that matter it's got to be towed there and that leads us to the other project we're working on today our tow monster gorilla we started this project with a rusty 87 suburban that we stripped to the frame and dropped on an urban gorilla body from 4x4 bodies then gail banks stopped by to help design the first ever twin turbo duramax engine then gale took all those mock-up pieces back to california and we'll have finished units back here in extreme soon now with the drivetrain pretty much nailed down for this tow monster it was time for us to turn our attention towards the suspension and it all starts in the rear with a new set of leaf springs to calculate how much lift we're going to need in these springs on the rear we set the vehicle on the ground and measured the height then we put it on the hoist and set it at the right height we wanted and calculated the difference between the stock and aftermarket tires we're going to use there's a two inch difference so we know we need a two inch lift in the back now we could accomplish that with a set of lift blocks like these from rough country but the problem with lift blocks is you can end up with a lot of axle wrap because of the force on them so we chose a set of completely re-arc leaf springs with teflon blocks in between the leaves to keep them from squeaking and rattling and we also grabbed a couple of rough country shocks the leaf spring bolts are seized to the sleeves hello i could heat them up to take them out but i'll just cut them off and replace them [Music] now you may have noticed our suburban gorilla doesn't have a rear quarter panel on it and the kit from 4x4 bodies comes with this fiberglass piece and it's trimmed to fit depending on the model but before we cut into this we want to make sure that the wheel sits good in the opening so we're going to just tape it in place for now once this is tightened up then we can just lower it down and see how it sits okay and we'll trim and secure the body panels to the gorilla while i fab up the floor for the spider oh so [Music] and i'm sorry if i ever yelled at you for scratching the paint now with the back of this truck on its wheels we can start to talk about the front suspension now the front of the suburban has a leaf sprung axle just like the rear great for strength not so good for the ride so we're going to convert this to a coil spring front axle with parallel bars and a patterned bar this is a five inch lift coil from rough country that you'd normally find in their dodge four by four kit now this is gonna mean we're gonna have to tap into this frame build an upper spring bucket a perch for the axle a bunch of link mounts and a lot of work so we're gonna save that for a different show but this is just the beginning of the frame modifications we have to do to this thing so for now the new tires and wheels on it and get the body off [Music] the question we keep getting asked about this drivetrain is how are we going to mount this 203 range case that's part of our ord doubler setup into the back of our hill killer allison 1000 transmission but it took some time and a call to advanced adapters because the allison has a 29 spline output and the 203 has a 32 spline input and advanced makes this sledge that's going to allow us to adapt the two of them together and with the shafts bolted up the next thing we have to do is work on the cases so advance also sent us this clocking ring for the 203 and one spacer to go behind the allison now we're probably going to end up running a couple of these but once this is together for now we can measure for the second with the clocking ring in place we can mark drill and tap the mounting holes then bolt it in place using a little lock tight on the bolts and then attach the whole thing to the back of the [Music] before we get allison drivetrain in we gotta box this frame for extra strength and then the next time we're wait oh the next time we're on this truck the frame will be fully boxed we'll take you step by step through the coil spring conversion on the front and we'll be putting the drivetrain in place as for the poison spider all we got to do is wait for all the plumbing stuff to come in and the drive shafts and that thing's done [Music] welcome to xtreme 4x4 and another day working on our suburban gorilla project our ultimate tow rig where this truck is going to be just as happy on the trail as it will be towing our trail rig now we started with an 87 chevy suburban then we got a hold of four by four bodies for one of their urban gorilla body kits granite we spent ten grand on that thing but we're going to be turning a lot more heads with that than we will be spending 10 grand fixing up that old rusty suburban now i know what you're thinking hey that truck's cool it looks neat it's got lots of power and i wish i had one to drive but i'm not building one but wait wait just wait a second remember the donor vehicle for this truck is an 87 suburban it's a solid axle gm truck there's thousands of these things out there on the road and the modifications we make to this frame apply to all those trucks like these two inch rough country leaf springs installed in the back last time and now this week on the front axle we're going to do a coil spring conversion but the first thing we're going to do today is an upgrade to any frame and that is boxing it in the whole point of boxing in a frame is to strengthen it by putting a plate on the inner side of the c channel that's going to stop the frame from flexing up and down and twisting on itself i've already stripped out all the brake lines and all the fuel lines but if you're not careful enough you might strip something out that's going to make the frame a lot weaker the part that jesse is talking about is a cross member like this one right here now we already pulled one out of the front of this frame to put the duramax in place and this one right here is in the way of our fuel tank this 21 gallon polyethylene tank came with our urban grower body kit and we want to lower it between the frame rails right here we could put it down in here but it's going to get in the way of our winch that we're going to put behind this back bumper so this cross member has to go but this adds a lot of strength to the frame just like rungs on a ladder this holds the frame together if you take too many of them out the frame's going to fall down so if we cut this out we got to replace it with something else with a temporary brace welded to the frame the factory cross member is removed holy cannoli that was hard boxing plates are welded to the frame an inch and 5 8 hole is drilled through both the boxing plate and the original frame and a new cross member is welded in place another trick you're going to want to remember when you're boxing in your frame is when you cut your boxing pieces you want to cut them a fraction of an inch shorter than the frame itself that way the weld will fall in the corner and weld on both pieces of metal whereas if you had it flush you're only going to have your weld on one piece of metal and it'll be weak and it'll break easily [Music] we need to replace the front engine cross member that we ripped out of here when we were mocking our duramax engine into place we're gonna build a new one very similar to the one we built on the back the only difference is this one will have a bend in it to go around the oil pan with the engine crossmember made we can go ahead and start making our transmission and transfer case cross members but first we got to get our engine in there and start making its mouse and since this whole setup here is huge it's actually bigger than any drivetrain i've ever seen before we're going to pull this transfer case off so we don't exceed the limit of our crane and just to give you an idea of exactly how big this thing is let's throw a tape on it here and we'll give you an idea right off the balancer this thing is about seven and a half feet long that's a big drive train [Music] and with the whole deal in position we can assemble our frame side motor mounts tack everything together then measure and build our support [Music] with the engine mounts built and tacked into place and the hill killer 1000 supported by that transmission cross member we can slip our transfer case back in place thanks sid now obviously this thing is super duper heavy that's why off-road design suggests we use a secondary cross member to support the weight of this double case because otherwise it's just going to be hanging off the flange of the transmission and that's going to have a tendency to break and i know there's a big space in here but we had to put it all together to figure out what size that space was so we had the right size of spacer now when you're building custom cross members like we are here it's a good idea to match up your mount material if you had a rubber engine mount like this rubber mount here and then poly mounts on the back of the transmission like we've done they can actually work against each other so when you rev that engine it rocks up and the back of the transmission is held tight you can actually crack the case right in half that's why we're going to be using prothanes new mount kits these poly mounts are different than your typical spring eye bushing the compound is a lot softer so it's going to absorb that engine vibration plus they come in a range of sizes [Music] welcome back to the extreme 4x4 in our suburban gorilla build or sug for short and with the frame box for strength we can turn our attention to the front suspension now as you guys know the donor truck for this vehicle is an 87 suburban and k-series trucks have these solid axle leaf sprung front axles and although they're great for strength and ride on the road is not that good so we decided to convert this truck to a coil spring front axle using a panhard and a four link we're going to be using these five inch lift springs that you would find for a dodge truck a set of 5100 series shocks per side and a set of control arms all from rough country suspensions when the big three automakers scrambled to build better riding 4-wheel dive trucks most oem started building independent front suspension systems dodge stuck to their guns and refined the coil spring solid axle pickup since dodge has some pretty good time invested in designing their front suspension we're going to borrow some measurements as well as some parts from the junkyard [Music] since we're going to be building this system from scratch we're going to be building one side at a time that way the passenger side leaf spring will be able to keep the axle in place while we build our spring buckets and our link mounts on this side scavenging a bucket like this from a wrecking yard is a great idea because not only does it have the upper and lower link mount in place it also has an alignment eccentric and a spot for a sway bar that we can add later now i know that everything we build here is going to be pretty much custom applied to this truck but you can take ideas like this and use them on your own rig using identical holes in both right and left frame rail we punched in some larger holes slid our new cross member into place this way we know it'll be square using the engine cross member and the one we just installed we'll bend a hoop to act as the new upper coil mount [Music] [Music] these are not the axles that will be used on the final truck so for now we'll just tack the lower mountain plates we measured the total height of this spring and then measured up off the bottom spring bucket to get a baseline now we expect the spring to compress two inches under the load of the drivetrain and we need two inch lift on the front axle to match the rear so we took this bucket and moved it down a total of four inches now that the spring buckets are taking shape we can go ahead and start locating the mounts for our trailing arms by using the measurements that we got off of that dodge stock truck the nice thing about rough country is that we can be using these arms for a lift anywhere between two to eight inches of lift when custom building any kind of mount for a suspension component it is a good idea to box it in for strength as well as add gussets from the mount to the frame over building a mount now with a little extra material will lessen the chance of it breaking later with everything held in place with some good strong tack welds we can turn our attention to the passenger side of the truck and then we can lower it down on its wheels and if the ride height looks good we can finish welding all the brackets and the buckets [Music] [Music] so [Music] so now that the frame is pretty much taken care of we can continue on some modifications so we can fit this monster drivetrain in our truck plus we want to get the body prep before we send it out to get coated inside and out the h1 that inspired the gorilla only had four seats and we needed more room than that so we're going to be using smittybilt's new outland leather seats with adjustable lumbar support they're fully reclinable and the center console has plenty of storage compartments and cup holders now the set comes with these three pieces but we're gonna install them with a twist we're gonna be installing two of those sets we'll have two bucket seats in the front and then we'll put both of the jump seats in the back along with the other two bucket seats so in total we're gonna have six seats when we need them this is a custom installation for this truck but you guys riding around on bench seats don't worry smittybilt has direct fit seat racks so almost any truck can be treated to their own set of leather buckets with our seats in place we can start to plant out our steering now we could have used the factory column from our donor truck but the whole thing was pretty long and it could have interfered with our turbos so we chose this full polished shorty column for my did it it's a tilt unit with built-in key and cruise control now we topped it with a grant silver tone carbon fiber look wheel and then to connect this to the box we'll use some borgeson full roller u-joints and some double d shafting hello seats jess comfy as you can see we got tons of work done today and well one of us is a little tired but that's all right but you know what we got a couple more things to finish before we send this body out we obviously gotta build this transmission tunnel in here and mount the steering column in its final spot but in the end this thing it just looks awesome what do you think jess yeah it looks great all right okay have a good nap i'll take care of this welcome to extreme 4x4 where today our ultimate tow monster the suburban gorilla gets its ultimate power plant that's right our diesel's been a long time in waiting from design to prototype to the finished product and today our bank's twin turbo duramax is going to be assembled right here on the show if you remember we called gail banks to help design the first ever twin turbo duramax diesel for our tow monster he came to the extreme shop with a pile of parts and his chief designer bob rowe together we built some prototype parts and then those parts came here to gale banks engineering in azusa california gail has been building performance engines for years and his skills really began to shine in the offshore boat racing world where his 930 horsepower big block chevy gas engines became the staple in winning boats then he made the switch from salt water to the salt flats where his creations set records and helps solidify his relationship with the original equipment manufacturers and now gale banks engineering is looking into the future and they see diesel fuel as the answer and they're using the diesel engines in some rather unique ways whether you've got a chevy afford or a dodge we're after it we're finding the limit we're finding how much those engines will do that come in those trucks i believe diesel is the future fuel especially in lighter vehicles to find the limit to find out how they'll endure we've been running a racing program pretty extensively here for the last five years we've built four different trucks to run in four different types of racing the sidewinder duramax type r this is a world-class road racing vehicle powered by a diesel engine twin turboed about 750 horsepower capable of close to 200 miles an hour which is plenty fast for a road racer this is the sidewinder d-max type d for drag race and what we're doing there is we're pushing the total horsepower limit of the duramax the white vehicle back here is a donahoe bank's off-road stock full class truck we've done pretty good with it so far it's a diesel running against gasoline everywhere else at the henderson 400 we took a second in the process we beat the truck that won the class in the baja 1000. the first one we did is this one right here and that's the bank sidewinder dakota this is the world's fastest pickup truck plus we drive it on the street guys go to mcdonald's with a damn thing now when it comes to building your duramax i gotta say i think you came to the right place for that too you guys are in for a treat cause most of you have seen inside of a gas engine but for some odd reason there's this big mystery about the inner workings of a diesel engine but not after today banks has taken everything he's learned about building killer gas motors and is applying it to the diesel like lightened rotating assemblies ported and polished cylinder heads and different cam profiles basically all the technology you'd use when you're building a killer small block or big block chevy and we're gonna take that and apply it to our gorilla motor and what we built today will soon be available turnkey from banks power and it all starts with this cast iron deep skirt duramax block this one has already been honed with a torque plate the cam bearings have been installed and the deck height checked this bottom end will be held in with some custom arp main studs the main caps can be dropped into place a little lube on the threads and then torch the spec the key to any successful engine build is obviously paying attention to the details like our crankshaft oil clearance that's why there's no crankshaft in it right now we're going to check the size of the crankshaft bore using this bore gauge we're simply going to slide it in place of the crankshaft main journal and compare the measurement to a measurement from the crankshaft if it's within specification we can go ahead lube up the bearings put the crankshaft in for good if it wasn't within specification the crankshaft would have to be machined and you'd have to get new bearings normally when you build a serious gas engine you replace the crankshaft but in a diesel engine these pieces are already pretty stout so here they've cleaned up the counterweights polished them up a little bit gave them some arrow wings to help shed the oil off that rotating mass now everybody say hi to david basham will you help me put this in this this is banks powers master engine [Music] builder [Music] now before we can go ahead and bolt this engine to the engine stand we have to install this flywheel housing on the back of the block not only will this adapt the block to our automatic gm transmission it also includes the coolant crossover for the coolant passages inside the block welcome back to extreme 4x4 we're here in asouza california at bankspower finishing our ultimate duramax engine with it on the stand and the crank in and the cam almost in all i got to do is put on the thrust plate and cam gear [Music] with the cam gear installed we can go ahead and put the oil pump drive on the front of the crankshaft and behind that is a reluctor ring that works as a crank trigger sends a signal to the engine's computer and once this is installed dave can go ahead and put the oil pump on now the computer for this engine is a bosch edc 16 controller it's the factory computer from the duramax diesel truck but just like the engine builders here at banks get inside the engine and change everything the engineers get inside these computers strip all the programming out and reprogram it depending on what kind of numbers they want to get out of their doormat we're back inside the engine room at banks power finishing up the short block on our soon to be twin turbo duramax getting to see the inner workings of the diesel engine is rare indeed and before we leave some solid poles off the dyno will let us know exactly what we've built the heart of any performance engine whether it be gas or diesel is obviously the pistons and the rods now this is where the difference between a gasoline part and a diesel part become very apparent this is a typical performance gasoline piston and this is the stock duramax piece aside from the fact that the duramax piece weighs almost twice as much as the gasoline one the real difference is in the design the diesel one has a combustion bowl cast right in the top of the cylinder this is where all the burning of the air and fuel happen in the diesel in a gasoline engine it's up in the combustion chamber inside the cylinder head now aside from that the parts are just a lot beefier you can tell this by looking at a gasoline piston pin versus a diesel piston pin now the assembly of the system goes together just like a gasoline engine with a floating wrist pin held in with circlips now we're building our engine specifically designed for reliability and durability and so in the long run power to us is sort of a secondary option but in the future if you were going to put together one of these duramaxes and power was your main goal you can get a set of rods like this from gale banks these are h-beam performance rods specifically designed for the duramax the bottom end torque means the front cover can be installed followed by the water pump the front seal and finally a newly designed fluid dampener balancer assembly next the oil pump pickup the pan and the rear sump now these particular heads have been ported and polished the intake valves have been replaced with severe duty stainless steel pieces there's been new chrome molle retainer plates and these custom valve springs developed by banks offer slightly higher clamping forces and allow for more lift without coil bind the duramax pistons will protrude from the block slightly you have to match this distance with the proper head gasket slide the head over the arp studs and torque and adjust everything to spec hmm dave's not done with his side yet working as fast as i can big difference between the diesel and the gas engine right here obviously a diesel motor has no spark plugs and the engine timing is controlled by the fuel delivery and it starts with an injection pump mounted directly to the motor now the duramax common rail injection system and pressures inside this fuel rail can reach well above 26 000 psi and that fuel is then injected into the combustion chamber through the injector that's controlled by the computer to give you an idea that's the duramax fuel injector and that's a typical car fuel injector that runs at about 40 to 60 psi now diesel fuel doesn't really like to start in the cold so to solve that problem you have what's called a glow plug in the combustion chamber this plug will glow red hot and heat up the combustion chamber when voltage is applied to it and it simply screws right into the head with a completed long block we can now install the finished pieces that started as prototypes and mock-ups only a few months ago with our duramax assembled and everything checked it's down the hallway to the dyno here banks engineers connect every sensor and meter imaginable break-in time four to six hours over a two-day period before going for peak power numbers so here's the deal we're going to build these twin turbo duramaxes two ways 600 horse basic crate motor and then a 750 to 800 horse that's been printed and we're going to use the power pda command center on both of those as standard so you have a basic calibration and then you can tune the power level from the pda all right gail you promised us a thousand pound feet of torque let's see what it can do all right let's pull on it three four five [Applause] [Music] [Applause] hey get a load of that horsepower well into the 70s seven well into the seven 725 horsepower and over 100 pound feet of torque we're back on the show and as you can see back home with the goods that's right inside this container is our banks power twin turbo duramax [Music] banks engineering kept their duramax for one extra week to test and tune it and get some good strong numbers off the dyno now to put into perspective for you a stock gm duramax only has 650 pound-feet of torque and about 360 horsepower and we smoke those numbers with 113 foot-pounds of torque and 770 horsepower now this engine is ready to go back in for one last mock-up stage wow [Music] if you remember the last time we worked on this frame we spent a lot of time building these super trick upper spring bucket we spent tons of time bending tube and welding upper coil buckets then we slipped in some rough country coil springs well obviously those coil buckets are gone we had to cut them out of the way with a cutting torch to make room for our turbos now i'm not gonna lie to you here we screwed up we honestly should have built the whole front suspension when we had the mock-up pieces here at extreme but they had to be sent back to gale banks to have the finished pieces done in time for the motor so we had to change our plan went back to the junkyard and got some stock dodge upper buckets and some stock height springs now the chevy frame is only four inches narrower so we just had to add some two inch spacers with all the measurements taken we can weld it in place with the engine and the buckets it also leads to another problem now we have to reconfigure our steering or just completely move this box and we also have to deal with the exhaust where the heck is it going to go but that's just another day wow welcome to extreme 4x4 this week we're working on our suburban gorilla the ultimate tow rig that's a hardcore custom truck full of lots of really cool one-off pieces but remember this thing just started as an 87 three-quarter ton suburban now we don't think that you're probably going to go out and build your own twin turbo duramax but you may be swapping out a gas engine for a diesel engine so these are just some of the tips and tricks you can use on your own project when we actually show you how to wire and plumb this thing later on and today's projects really do apply to almost any truck we're going to mount two different size winches to this frame plus we're gonna deal with some drivetrain protection underneath we'll put in the new fuel tank and then we'll take this blank canvas of a bumper and turn it into a work of art making it just as functionable as it will be looking good since this truck is really going to be used for some serious towing we had hill killer transmission put together this custom allison 1000 this is a top-of-the-line transmission for towing but because it's also going to see just as much time off-road we need to build some protection in for this deep sump pan and that's going to mean heavy duty skid plate and when it comes to skid plates you really do have some options if you drive a popular vehicle you can just go out and buy a heavy-duty aftermarket skid plate like this one but if you have drastically changed the location of your drivetrain like we have you're probably better off just building your own now building a custom skid plate on this truck is honestly not going to be that hard there's no body in the way so we can get in here and take all of our measurements but when you do something like this to your truck at home you got to remember there's only two kinds of off-road trucks ones that are broken and ones that are about to break so you got to be able to service components like the transmission the transfer case so your skid plate is going to have to be removable somehow there's a few things you're going to want to remember if you're building your own skid plate make sure that you're not welding the metal directly to the truck it'll give protection for everything underneath but if you need to service anything you're going to have to cut it out and another thing is make sure that you're not mounting it directly to the transmission or transfer case because one hard hit and you can create a lot more damage we are going to mount our skid plate directly to our cross member system with an additional mount at the front having a rosebud tip on your oxy acetylene torch will make this job a ton faster [Music] the allison 1000 has an external oil filter so to change the fluids with this skid plate should be pretty simple but if you had a system with an internal filter you're going to want to make this section of the skid plate removable so you can access in there all i got to do is cut and finish up this end and ian's gonna finish up the front [Music] now the front mount of this skid plate is very important you can see we mounted it on poly bushings just like the rest of the cross member for the whole drivetrain if we'd just taken the skid plate and welded it to the engine crossmember we'd actually be solid mounting the whole thing which is a big no-no when it comes to the drivetrain now you can see this plate still needs to be heated in the middle cut to the shape of these tubes and then fully welded but that's going to be a lot easier when the engine and transmission are out of the truck so we'll do it later a turbo motor whether it's gas or a diesel requires a few extra parts like an intercooler or for our case two intercoolers these high flow aluminum cores were spec by gale banks to cool our intake charge after traveling through the turbos now you may be asking yourself why two intercoolers well this engine really is two of everything it's got two separate intakes two turbos it really is two four-cylinder engines on one crankshaft now if we only had to mount one of these intercoolers we could drop it right down between the frame rails there and fit below the hood but with two there's a big thing in the way it's not gonna fit so where we're probably gonna have to cut out some of this frame right in here so it can drop down yeah that's what we're gonna have to do i think let's get to work [Music] when it comes time to mount your wench there may be some special considerations depending upon what mama you got now the suv is not lightweight by any means so we went out and got the biggest winch we could find this is the worn 16.5 ti this baby can pull 16 and a half thousand pounds with this 7 16 inch aircraft cable now your installation instructions should tell you what you should be mounting it on now this baby suggests that we need 5 16ths but the bumper isn't big enough so we're gonna have to add another plate they're gonna be low enough i think there should be so many room because we gotta make the covers it'll probably sit there really won't know to get that bumper done lock it into place i'm i'm almost done with it dude all right dudette just so we can continue fitting on the front i'll weld our winch mount plate to the bumper then drill for the mount i've already cut a hole for the control box and we'll match it on this side for air flow ready oh my god why'd you give me the heavy end this is the biggest and heaviest winch it's got to go towards you oh karumba now the reason why we mounted the wench right now is to be able to check for clearances so we can go ahead and finish up this front end and then once we get all the welding done on the frame rails we'll simply take this winch and drop it out the bottom and the bumper ready for coating rhino welcome back to extreme 4x4 and our ultimate tow monster the suburban gorilla or at least the frame the body was sent out to the local rhino lining dealer to get coated and as soon as we finish all the welding and the grinding on this thing it'll get sent out too now obviously the frame for this project has gone through a lot of drastic changes since it first came into the extreme shop a couple of months ago the whole drive train's been pushed back six inches and down a couple for better weight distribution the front axle has a coil spring conversion the entire frame has been boxed for strength and now the front bumper's been mounted with the killer worn winch the next step is to mount this fiberglass one-piece front end that came with the suburban gorilla kit before the body went out we took measurements to make sure it's going to sit in the right spot yeah all right there you could build this brush guard out of one long piece of tubing with multiple compound bends or you can build it in sections which is what we're doing and we're betting that with good finished welds it will look like one long piece when we're done with the mount in the center we're going to build the brush guard to wrap all the way around the sides and there will be another piece that goes up over the hood now when you're trying to get your bends close to your body panels it's really difficult because you have to do a lot of precise measuring and a lot of trips to the bender so what i'm going to do is i'm going to go ahead and mark this piece for the slugs now the point behind a slug is actually pretty simple if you brought another piece of tubing up to this one to join it and just did a butt weld you actually have a really weak joint it can fail so what we're going to do is install what's called a slug inside the tube we're going to drill it and plug weld it just to hold the slug in place that way if this tube ever gets hit the inner tube actually has to fail along with the outside piece it makes a joint like this really strong with holes drilled in the outer tube the slug is placed inside and plug welded you have that welder yep okay hold on let me make sure this side's level and straight hold on bring it in okay right oh right there's our mark okay one that's that's good yeah can you tuck it but don't burn my hand i'll try not to pull out just a little bit so i can get some penetration [Music] and good still yep [Music] ow my thumb but i'm okay that's good all right now we got a nice fit always remember that slugging something like a bumper or an engine cage is okay but when you're doing some main supportive part of your roll cage you might want to reconsider with the brush guard taking shape we can flip it over and do all the welding on the inside then later we're actually going to mount the fiberglass front end to the brush guard itself then the whole thing will flip in one piece now it's time to figure out what we're going to do with our off-road lights the body itself is going to have some roof mounted long distance illumination but we wanted some lower mounted flood lights so we went with these kc highlights flood driving lamps these 35 watt high intensity discharge beams will not only flood the entire ground in front of the truck but this hard coated lexon cover will protect the bulbs from any damage or any rocks or whatever so as soon as ian is done with that bumper we can go ahead and figure out where we're gonna put them so we'll see in just a little bit welcome back to extreme 4x4 with the front end of the suburban gorilla all welded up and looking great it's time to tear into the back end which means we can start cutting up the bumper we could leave it just the way it is but there's a few more things that we need to mount to it so it's time to start modifying wow that was a very fast drill bit [Music] the warren 16.5 ti winch on the front of the truck is going to work great but what if we need to winch something that's actually behind the truck in an ideal world we just turn the truck around but what if we can't the only logical solution another winch on the back to match the front we're going to mount the winch behind a tubular structure [Music] then we'll recess the body of the winch into the truck's bumper [Music] hold on one second now remember the last time we were trying to put a fuel tank in this truck we're actually going to be installing the 25 gallon plastic cell that came with the body kit and we thought you know 25 gallons exactly how far do you think we're going to get so we called lmc truck and we had an original 87 suburban 40 gallon steel tank shipped in and all we gotta now is figure out where to put it and it's only going to cost about 100 bucks to fill it up so once we figure that out all we got to do is finish grinding some stuff make sure all the welds are finished strip her down and this thing can go get coated right along with the body so the next time you see this thing the body will be back and hopefully by the end of that show we can put the two together like peanut butter and jam welcome to extreme 4x4 in the home stretch for the old suburban gorilla all the cutting and grinding is finished and the body just came back from our local rhino lighting dealer coated inside and out this has been a really long project starting with a thrashed 87 chevy suburban turning it into an ultimate tow rig and today we're going to take care of a lot of things on our list especially inside the body now this has been a huge project with a lot of custom tips and tricks and the best thing is that after today the body will be ready to go on the frame perfect grab the forklift cool [Music] not so jerky all right here claire [Music] now the inside of the gorilla is pretty big and today we're going to be taking care of the wiring harness and the rest of the interior goodies are going to fit inside the truck and a great way to do that is to lay everything out on the floor we simply measured the truck and this big box here is the floor this little rectangle up here is basically the firewall we'll have one wiring harness feed to go out to run our headlights in the front this little piece up here is going to be the part that runs up the b-pillar and then out the roof to the off-road lights back to the center of the roof for the dome lights anything else and then of course a feed out to the back and across to run both tail lights and by laying everything out and building your harness this way you won't have to be crawling all over the truck bumping your head hurting yourself and plus with this many parts a plan of attack is an absolute necessity so the layout begins headlights up front and a fan for the radiator plus two off-road lights on the bush guard a trans cooler with a built-in fan a lot of accessories means a lot of power needed so a dual battery kit the fuse block will be mounted behind the dash of course gauges and switch panels a gps unit power windows in each door switch panels to control everything roof mounted off-road lights tail lights and the seven pin connector for the trailer of course all work and no play is no fun at all so speakers for each door subs in the rear an amp for the subs a backup camera and dvd player three tv screens and of course a video game console now the harness for this truck is going to kind of be a hybrid between custom-made harness and pre-made harnesses now it's not that hard to do and when you have this much stuff to install it's almost a necessity it's going to take a little bit more time to control the regular stuff that comes in a truck like wipers and headlights we're going to use this painless performance universal 12 circuit harness and just install the fuse block up underneath the dash we will then add additional power feeds and wiring for the other accessories like the gps the amps the trailer wiring and the off-road lights to help with diagnosing problems later we'll take out all the fuses and or relays mark them on our schematics here for additional wiring from the harness and then we'll mount the parts to the truck now the urban gorilla body kit comes with all the lights needed for a regular truck obviously headlights the front tail lights in the back and marker lights in between and hooking them up is pretty simple because the painless harness already has everything loomed together but one thing you're gonna have to remember front of this truck is a fiberglass front end and whenever you mount lights directly to a piece of fiberglass you're gonna wanna add a ground wire into your harness because you can't just ground the light to the fiberglass won't work with a truck this big cargo is a given but when you run out of room on the inside the only other option you have is in the bed or in our case up on the roof this off-road unlimited defender roof rack is made of 16 gauge one-inch tubing and is pre-made for almost any truck out there plus all of the rack systems come with these little light tabs on both front and rear so we can go ahead and mount our casey highlight hids on the front and then the ballast will be mounted somewhere underneath [Music] now i have to put that up there but i'm too short to do it by myself thanks ready now you can easily see how a floor laid out like this let's just sort the wires into the sections of the truck now as back end all we did was run the tail light wires plus the wires for the winch control now the taillights themselves will mount into the body and we'll use removable connectors to hook them up in case we ever need to replace one then all we have to do is go through this entire pile of parts put power to what needs power ground to what needs ground and then we can put it all in the truck [Music] with the harness coming together we can continue to mount more parts onto the truck like the taillights [Music] [Music] you'll find out who your friends are based on who shows up to help [Music] now the rest of the audio in this truck is pretty intense but what else would you expect for the suburban gorilla and all the power feeds are ran and all starts with an in-dash icon tv 4100 dvd player now not only is this an am fm radio and cd player it also work as a video source for the rest of our gear now from there it's going to travel through a switcher into a motorized 7-inch screen for the passenger to watch when you want to watch a dvd this can switch between either the dvd the backup camera or even the game console that we put inside now we also had to run wires all through the harness down the floor up the b-pillar into the back now icon has won more awards than any other video manufacturer in the market so in the back seat you're just going to love watching twin overhead widescreen ultra high resolution monitors with built-in dome lights and then back here last part of the harness it's the backup camera we talked about all we got to do now is put all this stuff in the truck a lot of stuff welcome back to extreme 4x4 jesse and i are making progress on the gorilla one wire at a time and while she fabs up a mount for the roof light ballots my custom harness okay we're going to the truck now is ready to go in [Music] wow well ian hooks up all that wiring inside the truck i'm going to be working on the components and the doors these are fiberglass both inside and out and they come with the hardtop body kit all you have to do is figure out where you're going to mount everything so things like the speakers and the window switches it's all your choice but things like the window regulators and the door handles that's when it gets a little bit more precise with the location chosen for the speaker and the inside handle i'll trim the fiberglass on the outside of the door i'll do the same for the hinges and the handle the power window regulator is next it mounts in the center of the glass opening the last thing is the bear claw latch that mounts the outside of the doors and connects to the handles all right we got a nice clean look now all we got to do is weld the hinges to the truck and the doors are all ready to go on [Music] it's gonna hold sweet three more to go [Music] [Music] now if the front door is in place you can start to check the clearance for your dashboard now the urban gorilla kit comes with a complete fiberglass dash but like most guys who build these trucks we're going to come in here and build our own custom one just to sort of finish off the interior our dash is a pretty simple design and will be made at a pre-bent exhaust tubing the upper dash tube will be our starting point and a piece of 16 gauge steel attached to the truck the lower tube will be further from the firewall to give the dash an angle oh that hurts once all the tubes are tacked together we can pull it out later and weld it completely now once all this tube structure is welded we can remove the dash just by pulling the bolts out of this piece of 16 gauge steel here and the fasteners at the bottom of the down tubes but if you want to work behind the dash on some wiring or in our case install some gauges we made these fill panels of these pieces of aluminum all they'll do is bolt in place on some tabs and when you want to work on one spot just pull them out work away the last real custom piece to go in this body is going to be the headliner the rhino lining looks awesome and a lot of people think about fabric when it comes to headliners but the curve on this roof is perfect for an idea i had i'm gonna build a custom headliner with aluminum sheet and eight inch aluminum flat stock it should look pretty sick by the time i'm done so stick around because that's next along with gauges in the dash [Music] welcome back to extreme we're headed down to the tech center into the muscle car shop where they have a sheer big enough to cut our aluminum for the headliner [Music] gotta leave our mark really there's nothing to building an aluminum headliner oh hot aluminum shavings in my bra sorry guys there goes the ratings we'll even leave these fasteners exposed to make it look even cooler [Music] [Music] [Music] now this aluminum fill panel that will bolt into our dash is going to be filled with auto meter carbon fiber gauges now not only do these gauges light up with an intense light that the color is changeable depending on the interior of your vehicle they also just look great and they're really going to match the steering wheel that we put inside the gorilla now we've got full electric gauges so all we have to do is install the sensors in the engine it'll be easy to monitor and plus to make install even easier we're going to use painless performance's gauge wiring kit all we've got to do is hook this up and we'll have one plug to hook up in this harness all right the headliner's in the seats are in and i've already installed one of the overhead screens now these icon tv monitors have a bracket that'll go up inside the roof and then another bracket that'll mount onto that and then the screen will pop right in and sandwich right in between the roof all of a sudden there you go you got tvs in your ceiling dude now the front of our sub speaker box is made at a three-quarter inch mdf and we're going to skin it with this aluminum so it ends up matching the headliner [Music] so there you go guys the whole interior to the suburban gorilla is pretty much done and it looks awesome i mean for only spending 60 bucks on exhaust tubing the dash is perfect especially with all those extra components in there and that aluminum headliner jess when you first told me about it i thought you were crazy but guys so you pulled it off thing looks great and now the screens are in place it just it just sets the whole truck off and the coolest thing about those screens is is you can switch between video sources like that bam watch whatever you want even xtreme 4x4 live almost live no live bye now hello everyone and welcome to extreme 4x4 today we are finishing another project yes the suburban gorilla will be driving around by the end of the day and you're probably looking at it saying hey that looks a little different since the last time we saw it well as i'm sure you guys have figured out by now we work on all of our projects when the cameras aren't around and this one no different the last time we worked on this truck we had just finished up the interior with all the wiring and accessories then with the electrical completed we went to pick up our frame from the rhino lining dealer at rhino linings of middle tennessee they first prepped the frame with a primer before rolling it into the spray booth for a good coat of truck bed coating the coating is a rubberized sealant that will not only protect our frame from rust but it's also chemical and abrasion resistant once we have the frame back at extreme we put our mock-up axles back under and then lowered the body back onto the frame using new body isolators from lmc truck so with a rolling chassis again it was time to deal with the body and the paint now the suburban gorilla is being built to spend just as much time off the road as it is on so dropping like 10 grand on a hardcore custom paint job just didn't seem right so we loaded it up and took it to a local body shop where they painted it exotic gray with the new nano vir clear coat system this clear coat system is supposed to be more durable than the standard clear coats and it's supposed to shed dirt and mud off a lot easier but i guess we'll just have to find that out later then all we had to do was slip in our twin turbo duramat this is where all those mock-ups really pay off because the engine dropped in between the frame rails no major issue so that gets you caught up to what's been going on behind the scenes but what got us to this point right here it all started with the idea of building the ultimate tow rig for extreme 4x4 we shopped around and found our inspiration 2006 hummer alpha h1 but can you say sticker shock so we had an idea what if we built our own h1 inspired truck that's even better than the hummer version [Music] so it all started with a thrashed 87 suburban that we dragged into the shop and stripped to the bare frame we converted the front suspension to a four length with coil springs and modified the body to fit our twin turbo duramax allison 1000 transmission and mp203 205 combo and when it came time to build the duramax the only place to go was gale banks engineering in asusa california where we built our engine and ran it on the dyno the final results 1300 pound-feet of torque and 770 horsepower with all the fab work finished and the body back from coding it was time for the most complex wiring harness ever 26 circuits in all with custom touches like three tvs a backup camera dvd player hid off-road lights and of course all the normal circuits found in a truck so now you're caught up and by the end of the day this thing will be out on the road and on the trails and it's gonna be a blast now the drivetrain in this truck no question it's insane it's over eight feet long and we're stuffing all the power through the same allison 1000 that you find in hummer h1 but instead of using an aluminum transfer case we're using a dual cast iron full gear setup arguably one of the strongest dual case setups ever off-road design supplied us the triple stick shifter to control their doubler setup we chose the floor mount system because of the location of our trans but the allison 1000 is a fully computer controlled trend and powertrain control solutions just released a standalone controller for this model pcs got its start building standalone efi systems and seeing the trend of computer-controlled transmissions being installed in almost everything they now make controllers for all popular models the suburban gorilla was built for both function and comfort so of course we gotta have heating and air conditioning we went with the elite fresh air system from hot rod air not only can we pull in fresh air from the outside but we can re-circulate the air that's inside the cabin we also had a lot of options as far as piecing together stock parts but this turns out that it's much cheaper and easier to install once the condenser is mounted behind the grille the unit itself is installed into the truck this unit has both cooling and heating and a billet firewall bulkhead connector will help clean up the install banks engineering built all the accessory brackets for our d-max and once the lines are connected from the ac compressor to the bulkhead the air conditioning system is ready to roll now our brake system from vanco power brakes and steering system from west texas off-road are going to work hand-in-hand with each other and that's because we're using hydro boost brakes now hydro boost is not new technology and the principle is pretty easy to understand it uses the pressure from the power steering pump to work as the pedal assist inside the master and think of it this way a typical vacuum assist brake system puts out between a thousand to sixteen hundred psi while the hydra boost kit maxes out at well over three thousand the urban gorilla body has a flat firewall so we picked up a used brake pedal assembly from a cj-7g and since vanco has a bolt-in replacement kit for jeeps it made choosing our master cylinder setup quick and easy now the steering on this truck is a pretty typical swap for a k-series gm we've replaced the four-wheel drive box with this two-wheel drive unit so we can have crossover steering instead of the typical push pull you'd find on this type of truck plus we'll be using hydraulic ram assist to help with the larger tires but we're not going to install that cylinder until we get the actual axles underneath the truck that's gonna happen later stay with us hey everyone welcome back to extreme and the completion of our suburban gorilla project [Music] now we still have a ton of parts to put back on this truck after stripping it down for coating but by the end of today you're going to hear this gorilla roar to life the truck has been rolling around on mock-up axles until today but we had put on our wheels and tires ahead of time so we could determine our ride height now we wanted a tire that's considered a tweeny that's comfortable on-road yet capable off-road and this 38 by 15 and a half mickey thompson mtz is that tire it's radial construction is perfect for on-road but its aggressive lug pattern will still give us off-road traction plus it's a d low rating which is perfect for towing exactly what we built that truck for now we wrap these tires around a set of classic two wheels also from mickey thompson 20 by tens now we're using a 20 inch rim for a couple of different reasons we needed to run a 38 inch tall tire on the gorilla to fill out the wheel well as well as give us good ground clearance but if we run with a smaller diameter rim we would have had a big sidewall that could possibly float on us we had a trailer on the back so the 20 inch wheel we end up with a nice size sidewall really reasonable on the road and then plus we need this 20 inch rim to clear the brakes we're going to be sticking on that truck later now the coolest part about this tire and wheel setup is what you don't see the h1 that inspired our gorilla had internal bead locks so of course we got to have them too inside each and every one of our tires is a stone internal bead lock it's an inflatable inner structure that locks in the inner and the outer bead so your tire can't fall off your wheel plus it's dot approved and competition tested now installing this bead lock system may require moving or at the very least adding a secondary valve stem to your rim like we have to do to our spare here that's all right we're going to do that anyway because we're going to be installing power tanks new monster valves on all four wheels these wheels will allow us to air down our 38 inch tires in less than half the time as a conventional valve stem and you guessed it because their monster size will be able to fill up that 38 inch tire using their power tank co2 tank thanks to the compressed air that's blood off the co2 through the regulator with the truck in the air we're gonna go ahead and install the exhaust first finding a place for the muffler and then mounting it securely then we can start at the turbos and work our way back we're using three inch stainless steel primary tubes into a three and a half inch cherry bomb metal cap now before we went ahead and finished out our exhaust we already installed our 40 gallon fuel tank make sure we had clearance for everything and obviously as you saw we had to bring the tailpipe out through the fender well and down through this back part here and with the fuel lines attached to the tank we're going to go ahead and install this holley black fuel pump onto the frame rail now this fuel pump will deliver a regulated 10 psi charge to the back of the lift pump on the duramax [Music] now it's time to head under the hood the first thing to build is a battery box to hold our dual agv batteries [Music] once it's fully welded it will get a coat of paint before being mounted to the firewall stay with us and we'll be right back [Music] welcome back to the extreme shop where ian and jesse are putting the finishing touches on their suburban gorilla when you take a closer look under the hood you can see that the engine is far from being finished but we are so close but right now we got a lot of tubing we need to deal with now the key to building power in our duramax is obviously a cooler denser air charge and although it would be easier just to come out of the turbo and right into the intake we'd be robbing ourselves of tons of power so right here on the front bumper we've got to put together a stack of heat exchangers that whole pile is going to start with the radiator this is a unit from a 2005 duramax pickup that we've already mounted two oil coolers on one for the transmission and one for the power steering fluid next close the air conditioning condenser and then the two intercoolers [Music] with everything mocked into place you can get an idea of all the tubes we have to make the intake charge will go from the turbo into the intercooler out of the top of the intercooler and into the intake and since we have two turbos and two intakes it means four boost tubes in total the tubing is made from three inch stainless exhaust pieces that came from banks it came as a big box of bends that we're cutting up to build each tube the most important thing to remember is to not compromise the bends in the tubes this will restrict airflow that means making sure that all the angle pieces meet square so you're not filling in the gaps since we now have a wicked powder x powder coating booth in the tech center we're going to coat the outside of our tubes red to match our intake once the powder is sprayed on the tubes are baked in a 400 degree oven for 10 minutes [Music] oh shiny red [Music] our crate engine came with all the wiring it needed to make it run including the bosch ecu the glow plug timer and the relay box i know this looks like a complicated mess but really all we need is 12 volt constant and switch power to the feeds now as i'm sure you guys have figured out by now unfortunately there is no way we're going to get the gorilla on the road today as you diesel guys know it can take a couple of hours just to prime the fuel rail in our duramax to get the thing running and besides the trucks still sit on its mock-up axles sometimes there's just not enough time in the day but speaking of axles the axles for this truck just showed up this dodge dana 60 and corporate 14 bolt were built by mad four-wheel drive and delivered about 10 minutes ago but unfortunately we've run out of time so we'll give you all the info on these axles next time when we're slinging them under the gorilla we'll see you then hey guys this is it the day that i know we've been waiting for and i'm sure you have too yep call it the finale the button up stephanie completion what else safety maybe the putting to bed of a project basically by the end of today everything on the suburban gorilla will be finished things like the cooler lines air filter the intake tubing steering linkages the axles which show what we're talking about now for the ultimate tow rig we of course had to have the ultimate axles now starting at the wheels we have wilwood's six piston calipers and massive 16 inch rotors all mounted on a used 14 bolt that mad four wheel drive completely tore down and stuffed with 456 gears an arb locker and 35 spline axles now the front axle started life as a 99 dodge three quarter ton dana 60. and as you guys know those axles have a two-piece passenger side axle shaft with a centerline axle disconnect to disconnect it from four-wheel drive so to clean things up and make it stronger mad four-wheel drive basically pulled that whole tube out of the housing and replaced it so we could run a single piece axle shaft of the passenger side making it stronger but the upgrades didn't stop there the dodge axle also uses unit bearings for wheel bearing something like this now the downfall of these is they're non-serviceable so when they wear out you've got to replace them at well over 100 bucks and when you run oversized wheels and tires these things wear out a lot more regularly so we went ahead and they installed a dynatrac unit bearing elimination kit that converts the front end to the older style paper roller bearing two wheel bearings one on the outside one on the middle that you can rebuild if you need to plus freewheeling hubs and then the same as the rear wheel wood six piston calipers and 16 inch rotors they're actually from a hummer h2 big brake kit and basically help pull this thing down off highway speeds especially when it's pulling a big trailer considering that we started with a pretty torn up 87 suburban we look towards a hummer h1 for both style and mechanical inspiration the result one badass truck getting here was a huge undertaking with a ton of one-off parts like our twin turbo duramax all the super cool components inside and not to mention all of the wiring but in the end it's the little things that take forever like the air intakes for our twin turbos originally we thought about mounting an air cleaner up through the hood kind of like a typical h1 but that looks silly so then we thought what about mounting the air cleaner over here by the battery box but we realized it's just gonna eat a whole bunch of mud and dirt off that front tire who likes to eat dirt so then we found that if we take an elbow cleverly twist it towards the front of the truck we can mount the air cleaner lots of fresh air off the grill maybe a shield to keep it from getting dirty and only when it's cleverly twisted will it really work the inlet tubing is made with four inch stainless steel pieces and now that it's all welded up all we have to do is snake it past the radiator and onto the two turbos that is cleverly twisted [Music] now if you remember we replaced our typical four-wheel drive steering box you'd find on a k-series truck with a two-wheel drive box conversion there's a couple things for us let's just have crossover steering so fewer moving parts plus the four-wheel drive box would have gotten in the way of our coil spring conversion now we also moved the box up and back a couple of inches towards the firewall to make room for our front bumper now all this means custom steering shaft you should try to keep at least half an inch of clearance around the steering shaft in our case we have to clear the spring tower and the turbo then through the firewall where we'll hook it up to the steering column the gorilla requires a lot of hydraulic line for the power steering the hydro boost brake and of course the hydraulic ram assist now you can go ahead and have some lines built with these crimp on fittings or you can go ahead and build your own using earl's dash 6 steering line and their high pressure steel fittings [Music] the allison 1000 transmission we put in this truck was obviously the best choice for towing and heavy duty applications but the problem is the model is so new that nobody is making parts to support this type of transmission and with the cooler lines we had a real problem the stock lines use a steel line 5 8 of an inch with a quick connector and this quick connector goes into a coupler in both the radiator and the transmission housing but this thread is an m22 nobody makes an adapter for this thread pitch so what we're going to have to do is cut up a steel line use this coupler and a tube nut and sleeve to make it all work together with the line cut and the tube sleeve and nut in place we'll flare it with a 37 degree flaring tool now this is going to allow us to adapt our gm steel lines to our dash 10 braided hose but adapting the shifter took a little bit more work although the allison 1000 does have five forward shifting gears the manual valve only has four detents just like a 700 r4 so that's what we did we went ahead and modified a 700 r4 shifter cable to mount off the pto cover right here on the other side we went ahead and installed this hurst quarter shifter because the gate locks are easy to control with this large lever and not to mention this handle looks pretty beefy what started as a small annoyance in our drive train turned into a huge endeavor our allison 1000 transmission will not change gears if it doesn't know how fast the output shaft of our transfer case is turning the problem we have there is the 205 transfer case was never offered with an electronic speed sensor so we had to invent something we called the guys at advanced adapters and had them send us one of their universal reluctor ring and speed sensor kits now this is designed to fit a 700 r4 transmission now the output shaft on our 205 is a lot larger so we removed the stock plastic speedo gear and had the output shaft machined down by a local machine shop in order to accept the reluctant ring itself now we have a reluctant ring mount we need to mount the speed sensor so we pulled the rear housing off the transfer case they fly cut it drilled it and tapped it and that way we can screw the speed sensor in and set it to the correct distance away from that reluctant ring and once we put this housing on the back of the transfer case we'll be good to go while we're at it we're going to update the output flanges on both front and rear to these 1350 units we got from quad 4x4 as well let's install some dynotech 3-inch heavy-duty drive shafts you know the end is near when the fluids are going in but when we're always out on the road people ask us how did you get that shifter to work or how did you get that throttle position switch to fit on that motor so that's what we're doing today while we finish up this project we're answering some of those questions that you guys have for us like the power feeds to the rear mounted winch when we mounted this 12 000 pound winch it came with power feeds that are about six feet long but what do you do when the battery is over 20 feet away you obviously need new cable so we're replacing this with street wires zero gauge cable and attachable end pieces now there's a couple of benefits here number one we can cut it to length off of a 50 foot roll number two there's less resistance in this cable so it's gonna be less voltage drop across that distance and that's because of the stranding inside the cable now a lot of people think that electricity flows through the copper inside a cable but it doesn't it actually travels on top of it so when you have a multi-strand cable like this there's just less resistance more places for the electrons to flow it's just like adding more lanes to the freeway during rush hour radiator hoses can be complicated there are aftermarket hose kits like this metal one with an adapter or even a rubber universal fit hose but we wanted to go with an oem style and there's a couple ways you can do that in the custom world you can take a welding rod and bend it in the shape that you need it to go take it to the parts store and match it to the closest hose that fits or when you're at the parts store just ask if you can buy a bunch of hoses and return the ones that you didn't use which is exactly what we did with our upper hose now the 2005 duramax radiator is a closed cooling system which means it doesn't have a cap in it so we went ahead and mounted this afco recovery tank you're going to want to make sure that you mount it as the highest point in the entire system now the guys at mad four-wheel drive didn't have any heavy-duty diff covers available for axles so they shipped them here with just the stock stamped steel pieces and if we back into a rock with these on the trail could possibly damage the gear set the guys at great lakes off-road hooked us up with these heavy-duty tread plate units that'll definitely protect everything inside of our axle and with this last little piece taken care of we're ready to hook this beast up to the trailer now we stepped out of the shop into the power block tech center to finish up another project today the ultimate trailer because if the ultimate tow rig is going to hit the road it has to have something to pull and if you remember this thing started as just a pile of steel and now it's a pretty awesome looking 26 foot gooseneck trailer and today we're going to be tackling all the wiring for the lights although that seems like a big job our blueprints actually came with a complete wiring schematic so we're going to do is follow this mount the junction box up on the gooseneck easy as pie we held off on installing this upper cross member and tail today for a couple of reasons one is we wanted to make sure that the height of the gooseneck was the correct height for the gorilla and two we wanted to make sure that the winch was going to actually clear the camper thanks daniel now this worn 4700 workhorse winch is going to be mounted to the center of this cross member now the breakaway box for the electric brakes includes this small 12-volt battery that gets charged when hooked up to the truck but we're going to use this agm deep cycle battery instead that way we can power the winch and still get that 12-volt source just in case the trailer decides to break away from the truck lights turn signals oh yeah [Music] [Music] well there you have it guys the suburban gorilla our ultimate tow rig is buttoned up and the ultimate trailer is finished and the package is ready to rock now this has not been an easy project tons of one-of-a-kind parts and a lot of work went into this thing and i'm sure the question all of you guys are dying to ask is was it worth it well let's have a look and see what we have here as a total package a wild looking one-of-a-kind truck powered by a monster twin-turbo d-max allison 1000 and triple stick transfer case combo bullet proof axles front and rear and 38 inch tires basically an extreme package for an extreme show and that's exactly what we're gonna do next time take the whole thing out and test it we'll haul on the highway we'll camp at the trail and then we'll pull a dead vehicle off the trail with our tow rig and then we're gonna haul the whole thing back home i know i can't wait i'm sure you can't [Music] either hey everybody welcome to extreme 4x4 and as i'm sure you figured out we're not in the shop and we're not on the trail we're behind the wheel of our ultimate tow rig the suburban gorilla now you've seen jesse and i work on this thing for the past two season and today is the day that you find out if it's all worth it we're going to test this thing in all the areas that we built it for towing on the highway riding on the trail recovering dead vehicles from the trail and even just out on its own as a daily driver but before we start that let's get a look at where it all started our ultimate tow beast began as an 87 suburban that spent its days as a field unit for the georgia department of agriculture keep going up we traded 600 bucks for basically a frame and a vin number and now it's a one-of-a-kind tow rig with the looks to turn heads everywhere it goes i mean when was the last time you saw an h1 with a gooseneck behind it and with our killer banks twin turbo d-max under the hood it has the power to tow whatever we need plus this rig is equipped to head into the trail now gail banks is known as the no black smoke guy but the issue we have here is space really limits the size of our intercoolers so we don't have that ideal fuel to air ratio but at the same time it's kind of cool to have all that black smoke coming out the back isn't it keep the tailgaters off and now that we have our 26 foot gooseneck hooked up to the back one of our buggies strapped down it's time to test this truck's primary duty towing now driving with a gooseneck does take some getting used to because your rear wheels don't track the same as the truck but it does help you get in and out of tight macros a little bit easier with your load probably the biggest thing you got to worry about when you're pulling a trailer this thing is merging with traffic but really with all the power underneath the hood of this thing you just got to turn it on and hold on oh yeah 76 miles an hour before the end of the on-ramp now that is not only a good performing truck it's a little bit safer because we're up to merge with traffic going slower acceleration is only half of what towing is all about we're going to throw out the anchor at some half decent speed see how our six piston will wood brakes 16-inch rotors and bandco hydro boost brake setup can handle this huge package [Music] that works it works indeed pretty much the only thing we have to work on right now is the shifting and the transmission it's a little too firm now that's better than a sloppy shift where the clutches are actually burning up but at the same time you don't want it shifting so hard you think you're gonna break the drive shaft in half now really the only way to do that is we're gonna have to slowly calibrate this transmission computer just get used to this motor and this drivetrain all it takes is time while we're here getting gas we thought why not go ahead and weigh this thing and see how much it actually weighs as a total package my guess i'm gonna guess just under ten thousand pounds my truck isn't big enough hold on first way reway first wayne hello come on thank you sir [Music] now we get to go see how much we weigh i was way off what were you here well i was guessing well over 10 so i guess i could still say that i'm pretty darn close uh how do you want to do it well let's go gross weight whole package the door all right well uh hop down here tommy boy um we got a little wager going okay what what number are you at uh 1203. what number are you at 13 2. dude you guys are wrong we are a total weight of 18 700 pounds no wonder it's working pretty hard on the highway you keep you get to keep your 10 bucks [Applause] coming up our monster tow rig boldly goes where no nine-ton package has gone before will it pass the trail test find out welcome back to extreme and our payoff day for the suburban gorilla toby so far so good as we're making the 50-mile highway trip to one of our favorite off-road parks we added all the serious off-road stuff to this truck like air lockers low gearing 38 inch tall tires to get it into the trail and recover vehicles if needed but as an added bonus we can pretty much haul our gooseneck anywhere we want all right we picked our spot on the top of the hill now it's time to set this thing up don't just be looking at it come on set my trailer up come on vote tommy i'll be right here someone get me a red bull another day at work that should be good right about there tom asked me how many man hours were in the truck and i added them up there night that made me sad there's about 750 man hours in the truck in the trailer 22 months to build a start to finish including the trailer on the truck uh and uh not to mention that there was 10 other vehicles built in between still a lot of work a lot of work but it was worth it and with our extreme t-shirt flag flying and everything set up on top of the hill let's check out our scorpion camper now this truly is luxury when you're at the trail i mean come on look at this we've got a fridge to keep our food and our drinks cold we got a full kitchen with a sink a stove and an oven in case the campfire is rained out and we even have a toilet and a shower just to wash off a day's worth of grind and we're still trying to find a spot to mine our 50-inch plasma screen tv but for now a smaller window into the off-road world will have to do let's go for wheeling the boys tangled a poison spider in a web it can't get out of which means gorilla to the rescue stay tuned we're back on extreme with the final installment of our suburban gorilla project we've proven this rig has the power to pull and our twin turbo duramax had no trouble getting our 18 000 pound package to the top of this hill but that's only half the story this rig's got it where it counts when we're talking about off-road large tires big brakes lifted suspension chromoly axle shafts this gorilla is built for off-road recovery as well all right will it make it it's the name of one of our favorite trails where we're going to try and intentionally flog our poison spider [Music] [Music] rolling the spider on its side is easier said than done for brandon and suzuki it happens every left turn [Applause] i don't think i can drive out of this one top don't jump on me well now we have a situation where normally if you're wheeling with your buddies one of them would probably have a winch be able to flip you back over but what if you weren't that's we built the gorilla for that's what we're gonna test next we're back on extreme and the conclusion of what has been our most ambitious truck build ever quench him out in the last phase of our suburban gorilla payoff we'll test its ability to recover a rig on the trail namely our poison spider which we intentionally rolled earlier going to save the spider the dual 203 205 transfer case combo was the ideal ticket for this truck with gearing options of medium low 2 1 and ultra low 4 1 you can put that 1300 pound feet of torque to work on the trails all that twisting motion and power on the chassis does make for some interesting sounds [Music] each part of this drivetrain was planned to eliminate weak links 38 inch tall tires for added ground clearance full gear cast iron transfer cases for increased strength 35 spline chrome moly superior axle shafts and aux joints to prevent axle braking plus the power from the twin turbo duramax all in an effort to build a tow rig that can handle any trail you can throw out as long as it's wide enough to fit the width of the truck eight foot six inches now this is why we put two winches on this truck one on the back and one on the front because i can't turn around now this thing can haul 12 000 pounds since our total rig as we waited today was eighteen thousand we know that we're dealing with some serious weight now the spider itself it's only about four grand so you have no problem putting that sucker back on its wheels we'll winch it up get the high lift out hold the pressure on it with the high left take the winch off and then we should be able to back it out or lower it down or something i was gonna say throw it over hook on the far side and i'll better lift the whole thing up hey tommy yo how about you drop it in gear and i'll winch it and see if you can get the rest of the way up yep all right getting in my truck here we go even the gorilla [Music] recovered test number three pass great recovery tommy thanks bro now there you go the suburban gorilla has shown that it can do everything we built it for toes great on the highway works great as a daily driver it's a little bit of a beast but not that you wouldn't want it to be and it works as an awesome trail recovery vehicle and don't think this is the last you're going to see this rig because it's going to be hauling our projects to the trail forever oh yeah

Channel: Gunpowder & Gasoline

Views: 553,677

Rating: 4.7681694 out of 5

Keywords: chevy suburban, suburban, chevy, h1, h1 hummer, hummer, offroad rig, off road rig build, trail rig, trail rig build, tow truck, full build, suburban gorilla, suburban gorilla extreme 4x4, powernation, powerblock, xtreme 4x4, extreme 4x4, ian johnson, jessi combs, offroad, off road, full build powernation, full build power nation

Id: rW_ziogZc-8

Length: 126min 39sec (7599 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 03 2020