I found a smuggler stealth truck at a DEA auction

he could have told me there's a dead body in the back as long as I got to take that engine home with me it was great so I've been a gearhead a car guy a motorcycle guy my entire life but I really love trucks and my absolute favorite truck in the entire world is the one that I currently drive the one I plan to keep forever and that is my 2006 Dodge Ram overlander now my love for this particular truck started in 1999 when dodge at the Detroit International Motor Show unveiled the dodge power wagon concept truck and this truck was just the coolest thing I'd ever seen it was this modern stylistic interpretation of the old 1930s and 40s power wagons that you'd seen is like command cars in World War two you know with a big narrow grille and the big fenders with the headlights out on defenders and this was like a modern version of that but it had this sleek windshield and a big diesel in it big tires and I just thought was the coolest thing ever and during that time dodge was known you know they'd taken the Prowler from a concert deal they made that they come out with the Viper they made that so I was like when can I get my hands on this truck well they were never gonna make it closest I ever got was this little Hot Wheels I said I'm a desk it was the same truck is actually black but then in 2006 when the third generation Ram facelift came out suddenly this was the truck I'd been waiting on it was close it had the narrow grille at these big fenders with the headlights kind of wrapping up on it the fenders and I looked at it I thought man you know if I could just get like some big fender flares and that big bumper and the winch like that truck some lifts and big tires that truck is gonna be as close as I'm ever to get to this concept truck you know at that time too I was shutting down my over landing company I was rock crawling the diesel scout I have I was Road racing sport bikes I was drag racing a hot rod Hemi Dodge Magnum I was doing track days with a buddy of mine at a BMW I was racing dirt bike I was just had too many irons in the fire so I started looking and again I took me a couple of years to kind of put some of my projects aside I really started looking at earnest in the 2006 through 2008 had this body style but the O six was really the Holy Grail it was the first year of the big limo like Mega Cab but it's last year of the old school five nine Cummins diesel which is just a fantastic motors so I start looking for these trucks and you know I'm very rapidly finding two ends of the spectrum either it is some work truck that looks like it's a building is collapsed on it on the high end of the price range I was finding these you know every option to our showroom perfect clean version that some urban cowboy wanted way too much money for so in a page that Ed would write later I started looking for things like damage or salvage or repair and you know I'm a pretty good mechanic and I figure I can fix pretty much anything that might be wrong with it so that rabbit hole started leading me finding all sorts of other trucks it would either be a truck that said slight frame damage that looked like it had been dropped out of an airplane or it would say you know needs interior but it had been completely torched there were a couple of good solid diesel four-wheel drives went through but I either got outbid or just missed them but my search through the dark side of used vehicles led me to some of the DEA like federal law enforcement auctions like where they would bust a drug dealer or some guy out a bunch of taxes or something so I started looking through these sites and I found one and there it was it was 2006 3500 four-wheel drive Mega Cab it was the single tracks of no it would normally have been a dually it just had one set wheels in the back the big diesel it already had the bumpers on it it had the fender flares it had like everything I wanted and it was black it was like the closest thing to that little Hot Wheel car I had have it called the guys immediately and they were pretty cool they just said yeah we get these things from da auctions ATF any kind of a seizure and you know if there's truck you want you know send a $500 deposit will secure the truck in come down look at it if there's anything wrong with it you know you can keep half your deposit okay well I'm bleeding at the price and you know this price was was pretty low for a truck of this time it was about half of what the market was going for and you know it looked okay in the pictures so I asked the guy said well you know why is this thing why is the price as it is is it damaged is there sort of a mechanical issue and he said well they're hard trucks to move because a lot of people are a little weary of their possibly criminal past he said a lot of times they've been sitting in impound lot for a long time you know the radios are missing there's some kind of weird damage to him sometimes but you know this truck solid it's in good shape and again if you don't like it you can get happy deposit back and I immediately knew that if I let this and go I was gonna regret it so I wired him the money I rented a car and I drove to Houston and the address they gave me was this warehouse just this sort of unmarked warehouse and everything is just this washed out overexposed 70s just kind of hazy light bleached out white except that truck it was next to the building behind like a 12-foot chain-link fence like some sort of caged animal and this truck was just sitting there and it was the truck was black it had limo tinted windows they were black the emblems were black it had black projector lights on it had big black bumpers it had black aftermarket wheels and it wasn't like that chalky flat black it was this inky like light just disappeared into it this truck look menacing in the daylight and I saw and I knew that even this may have been murdered in his truck like I was going home on his truck so a knock on the door but a very bouncy very bright guy pops up and they skip or something pops up hey you're the truck great well here it is so you know he takes me out back and like stepping into this little fence an area with this truck it was like I was I was excited even then it was like getting into a cage or this thing it was just sitting there and it was just the most sinister looking truck and I was just so excited and you know and I walked over to Eddie Knight you know I look inside and you know from the outside looked okay the inside looked alright except there was a little bit of damage to the inside the seat bolster on the driver's seat was like broken and the visor was torn down and there was like the radio had been kicked in and it looked like there had been some sort of wrestling match it happened inside the truck and it was always clean though they'd wiped it out pretty well looks like somebody had set in the passenger seat maybe shaking up a dr. pepper there was like water stains all over the headliner and the carpet was all stained and there was some like some kind of just they wiped the door panel on the dash down but there's some little cracks that just had some stain and stuff in it and I'm thinking okay just my spilled a drink or something so I'm about to get out look under the hood and the guy produces a key and you know it was the typical Dodge key fob but it had this motel key hanging on it it was a motel that had the address scratched out and it was just on the keychain okay that's a little weird but nonetheless the salesman actually didn't want to go in the sit rap with me he just said hey look I'm gonna be paperwork together you go take it first banned drove it out to the road and and this is well this big Texas highways with the turn lane in the middle and two lanes on either side big wide group and so I saw my gap and I put my foot in it and immediately this truck just took off like as soon as I started turning out across the road I'm making a left turn you feel the rear end stepping out I just kind of turned into it and it just made the most gorgeous just power slide across all five lanes just sort of held the drift for a second and I just as I leaned it you know if the gas just straightened up beautifully so I'm just sailing a little highway and just loving every second of it I see an exit coming up so I get off and you kind of get off the exit turn I go under the overpass and I'm sitting there for a second and you know just kind of listen to it there's nothing the road in front of me is just a big long straight Texas road and you know I put it in four-wheel drive and you know put my left foot on the brake and kind of do the you know country boy lost control just kind of build a boost up a little bit and you know it's in four-wheel drive and the second I let off the brake and gave the gas it just snapped my head back that truck took off with just this amazing roar and Rumble just oh my god you know this acceleration Harlan but I mean I've drag raced a lot of cars this thing was fast you know I switch it out of four-wheel drive at about 65 miles an hour it's going it's going I bury the speedometer at 120 I look at my GPS says 138 the truck is starting to rise up you have these big like 14 inch wide tires which that kind of centripetal force they become cons and it I can feel the truck actually like gaining height it was right up on the tires and oh my god so I slowed it down and it's Wiggles a little bit and I'm just like oh my god what do I have here and I turn it around and get back to the same underpass and I stopped the truck and I get out before I get back to this office and I open the hood and it was I was like in Pulp Fiction when they opened the briefcase there's a glow I mean it was just this giant air cleaner the size of a desk trashcan and this big shiny crossover pipe and you know wrapped fuel lines and like two field lines feeding it and I could see the head and like there's a gasket material on it the heads been off presumably it's got pistons bow springs who knows what else in it like all the way back I'm just thinking like I'm a guy like they're gonna find out like what's under the hood of this thing they're gonna back out of this deal I'm already thinking like I'm driving really safely I don't somebody like wreck it before I can send the title like I must almost got this like like I'm a shoplifter like I just got to get out somehow of this truck I get back and then the guy says very nonchalant you know hey I did Drive and I'm trying to be all cool oh my god it drops okay sounds good he said yeah I think it's got a chip in it for fuel mileage or something it needs new muffler though and I look up underneath it look like three big mufflers welded end-to-end that we're all wrapped in some kind of crazy insulation or something like that's weird but okay heat exchange or something there also there was some weird little lights on the front bumper I couldn't find a switch for I follow the wire back and it goes to wherever the the component that had been screwed to the console was and I sir look and they were like the 24-volt infrared lights that would normally be on like a strike or a Hummer or something and I was like man this is cool the drug smugglers must have like been using like night-vision goggles or something and there was a little like a spring-loaded interrupts which and I pretty much discovered was that all the interior lights had been pried out of the truck the fuses for every one of the lights for the dash for every light on the truck the horn had been cut everything on this truck that could possibly make a sound or any light had been cut and they were pretty much just using this little infrared lights and you know what the truck being all blacked out and this big long muffler thing on the back I'm thinking this wasn't like the smuggler where you got the hidden compartment in the trunk this was like they were just straight-up driving over the border in the dark getting whatever they were doing coming back and just run in full stealth mode and I guess with this hot rod motor and the bumpers they were just gonna run it or Ram it so we're doing the paperwork and I asked the guy you know about the history of the truck and you know of course he's like well you know I don't have any action information he said but I do know that has not been registered in almost three years there's no insurance claim for anything I'd run a VIN number on it already there were no hadn't been total direct or anything it had just been not registered I'm like okay that's kind of weird did tell me it had been seized in Laredo Texas which is right on the Mexican border and DEA had had it for about a year and then they had flipped to the auction where they had obtained it something okay I said was it like some kind of undercover thing or something he said well it's hard to tell but you know with with the title you usually yes they may do that if they seized a truck but then decide to use it like for their own undercover stuff when they're done with it they just watch the title that way the next owner isn't in any way associated with whatever badness might have gone on I'm like whatever this point he could have told me there's dead body in the back as long as I got to take that engine home with me it was great so I get the truck you know I've good time alive is able to pay cash for it just paid him cash hit the road with the truck so I proceeded to get the truck fixed I pull the crazy exhaust pipe off put a 5-inch exhaust all the way out of the back a truck dyno dat 698 horsepower and eleven hundred and fifty-eight foot-pounds of torque it was just a right to drive it was as I said before you know a big vehicle like that when you go sliding it around a cloverleaf or power sliding on to some Street you know the weight of the truck just pulls the tires along so it was the easiest thing to control I'd get off on an exit ramp and just tap the gas and sling the rear end out and just you know one hand the wheel drove that truck through the side windows as much as I did the front I just treated it like I was in some Gymkhana video for like two years just had such a great time with it i raced it it turned 12s the quarter mile in commerce I spun the tires every chance like yeah of course I was going through a $2,000 set of tires about every ten months but I did not care because it was so much fun but you know as they say the candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long and all good things come to an end the engines started making some bad noises the transmission started shifting kind of funny and you know I looked around to some people who could do performance diesel and I found a really really great shop Garmisch diesel performance down in Griffin Georgia and they were just knew that engine backwards and forwards and they're really talented guys and they went through it and they said well we're gonna need an entire native drivetrain that was just way out of my budget but again with a fantastic stroke of luck the guys there had seen some of my sculptures out of car parts and the shop guys there said hey we want to give Jeff a really great Christmas present from the shop and he's a guitar player do you think you could make a guitar out of some of these parts from your engine and some of these other trucks and transmissions and I was like yeah they're a build a guitar before and I'll play guitar but I'm not gonna pass up a chance like this so I said yes so I left the truck with them scooped up as many parts I could fit in the car and took them back and started together this guitar and I went to a pawn shop about a playable you know bought a six-string electric just kind of cut out the playable bed and started building this elaborate you know body around it I use lots of gears wanted I wanted to capture the mechanical nature of their engine shop and a transmission shop and it came together really well and I went away with the most fantastic hand-built Cummins diesel engine by these guys even though the engine is all sorted out in this truck now the electrical sorted out everything works everything is new we've done axles we've done transmission we done the engine everything is great but the sort of nefarious history of this truck still kind of intrigued me and I had fixed all the wiring I had rewired it all got rid of the infrared lights but you know I was just trying to figure out like what happened inside this truck now Adsense replaced the radio or gotten kicked but the seat it's to this day the seat is still bent back you know that visor like what happened in this truck so I was over there cleaning it one day and I was just still kind of getting in the nooks and cranny's I was over in that side with the carpets all stained and the stains in the door panel now cleaning them I've got just some alcohol with a q-tip and I'm kind of cleaning them out my buddy minds over there and he's looking at it he was like hold on a second he's a hunter and he goes out to his truck and he comes back one of those like blue like the blood tracker lights which really only worked were like fresh blood but he shines it in there just kind of dr. pepper looking stuff was just jet-black under the light and he said dude that's blood I got it all cleaned up but I started thinking like my god did somebody get killed in this truck from 2011 to 2006 that truck is just a ghost it wasn't registered anywhere I can't find a title on it so whatever happened with the DEA with his truck I don't know if they seized it from somebody and then they used it did something go bad when it was the good guys truck did it just go bad when it was the bad guys truck and they kept it I don't know so fast-forward another couple of months and I'm helping a buddy of mine he was moving he had a bunch of old Range Rovers Land Rovers that he was restoring and working on and I was already there and a guy kind of showed up late and she walks up he said man whose black truck is that I said I was mine he said man if we were back in Texas I would swear you were the drug smuggler my sister used to date and I was like wow yeah that's pretty crazy and I get my mouth shot just in case he still knew this drug smuggler so again I don't know what the history of this drug was but it's definitely had a very dark past however I have tried to give it a brighter future I've been building this truck into the ultimate over landing truck since I have built a custom roof rack for it I put my reef tent up top I've got all my camping gear I built a red bed in the back for duel spares on my tolls I put a lift kit on it bigger tires added the wench I've put 360-degree lights around and an awning a snorkel memorizers all the great stuff I take it to caffeine and octane here in Atlanta I want to take this truck eventually and drive it from Tierra del Fuego to Prudhoe Bay I want to do some big Alaska trips with it I've done some great road trips and I've been building this truck for that it is the ultimate Overland truck to me that I can build it's been a great truck I've met so many people at gas stations and just random people who want to come look at it they've now become great friends of mine and I plan on keeping this truck forever despite its nefarious drug smuggling past if you love ven wiki you'll have heard us talk about minimizing ownership cost on exotic cars but the guys at exotic car hacks have developed a system an educational resource that you can access now using an exotic car hacks comm / VIN wiki and get the best membership race that they've offered since Black Friday it shows you how to leverage financing minimize what you pay maximize how you sell it and minimize the cost while you've got it so be sure to join their community of owners and enthusiasts today at exotic car Hank's comm /then wiki and it'll be easier than ever to buy owned and sell and loved the car of your dreams [Music]

Channel: VINwiki

Views: 3,167,838

Rating: 4.8498826 out of 5

Keywords: Smugger, border patrol, dodge, diesel, power wagon, christopher, vinwiki, car stories, vehicle history, DEA, auction

Id: a8Q9Yibblbc

Length: 18min 38sec (1118 seconds)

Published: Mon May 18 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/tmus5]

That was a fantastic story, thanks for the share!