John Deere Tractor engine in 1969 GMC truck!

and it sounds like a deer man right [Applause] welcome to the back to life series at the time join us as we go behind the scenes and check out some of the best hot rod fabrication in bakersfield at h s body works [Music] [Applause] [Music] just gonna say this is outrageous what i'm about to show you now we're here with clayton and mark right and mark you helped build this thing right clayton you are the owner of current machinery here in bakersfield california right yeah i've got my brothers yes our family it's a family deal okay cool i'm not going to get too much i'm going to give him a little teaser here right there we go and why did you pick 1969 gmc 1969 was the year my parents got into the john deere business and so it was a celebration of that right what's special about this truck is that it has a john deere motor in it right now is it a real john deere it's 100 john deere motor like you could order it like crate style or whatever from the factory yes okay so tell us about it how'd you come up with that or well we also own uh engine distributor next door okay so the clayton came to me one day and said hey i want to put a john deere engine in a truck we didn't even have the truck that was on and he goes do you want to do it and i said yeah we'll talk about it when the time comes then this truck shows up so it was a 69 four-speed with a 350. somebody did a sort of cleanup on it i wouldn't call it a restoration they put a cheap paint job on it and uh so we looked at it and then we were debating on six cylinder four-cylinder and uh he elected to go four-cylinder and uh then from there i just tore into it yeah wow you know what was the hardest part would you think on this thing on this bill is there anything that you didn't expect or it was pretty much what you thought it was going to be yeah i've built a lot of trucks and rails and things over the years and that's the number one question i always get asked everything's hard if you don't know what you're doing it's just hard i mean in this one you're stuffing a huge diesel even though it's a four cylinder obviously into a tiny package that is incredible and doing it nicely and neatly and making it look oem but we had to take so we first got the truck and pulled the front clip everything off it tore it all apart and kind of went through and fixed all the things we wanted to fix and then i had a blank slate we had the whole front end i got the engine was donated by his brother who owns the uh engine distributor it's the most powerful four cylinder the deer makes so we got the whole engine package and then he wanted the allison and we were flipping between the five speed and the six speed so then i had the automatic people we deal with built this a hybrid it's basically a 1000 case with 2 000 internals in it and it's a six-speed wow and then we had to source out a controller because it uses electronic controls and integrate that into our control system electronically controlled diesel you're not going to take this to the dealership to go get work done right part well i mean you guys are but you couldn't take it to the automotive dealer like they wouldn't even know what to do with it right i'm probably the only one that knows how to work on it other than the guy that helped me the most he was one of my lead taxis since retired but i would envision what i wanted and i don't have the time to dedicate it however i did dedicate one saturday for a year okay every sec you know once a month every saturday we would work on it exclusively yeah how does how would it compare driving compared to like a duramax when you talk about running a tractor engine compared to like a standard diesel engine you need financing you don't really notice a difference okay yeah well yeah amazing other than you know it's a horse owner not a right they rev higher this doesn't yeah you're working in the lower you're working more down in a cummins uh rpm range okay yes and you switch the gears on it of course no it came with four times it did it came with four cans okay man that is amazing now does it get too hot under the hood i know you got some heat wrap here it doesn't okay that was strictly precautionary all right i've made no changes to this truck since i designed and put it together right this is was the finished product and haven't had to change anything all right now you know one thing that's interesting because you can't go order engine mounts for a john deere tractor into a truck right they don't that doesn't even exist no right so you got to make that right so your fabricating there's a lot more fabric all this is empty the whole front of the truck is gone all that's there's a frame rail you take the engine set it in i figure out where i want it to go measure design we have victory circle that's down the road from us it has a cnc and uh plasma cutter so i would draw up what i wanted have them cut the parts out of ar and then when i got them back i would i did all the welding okay so you fabricated it all together once you got the pieces cut right yeah right designed it and then and that and that goes with the underneath too right oh all the undercarriage so originally obviously the transfer case was attached to the old four speed we went with a whole different transfer case we went with the 203 so then i had to source a guy in canada that had a divorce unit for the front of it so we could divorce it and then i built all the brackets to suspend the suspend transfer case and the engine's mounted on four pedestals the transmission's mounted and the transfer case has its own period right i got to ask it does john deere have a patented green is that is that a color or is that it's not a patented but there is definitely a john deere green okay so which is not it okay this is not it okay yeah in fact we didn't even do i did a few things to the interior i put a carpet in it but it came with fairly new panels it came with the seat cover which i kind of like the contrast and the different greens it looks original i mean it looks like it's not original right it's really done but it looks like it's cherry yeah yeah they got the right one for for that period right uh we didn't change anything on the dash or the steering where you had it seat belts no it had the seat yeah 69 just has lots of trucks all right yeah wow yeah it looks cool man i like it you didn't go too far with it but i see there's a couple little modern things thrown in there right there in the center drop down under the climate control okay so right here the screen you see that's our john deere interface so we can see digitally all the readings on the engine codes all that kind of and over there is the allison shifter whoa and overdrive switches so everything we pretty much added is all contained in that one panel it's right there i like that i like this panel man that's cool wow and all the factory gauges function so if you looked at the dash of it you wouldn't know cruise control this might be one of the only 1969 trucks with cruise control he wanted that special we did not put it together with that i didn't feel the need for it when i first finished it i took it on its maiden voyage down to san diego to my house and i didn't see the knee but he likes it so now who put that who wanted the air conditioning it had him of course he's all about creature comforts but it had air but it wasn't functioning okay and that's why earlier i was saying i had to modify it to modern so i just cut it up and made it myself and yeah amazing needed the cruise control as the engine would go in and out yeah it was hard to keep a steady miles per hour and i'd ask for cruise control mark said well we can do it this way yeah and he did it it's got so much torque that it took the original dana 60 axles and twisted them in half whoa we're re-testing it or something yeah we were doing some testing we had dutchman make us some uh good alloy ones have you talked to john deere but do they know you did this right here some do they i mean i mean maybe you're doing something here are you maybe getting an automotive industry maybe right offer some john deere engines no i'm not gonna do it yeah yeah right all right i'm gonna come back around here to the back now of course the patented how long has this logo been with john deere it has to be a long time i remember this even as a kid right nothing runs like a deer right has that been there for a long time in the john deere company or something like that wow so i don't know that that's been around that long but yeah there is deer is known for that right now have you have any other like saying you have other john deere dealerships right have they have they seen this thing do they know what you got here are they have they take a look at it yeah they're jealous i'm gonna say when you're opening this it's not fair right i've had john deere engineers out here for other functions we've had and then i catch them all out here snooping around and but they don't ask questions but they've heard about it they've heard about it so they want to look at it and then they go look yeah no you know what i have to hear it i've got to hear it start up can we do that because it runs right no it doesn't run okay i gotta hear it man and it sounds like a deer man right yep all right going down the highway it's pretty quiet it is we have a conversation no problem that's not that noisy at all wow that's incredible that's something else yeah i would imagine you had to make it looks like you had to make the shroud right that's all custom made everything the whole thing right oh all the everything you see other than the engine yeah the exhaust all the intercooler tubing all the cooling system the radiator that was a cross flow aluminum but the fittings all had to be modified the whole ac system is basically from scratch so this right here is coming out of the turbo okay going in being intercooled air to air and then out and up to the intake and that's how that would work even on a tractor that's how the setup would that has the same setup on the tracker okay in fact this intercooler comes out of one of our models of tractor yeah i was going to say like how much of this stuff as far as the cooling is do you try to get as close as you can to like a tractor you don't i just put the biggest intercooler i could fit in it we have intercooler we have ac condenser we have engine oil cooler and training yeah you know a lot of people will not understand that i mean i'm looking at this latch and how close and how you had to modify that to get that you know that close to all that stuff right okay well the engine can only go back so far right i mean you got to push back probably almost as far as you could get it right obviously right and i'm looking up here that clutch fan is within a quarter inch of the radiator right and then you have all your stuff up here you're cooling up here you don't have very much room to work right i mean you're talking with you're you're scrapping for inches here well it's just like a modern vehicle yeah and i didn't want to come into the core support if i didn't have to with the radiator so we were lucky i did modify it a little bit i came forward about a half an inch but i'm good with the quarter inch wow plate when you see all this were you impressed by some of the workmanship that was going i mean do you i mean i know for for someone a fabricator will look at this and say wow whoever did this really knew what they were doing i mean to do something like this but even like if someone said okay go ahead mark go ahead and take over here what was your impression when he's just wild wow this this is so clean it is so it's just precise it's factory it's better than factory this is just it's an amazing work of art i will give them credit i asked them for carte blanc and not to have my hands tied and gave it to me green light across the board yeah if i envisioned it and i wanted it i did it yeah do you draw any of this up or do you just kind of go for it how much is it on the fly how much is pre-planned oh eighty percent's on the fly it is oh yeah right like all the stuff you're talking about here i just tackle one problem at a time we're going to do this we're going to do this we're going to do this and you know in here where you're talking about laying out all the coolers making all the brackets making everything fit incredible the stuff that i have to draw up and do all that is the stuff where i've been going outside now you know what's cool clayton i want to talk a little bit too because you know you're you're kind of using this a little bit to entice a program that you're trying to get involved with right and explain that to us a little bit we're involved we've been involved for probably about 10 years with a ag tech program that's sponsored by john deere up at walla walla washington junior college and we are helping grow our own technicians by taking them through a 21-month program that's sponsored by deer and they will they go there for three months they come here for three months and it's back and forth and when they finish that program according to deer they are certified in hydraulics electrical and diesel so it's a very good starting point when they come to us they're by no means experienced enough but it's a leg up on hiring young technicians we don't we don't have mechanics we have technicians and they're concentrated in electrical the way our tractors are going as long and the diesel is still there and you know we're totally hydraulics too so it's a program that we just wanted to show high school folks that yeah we work on tractors but we have a little fun too and uh we brag on and mark and brian who put this together on on their thought path and being able to do it so it's it's uh it's a combination of things in celebration of our history and uh promotion of the future yeah you know i'm going to imagine that you are probably grouped in with a lot of industrial companies around this area around the country that are having a hard time finding technicians or people right because we're sending a lot of kids and we're promoting through the high school systems and even in the junior high we're saying you know set you up for college right and they're funneling all these kids into college and doesn't leave a lot of room for kids that want to work in this kind of industry right the the voag things the vocational classes have we've lost we had lost some of those they're starting to come back but we have a real struggle on finding the right people to come into the business with us yeah this the ag tech program sponsored by deer is a good we help with with their funding and we will pay them back over time if they prove to be a success story yeah well i will tell you this that i have seen a lot of trucks and i've seen a lot of cars come out of the h s body works and this one is one for the books here uh i think you have definitely the most unique truck in town it's kind of a hidden gem i don't think very many people even know it's here but here it is man right in bakersfield california a john deere gmc 2500 with a john deere motor there you go matt congratulations on that guys very cool

Channel: BTUFF

Views: 608,970

Rating: 4.8890862 out of 5

Keywords: John Deere, tractors, trucks, GMC, Chevy, custom trucks, wild rides, can I put a tractor engine in a truck?, 1969 GMC, 1969 2500, BTUFF, Bakersfield Tuff, H&S Body Works

Id: QYKQx1d9eH4

Length: 16min 41sec (1001 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 19 2021