LEGENDARY 1948 WILLYS PICKUP BUILD: PART 13 THE REVEAL

so [Music] i'm chris meyer join me in the legendary customs team as we take ordinary rides and craft them into legendary customs [Music] hey everybody chris with legendary customs based out of lacrosse wisconsin thank you very much for joining us behind me is what ron's grandchildren call the little red truck it's a 1948 willy's pickup truck that we transformed from an original vehicle into this beautiful custom rig that's behind me right now the project started out as a two-wheel drive because the customer really wanted front independent suspension so it would drive better well part way through we fixed up the frame boxed it in a decision was made to change it to four wheel drive because you can't have a willy's jeep truck and not have four wheel drive so we had to go out and find a frame for this to fit on and what we found was a 19 or a 2000 escalade frame it was the exact same size within 1 16 of an inch you can't get any better than that we put a 30 second up front 30 second in the back and we're right where we needed to be it gives it a very aggressive look he bought some really nice 33 tires he loves the chrome we love the chrome but it really gives it a bulldog stance really mean really aggressive we did get rid of the torsion suspension underneath and we put in coilover shocks and suspension so it totally rides different than what it did on its original frame and original chassis so we have a lot of modern features on an old vehicle for an example up front we have a 1948 wheelies truck but underneath is a 355 325 horsepower chevy motor it really puts the power down solid underneath is the transfer case that was in the cadillac truck so just like in the cadillac push button changes over to four wheel drive lock it in and rock and roll and the rear end is the cadillac rear end also so it's geared perfectly for going down the highway when i drove it over to west salem last week 55 miles an hour was about 1200 rpms 1300 rpm so at 70 on the highway it's gonna ride out really really good but basically what you're looking at is a truck that run his own for 25 years and he wanted to update it to make it into this so let's go over each and every little detail so you can see what we did okay what we're going to start with is something that you traditionally do not see on a custom vehicle this is from image woodworks in sparta wisconsin he made these out of cherry for us these are extremely important to ron because his family gave him these as a gift now they were a different material before we started the project but we redid them and copied them in cherry so it gives it a really really classy look for what he was going for now something that is next is in the bed so not only did image woodwork do the stake pockets out of a beautiful cherry in a 1948 willy's pickup truck something that is not from the factory in any pickup trucks is a wood bed we really wanted to put in a nice wood bed for them so we put in the stainless steel strips and beautiful cherry wood and we use the hidden fasteners so you don't see the bolts that hold in the stainless steel it's a very clean very crisp look and it's designed just as it would be in a regular pickup truck that has a wood bed to get rid of the water and in the center here we have a billet aluminum push this button here and that's where you fill up the fuel so it's a very very nice seamless situation and it's just gorgeous again in a 1948 willys truck this is something that you would never see i've seen about three of them on the internet i'm sure there's a lot more out there but i would venture to guess none of them are as nice as this and the one cool thing about cherry is the more that it's out in the sunlight the deeper and richer this wood will become so right now it's been in the sunlight only for one day but it'll get deeper and deeper and richer and richer and next to the beautiful red paint this is really going to pop very very nicely up front we have the original willys look however the one change that we did make is the blinkers in 1948 those were just running lights we went up to a 1950 lens just so we would be able to have blinkers on them now like i said underneath obviously we had it rebuilt brand new you saw that in other episodes we painted a really nice high contrast silver so next to the red it really really pops one thing that ron likes is some of the old classic engine hardware so we put in some billet aluminum for the pulleys and brackets real nice air cleaner with the standing fins that were very very popular back in the 60s and the 70s and the same with the valve covers so we have a lot of things that are modern here we did get rid of the fuel injection he wanted to go carbureted old school and have the old school look we have of course power brakes we did put in an edelbrock carb one of their new ones and of course this does have air conditioning we use vintage air in this bad boy and it really keeps things cold works very very good but check out the motor it is awesome 425 horsepower and it really really gets you down the road you're not asking for any power everything that you need is right there if we go on to the next thing if you are familiar with willis in any way you know that front bumpers brand new in chrome are not available they are available painted we purchased it in raw primer and then we sent it off to a company in minneapolis ron actually did and had it chromed now if you're wondering how much is chroming in today's world i'll tell you just this bumper was 710 amazing amount of money and then of course he had the the grille guard and the other pieces done so it is beautiful it is show chrome it is really really a nice finish but if you want a chrome bumper you cannot order them anywhere right now they just come painted so that's another feature that we stepped it up on this and it really really gives you a nice look now if you remember we did an episode that we talked about the front suspension and i told you that we had to make a change one of our viewers out there reminded us of something extremely extremely important if this looks familiar to you it's because this is the front top a arm from the escalade now the escalade the top a arm does not support any decent amount of weight so what we did is the bottom knuckle we used actually we had dca dan helped us out quite a little bit he machined it welded it in so now we have a new knuckle up on top new ball joint that is designed to carry weight this would have been just fine going down the road for probably four or five thousand miles and then this would have worn out thanks to a viewer just like all of you he told us that it's something that we should change we knew it we forgot about it with his reminder we changed it out so when you look underneath you're gonna see that the shock was mounted right here we moved it farther out to the front because you get a better ride the farther out that you go on the a arm and you'll see four bolts now the four bolts do not hold in the knuckle the four bolts literally are what the shock holds to the ball joint is literally welded in and part of the a-arm now so it was a very important change so if you're following our directions on building this and you forget to make this change that's a no no make sure that you put a structural ball joint up in there that's very very important okay one small detail that i wanted to point out is this little emblem right here jeep truck in 1948 this was one of the first jeep pickup trucks that were manufactured this emblem was not on the truck when it originally came in and we actually found a really nice reproduction the holes were still there the people that did the work before us filled them up with bondo so the holes were exactly where they were supposed to be when we cleaned it up it was really easy to install now we're going to go from this to a product that you can't see with the wheels hanging out this far in the front and the back with the aggressive look that we got you need paint protection this thing out on the road one time one rock will raise hell so from the body line right here and down this has a product from 3m on it and geforce wraps installed it for us but it is a high gloss clear paint protection so any rocks that come up instead of chipping the paint will hit the paint protection from 3m and then that paint protection if it gets beat up really really bad you literally just peel it off and put brand new on so it's not an inexpensive product but it is tremendously inexpensive compared to a brand new paint job so that's something that we did now up here we have from lacrosse glass some nice smoked tinted laminated glass so just like in 1948 the glass came from the factory laminated that's exactly what we have in here but we did add a nice smoked tint so it looks beautiful they cut it to fit awesome job lacrosse glass we appreciate your help on that very very much now we go to the interior and it's no surprise that rags in onalaska wisconsin matt and his son and danny all worked on our interior we've been having rags to our interior interiors pretty much from the beginning now at the show this one best interior you could depict a better vehicle it's just very simplistic but yet very very elegant for a 1948 willy's jeep so we didn't get too far off of the beaten path what you would find in a vehicle like this but we put a lot of little touches of class in here the seat is extremely comfortable it is a bench seat versus the buckets that it came with the bench seat is so their grandchildren can ride with them when they go on trips we put in a nice billet gas pedal brake pedal and dimmer and of course this air conditioning system and heating system is from vintage air it fits right underneath all of the gauge cluster and i could not have asked for a better product it is almost the exact width as the factory gauge cluster is and it looks like it literally could have come from the factory that way so it just it looks very very classic it is not really modern like i said but it looks like a vintage air conditioning system just like they say now up in the center we did redo the gauges we got rid of everything from willys because those were 6 volt and instead of adapting them over to 12 volt we did go with dolphin gauges dolphin gauges is out of florida they are wonderful people to work with now down below the gauges there are several buttons one of them is to lock in the four wheel drive another one is for the headlights another one is for the windshield wipers and then the other one is for the interior dome lights one thing that ron did what do you do in a classic vehicle you add dice so he put that those in the last time we were at home it was at his house very very nice touch in the back window we do have a antenna to pick up radio stations it's a nice small digital antenna and down below we have what is a hidden stereo system it's meant to go in a glove box or somewhere hidden we put it down on the floor so it's out of the way so we can see what stations he is on but it has everything again a lot of modern touches but not to the degree that takes away from this elegant classic 1948 willys pickup truck all right everybody thank you for joining us that is a wrap on the 1948 willy's jeep the little red truck fondly called by his grandchildren just this is a beautiful beautiful build i can't say enough thank you to zach and tyler for putting things together and working hard on this it's just really really a very very good team effort to bring us to a fabulous fabulous final product now i have been told that willis has a huge following jeeps the willy's truck the willys jeeps that were used in world war one world war ii just a huge following out there if you have one of these bad boys i'd love you to comment below drop in a picture of what you have what you're working on we'd love to see them this one a little bit over the top but we'd love to see what you got going on out there we're doing this because of you guys our viewers it's what it's all about the memories that these vehicles create that's why we do it so we appreciate that now remember like us on facebook please follow us on instagram you're watching the final episode of the 1948 willie's truck there are 13 i believe episodes prior to this literally from the day it pulled in to today why don't you go back and watch those episodes see how it's done we have some real nice pointers in there for you if you're looking at restoring your own willy's truck or jeep a lot of things that are interchangeable there but we do appreciate you tuning in if you like what you've watched please share our videos and subscribe down below then you can see our future episodes that are coming up on other vehicles that we are finishing but again chris with legendary customs the legendary team and myself thank you very very much for joining us until the next episode we'll see you then [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Legendary Customs LLC

Views: 75,065

Keywords: Jeep, Willys, 1948 Jeep Willys pickup, Willys Pickup, Jeep Pickup, 1948 Jeep, Overland, 1948 Jeep Overland, 1948 Overland, Jeep Willys, 1948 Willys Truck, Willys Truck, Legendary Customs, Vintage Jeep, Jeep restoration, Customs fabrication, automotive, 4x4, Jeep 4x4, Willys restoration, 200o Cadillac Escalade, Cadillac, Escalade, Frame Swap, Willy Frame Swap, Willys Frame, Welding, Piant, Truck Paint, Truck Wiring, Dolphin Gauges, RAGZ, Truckinterior, Garage, Pickup, offroad

Id: 1Lj0csAxSpc

Length: 19min 12sec (1152 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 01 2020