Offroad VW Bug with a V8 where?

hey how's it going we are getting ready to give away a skosh magic Mount and a boom bottle at the end of this video stick around so you can figure out how to win them [Music] welcome to rock buggy I am going to walk you through what we built and how we did it got my co-star here we are actually just finished up a great American crawl in Hawk Pride Alabama I knew I wanted to build something like a rear steer buggy something like that I wanted V8 I wanted power but I also wanted something that was going to be really reliable something that was really gonna kind of pull people together and the best thing that we could think of was a VW Bug now we kind of had a VW bug or access to one so to say and that's where Jared Crawford and Steph came in so what happened was they had wanted to build a class 11 car and they went out and bought this thing 1971 Volkswagen Beetle that we're gonna turn into a class 11 right they started tearing it apart and everything and it got to a point where there was just no time for them to kind of Chase that pipeline of a race car race team so I called them brought them into the shop and I was like look man we've been moving this thing around the shop for like a year and I think we could do something really cool with it but the only way that I can truly get behind this thing and build this thing and do it the way I want to I would have to own the car because the amount of money and parts and labor that we're going to be going after companies and building stuff with we've got to have some ownership on this car so that we know where it's going to go and what's going to happen with it we worked out the deal and they signed the car over and then we really got into it [Applause] [Music] so the first thing that we had to do was figure out how we were going to take a VW body and put that on a frame that could actually hold up to what we were going to do with this thing we needed something that was going to be a good width a good length all that kind of stuff so it was a jku frame so what we ended up having to do with this thing it was pretty nuts is if you know anything about jku frames they come in three sections and that's where the cross members are all connected so we ended up having to cut the three sections apart and rip this thing apart with forklifts foreign which was a catastrophe in its own [Music] what we ended up doing was taking this thing after we got it apart and we had to widen the middle and then we dovetailed the back but then did another cross cut where we put it back to where the rear rails were running parallel to the body and we ended up pulling about 132 inch wheelbase I think on our final adjustments we ended up around 134 with everything because of how long our Drive lines and everything ended up being when I started designing the body mounts I I wanted something that was going to be pretty structurally sound because what I wanted to be able to do with this thing was going to be pretty gnarly and it's going to put me in positions that if I needed that cage I really needed that cage the body mounts on this are 3 8 plate in the front they come down to quarter inch supports actually right onto the frame itself the actual cage mounts onto that 3 8 and that 3 8 sits directly above all the quarter inch gusseting and support So if this thing takes a hard impact everything transfers right to the frame and you're pretty stout with dropping an LT1 inside this thing the way we did typically these firewalls and these bugs came down and they sloped all the way out there into the front because there was no engine in the front but there's no way you're putting an engine in the back of this thing and it being a successful rock crawler with that much weight in the back so we definitely had to have the engine up front in the LT1 up front and um you know Jared and I had a couple long nights there you know fitting that engine in there and getting that stuff to that point [Music] thing we had to get done was the cage you know we were sitting there looking at it and we were like how are we going to get the cage once it's built in and out so we were talking and I was like man I think we have to build a hard top just like a JK or any other type of Jeep that you can actually take the top off and put the top back on I started cutting on things and I ended up staying there I think until morning Jared came back the next day and he's like you made like a hard top convertible [Applause] yeah so the guys at Full Throttle and pentagram engineering like how fast they got that done it still baffles me because they had to design Weld and put in a full cage and do all this in about a week [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] and sprayed the entire Patriot liner body on this and Josh from patriotliner actually flew out because it was their first big spray like that that they had done and so Josh actually flew out worked with them got everything sprayed and again it just I mean killed it [Music] foreign so the reason that I really enjoy spraying my vehicles like gridlock or Rock buggy with Patriot liner is one when I'm out in a place like this for instance I don't have to worry about trees bushes rocks that kind of stuff because that stuff really does encapsulate the body also what I have found out is it does not matter what it is if it is metal and it's in the South or on the East Coast it will Rust so that's also another reason why I like Patriot liner because it encapsulates that metal and basically creates an envelope around it so that it can't have a chance to rust [Music] when we go into the actual build of rock buggy now that we've kind of like summarized up that timeline that's when I would say all of these specs really started stacking up on this thing and what we were going to do with it so let me kind of walk you through what rock buggy is and what we've done with this thing so it is a jku chassis it is stretched out to about 130 234 inches it is front steer and it is rear steer now the axle setup on that is from East Coast gear supply it runs a Yukon gear and Axle Grizzly Locker in the front and the rear I've always had luck with them they are 40 spline these are 14 bolts but they do come from East Coast gear supply with a factory shave built into the cast it adds around maybe two and a half inches of clearance these have four inch tube in them half inch wall thick with 40 spline shafts from East Coast inner and outer in 1550 brand and Q joints they are a super Kingpin inner outer and they've got all of the big boy brakes never everything you're going to get like in an F450 F550 stuff front and rear so that had to get obviously a Hydra boost setup with our braking system which then got us into the hydraulic setup so we went to PSC where we realized in the very beginning that a single CBR pump was not enough pressure to run front and rear and Hydro Boost so we ended up having to build a two pump system and then we're also running two reservoirs and then we got three inch rams front and rear now I personally at that point had never built something with rear steer it was completely foreign to me it was Again part of a pipe dream that I've always wanted because I've been on a lot of obstacles with gridlock and I was like man if I could just change that rear end 10 degrees either way and that's like 20 if I could just move it a little bit it would make my life so much easier [Music] foreign foreign so we are running a 20 by 10 life Canyon bead lock on these [Music] wrapped around those is a tire that I have been waiting on for years and they are a 44 inch radial on a 20 inch wheel Baja boss Mt when I saw these things for the first time I absolutely lost my mind because when you take this tire and you put it up next to gridlock's 46 which is like a bias this has to be true to size which a 46 doesn't this is almost as tall as that 46 but it's only 13 and a half inches wide they are an awesome Tire I feel like they're just as good as the sticky the sticky does heat up better but these things have been Flawless for me and it just worked amazing once we get into all of that we had to figure out suspension in this thing and we knew we wanted to run like a piggyback from King I wanted a three inch I wanted 16 inch and I wanted this thing to really look like an RC car with the 16 inch coilovers and the problems that I had had with gridlock in the past we kind of built kind of like an exoskeleton that would build all the suspension and put it where I wanted it we're also running bumps front and rear [Music] so on a build like this you definitely need some good fabrication parts that's where we turned a ballistic Fab they have a lot of high quality parts that range from a lot of stuff like you have great battery hold downs and a lot of those work with the Odyssey batteries that we use and then you'll jump into bungs and heims like we used on the front and rear steering on the axles then we jumped into their ballistic Fab joints now the thing I like about their 2 and 5 8 joint is I'm using a 5 8 bolt because in gridlock I broke 9 16 bolts all the time so I stepped up to a 5 8 but I didn't sacrifice any of my Flex with that now we knew we would need pretty cool Drive Lines for this thing we knew they were going to have to be custom like the ones on Gridlock were but we didn't realize how crazy that front drive line was going to have to be the rear is pretty straightforward 1480s a you know carton joint up front and just a 1480 in the rear single piece for the rear um I wanted something pretty style back there and then in the front um that's a little technical so it is what you consider like a two piece but it actually has three Cardon joints built into it one coming off the atlas another one a jack shaft Mount and then another one the atlas in this is a four three to one Atlas I went with a little bit you know heavier of a gear ratio than I've ever ran in something and I'm really excited about it I also went with a factory stall [Music] we had k n build us you know a one-off Aluminum Intake for this thing because the that LT1 obviously lacks airflow we had to figure out a MagnaFlow exhaust system now what I love about the exhaust on this is when you start this thing it's loud when you get on it it's loud but when this thing is idling it is nice and quiet like a stock car you can actually have a conversation and it's not annoying I do like a dual battery setup especially with heavy winching and what we do with low speed crawling we have a battery up front which is our main battery and then we also have like a 12 PC 1200 in the rear behind the seats and it's kind of harder to see but that guy's tucked in there so we have a one to two you know battery isolator on there PSI conversions sent us over a wiring kit those guys knew everything we wanted to do what they sent us was just like a drop in wiring harness it was it made life so easy so we went to a JS alternators and I believe this one's pushing around 300 amp so this has a self-excite alternator on there that as soon as I hit you know 1500 2000 RPMs it kicks on and I have about 14 14.4 amps constantly we did again take a trick from gridlock that we've used in the past and we took two s pods and those control all the accessories and the full control system in the vehicle like the ECU the start the ignition so that kind of gets us into cooling um we do use mishimoto on all of our stuff you have a mishimoto 12 inch duals in the rear like a high speed race fan a V8 style mishimoto radiator and then we've got a giant cooler in the back for all the hydraulic we have two transmission coolers from mishimoto that are the smaller ones but they're still I mean great size and they'll sit behind each sheet with their own fans and then we have like an overflow can for them as well and we've got a couple other smaller coolers up on the frame rail one for the engine oil and one is more like a collector point for all the hydraulic fluid to go into is like a last thing that goes up into the you know extra Reservoir cans and things like that my Baja Designs I've been working with them now for about four or five years Quality Lighting like Baja Designs there is no comparison you'll be out here in the middle of nowhere and you'll have six rigs lined up which is random lighting and they'll be lighting something up and I'll roll up with my two LP sixes and I'll turn that on and it's like their lights are like the little night light plugged into a socket and I just turned all these lights on it just lights up the world then I turn on that Onyx laser you know I mean 20 inch bar up front and forget it like it you don't have a blind spot out there anymore at Dart we also run them as our dome lights inside the car we have our Rock lights I don't know if it was fate or if it was just pure luck probably luck but the rear bumper that we kind of built on this thing and the way we ended the frame and did everything literally tucked in an RTL beautifully you can't even tell it's there until we turn it on you turn that thing on and it's your entire rear system we have turn signals brake lights reverse anything you can think of we do have some Amber rear because I do love that on Gridlock so we did throw those on there extra dust lights [Music] fuel tank that we got from Moto built I think was actually the kickoff to the new relationship we have with Moto build them being a brand partner of ours it's an awesome 18 gallon tank and I've done some long trips on that fuel tank and it's been like halfway so it takes me a good two to three days of goodwilling to run that fuel tank down to a point where I actually need to refill it we also have their sliders on this I had to cut their sliders apart and then shorten them a little bit re-tube them on the inside do a bunch of cool stuff but these are Moto built jku weld on sliders and a jku tomahawk front bumper winch wise in recovery on this stuff every build we've ever done has been a worn winch and we are running a VR 12 000 pound winch in the front of this thing and then we have what I call like that staple Ultra hook on there from Factor 55. all of that kind of gets you to the point of Designing the interior in the cockpit of this car and when we built the dash we built it you know door to door it's a huge Dash cross there and I wanted something that was going to make a bug a little bit more futuristic but I also love the Dakota Digital setup that we have in gridlock so we designed the same cluster and everything that's in there oh we obviously wanted our prps these are Gator they're they're super bougie and so we have those in there we have a gold steering wheel in there as well and we are running you know their 4-2 harnesses I love those I love the clickable harnesses and then we've got some really cool mishimoto gear shifters in there as well and then we knew we needed a ton of skosh mounts in this thing like we always do handles and mirrors and mounts for GoPros and battery chargers and all that kind of stuff two things that I really like about rock buggy is the rugged radio and the kicker sound bar with those fans where they are and everything and sometimes some of these obstacles you get into we can throw our headsets on and when you have that headset on and people are talking to you on the radio or spotters with you on the radio you can't hear the race fans behind you or we can turn that kicker sound bar on and just jam out to some music which I love that feature because it kind of makes it feel like you're in a car not a race car talking about Coatings in this thing gold is a very hard color to get right especially when you're trying to match a rockstar gold and it needs to match it this build would not be in existence right now if it wasn't for Rockstar Energy they actually came in and were a financial contributor to getting this build done so hats off to Rockstar it was the first big build with Rockstar Energy that we did like that I mean it worked great it did great but having to match that gold you know like once you kind of work with them on that like you've got to match that goal perfectly it was an insane build to do and I don't think I would have done anything different besides me running a bigger coilover but maybe that's the next build we do I don't know but as for now you know we've got a couple of very minute things to do on Rock buggy but it's kind of here to stay and it's been killing it and it's showing a lot of the things that maybe we need to do another you know gridlock rebuild on and take some of the things we've learned off this and put them into that and make that thing even cooler if you like rock buggy do me a favor leave the comment below as for now we're gonna hit it it's been a long day a long night and this is the rock buggy build hope you guys enjoyed it all right hey how's it going I appreciate you guys sticking around to figure out how to win these so we have a grip Mount from skosh Magic Mount this is pretty cool it actually charge your phone while it's holding it and this is a boom bottle from skosh we use these a lot has a mount on top for your phone it's magnetic it's pretty cool so if you want to win one of these leave a comment on this video on what you think the coolest part of rock buggy is whether it's the rear steer the Patriot liner the gold cage whatever you think is cool about it or the whole build itself we're gonna pick out the best comments so make sure you leave your Instagram handles a part of your comment so that we can contact you and you can get your prizes good luck technically build I don't know I'm not trying to oh what's up this because it is by far my favorite yeah get in here do it if I could have my own business [Music] say hello you're on the YouTube no you're fine you're fine get back in here get back a camera introduce yourself uh Daisy yeah Daisy what are you what are you doing out here Wheeling Wheeling yeah you come out for what for the Great American crawl yeah did you have a good time yeah I actually had the best time tell people with great American crawl is all about everyone told me that it was going to be too busy and nobody would care if you were here but I think everybody does and I think it's awesome and it's small and it feels like a family like a Jeep awesome that's exactly what it should be what do you think about this thing it is what do you like most about it it's different you took a bug and made it freaking awesome like they're already really cool I've always liked the older ones but that that I would want to go for a ride in uh well let me let me get out of your way so you can get a photo of it I'll remember where that Mark is or do you want to jump in there and grab a photo jump in there yeah you jump in there grab a photo so yeah there you go get her the whole shot all right drive safe is that good hey if it's not like sorry it's a little off I I will pet you in a second all right sorry interrupted but you know what that's exactly why we do what we do for cool people like that so where are we are we talking about

Channel: RockstarGarage

Views: 28,120

Keywords: rockstar garage, grdloc, rockstar, energy, jake paul, emergency vehicle, off road, rock crawling, jeep, cj, cj7, wrangler, jk, gladiator, custom, mickey thompson, pro x, r1 concepts, ultra4, gta, stretch, wheelbase, nic ashby, GRDLOC, gridloc, yj, jl, car crush, matts, adventure, camping, SEMA, cleetus, fantasy, wreck, dirt, grind hard, donut, jump, horsepower, supercharger, dodge, chevy, ford, towing, diesel, rally, pastrana, block, car, rear steer, buggy, baja boss, VW, bug, dirty life, bouncer, volkswagen, ECGS, kanye, kim

Id: NSScb0zTet4

Length: 22min 34sec (1354 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 16 2023