Visiting Aaron Kaufman at Arclight Fab & Full Shop & Truck Tour | Ford Era

[Music] all right just got over here to arclight fab and some of you guys might realize there's a bunch of fords around here so let's see if we can find aaron if anybody's in here cf4 hello yo what's up bro hey what's going on man dude i haven't seen you in a minute hey i know it's been a while dude nice to catch you at lst and then i can't wait for you to show me yeah last last time you were here we were punching holes in the side of the building so we got that done and then not much else so because the verb adam made got finally sitting it's actually bolted to its frame rail and i only work on this truck about two weeks a year so i'm thinking maybe 20 45 or so i'll be driving but it's got frame horns on it and the caps completely mounted so she's looking we're we're actually at the point where the cab comes off now and so the six two is a the six dude is a bit of like a major problem in a kind of a normal hot rod way when you when i put it in the oil pan's below the frame rails and the intake's above the cowl on it but i was always planning on building an intake manifold for modifying an old pan ain't that big a deal but you don't realize how big a 6-2 is dude put it in the unibody oh it's massive so and also i'd been where i really i really like to have uh actual center line uh on my cylinder one edge right and maybe even centerline but this one it would take so much cab intrusion and come in and you know eliminate so much foot box that it's going to sit back in a kind of a normal place i'll be like on center line with two and three but it's not that heavy a motor so to be okay but we're at the point now being a torque arm rear uh rear suspension the mid cross member has to be it's multiple purpose like it's the rear suspension and the trans and all the crossmember and all these things so at the point now where get a final location for the motor and then pop the body off build that and then we can go to finish in the rest of the truck can i show them some of the metal oh yeah whatever yeah oh yeah so this i designed this chassis in in 16 and 2016 and uh kind of this was my early what i thought i was gonna go into production with but um this right here is it's it's too involved having a four and a half inch ride height like it really it requires a lot of modifications to get together like you know it's gonna pull it out of the box and throw it on the truck like it takes another shop to put it together or someone at home with a lot of experience yeah and so not to mention at the point at the initially the front suspension i was looking to build my frame rails and then use another suspension company's components that they were already manufacturing to speed it up reduce cost all these other things as i got into it i found that it wasn't viable for a few reasons i don't think it was a bad idea it just really wasn't going to happen and so after you know we tried to pick the most reasonable suspension for it and we didn't have to modify so much that it really we needed we need to develop our own suspension from uprights control arms everything else since i had the stuff i decided to go ahead and put them together in this truck but like i said i'll work on it about two weeks a year so so that's that's he got really far in the last couple years well yeah it's what like six weeks worth of work yeah exactly for one dude and so if it was anyone if there's any other shop they'd been on the road retired and sold three times already oh yeah but the uh but the idea with this one is like you know like i tell john you know it's like there's definitely two schools of thought in the sport truck or the mini truck world or whatever and i guess one you know is like you want to be laying on the ground like it's broken and sitting your lawn chair next to it and that wasn't a theory that i had wasn't wasn't something that that i appreciate like i did when i was younger i'd rather look cool grabbing second gear sideways through the intersection and so that's even being on air we still we still feel that way or i do and so the suspension setup is very aggressive uh performance uh between the geometry on it and the height of the truck and the wheel choices on it to run as lightweight wheels we can as bigger brakes as we can and have as much as aggressive geometry and so that being said it's like we also there's a compromise there and when it comes to like just some of the a what you think of as a traditional sport truck appearance and and then functionality is is alter a little bit you'll find that our trucks have a little more camber on them because when they're aired out because we have a progressive camera gain on it we like going into the corner anyway so but that being said it's like you know look for me out there on the main streets come 20 45 you know so hopefully a lot of still driving by then i'll be the last one there we go oh man yeah it's a little bit of bed work yeah oh yeah definitely take some bed work but i'll tell you you know one thing also you see in the rear is like with the the way that the the notch is done is if we were gonna do if this was you know maybe i should back up and say they're really the flat bed floor i love other than it turns most trucks into worthless trucks and worthless cars at the same time though it's two seats and nothing else and so i actually prefer retaining as much bed depth as possible so the bed the truck can still be used as a truck to me it doesn't matter how big the tubs are it doesn't matter a lot of things i still want my truck to do truck stuff and so for that i mean that means putting another set of wheels in there my ice chest overnight bags tool bag all the crap and so i like being able to use that so we use that so i use this method as far as making the notch otherwise if this was a race car or if it was we didn't care about it what we would do is do a long step up and over run a continuous rail but this particular design was meant to create as little bed intrusion as possible and then the extra height is rather than having like the exhaust you know i personally don't believe that exhaust under an axle even qualifies like it to me that's a it's a failure i hate it to me it's a failure so everything goes up and over the the rear axle and so the additional height is meant to put big exhaust in and completely took just like a factory vehicle you know i think a lot of times people in the custom world discount the effort and thought that goes into manufacturing from a factory level of things that they consider and they think about that for longevity you'll see factory vehicles on the road 200 300 plus thousand miles and that's because they considered all of those options they considered the wear and tear the accessibility the work you know how how they can work on it uh not number one i'm talking about nvh just how the vehicle exists and so i try and incorporate as much of that as i can while getting as much go fast and cool guy crap in there at the same time i think you uh you're doing it so dude i still can't get over the patina it's like it's rare that and i'll say you so i went up there to buy this thing based on that only i mean it wasn't like oh man it's like you know granted if you're buying unibodies if you're into them you know there ain't nothing i don't think they're i mean i don't think there's another vehicle that has less parts than a 6123 unibody there is i don't i mean like so i've built i've built so many cars and then and all of those have a lot of parts i'll tell you the one that blows my mind we did a television program we did a uh 49 40 48 49 49 chevy and uh that has enough parts for four or five vehicles like there are just too many parts to the whole thing and if you have one you know what i'm talking about but unibodies it's like i think if you broke down every spring every screw every washer i bet there's only a few hundred parts and we're talking screws and washers not even large components yeah and so which was honestly one of the features that they were after is a lighter cheaper to produce truck and they were successful in that but it always blows my mind that in 61 and two people hated this truck so much they partially went back to the old truck for one year yeah but you know if you're being progressive you know you can't always win but i'm happy they built them and i and i and i love them to death and they definitely have an attitude the rest of them don't and lucky on this one dude is like you're quite like over here yeah it's always blown out i very rarely see them not blown out but i'll show you something so we had we had some small pinning here i had one of the guys back at the old shop do some uh repair how to keep it as small as possible so i'll be uh airbrushing and blending that back in that was about it the floor wheel is a great shave over the other side if you've got a unibody you know about this is uh in fact if you don't have uh if you don't have this maybe you don't have a unibody and then so what we're talking about is the back of the b pillar here yeah like the same thing has some holes here a little right here little pits there once again that'll be blended back in and buffed out and no one will see it and as far as when we say patina this truck is in in my opinion about as far as you can go before you have to clear them and let me be clear maybe clear about it i don't think that clearing old paint vehicles is the right choice i think it's the last stop before you have to yeah it's going to get destroyed yeah well and for me it's transfer it's like if you like sitting on your trucks and lean on your trucks you don't want to get all over all of your your clothes and stuff like that that really kind of is a bummer um because like i don't wear cleaning you know i don't get all dressed up wear super clean clothes all the time unless i'm going car show and i don't want to be ruining those two or three pairs of go out clothes i have and so so that being uh that being said this truck it has been about it a couple times or so i went through a big process once and buffed it and i was really really happy with the result on it but i went ahead and see a lard it one more time hence the chalky appearance on it currently is it's the it needs to be buffed again but i don't think that you can have any more rust than this and still call it patina paint like it's rusty yeah and i currently have one at the house i've got a 65 galaxy where there is no paint on the deck lid the roof and the hood straight that's just metal and i see a lard and the paint on the sides like i'll take it i'm good with it but the but the sides facing the sun they're gone and they've got these nice little you know rug you know rust patch things that come down the side right there it's gonna have to get flat clear you know but we'll run that and one day it may end up getting the paint job but i i personally love patina it's only original one time even if you only got 10 of the original on there but at some point i think we all have to be real it's rusty yeah that i i that's my biggest fear with my truck is i live in south florida literally five six miles from the beach yeah you can just hang you can kiss a goodbye i've owned it since may and you could start seeing you know the little bubbles are getting a little bigger and i'm like all right i probably need to figure something out to seal it even though it doesn't have like heavy patina but it's if it's you know where you live it's not like the guys in michigan or wisconsin or ohio where they're driving around brine yeah brian it's inside the brakes it's inside the door the door handles the hood it's everywhere you're just smoking away from it ever it gets between the seams it's gone like i don't know how those people deal with it but they do where you live is a little different it's in the air and it's in its spring summer fall winter i mean it's all the time and so people like i've gone look at i've looked at thousands and thousands of cars and like been in california like oh it's original california car it lived its entire life within four blocks of the ocean there wasn't even left of the car it had never seen salted roads a day and it's like the atmosphere was just asian there is so much if you're talking bakersfield california different story so people go california cars where there's a little buffer zone there that looks just like cars out of the midwest so maybe it's not even worse yeah i remember there was an old uh old thing that ronnie always says is uh that if you could take a truck or a car from arizona and take the interior from like milwaukee yeah cause their interiors are perfect because they don't get the heat that we do and the rubbers are all perfect yeah i'll tell you one thing up north though it's like always case on uh cars from up north and largely it's like most of them are jump but the the one odd thing you would find and there's a reason for it is that convertibles are almost always in great shape and like you said interiors because they don't get sun baked and here in texas and in california and arizona our in-cab temperatures with the windows up is enormous it'll turn the it'll turn rubber in the liquid and so they do they do have a hard time dealing that the paint's all burned you know but all the sheet metal isn't good yeah and so and i'll take that you know every day over the other but during the winter these but you know they have winter cars because it was nasty you were going to slide off the road you were going to deal with salt and so like they're date cars they would live in the garage all winter long so they have a fraction of the miles they don't see the salt you know not saying they don't have some issue because they get them out early in the spring and they're still salty on the road but like ultimately they're pretty nice cars interiors they've been inside their whole lot so you won't find ac cars up there but convertibles and good interiors hey so not a ford yeah wow ford smoke sports smoked them yeah they did yeah so a gentleman up north in canada uh damon runs a a youtube channel and web page and everything that goes along with technology entertainment so daily driven exotics they had they were such they were big fans of the unicorn um you know that uh with the hoonigans and ken block and so he really liked the styling on the car this car made 730 horsepower in a and spins to 4 billion rpm it makes all the noises it's infectious this thing is crazy to drive and and as they're well aware most of their cars are but they wanted to crank it up a notch and they really wanted turbos hanging out of the hood lots of fire and you know and wild horsepower basically just you know destroyed 300 000 car which i like bad ideas and so we kind of got together on it and so between all the drift racing and corona and 2020 all the different traveling and stuff we were doing it hasn't progressed really quickly but here we are twin turbo uh f uh f12 couple nagasaki nasty boys yeah yeah you know i don't want to get too deep in it kind of let damon share yeah with his fans but uh but anyway i'm more interested in the tools in the shop than i am in the ferrari honestly so i'll tell you you know it's like uh you know between between the welders and the plasma table you know it's like in my 3 8 impact it's like that's about those are the most used tools and i really you know um drawing and bobcat and solidworks and then like so it's just think it draw it cut it make it and uh and so largely it's like here we run bailey tools and lincoln welders and and that's kind of that's how stuff gets done and then like i run a two by four mandrel bent and it's like we just uh maybe have people haven't know about but we prefer to do work for other shops and we've done uh bed rails for other shops where if they have a customer they can deal with the customer about their specific needs they can send me a hand drawing and then uh what i do is i'll converge with cad file send it to them and then if they approve it i bend them up and then things ship out usually within a few days or maybe a week or so and so uh i can't run full length frames i have a eight foot bed on it but because my because i designed around my frames being stitched together like on the unibody you'll see it's got a 2x4 front and rears with a 2x6 center on it okay and which uh for a lot of reasons there's a kind of it builds an internal gusset an integrated gusset into itself the other thing is it's more the appropriate size of the frame rail and it fits under the truck well not to mention it's pretty strong so mine were designed to be stitched so i can run whatever hang out is plus eight foot but we can discuss that if you want one if anyone's interested in mandrel rails it's like i'm happy to bend them for other shops uh and uh it's just with customers it's like if they draw if they draw something and they get it home and they misunderstood what they were doing that's that's their best deal so i prefer working with shops that have experience yeah heck yeah i had no idea that you like were in here all by yourself fab and all this badass you know yeah well that's that's also the reason if anyone's dealt with me i'm not very fast and that's kind of the reason is it's just like between answering the phone and go pick stuff up and go do this it's like we met you know it's like might get you know two hours of welding done and then like nothing else the rest of the day or i might be able to machine two parts and then do something else so it's it's always a challenge you know to be by yourself and run everything but at the same time though it allows us some flexibility but it is definitely definitely a built-in challenge so um you know right now just uh working on some charge pipes on the uh on the f12 trying to get it kicked home it's definitely been here uh long enough and and sadly you know been been held up just due to just all the different directions that i run in and not be able to put people on it whenever i'm gone but that's it then we got the we have the burb here picked it up recently uh i just did some trading and uh for anyone's big falcon fan um i guess you're gonna cry yourself to sleep tonight so i did some trading on it and so the falcon was an incredible uh vehicle to to to take me different places in life and big experiences um as a race car it's really a time travel car it's hard to class with other cars so i always end up running an open class something like that done some door-to-door racing obviously i raced at 14 15 and 16 on the mountain and uh did went down to a big bend open the road twice and really just trying to find a lot of things to go do uh with it but not a point in my life where i can have cars that i don't drive necessarily and so there's a lot of interest in that car and i had someone reach out there personally they really wanted they were interested in the car and uh that made me happy about it so i threw a prep on it and i had to put door bars in it because i was up at an event running a time attack deal and i kept hitting my elbow on the door bar so i saws all them out so i could finish the event so so real quick tossed some door bars in it got it got it prepped got it on its feet and we made a train on the burb nice um the verb it's a it's a beautiful example i know i know on a ford era tv here and uh i've actually featured one chevy but it had a coyote under the hood oh yeah well i'll tell you i'm a big fan of that so kc which i'm sure everybody knows uh a long time ago he had a 67 camaro and it was just sweet as could be it really was a bit of a cream puff and we had a coyote sitting next to it and we were about a day from shoving the coyote in it for no reason other than just the anger that it would cause yeah you know ultimately it found a better home and so we didn't have to cut it up but but we can't do it yeah a couple more beers it would have oh it would have been absolutely but yeah this thing here is sweet it's i think it's really just a beautiful example of a survivor truck and she's for sale guys yeah and so it's just really fun i took it down to took down to lone star throw down this weekend had a lot of fun uh a guy across town he did a late model engine swap on it and uh guys that headed up north put the interior and uh it's just a sweet old truck like to see it go to another home if it doesn't it's a turbo less right do it turbo ls yeah it's got a built six liter and a turbo off of some kind of dump truck you guys make sure you hit up aaron if you want a suburban that's literally ready to go i mean it was what 600 mile round trip uh i don't even i don't know houston back yeah whatever that's far enough yeah and we're rolling i mean along the state troopers aren't watching this video i mean we were rolling 85.90 the whole way down yeah you were going faster because i could i couldn't even keep up with him we went out for dinner one of the nights and uh we're heading back around the highway and he's doing probably 95. my truck tops out at 87. like gold dust can't go faster than 87 it literally doesn't let itself yeah so yeah yeah that's it still got all the rain and and debris on it but yeah that's uh that that's about that's about it man yeah we've got beautiful equipment beautiful shop and it just you know knock out the best work we can win when we can you know uh but that's that's it man got anything got any trucks that actually run you know sometimes there ain't nothing right here that runs except for my truck i've got so i got this little cut down i'll tell you i got this little this little story you want to hear when you see the truck you want to hear it now we're on the way over i'm assuming right yeah you know what come here grab the keys on it all right and we'll uh we'll do this well okay we're going for a treat might be a what the truck i'll probably include it into this episode though so always uh you know you know how this goes like you're uh every day you wake up first thing that you got to go through marketplace craigslist finally well one day instead of going to work i decided to go buy more junk and that's exactly what i did so a few bucks in my pocket in the trailer i went over to fort worth and uh i hadn't owned a factory four-wheel drive truck uh f-100 f-150 i hadn't owned one and i thought well i really want to kind of experience it right see what it's all about so i went over looked at half ton 150 long bed uh truck and uh it ran sorta it drove kinda like we got in it and it's probably as borderline deadly as any vehicle could be we went down the street came back and um put it on the trailer brought it home made a deal bought the truck probably two thousand bucks or something it's got a 360 435 mp205 high pinion 44 nine inch i thought for an old truck it's got all the all the cool guys that's the setup yeah and so i brought it back and like and the reason i got is because i thought it was cute one and the second thing is on my street i live on a private street and we don't have any city services so we don't we we're all in well all septic there's no mail there's no trash collection and so we have to take all of our trash so it was my trash truck so at the trash in a bed and on mondays i run truck up top the street take trash out come back well so this is how it begins so i'm uh the battery would die if you don't you know if you don't run it pretty often well so you had to start once a week well anyway so i came home one day and for lunch and i started the truck went side a sandwich came back out getting super dude rip off back to work three days later i come back home and i see the door open on my truck oh my god somebody's in my truck or maybe i didn't turn it off and so so i don't know i don't i didn't know it run out of oil pressure had run out of gas if it had just ignition i had no idea what happened but one thing's for sure is it didn't run anymore and so so should we you know quickly the deuce that it's not locked up but even then you can still hang one they cool off right but so i thought well we'll see what we can get done so the if you've ever worked on these with electronic ignition they're a pain in the rear and they kind of suck i mean they can be okay but they kind of suck so i'll pull all that crap out and they've been about man him out had been about eight years since i put an hei distributor in and i thought no let's get hei just be done with it right so ordered one up one gets here pull out the box yeah that's why i haven't put an hei in in a bunch of years they are hideous but they do work really well so so in it goes plug ware is not also bs and sure enough this little bastard lights off and it runs nice all right well we got something well now i've also got time in it you know what i mean like now i've worked on it yeah and so i've started to grow an affection for it because before it was just a trash truck truck and so but now i've worked on it so your your brain's starting to think how could i make this good it doesn't have any breaks either but on my street it's private street there's only a few of us on it i can plan my stops out pretty good put it in low gear let off the clutch so it's no big deal who needs brakes right well now that it runs i realize it breaks on it in australia i'll help take it to the shop i'll take a shot we're gonna put brakes on now it runs needs i screw this needs another manifold this thing oh my god and it's like i've worked with that fees a long time but every time i take an fb manifold off i am always blown away it's just like wow this has got to be the heaviest manifold anyone has ever seen they're 82 million pounds 82 million is the exact number that's expected i'm 150 pounds i can't pick it up like not like out there you know so i take the intake manifold off with an engine hoist it makes me feel real manly but anyway so i get it get to working on it and then i i don't in case no one knows i'm not a lift guy at all like i think that like people i'm not into it i'm just not it's like you got bad driveline angles you've got bad steering angles and sure all this can be overcome but you're increasing the leverage on the truck i'm just not into it there's a certain amount of height you need past that it's just ridiculous so when peop when you open bigger tires on the problem is not your suspension the problem is your sheet metal fix the sheet metal not to mention i i think that people often choose really insane offsets for the wheels which cause a lot of problems and so my goal for this was like all my trucks no lift and we we have got a i've got a list of trucks i've done on 40s with no lift and it's just the the movement of the sheet metal just augmenting the sheet metal to make it work and the vehicles work so much better this one was no different stranded tires much smaller but like every one of these trucks i see broncos it's like they're on eight inches of lift to run 35s and it just seems so weird especially since the 40s of the new 35 and so to me it looked like the wheel opening would support a 35 and so it's got 35 1250s on it and uh on a you know 17 9 um zero offset and it is an inch taller than stock now granted it's got a bunch of weird tricks on it that i've done and i'll take you out show you in a second but i just figured i'd give you the rundown basically it's a it's a lightened up uh 360 with a 435 if you don't want a 435 is it's a dump truck transmission so first gear is like 661 or something to one like it's extremely low and so you drive it two three four you don't even use first so it's really really low but since the transfer case is in a four to one transfer case you get when you're in four low and in low gear you get a pretty decent crawl ratio out of uh out of the truck and it's still on the highways goes as fast as all the other trucks of that era you're still no overdrive but i just thought it had all the right neat gear on it and it you know everything on it was smoke the steering was smoke the ball joints everything was smoked on and so the only thing i've got left to do is is i'll show you under the hood i got a little little stuff that needs a little attention but it's got i just gotta do gears and lockers in it it's i've built one ton steering for it um because the the original steering has real like as it droops out it'll tow the tires in real bad and that just wouldn't work originally this thing had like a whopping six inches of travel it now has nine in the front ten in the rear um and then uh it's on fox gladiator shocks and to be perfectly honest the the fronts are not valved heavy enough coming off of a v6 jeep but what i was after was there's it now runs gladiator setup on so everybody from king fox icon radflow bilstein everybody makes really nice units for gladiators then now it's bolt on you can buy really serious shocks that go on and it's just they're uh just a little under valve but but ultimately it's got bigger longer shocks on it and uh you know she's got one a three quarter one inch spring in the front and then the rear deleted block on it so it's got a built bump uh bump extensions or bump drops on it and then it's got a uh basically a a progressive no block uh pack in the back with my hangers on it factory shackles and i'll show you heck yeah keep you guys in suspense for long enough she looks like a peach there you go fired it right up [Music] so the story the story i got on is this thing was originally sold which i haven't validated any of it in the northwest idaho washington kind of area and uh guy had it up there it ended up migrating to florida and the guy worked on a boat or ship or something where he was he had to be on call and couldn't go very far so they never even registered the truck down there it just went like from the dock to get beer and cigarettes and back you know didn't mess with it ended up back here in texas and i bought it as a as a long bed it had uh some repaints on it but these are the original colors on it but it had a couple repaints the truck was 16 inches longer than it is now and now now my opinion about the best way to cut these down well let me back up and for people that don't know is dent sides are the only trucks i say that i can't i don't know every truck but like your chevrolets and your other years forwards and i don't know about dodges but i just don't know about dodges is uh all of the extra length for a long wheelbase is midship and so every other year ford and all the chevrolets if it got longer here it got longer here and that would retain uh proportions well they only did it in midship here so it makes them pretty easy now i personally believe the best way to do it is to cut them out of the headboard and move the headboard back and you can shorten a dent side with no seam without a seam on it at all and so that's really cool but it's much more complicated and like i didn't want to be deeply involved with this not to mention i was curious about the possibility and how it all line up so i just snipped this one right in half and just glued it back together but since the truck is full of scars i i wasn't this trick's not getting painted it's not whatever so i didn't even i didn't grind a single weld so i wear the truck back together shot some paint over the top of it i mean usually you only you only you know clean up a weld when they're kind of crappy but this one which i didn't see did you have a robot in there yeah yeah no it's not that nice but and so it uh so it's a just a day you know a little bit on the elle's bed if anyone's done one it's cool move somewhere else move somewhere else you know and so it took me about a day to weld up both sides of it and the whole bed so the bed welding up was a day but the shortening was quite literally a day so it's i say it's kind of two days and i don't really offer this service but it's like these trucks could be cut down drive in drive out inside of one week completely fuel launch brake lines chop down everything also the drive shaft uh so basically when i shorten drive shafts so i mark them we keep them in phase this one was shortened here put back in no vibrations no problems with it and so it's like you don't have to go have a thousand dollar drive shaft built like you really can just shorten them people don't understand how the drive shaft work and how it's assembled once you do it's not that complicated but so it's got my my hangers on it and then the rear springs were a bit of an uh a bit of a experiment they're for a bronco it was difficult to find progressive like basically the blocks three inches in the back and so these were four inch lift springs and so it was going to be an inch bigger but because of the not being unitized body not having the camper shell on not having rear glass the truck is lighter and so the rear spring packs just uh spring rates a little heavier than it needs to be and so we'll make some adjustments to that but and once again also you'll see gladiator rear shocks mounted in the rear um and that was the you know that was a little bit of a effort to get those in there where i really i got the travel out the motion ratio i was after and uh you know see how see how this all goes and the reason we delete the block is just for the increased leverage over the spring um you know various other reasons but you know here it is short and and i can i'll tell you something else also it's like while it takes 16 inches to get it to a short bed length which is six nine it's like what what i personally feel is the more appropriate way is 12 and four it's it actually will cut down perfect oh well yeah but this is factory this is exactly the way all the factory short beds are yeah but i disagree with what ford chose to do here and i really think only going 12 in the front and going four back here really or something in that that era but not all 16 up front because i feel like dent size it's a little bit long a long tail yeah i do yeah and i really think though i think they'd look a lot better and perform a lot better if the the wheelbase was just a little bit longer and the axles closer to the back lonnie's truck uh schlongbed he he only took i think 12 out of the front and left it because he's like it looks really weird so his in between are long and short it is because you'll notice so it's like you know on these things it's like because you have all of this door front fender a little bit of bedside you have you have a lot here so it's not that that distance is weird it's just the ratio of rear hangover to front bed is awkward you know what i mean and so if you you know if you were going to shorten them both on them i really think that's the winner but it's not i thought ultimately i'm it's not a forever kind of truck i was just having fun with it it's gonna go somewhere else and i thought that if i had to explain why my truck was different than the rest of them that it might hurt it and so it is just like all the other short beds now that's that's how that is um the rear shock placements are similar to stock but they're not in stock location and then so on the front obviously you know if you're familiar with these things they have a shock tower that comes up off the top here and hangs off but the uh and you know and you can get a set of fox 2 0's that will work and you can change the stud on it make it work but i wanted to use a gladiator shock so the bottom was able to work out fine and i had to build a tower and obviously there's some inner fender intrusion here which that still needs to be have a bucket put on and patched and you'll see the other one needs a little more on that one and it says skyjacker one inch springs on it and then basically got new bushings in it and um and tightened everything up the at the truck we're going to stay around or keep going um obviously i'd had a torsion sway bar in the front and then we'd move on to big foxes or kings for stock gladiator and uh for all for an old girl she got all she needs and then you know about the 35s if anyone's curious so i've had this thing right metal to metal and then the turning on the back of it's absolutely fine when you buy a 1250 on a 9-0 offset you run into your radius arm like that's going to happen unless you kick the radius arms but you know you can limit your steering which this one's got the steering tops stops turned out and just austin powers around a little bit if you get if you need like if you're off-roading you need to twist it up real quick but in the front though you will find out here on the front here they do make contact and it makes contact right here when this is at full metal and then when you turn to and you turn into it you make contact here and it's like if you go and you see the second mark here this is free and clear by about a quarter of an inch and this top mount right here this is good and clear you got finger clearance on it as it sweeps and so just like on the bedside that's right here and uh you're gonna get a a pie piece cut and then knock back and then so you'll see a nice continuous flow of this line just taper right on out and weld back dust it on some paint not gonna grind it down and and that'll be that and this thing sits one inch higher 35 12 50 turns locked to lock metal to metal so it just it happens how it should um and then if anyone's familiar with the older you know basically like every couple of years they kind of change the steering setup on these things and so i i can't remember this i don't remember where i got the the ends from basically this is uh k 3500 chevrolet one ton components right and heavy wall tubing um put on so it's got one ton steering on it now i was gonna flip it and run high side on and re-drill the knuckles but the the deal is like being in stock height you can get them into the steering box and there's just a uh too many things running in there's a space issue interference issue so i went ahead and left them on the bottom side and no need to go to rod ends these big ball joints for 30 miles will be fine and like and while i would have enjoyed 737's i didn't think the factory brakes could handle uh 37's i didn't feel like the steering box could handle 37's i just i thought i'd wear the components out i thought 35 was a perfect match for a dana i think it fits perfect too yeah and so not on it i've got uh to make it all jam and because i didn't want to go the trail and think like everything was gonna break like it was all gonna pop and so uh so i'm not in it right now but i've got uh yukon uh chromo uh uh axles uh for a front and for the rear and obviously new joints on everything and so it's just like all the all the driveline underneath it all the axle components all yukon and uh and then ultimately i've got a buyer on it right now but it's not out the door as you can see but it was gonna get rock sliders on it and then uh build out the spare and gearboxes in the back so i just really want to have like this sweet old truck that's got a lot of neat little tricks on it you know yeah and i think i think we're i think we're really close i agree i guess i'll show you under the hood i mean it looks like it looks like all of them this this old girl was abused and neglected and so as you can see had to pop some holes in the inner fenders which my intention is fully to go back and and sheet metal those back in but you know just did when i got it had an edelbrock carburetor on it which you know if you have one it is what it is and so and then this massive hei distributor but you know it was a power steering power brake non-ac truck and um and so because i you know initially my plan was this was going to be honest i'll put this together as my king of the hammers golf cart just to get around right and so because you can twist them up uh ditch the mechanical fan on which i am a proponent of mechanical fans i'm a big proponent of it but whenever you think you're going to twist something up you could run into a situation where the fan blade enter you know you know has an interaction with the radiator which is typically a failure and so and so this one's going to uh electric fan setup on it um but you know it's just sweet old dump truck kind of you know that's it she cranked on the first time and that's what that's what matters he doesn't care about anything oh this truck just wants to go so awesome well i really appreciate you showing everybody you know a little set up over here and then walking us through the shop yeah and then i'd show you this but then on the show yeah they just old truck and y'all all seen that 100 times over who doesn't like an old truck yeah you know the other thing is just so people know us you know don't think about is like on the trim so we're shorting the truck down we need to shorten the trim now i thought the trim was really one of the more unique features of the truck you know i thought it was i thought it was cool and so this is the original long bed trim just snip snip this is the original long bed rubbers the bumpers on them snip snip like everything goes back in there if you you know if you t if you take your time and pay attention what you're doing you'd be surprised how much you can chop up and we'll go back together so okay yeah good luck awesome well hope you guys enjoyed it thanks aaron and we're going to record a podcast so you guys make sure to listen to the next uh episode or probably two episodes with a different one now but make sure to tune in to f100 talk catch you guys soon and now a word from our sponsors jason with fat fender garage and we are at our shop in gilbert arizona and so we work really hard at building cool classic pickup trucks and a lot of things we like to do are fuel injection swaps whether they're ls or coyote or godzilla or whatever it is you're working on we really like that better than we like the old classic stuff that's just a personal preference here so we have a lot of cool parts if you're a ford guy and you need a brand new chassis we sell those and all the components that you would need to do a coyote swap in your own personal vehicle we also sell some ls components as well but follow us on instagram follow us on facebook go check us out and see all those components that we have on our website for your ls or your coyote swap go check this out all right so we wrapped up over here at the shop knocked out a podcast and then we're gonna go uh check out the private shop so i'm excited to bring you guys along so you guys get to come along all right everybody so we're over here casa de cough man and and show me some cool i don't know about that he's got a killer galaxy over there he's gonna get under the knife one of these days and then now we get to see old charlie brown which i've really been itching this place is sad but i don't work here no more damn he's looking good yeah so ocb finally got inside and uh we've been sitting outside for a long time much like your truck so this is on a 98 one ton uh dodge 3500 frame and um i know i'll talk about dodge but there it is but 12 valve nv 4500 241k standard 60 dana 80. the dodge front axle is because goofy coupler on the other side of the two piece so i've already got new axles for so one piece right side axle spin tech hubs for it uh gears lockers i'm on 37's now machine set of uh uh hummer wheels this will end up on a set of innovate 17's but right now it's just on the hummer wheels we just cut the boards on them um truck truck has high miles not but it drove like a champ when i got it in as a theft recovery and then we switched charlie brown over and charlie brown was a two-wheel drive 460 c6 off the road 17 years uh i bought from orville california it was as described he did a good job describing it uh one problem is the drivability was nothing like he described him we sorted that out over the next 2400 miles dude that was an epic road trip yeah so like i said it's been hanging out a while so it's cobweb but there again spiders trying to take over my little shop here but no tyler brown suite and this is my of all of my junkie projects this is my favorite this is my baby so i fully intend on this being my daily work truck full-on i have intentions of going down and running nora and this is my chase truck trailer you know bronco on the back it's like those are the those are the goals but this is this is my sweetheart the one thing about doing the late model conversion as you're aware to it is like the axles are too wide for the body like it really pushes the wheels out which which caused a little bit of a problem so i'll end up drawing instead of around zero offset also run a high offset as long as we you know keep them off the frame and control arms but like i really don't in case people have picked up on i'm not a fan of my wheels hanging outside of the truck at it at all so that that being said though so we'll try and keep these as tight as possible and once again the hummer wheels are they have a high offset or high-ish offset but this is it the ready uh six door service bed has been on it best i can tell it's whole life and i love how they put this yeah it's in pretty good shape yeah this is strange yeah it kind of matches yeah it kind of matches and so uh right now the cab the cab sort of mounted we've got front cab mounts and rear cabinets the rear cab mounts are directly off of its tool drive chassis the course works floating right now and the bed just sitting on two by four so the project obviously has gone nowhere but but there it is it's just hanging out did you have to shorten the frame at all get this this service bed on the two-wheel drive on the wheel drive setup the service bed didn't line up with the wheel center line it wasn't a problem because it ran little bitty tires you know 16 pounds when i got it we put 285 75 16 on it and it fit in there it didn't matter that it was off center the wheelbase on the three-quarter ton so this extended cab long bed 3500 dodge fits this truck better there's a three-quarter now i was saying it wasn't much different but at three-quarters of an inch uh difference really what really made things work out well but i am because the 37's won't get the service bit i'm going to reshape the wheel openings on this and then ultimately the top boxes you know when they open up i was hoping to not get i mean it would be nice this didn't have boxes on top because i really prefer my six-four service beds with a slide-in camper because you put a sliding camper on a pickup truck bed you have no gear you can do nothing and so i really wanted to put a sliding camper have access to all my equipment but in the chase truck and work truck aspect to be able to you know use the bed is uh you know is necessary so i think we're gonna do is do fold out canopies on the left and right out of the top boxes on it that way ultimately if we put something in it and we have to set tires on it or we have to use the the top edge on it we're not going to we're not we're only going to miss the canopies like we won't use them as a functional box but that's it it's just here it is here's the baby hell yeah so my mind is shortened up five and a quarter inches that's why i was curious oh this looks much longer than my truck this is this is 100 stock 98 3500 dodge uh suspension chassis 100 with the the cab transplant and the bed sitting on top of it has not been altered at all you've seen the front of the cabinet well what originally was it extended cab long bed long bit yeah on a gen 2 okay 98 3500 so and originally and i was going to link it at first but due to the truckness of it and the going to work part uh what i'm gonna do is put progressive pack and airbags on the back um and so we just retain a little more of the truckness and uh run like a diva or carly or something on uh yeah with a with a big tapered sleeve bag on the back oh yeah because we wanted to put a lot of tongue weight on it but uh but yeah it's got factory springs in it with the cummins in it or everything so i mean it is we pulled the body off stuck this one on that's the end of the story fenders haven't been altered there it is on 30 seconds so man i'm kind of jealous it's on you need you have to lift it but it's a dent yeah dents have much more space so did you build your body mounts to give you lift or no no you take a look and see like a matter of fact you can see underneath here how tight it is to it so like right here it doesn't fit look in the back so you can see how tight how tight this is to it on the back yeah so you can you can't sink it any further gotcha so while you have this unused is the difference in chassis style basically you still get this big gap here but you can't get any lower unless you start to cut the floor i didn't want to cut the floor yeah so no that's for sure i didn't realize this was a 350 i thought it was a 250 ah a big boy and then pop this open that's an awesome hood latch so but so the idea so when you take the ac out you have this massive hole so you can see like this i had like this literally got dropped on here and never got touched again anyway and so we just notched out that little corner there because i'll fix that out so that if we want to pull the manifold straight off the side of it we can't and you see so many of how hard and tucked they are yeah and also once again we've taken the factory motor mounts and trans mount and slid them back in the truck three inches okay so so like if yours is in your truck in the stock place it's like that's where things start to get weird we took the motor and like we put the axles where we want it we moved the motor back three inches inside of it nice so when we're to finish this thing off road trip get in line we need a road trip brother oh no is that your great grandfather or something no some fans in it we always thought it was cute it is yeah so that's charlie brown dude it's my favorite of all my junk it's my favorite dude this is a great sized shop oh i'll tell you this so this is it's 40 by 40 1600 feet this is it's the i i adore working in here by myself it works perfect the only problem is when you blow a car apart it absorbs the entire shop and i don't have any other storage except for what's in here and so when you take one car apart you can't move in here but you can fund me if you don't blow the car apart you can work on two cars and have two guys working and it works out pretty good but it's like the second you take a car apart it's all over nice any other trucks sitting around here somewhere i got larky on the side over here so here's larky desperately in need of a wash got this out of a field in a mississippi not i mean like the same house but like the bozo was up against the house and this was out in the field and then jonathan and buddy of ours elliott they almost got destroyed by this egyptian war horse or something that tried to try to eat their ears and kick him in the face but we all we all survived though and i got this thing home and it belonged to it uh an uncle of a friend of mine out in the delta and uh got collected on a bad debt and got sold to me okay it was a small block automatic power brake power steering ac truck originally motor got pulled out uh we built the motor went in something else one day it was just up on stands i cut the beams out of it and then one day i needed to move it so it's got a vic tossed underneath it and that's it and then here's larky what's the plans with it for now it just sits here i was gonna i was gonna make it four wheel drive and also stuff but uh i mean to be honest i'm probably gonna sell it i mean i'm not i'm just i'm just i don't have any need for it and it's like it's like the front fender could be hammered out and it's the same color anything in a damn shirt could be hammered out but it's just like it's just kind of you know the beds just maybe a little too far gone but you know he could go live at someone else's house that's for sure so there it is just that short bed that's it that's all that's all the toys that's all the junk i got sitting around here there you guys go so i'll see you in a second so aaron's got his truck and uh said you want to grab the keys and see how she feels pretty rad man all right everybody hope you guys enjoyed it's dark outside we had a little bit of fun and uh we'll catch you guys next time so as always if you like the video consider subscribing to the channel give us a thumbs up if you have any questions drop a comment below make sure to check out what aaron's got going on the arclight on instagram see you later you

Channel: Ford Era

Views: 547,520

Keywords: aaron kaufman, gas monkey garage, arclight fab, daily driven exotics, f12, fat fender garage, ford era, ford trucks, unibody, bumpside, dentside, bullnose, baleigh, lincoln electric, nitto, magnaflow, f100, old truck, custom truck, sheet metal fab, fabrication, twin turbo, welding, bozo, charlie brown, fummins, cummins swap, cummins turbo diesel, dentside 4x4, what the truck, f100 talk

Id: D3y5_-XprtI

Length: 49min 0sec (2940 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 08 2021