On episode 43 of Dirt Every Day
Category
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MotorTranscript
00:00 This week on Dirt Every Day, we're putting 40 inch tires,
00:02 white vinyl racing seats, and a V8 Cummins diesel
00:06 in a '73 Roadrunner.
00:10 That's gonna be four wheel drive.
00:11 - It's gonna be awesome.
00:12 (engines revving)
00:17 (upbeat music)
00:19 - Chappelle's Customs here in El Cajones, California.
00:37 - You got us a muscle car.
00:42 - It's a '73 Roadrunner.
00:44 - It's rusty as hell.
00:46 - It's the off-road runner.
00:48 - This is terrible.
00:49 - What do you mean?
00:50 It's perfect.
00:51 Check this out.
00:52 We're putting 40s on it.
00:53 - That's awesome.
00:54 - You think they'll fit?
00:55 - No, not a chance.
00:57 - Nah, it'll be fine.
00:58 - I like it.
00:59 Dookie brown paint, biscuit tuck interior,
01:02 white doors with the red seats.
01:04 Was that like an option that you asked for?
01:07 - Dude, this thing was a lady killer back in '74.
01:10 - Some Mopar freak's gonna hunt us down
01:12 for cutting this thing up.
01:13 - No, it's fine.
01:14 This is like the ugliest Roadrunner they ever made.
01:17 - There's an ask for every seat, Fred.
01:19 - I know.
01:19 I'm pretty sure next year we'll be winning
01:22 Best of Show at Pebble Beach with this thing.
01:24 - All right, let's get it off the trailer.
01:27 - Did you get any other packages here for me?
01:39 - Yeah, check this thing out.
01:41 - This is the new five liter Cummins
01:44 they're putting in the Nissan Titan.
01:46 It's actually a test engine they just sent us
01:48 that we can test fit everything.
01:49 The actual engine will be here anytime.
01:52 And we have to have the whole thing done in like a month.
01:54 - Awesome.
01:56 - So what we have is a five liter, it's an ISV 5.0.
02:00 It makes about 275 horse,
02:02 but it makes almost 565 foot pounds of torque.
02:06 It's a really cool engine.
02:08 It's really not that much bigger than a basic big block.
02:11 It's probably 700 pounds, it's drive by wire.
02:15 It's got a big turbo in the back.
02:16 We're hoping this thing makes our road runner awesome.
02:19 Check it out.
02:21 Sweet.
02:23 What do you think?
02:24 - I like it.
02:25 We should be able to unbolt everything,
02:27 cut all these wires and hoses
02:29 and just drop the whole thing out.
02:30 And we'll put the motor wherever it fits.
02:32 - Yeah, so the drive train is gonna be
02:36 the Cummins five liter V8 to an automatic transmission.
02:40 And it's actually gonna have a transfer case
02:42 and the four wheel drive.
02:44 The idea is this thing's gonna look like a big stink bug.
02:47 The rear end is gonna be all jacked up,
02:48 big 40 inch Maxxis tires.
02:50 The front will be a 35 inch tall Maxxis tire.
02:53 So first plan of business,
02:55 pull the trunk lid off
02:57 and make all the stuff in the back go away.
02:59 - That's a weapon.
03:03 - Those are probably,
03:04 there's a collector somewhere looking for those.
03:06 This is actually probably the only thing useful.
03:08 We'll keep that.
03:10 (engine revving)
03:12 - Whoa, whoa.
03:13 There's a road runner guy that wants all this stuff.
03:16 This is a Sony stereo,
03:18 which was a special option in 1973.
03:21 You want this special Sony road runner stereo.
03:24 It's right outside here with the other parts.
03:27 One back window also outside by the other stuff.
03:30 Ah, there you go.
03:35 - I got it.
03:39 - That's actually in good shape.
03:40 - The road kill guys will pay us top dollar for that.
03:43 Man, I bet the backseat of this road runner
03:47 could tell some stories.
03:49 Mm, 73.
03:50 - This is the most action it's seen in a while.
03:55 - Airsoft.
03:58 - I'm cutting this out
04:01 'cause we're gonna fit a 40 inch tire in here standing up.
04:04 And then we got to fit a 35 inch tire over here standing up.
04:07 And then we got to fit like a 50 gallon propane bottle
04:11 or something for a fuel tank or a big keg.
04:14 So it's gonna be awesome.
04:16 I haven't ever done this before.
04:18 Don't worry, we got it.
04:19 - Check it out.
04:22 This is the new Maxxis Razor MT.
04:26 This is an LT31570R17.
04:30 It's about a 35 inch tall tire.
04:32 Check out that tread.
04:33 This is the first time this tire has been seen in public.
04:36 So we'll have two of those there plus a spare in the bed.
04:39 It'll be awesome.
04:41 - So what we have going on right here
04:43 is we've got 16 people all working hard,
04:46 working together to get this motor extracted
04:48 out of this vehicle.
04:49 It's gonna be a beautiful thing
04:50 when it drops out the bottom.
04:52 We're gonna have parts and oil and water
04:54 and crap everywhere.
04:56 It's gonna be awesome.
05:06 - We're done.
05:07 Engine in this compartment,
05:08 transmission, front axle, tires.
05:12 Phase one, almost complete.
05:15 Hey Dave, how much do you think these factory perfect
05:22 for 73 Roadrunner seats are worth on the internet?
05:24 - I wouldn't give you 10 cents for them.
05:27 - Do you have your Sharpie?
05:29 - I always have my Sharpie.
05:30 - Here, I'll just write on here.
05:33 - Roadkill.
05:34 - Now they're worth a lot of money.
05:36 Put that on your seat too.
05:38 Would you like to buy some factory pristine Roadkill
05:41 73 Roadrunner seats?
05:45 - This one here is signed by Finnegan.
05:48 - Yeah, that one's signed by Finnegan.
05:49 And over here, this was Fryburgers.
05:52 If you'd like to buy these,
05:53 they'll be outside by the dumpster.
05:55 - Junk.
05:57 - The Roadrunner is kind of a rusty pile.
06:01 So we need a lot of steel to rebuild the thing.
06:04 Basically build a full substructure,
06:05 put a roll bar in it, build all of our suspension.
06:08 My local steel yard is Industrial Metal Supply.
06:11 They have locations all over Southern California
06:13 and into Arizona.
06:14 We're gonna pick up some quarter inch plate,
06:16 a bunch of perforated metal, some tubing,
06:18 get all this stuff back to Dave's shop
06:20 so we can finish this project.
06:22 - If you're gonna start fabricating in your garage,
06:28 the first tool you need to get is a torch,
06:29 a good set of torches.
06:31 You can cut with it, you can bend with it,
06:33 you can weld with it.
06:34 If you learn how to use this thing
06:35 and get a chop saw and a MIG welder,
06:37 you're pretty much unstoppable.
06:38 - This part of the episode, Dave will set the car on fire.
06:42 - Remember that time we got a Roadrunner
06:45 and then we had to get a second one?
06:47 - At some point in this Roadrunner's prior life,
06:51 the Duke boys took it over a bridge
06:53 that was probably washed out
06:54 when they were getting chased by Rosco
06:56 and tore up all this cheap metal right in here.
06:59 So we're trying to clean it up
07:00 because our subframe's gonna go right here.
07:02 Straighten out and grind off whatever's in the way.
07:08 Dave's gonna start building a subframe
07:10 off the bottom of the Roadrunner.
07:13 We need some height because we're gonna have
07:16 a giant transmission and transfer case in here somewhere.
07:20 - By the end of the day,
07:21 we should have either a big square under here
07:24 or just the subrails,
07:26 but they'll be pinched in at the front
07:27 so that we can mount the radius arms in the front
07:30 and then the back will end up being a late spring mount.
07:33 - A lot of times when people build four-wheel drive cars,
07:35 they just drop the car on a truck chassis.
07:38 Seems to be a K5 Blazer chassis is the chassis of choice
07:42 to put any car on to build a trar.
07:45 This is a little bit more advanced
07:48 in where we're actually trying to build a subframe
07:50 and strengthen the unit body that's already there.
07:53 Whenever you're welding or tacking welds
07:55 and you always wanna wear gloves,
07:57 unlike what David's doing,
07:59 and you also wanna put your tacks somewhere
08:00 where it's easy to cut them out
08:01 in case you have to change something,
08:04 unlike what David's doing.
08:05 - And make sure you're welding on some rusty metal.
08:09 - Yes, and you wanna make sure the metal is really rusty
08:11 so it gets lots of--
08:13 - Porosity.
08:14 - Porosity inside there.
08:15 Porosity is very strong 'cause it breathes.
08:18 Every day about this time,
08:19 we stop while we're working on and have a cannoli.
08:22 - It's the best part of the day.
08:25 - We should start a cannoli club.
08:27 - I feel the rub.
08:28 (gentle music)
08:31 - We're making the spring hangers for the rear suspension
08:35 and we needed four plates at a quarter inch thick plate
08:40 that will mount to the substructure
08:42 and hang the leaf springs.
08:44 So we cut four brackets out, clamp them all together,
08:49 grind them so that all the outsides are matching.
08:52 Then we actually tack weld all four plates together
08:56 so that they're identical
08:57 and then drill all through all four of them.
09:00 There's one, there's two, and there's the last two.
09:07 Those will weld to the frame
09:09 and then the leaf spring will hang underneath there.
09:13 When I found this car, I started thinking about it
09:16 and I said, "This would be a cool vehicle to build
09:18 "into some sort of doomsday Mad Max type vehicle."
09:21 I talked to my friends over at Max's Tire
09:24 and said, "Look, it'd be cool to have a company there
09:26 "involved in the whole project.
09:27 "Let's call it the Mad Max's Off-Road Runner."
09:30 And they were into it.
09:31 They said, "All right, perfect,"
09:32 'cause they have this new tire.
09:33 This is gonna be perfect,
09:35 but this is how far behind we are.
09:37 The guys from Max's are asking us to send them photos.
09:39 "Hey, how's it going?
09:40 "Send us some pictures."
09:42 We're not doing that because I'm pretty sure
09:45 they would freak out if they saw how far behind we are.
09:48 (engine revving)
09:56 The Road Runner needs a fuel tank.
09:57 It needs a really big fuel tank.
09:59 So we're down here at a junkyard
10:00 right outside of Chappelle's Customs
10:03 trying to find a big tank that we can put in the thing.
10:05 - Check it out.
10:06 - Look, it's almost the same color as our Road Runner.
10:09 That must have been a popular color back in the '70s.
10:12 Root beer brown.
10:14 Look at that.
10:16 50 gallon steel tank, $100.
10:19 Thanks, boss.
10:21 Take care.
10:22 Golly, jeez.
10:25 I think we've nailed the smell.
10:27 The smell is right on.
10:29 - The mixture of--
10:30 - Propane and diesel and rust and old vinyl.
10:33 How's that?
10:40 So we're working down in El Cajon
10:43 on like the hottest day of the year.
10:45 I'm totally modifying my dirt head jean jacket
10:48 so that it's cooler to wear out here.
10:51 That's so much better.
10:53 - Why the hell didn't we do that two months ago?
10:55 - I have so much more room for activities.
10:58 I'm way more capable of things.
11:00 All right, this is what we're doing.
11:16 Across the back of the Road Runner, there's a gap.
11:20 This will run the length here,
11:21 fill the gap between the body and the bumper.
11:24 At the ends, it'll kind of kick around.
11:26 The roll bar will come up here, follow the body line
11:29 up to here where there'll be a tube
11:31 that ties the two roll bar kickers together.
11:34 And then we'll do another tube
11:36 that follows the opening of the rear window.
11:39 Mastercraft makes suspension seats.
11:45 And if the interior of your '73 Road Runner
11:48 has white body panels,
11:50 you're gonna want white vinyl racing suspension seats in it.
11:54 They have openings for seat belts and harnesses.
11:57 The biggest issue is they're white
11:59 and we are dirty dirt heads trying to build a Road Runner.
12:04 So we need to get these seats in there
12:06 and figure out where we're gonna mount them
12:07 without getting them completely filthy
12:09 before we take the thing out in the desert
12:11 and get them completely filthy.
12:13 - Perfect.
12:14 - There you go, weld it in.
12:15 So we're trying to figure out where our seats are gonna go,
12:18 but also clear out the transmission tunnel
12:21 because we're probably gonna have to bring the transmission
12:23 up into this area.
12:26 So we're gonna have this giant purple
12:28 six-speed Allison sitting right here.
12:31 And then we're building some bars here
12:33 that then we'll come off of and mount the seats to.
12:35 (drill whirring)
12:39 Here you can see the factory drainage
12:42 that Plymouth put in '73 Road Runners.
12:48 They knew that in the future, after Freiburger got around,
12:50 that patina would be a really hot trend.
12:53 So they were already ahead of the curve
12:55 by putting patina in the floor here
12:58 and also working as really good drainage holes.
13:00 We are hustling to get this project done.
13:07 Dave has a full-time job.
13:08 I've got a full-time job running a magazine.
13:11 So also trying to build a car is taking a lot of time.
13:16 So we are trying to get everything done
13:18 so we can get this thing out to the desert
13:19 for the next episode.
13:20 So we're kind of clearing this out to start figuring out
13:25 how the front frame section's gonna come up through here.
13:29 The frame rails that are on the car
13:31 are too narrow to fit the engine.
13:34 It also has to be wide enough
13:36 that it fits around the engine,
13:37 narrow enough that the shocks coming off of the axle
13:41 will clear the frame rails.
13:44 (metal clanging)
13:47 Because the engine and transmission are so heavy,
13:50 we wanna load the engine and transmission from the bottom
13:53 'cause trying to bring it over and down in through the top
13:57 is gonna be really difficult.
13:59 It's kind of the ugly road runner,
14:01 but I think it's turning into something really cool.
14:03 I like the long nose of it.
14:05 We're making room for that big engine.
14:07 We're not doing what a lot of trar builders do
14:11 where they just drop it on a truck chassis,
14:13 like doing all this work to put a suspension under it
14:17 is a lot more work than just dropping it
14:18 on a K5 Blazer chassis.
14:21 And we don't want it to sit super tall
14:23 like most of those trars.
14:24 We want this thing kind of down in the nose
14:26 and we gotta make sure the frame is tucked up pretty high.
14:29 This was the old frame rail, it kicked up here,
14:32 but it was too narrow.
14:34 Our new sub structure is all running up through here.
14:37 They've cut and piped, shaped these, brought it all up.
14:40 So now it all kicks up.
14:42 So now we've got the three by three,
14:44 188 wall frame rail running all the way
14:47 from the rear leaf spring perches
14:48 all the way up to the front frame horns.
14:51 And then this tube here is actually tied into the roll cage.
14:56 Essentially what we're gonna end up with here
14:58 is a frame rail that is almost nine inches tall.
15:02 So it's gonna have a ton of rigidity.
15:04 - We got our Allison 1000 from ATS.
15:07 This is a six speed Allison transmission
15:09 that has an SAE three bell housing.
15:11 So it's basically a transmission
15:13 out of a Chevy Duramax truck,
15:15 but you have to put a different bell housing on the front
15:18 to bolt it up to the Cummins.
15:19 So now we've taken the Cummins, bolted it to the Allison.
15:22 The engine probably weighs six or 700 pounds
15:25 and the transmission is probably about three or 400 pounds.
15:28 So we have a thousand pounds of engine and tranny right here
15:31 that we gotta get underneath the Roadrunner.
15:33 And then we're gonna drop the whole body down onto it,
15:36 figure out exactly where we want it to sit
15:39 and probably start cutting out the floor
15:41 so that it all tucks up in the frame rails.
15:44 - I'll let you know, right there.
15:45 - We just got the Cummins in.
15:46 Dave built these super bitching bad dude motor mounts.
15:49 They mount to the engine, they come off here
15:52 and these three big bolts bolt the motor mount to the frame.
15:56 We have an axle, a big Dana 60
15:58 that needs to live in this area somewhere.
16:00 We have this low hanging oil cooler and coolant return line.
16:05 All this stuff is kind of,
16:07 wants to live the same place our axle does.
16:09 Our build's going awesome.
16:10 The front axle is getting put together.
16:12 We don't have the final engine
16:13 and we got like two weeks to get this thing done.
16:17 We're kind of freaking out.
16:19 Remember the wheels that were on the Roadrunner
16:24 when we got it, those cool Anson slots?
16:27 This American Racing's new wheel.
16:30 It's a faux bead lock, but it looks awesome.
16:34 It's gonna be so cool in this car
16:35 'cause it's kind of hot rod car, muscle car and truck wheel.
16:40 Aren't they cool?
16:41 So the way this works is there's a locking nut
16:49 that's inside there that kind of preloads the bearings.
16:51 And then there's a washer
16:53 and the washer has all these little holes in it
16:55 and a tooth, one tooth.
16:57 - One tooth.
16:58 - That hangs out like that.
17:00 And for the life of you,
17:00 you can never just drop it all together.
17:02 It never just falls together.
17:04 You use lots of colorful words like purple, yellow,
17:09 oh, red.
17:11 What? Oh.
17:14 We are ready to button up the front end.
17:19 We got the EBC slotted rotors on.
17:21 We're gonna put our EBC pads on,
17:23 stuff our new calipers on there
17:25 'cause brakes are important when you have a car
17:27 with this much power and giant tires.
17:29 That's it for dirt every day.
17:30 All we gotta do is bolt on these 35 inch Maxxis tires,
17:34 finish building our front suspension
17:36 and finish our EBC brakes and finish our V8 swap.
17:40 And Dave, come here.
17:42 - Finish our turbo piping.
17:43 - Turbo piping.
17:44 - And finish our brakes and our-
17:46 - Plumbing.
17:47 - Plumbing.
17:47 - Wiring, lights, white vinyl seats.
17:50 It's gonna be awesome.
17:51 See you on the next episode of Dirt Every Day
17:53 when we take this car out to the desert.
17:55 Hopefully.
17:57 - And we dominate.
17:57 - It's gonna be awesome.
17:59 Hopefully.
18:00 - It'll be great.
18:01 (claps)
18:02 - Yes.
18:02 Birds of freedom.
18:04 (laughing)
18:05 - Dave, what's your favorite scene from The Road Warrior?
18:08 - I can't talk about that right now.
18:10 - My buddy Dave, who I got to help build this thing,
18:15 has never seen the movie that it's based on.
18:19 - I've seen the original one at the bar.
18:22 - So tonight, him and his wife
18:23 are gonna have a nice romantic evening
18:24 watching The Road Warrior.
18:26 - It's gonna be epic.
18:28 My wife is going to bed early, I guarantee it.
18:31 (laughing)