Crazy Horse Paint

Welcome to trucks. If you've watched this show at all in the last year or so, you probably have a pretty good idea what is on that rotisserie.

Now, if you're new to the show or you don't get a chance to watch it very much,

let me bring you up to speed. This is the body of a 1966 Ford Bronco project. Crazy Horse. And I've completely reconstructed it here on the show, replacing everything but a piece of that firewall and those two rear fenders. This is how it went. It started out as a $350 piece of junk that I pushed into the shop.

And the first thing I did was replace the floor pan

cross members

and the rockers.

Then I chopped out the door strikers and the inner structures and replaced those with new metal.

Finally, I finished it off with new inner fenders, wheel tubs and a core support

and of course new fenders giving me basically a brand new body.

Now, it's no secret that my paint booth is literally stacked to the roof with other projects and junk. So the next deal was to find somebody to paint this for me.

Now, remember I'm building this to pay tribute to Big lie, the Bronco that Parnelli Jones won Baha

with in the 19 seventies. So I knew exactly how I wanted the paint scheme to be and it had to be special.

You're not gonna believe who I had paint this.

This was painted

by the Nashville Auto Diesel College. That's right. A bunch of students.

Now, I know what you're thinking. You had a bunch of students paint crazy horse. What are you crazy?

No, I'm not. And here's why,

first of all, they have some of the best instructors in the nation

and they keep a watchful eye on the students and teach them in tools and techniques.

Second in a few months, these students

are gonna be working in shops all across the nation on your vehicles. So somebody needs to take a chance on them

and I figured now is as good a time as any to see if they know what they're doing.

And as you can see, they really did a great job.

Now, the two colors that I picked for this project both come from house of colors

and this purple is called Passion Pearl

and this silvery white is called snow white pearl. And they work really well together. This two tone look is very similar to what the original big lie had. Of course, lie was gold down here and white upon the top.

Now, the students did a really good job laying out this line getting it straight and burying it in the clear.

Now, big lie also had a big horseshoe on the door for its sponsor Olympia beer.

So I needed something special on the door of this project.

Now, this airbrushed Crazy Horse was not done by a student. This was done by airbrush artist, Johnny Watson.

And the amazing thing about Johnny is he doesn't use any patterns. He does it all freehand. I basically said

I want a horse's head in the door

back into flames over the rear tire and boom, this is what he laid out.

Let's take a look at the details.

You have a snort coming out of a flared nostril with bared teeth.

You have a glint in the eye,

check out all of those individual little hairs.

Then of course, it flows into flames.

Each flame has its own pinstripe

and then of course, it's buried and clear. So you won't feel an edge anywhere.

Ok. How about a hood? Oh, you Bronco guys are gonna love this. This is brand new from wild horses. It's called their high country hood. It's a fiberglass cow induction hood. Got a big cow induction scoop here in the center

and then two smaller scoops out here on the sides. And of course, it comes with all the hardware, the pins, the hinges, everything to mount this on.

Now, the hood was painted once again by the students and striped.

Then of course, the word Crazy Horse was brought out by Johnny Watson. Now, just in case you think that Crazy horse is in danger of becoming a trailer queen. Oh, no, man. Think again,

the whole idea behind this project is to show you how to build something that looks really good,

but it'll also handle whatever you can throw at it on the highway

or in a hardcore off road situation.

And if I scratch the paint, which I will

heck, I'll just fix it.

If I break the axle or hurt the motor,

I'll just fix them.

That's why you want to learn how to do this kind of stuff. It gives you tremendous freedom with your vehicle. You're gonna find there's really nothing you can't fix once you know, ha. Now, now the moment of truth, mounting that body down on this chassis. Now for the mounting points, we went to James Duff Enterprises, got this two inch body lift comes with the Urethane bushings and the two inch spacer set it down there. Put the body on top bolted on

when you go to set a body back on a chassis, having an overhead lift or a hoist can really be nice.

However, if you don't have one,

about six healthy guys can manhandle a bronco body pretty easy. Either way

you'll want to go slow

and make sure that everything's fitting properly.

Now, you can see why I kept telling you how important it is to keep checking your alignment and your clearance and all your measurements. When you are reconstructing a body.

If you mess up any of these measurements, when you're rebuilding one of these things, when you drop the body down on the chassis, it's not gonna fit. And the last thing that you wanna do at this point

is to go back and cut and fit and weld on a freshly painted body. Now, what you want to do is drop straight down on

all the holes to line up like ours just did.

This is where all the time that you spent when you were building, it

really pays off. This is what it should look like. Check out the fit around the steering box,

the firewall,

the headers,

the front shock hoops,

even the rear shocks,

ok? To get the full effect I put on the grill, put on the hood and rolled it out to where you can get a really good look at it,

man. That is sweet. I love it when they start to come together like this.

Now, obviously, I have got a lot of reassembly to do, but not today

in a couple weeks. Got something for you two wheel drive guys after the break.

You know, most people that drive a stock two wheel drive street truck would agree. It wouldn't mind lowering it down a little bit if it was affordable, it wasn't too radical and it was something that didn't destroy the usability of the truck. Well, if you're one of those type of guys, I've got just the kit you've been looking for because

it is all that.

But it's also something that a competent weekend mechanic can put on in his driveway.

So, follow along while I take a 99 Chevy Silverado,

drop it two inches in the front. Four in the rear.

The kit we're using is from ground force. And for the front, you've got these two inch drop coil springs

shocks

and bump stops and that is it.

Now, for the rear, you've got a little more. Not a lot. You got brackets and shocks and shackles and all the hardware to put it in. This is a well engineered kit. Something that you can just bolt on never have to think about again.

Ok. The first thing we're gonna deal with

is the front end and it gets its full two inch drop from new coil springs, which means you don't have to replace spindles or anything.

So, with the truck up in the air and the wheels off, come in, take out the sway bar end links

and get rid of the stock shocks,

then we'll pop the tie rod end loose from the spindle.

Now we're ready to go up to that coil spring. So I'll stick a jack under the lower control arm to support

it,

then knock the lower ball joint loose

once everything's disconnected, come in and carefully lower the jack

to release the pressure on the coil spring. Now, we don't have to use a spring compressor on this application

because this control arm's gonna drop far enough to totally release that spring. But

any time you are messing with the spring, that's under pressure.

You need to be careful because if you come in, start prying on it

while there's still tension on that spring,

it can come flying out and it will bust you up. So you need to make sure all your pressure is released

and the spring is sitting in there loose before you try to take it out.

Next, install the new spring into the spring pocket

and make sure that you reuse this stock rubber dampening pad.

So you don't get any squeaks,

make sure that you rotate the spring.

So it sees into the lower control arm properly.

Finally, just jack up the lower control arm, compressing the spring,

then reconnect the lower ball joint to the spindle.

Follow that with the sway bar and links

the tie rod in

the new shocks

and the bump stops that come with the kit

and that is all there is to the front, see pretty straightforward.

Now, the rear is a little more involved, but it's still not too bad. And I'm gonna show you that after the break

just can't get enough of trucks. Check us out online at trucks, tv.com.

Welcome back to trucks. The project. I've got going here is a twofour suspension drop on a late model Chevy using a ground force kit. Now, the idea here is to drop it down, make it look better, make it handle a little better

but not go too low to where he destroyed the usefulness of the truck for towing and hauling stuff and also not to spend a fortune doing it. Now, I've already finished the two inch drop on the front time to get on the rear.

The first thing you need to do is get a jack under the rear axle to support it,

then unbolt your U bolts

and then just lower the axle out of the way.

Next, we need to replace the shackle here on the back of the spring

with this much longer one that comes with the kit. As you can see, this is where we're gonna get a lot of our drop. Now, this just bolts on

using those factory bolts.

Now

unbolt the front of the spring from the bracket.

Ok. This is where things get a little more difficult.

The ground force kit comes with a new front spring bracket and the good news is

it bolts right in the factory location using the factory holes. That's the good news.

The bad news is that these are factory rivets and they are a pain in the butt to get out

that can turn into an all day affair if you don't have the right tool

and the right tool is an air hammer.

First, I'll use a chisel to knock the heads off of the factory rivets. You can see even with an air hammer, these rivets are stubborn,

then I'll use a punch to knock the rivets out of the hole

and the stock hanger bracket will come right off.

Now, both the new bracket and spring in place using the factory holes and the supplied hardware

just so, you know, on the driver's side, you will have to unbolt the gas tank and move it a little to the side. So you can get to those bolts when you're putting on that bracket. So allow time to do that.

Now, moving on, we've got these little wedges,

they go up here

and they correct the pinion angle. So you don't get vibration when you're running down the road. Unfortunately, a wedge brings up a problem. Your centering pin is now too short to properly see into the axle and that is bad.

So

I'm gonna correct that by taking a clamp, putting it on the spring and getting rid of that old pin,

then slide in the new center p

with the longer head and bolt it up.

Now set the wedge on top of the axle and jack the axle up into place

and bolt it on using the stock U bolts.

Follow that up with the new shocks and the bump stock.

Ok. You're probably thinking that that's it.

No, not quite. We still have a couple of pieces left and you don't want to forget about them.

This first one is to relocate your carrier bearing, which is here in the center of the truck and it's gonna line your drive shaft up. So you don't get any vibration when you're running down the road. So the first thing we'll do is unbolt that carrier bearing, using the measurements from the kit,

cut out the cross members,

Now lightly bolt the new carrier bearing bracket into place. Now notice how this is gonna raise the location of the carrier bearing

and line everything back up.

Now, we are not gonna reuse these factory studs.

We're gonna come in and use these holes and they will line up with these slotted holes in the bracket

and that is gonna give us just a little bit of adjustment

so everything will be perfect.

The last piece is this transmission spacer. Once again, it's for alignment of the drive shaft to put it in, just unbolt the transmission mount,

slide it in

and bolt it all back up.

It's all these little details working together to make sure your drive shaft stays in proper alignment.

That'll ensure you get thousands of trouble free miles out of this truck and that finishes up the installation of this twofour drop but not the project. Now,

I'm gonna roll it back next week, put on some brakes, wheels and tires, all kinds of cool stuff. So you're gonna wanna see that,

but there's still more trucks coming at you today and that will roll at you right after the break

in the world of cars and trucks. There's one area where most people don't wanna mess at all and that is transmissions, especially in automatic.

And the reason is they just don't know what's going on inside.

Well, we're gonna take you inside of one of these really big

automatic transmissions

and show you how it works.

Oh, it's worse

brought to you by

Woch.

Hey, we're here at Wyotech. We're looking at a cutaway of a really unique transmission. Chad, what is this? What's it out of? This is a, uh,

power shift transmission that's out of a John Deere loader.

Um,

it would be mounted right in the pivot point of a John Deere loader.

Um, it's gonna receive its power from the engine and it's gonna drive this torque converter. It looks like a regular torque converter off a truck or a car, right? Just like any automotive application torque converter from there. The converter is gonna drive your input shaft

and on the input shaft is your main drive gear,

your main drive gear in turn is gonna be in constant mesh with your entire front set of gears which is gonna rotate all the time

from there.

Your gears are gonna be flying into these drums and each one of these drums contain two different clutch packs

on the back side. We have another set of gears

um, in order to maintain any of the gears or, or to move this loader, we just have to apply any two clutch packs in this transmission

and we would be able to move. Now, I assume on this transmission, like most of them, your power transfer comes through your clutches. Right. That's correct. Ok. Tell me about the clutches. This sounds like this is the war area, right?

Well, just like any uh clutch pack assembly in any automatic transmission, you have nothing more than a series of friction members

and steel members that are alternately

throughout the entire clutch pack. Ok. What kind of material is this on here? This is a high metallic bronze friction material like an engine bearing or something, right? It, it, it's designed to absorb a lot of heat.

What are the little cuts in there? These cuts serve two purposes. Number one to lubricate the clutch when it's not being actuated because the this clutch will actually slip a little bit.

And when you go to apply the clutch that acts as a channel to

push that oil away, so this clutch pack can grab and hold strong. Ok. So I assume when somebody burns up one of these trannies, these are what they burn up.

Yes, you'll see uh the grooves in this friction material almost totally disappeared. Uh Your friction materials be waved due to heat warping and you'll also see minor heat checking or you can have excessive heat check.

Ok. Now, when you set one of these up, I assume that the,

the tolerances are pretty important. Tell me about that.

Well, your clutch pack in clearance is definitely the, the key to long life. Uh You, you definitely wanna set your in play for that clutch pack up to proper specs according to the OEM manufacturer. Wow.

Now, like I told you, this is a pretty in depth transmission. If you can understand one of these, you can understand almost any automatic out there because this is how it works.

It goes without saying that the Ford Bronco is famous for a lot of things, most of them really good,

but it is famous for one thing that's not so good and that is excessive axle wrap, especially if you have a lot of power under the hood.

Well, James Duff Enterprises has an answer to that with these traction bars. Now, the kit includes one bracket

that mounts to your U bolts

and you have another bracket that goes up to the front spring hanger.

Then of course, you've got the bars and the hardware and everything. You need to connect those two brackets together.

But the best part about these bars is they fit over the top of the leaf spring. So you don't mess up your ground clearance

and as you can see, it wouldn't take much to come in here and modify these to fit just about any four wheel drive rig.

So if axle wrap is a problem on your rig, especially if you have an early Bronco, you need to give James Duff a call.

Ok. For those of you that are restoring or hot riding a classic truck.

Well, you know that power windows was not much of an option that they'd sure be nice to have, wouldn't they?

Well, a quick call to Watson Street works and you can have them because they've got this kit to convert your manual windows to power. Now, here's what you get,

you get the complete lifting mechanism with universal mounting points. So it'll literally go into anything.

You've got the electric motor all installed, plus the channel for the glass. This is everything you need

to literally be able to lift your windows with the push of a button. Speaking of that,

Watson's also has these trick billet buttons that you can add to that kit

and really finish it off and really smooth out your door panel.

You don't have to have been around the truck world very long to realize there are some amazing things happening with diesel engines.

You can get some tremendous power out of them. Well, the guys at Bully Dog technologies have yet another way to squeeze power out of the Chevy

Duramax

and that is with this fuel injector upgrade.

Now, these may not look like much, but Bully dog claims you can get 100 horsepower increase with these

and up to a 200 ft pound increase in torque. And at the same time,

get better fuel economy as long as your foot's not buried in it.

So, if you're driving a Chevy

Duramax, you may wanna check these out

now, that's gonna do it for today. But remember,

I'm gonna be back on the White Sport truck next week, then we'll be on Crazy Horse and after that,

we're gonna be back on Copperhead. So you've got a lot to look forward to and I've got a lot of work to do. We'll see you later.