Gibson Guitar

Hey, welcome to trucks. Got a great show planned for you today

because we're gonna show you some engine options that you've got for your project. Gonna take you on a trip to the Gibson guitar shop. Heck, we're even gonna show you some of our craziest moments. But first

we're gonna talk about the most important part of your truck. The engine because if that's bad,

you might as well just fill it with dirt and plant grass in it because it's not gonna go anywhere

and the bad news is engines are going bad all the time because you use them.

So eventually everybody's either gonna have to rebuild

or replace their engine. The good news is it's a lot easier to replace your engine nowadays than it has been in the past because you have so many aftermarket parts

and accessories to choose from.

That's what we're gonna look at now.

Ok. If you are a typical truck guy,

this is probably a really good example of what you either have in your truck now or what is in your garage waiting for you to get to. Now, the question is, do you rebuild it or do you replace it.

Unfortunately, only you can answer that because it depends on your budget, depends on what kind of power you want to get out of it.

It depends on what kind of time you have to dedicate to it. What kind of tools you have? What is your skill level? Now, you may find after looking at all these factors that you don't want to mess with this. A replacement crate engine is the way you wanna go. That's ok. Check this out

for you Chevy guys and girls. This is the GM performance 385 small block crate motor. Now, this thing starts out as a 354 volt Maine

and then they pack it with all the good stuff, high performance crank rods, pistons, then they top it with high flow aluminum cylinder heads,

finish it off with a damper

water pump, aluminum intake, even a distributor. Now, this whole package adds up to a 385 horse torque monster.

It's affordable bolts right in your Chevy rig. This is a nice package.

But what if you've already got to go set of heads and an intake and you're just dying to use them? Well, obviously you don't need a whole package like this. Here's what you need.

This is the GM short block. Now, it's very similar to the crate engine and that all the machine work is done

and the whole bottom end is assembled. Bearings are in the cranks in the rods, the pistons,

all you have to do is finish putting it together exactly how you want it. This is great for the guy that likes to turn his own wrenches.

Once you have your engine assembly taken care of, whether you built it yourself or you're using a crate motor.

What are you gonna do for a fuel delivery system? Well, we're gonna talk about carburetors first because they're the cheapest, They're the easiest

and you can make them run like crazy. Now, this is Holly's new version of the truck, Avenger

770 CFM. This thing will handle over 400 horsepower and being a truck Avenger

and it'll handle the rigors and the bouncing and the angles of off road driving.

So if you're looking for a good reliable fuel delivery system for your off Roader and fuel injection is not in your budget.

This is what you want and it bolts on with four bolts.

Speaking of fuel injection. Yeah, that's the hot set up. Great power throttle response. Good gas mileage. It'll run upside down,

but it's gonna cost you a lot more than a carburetor, both in money

and in installation time. For example, this is Holly's new commander 950 multi

port fuel injection unit.

As you can see, this is a nice looking piece and bolting in the fuel injection part

is as simple as just bolting in an intake motif fold, but to make it run

you've got all kinds of fittings. You got a wiring harness, fuel injectors, a computer, got a fuel system upgrade linkage to take care of. There's a lot going on here and this isn't necessarily hard.

It's just a lot more involved in it than just putting on a carburetor.

Ok. Let's say you want power. That's what you're into. And you've been eyeballing a super charger.

Well, once again, there's a lot of choices. you can get a supercharger kit like this wing setup, bolt it right down on your engine and run like the wind.

The thing you have to watch with a supercharger is your compression ratio.

The lower the better, especially on a street engine 8 8.5 to 1 is right where you want to be

that GM performance crate engine we showed you earlier

9.5 to 1 that's a little high to be running a supercharger. Now, if you do that,

the higher compression ratio is not going to allow you to run as much boost.

That kind of defeats the purpose of a supercharger.

Now, what if you don't have room under the hood or the money for a super charger? But

you still want that power sounds like you are a prime candidate for nitrous because it basically does chemically what a super charger does through compressing air and that is pack more oxygen

and fuel in your combustion chambers and boom, big blast of power. Now, N Os has a lot of kits available for a lot of different applications.

But one of the simplest is this power shot. It's just a plate that goes under the carburetor

gives you the blast of nitrous and fuel right into the intake runners and

off you go.

Now, a couple of drawbacks to nitrous, it can be a little expensive to keep this bottle full. So if you're on the finger all the time,

also, you need to make sure that your engine is built to handle the stress of nitrous because

it can blow things apart. Now, hopefully this gives you an idea what's out there. Some of the options that you've got. When you're putting your engine together, we're gonna take a break but don't go far because when we come back, we're gonna make the connection between rock and roll and trucks.

Hey, you're back. As you can see, both Copperhead and Crazy Horse

are almost finished, man. It's not gonna be long to actually turn the key on these things

and go for a serious test drive. But first,

I've got something special to show you something you're not gonna see anywhere else. Now, I've made the comment before how the music world and the custom car and truck world very closely related. Well, nobody understands that more than Gibson Guitars.

Not only do they build some of the coolest guitars in the business. Most of their employees watch shows like trucks and are building some kind of hot rod of their own

and hand building a guitar is similar to hand building a vehicle just on a little smaller scale.

So it was a tremendous honor when the Gibson custom shop decided to build special custom guitars to commemorate the Copper Hidden Crazy Horse projects. Now check this out. You are not gonna believe it.

Crazy Horse started out like any other Les Paul, just a specially weighted block of wood.

Then it was carefully cut and worked and formed into the desired shape.

The neck also starts out really crude,

but it too was carefully assembled and fitted

and then worked and formed and curved until it's perfect.

And then the whole instrument moves on to the final steps

up to now, things were pretty straightforward. But this,

this is when it became crazy Horse. I notice it's been painted with the same house of colors paint that we used on the real truck.

You got the Crazy Horse logo, a

couple of horseshoes here and a very irreverent Parnelli Jones tire track runs across the guitar to give it a cool off road feel. Then to top it off, they put my name in the head stock as the designer and the builder of the truck. This is awesome and it's all set up ready to rock.

Now, how about you guys that are more into the Copperhead project? Well, I have got something to show you too, but on this one,

the designers took the whole copperhead snake idea to the extreme.

They sat down at the computer and designed a way to cut the snake skin pattern

right into the wood.

Once that was decided,

the guitar went through the same tedious hand building process.

And this is what Gibson rolled out. The copperhead SG.

First things first

notice that the snake skin pattern is cut right into the wood giving it a really cool three dimensional look. Now, the guitar is painted with the same custom PPG paint that we put on the truck, but that's not all

each scale is painted with a color shifting paint. So as the body moves, those scales are gonna glitter and flex and move on. You very sweet

up here at the base of the neck. You got a subtle reminder of the big 572 cubic inch engine in that truck.

The word copperhead dominates the neck in classic Mother of Pearl.

Once again, they put me in the Truss rod cover and it's all topped off with the Gibson name.

Now, is that cool or what if you think that's wild? You wait till you see what they're doing for the Hairy Hauler.

Now, some of you may be wondering is Gibson gonna offer these for sale to the public? Yeah, you can get one, gotta go to an authorized Gibson custom dealer or just log on to their website Gibson custom.com

and order you one.

Now some of you may be wondering, man, what do those things sound like? Well, they sound like Gibsons and believe me, it's taking all my willpower not to just plug in here and jam away for hours. Matter of fact,

it's time for a break. We'll see you in a minute.

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

One of the best things about doing a show like trucks is that I not only get to beat and hammer and test vehicles that I built, but also that other people have built, including the manufacturers.

And one criteria that I always try to strive for is to really test these things. Not just pussy foot around,

sometimes the vehicles can handle it,

sometimes they can't,

but that's what makes a good test and some really memorable moments.

This 71 Ranchero was a favorite with its blown Cleveland. It was insanely fast

and insanely hard to hold on to with its crazy butterfly steering wheel

in testing the new Subaru Baha.

They told me to drive it hard. Well, ok.

Well, maybe not quite that hard.

I

got a great shot of the undercarriage here on the ground. I think he left it behind.

Uh just a few nuts and bolts to fix that. That's why we have a how to show

the Mickey Thompson Jeep performed flawlessly despite immersive flogging it all day long.

The High Sierra project truck was a great Real World Daily. Driver

that was subject to some very harsh real world conditions that

it handled with. No problem.

As did the supercharged sportsman truck

and the massive lifted super duty we built that made it all look easy.

Of course, we all know the Ford lightning is an awesome street machine,

but there's also some really nice shed is out there.

We found the Toyota Tundra could use a little more ground clearance

and size does matter.

At least when you're ordering lunch.

We also found that mud holes are always deeper than they're supposed to be.

Some things are just meant to fly.

Breathing. Second hand smoke is a good thing.

There is more than one way to make tracks.

Photographers, yeah, photographers are always in the wrong place at the right time.

Hey, Chris, what are you doing, man?

Hey, don't worry, I got it on camera.

He wasn't even looking.

No.

No.

Right.

Unfortunately, that's all we have time for. But don't worry, we're gonna continue to build them for you and drive them hard because if we don't,

we couldn't really call this trucks, we'd have to call it like pottery or something.

We'll be right back after this.

One of the biggest questions that people ask about a semi is what is the deal with the brakes? That big

blast of air? And we've all heard the story about a truck that lost its brakes going down the mountain and became a runaway. So the real question is what kind of braking system is on a rig like this? To bring it and a trailer to a stop over and over for thousands of miles. Well,

good questions. Now we're gonna show you how it works.

Oh,

it works

brought to you by Wyotech.

All right, Chad, we've got a huge rear end out of a big rig. Tell us what's going on in this brake drum.

Well, we're, we really need this large brake drum to provide the sufficient surface area

to give us the proper braking force so that we can stop one of these big trucks which could be loaded up to 80,000 pounds,

man. Ok. Tell me what's going on inside here. All right, let's go down here. I've already removed a brake drum.

Uh All of your braking system is gonna start right here at the brake chamber. It's gonna receive air from a series of pneumatic valves which is gonna be located throughout the truck.

The brake chamber is gonna convert that air pressure into a mechanical force which is gonna push on your slack adjuster,

which is gonna put a torsional force on an S cam.

Like so

once that happens, your brake drums are gonna expand out into the drum. Ok. Now, question for you safety,

what happens if you lose all your air pressure, you have a runaway or what? Well, that's, that's very important

for emergency braking. We have a spring break chamber which is gonna be right in this portion.

Uh, and it's gonna contain this large spring compressed in that tiny housing. So the whole spring goes down in that. Yeah, it is.

So

the emergency braking is we lose all air pressure. This spring pushes outward

and we get the same braking effort. So when you lose air pressure that locks your tires. That's correct,

man. Ok,

big question. Why are there never any disc brakes on a big truck? Why is it still drums? Well, one of the big reasons is, uh, your, your drum brakes has a larger surface area for that braking effort versus the relatively small

disc brake pads that you would find on a rotor set up. Ok. How long does something like this last?

You should be able to get it last? Well, if everything's, uh, adjusted properly and well maintained, you should get uh, roughly 80 to 100,000 miles. Now, the big question is when you hear about a runaway truck going down the hill losing brakes, what's happened?

What's happened is the driver improperly, uh, uh,

used his brakes and got things nice and hot. Uh, the brakes shoes have glazed over and the drums have begun to warp.

That should give you an idea of what's going on in the big rig breaks. Now, the next time you're going down the road and you hear those

air brakes come on now, you know how it works,

man. I can't believe the size of this stuff. Look at that housing

as the popularity of off roading has grown. So has the demand for off road tires and more and more people are asking for a good all terrain tire. You know, some that'll handle pavement as well as mud rock snow, everything.

Well, Mickey Thompson's got you covered with this Dixie Peck radial FC two.

Now, this has an aggressive tread that will handle the off road part. It's a radial that'll handle the on road part and you can get it in sizes from 30 ones all the way to 30 sevens.

So if you got a Jeep, a truck or an SUV spends as much time on the highway as it does that on the trail.

Mickey Thompson had you in mind when they designed this tire.

One of the most popular modifications to do to a classic or a hot rod truck is to relocate the gas tank down under the bed and just get it out of the way.

The problem is when you do this, now you've got to rig up some sort of a filler neck to get the fuel down to the tank.

Well, Leggin's Hot Rod shop has got a kit for this. That is so cool. They won a best new product award for it last year. Now, the kit consists of bracketry hinges that are all polished up. Nice. You have a little electric ram

and this whole kit mounts down under the bed. Now, when you flip the switch,

one of the boards lifts up and rotates out of

way, giving you access to the filler neck. Now, once the tank is full, you push the button again,

the board goes back down. All slick, smooth and you'll never know what's underneath there.

Leggings. Hot Rod Shop is the only place to get this.

The last product we're gonna look at deals with an area that most people overlook when they're lifting their truck break hoses.

They don't come with most lift kits. So people think they don't need them and they go ahead and modify their stock lines to work. Now, before you do that,

check out these dot Approved braided stainless steel lines from Skyjacker. Now, they not only give you the extra length that you need,

but they also go through a nine point check for things like tinsel strength and flexibility, hot, cold, heck, you name it.

There's a lot of things that you can break on your rig when you're out. Four wheeling

these hoses from Skyjacker will make sure your brake lines are not one of them.

And that's it for today. Next week. Dodge hemi

Ram. We'll see you then.