Copperhead Payoff

Welcome to trucks. I've got a great show planned for you today

because I finally get a roll copperhead back into the shop

and finish up some of the details on it. And I know a lot of you have been waiting to see that

now, like I always say, the final details on any project are always the most tedious,

always the most time consuming

and definitely the most important because this,

this is what decides the final fit the final finish, the actual look of your project.

If you get in a hurry here, you are gonna regret it. Now, you need to spend time deciding what products you're gonna use, how you're gonna install them. So everything fits together and works, right?

And you've got a lot of choices on a body style that popular.

We're gonna show you some of them. The first thing we're gonna deal with is the wiring harness and the choices that you've got here are to go with an original style harness or a custom harness. Now, if it's an original one, you're after you can get those from early classic enterprises, they've got them to go under the dash

up under the hood

and of course, back to your tail lights.

Now, when I say original, I mean, original, right down to the way the fuse block is set up to your fittings and your plugins, heck even the way the wires are wrapped. If you are doing an original style restoration or even a modified restoration where you're using a lot of original parts.

This is the harness you wanna go with. Now, if you're doing a truck like this where nothing is original gauges are different, the steering column is different. The engine is different.

An original style harness is not your best bet because nothing's gonna fit. Now, you need to look at something like this.

This kit is from painless performance

and it is made specifically for the 67 through 72 GM trucks.

So you've got a fuse block that bolts pretty much into the stock location

and it's been upgraded with modern style blade fuses. Now, another unique feature

is that every wire is marked down its whole length exactly where it goes. So it's pretty much impossible to hook these up wrong unless you're just not paying attention.

Now, another cool feature is how long the wires are. This gives you the option of running the wiring up out of the way, however you wanna do it.

Now, obviously hooking this up is a little more time consuming than just plugging in an original harness, but this is the best for our application.

Now, don't worry, this is not as tough as it looks.

Ok. Now that we've got this painless wiring harness all laid out and we know where everything's gonna go.

It's time to do something about our heat and air conditioning because you definitely wanna lay that out before you go any further

and before you get your interior in. Now, of course, you've got a couple choices on that.

They're both over here on the table.

Ok. For the 67 through 72 GM trucks, both of your choices come from vintage air and the first one from here over

is made specifically for these models of trucks. Now, it takes your whole heater blower evaporator assembly and moves it from under the hood

to under the dash. Now, of course, when you put all of this under your dash,

you know, you're gonna lose a little bit of your glove box. So the kid also comes with this little glove box insert, so you at least have something. Now, of course, you get all the bracketry, the hoses, the hardware that can

denser, the compressor,

everything you're gonna need to put air in your truck. But one of the most unique features is this little panel, this is a firewall cover slides down over the firewall covers the stock ugly holes, just screws in place and allows all your fittings to come out here. Now, as you can see, this is considerably cleaner than the original setup, which came up to about here and took up a half year

engine bay. This will be the setup that most of you guys wanna use. Now, let's say you wanna smooth the firewall down even more. You don't even want this sticking out.

Well, you need a different system. That is the GEN two system. Now, this system is a very compact, universal fit heat and air system. You have your heater and your blower and your evaporator all wrapped into one tight little package much smaller than this.

Now, you also have a flat area here. This is what goes up against your firewall. And then with this kit, you also get the condenser and the compressor, all your lines, all your hoses, wiring controls everything to make this a complete system.

Now, you're probably wondering, well, if the lions come out here,

where do they go through the firewall?

The answer is wherever you want them. That is what this fancy little BK is for lions go in there through the firewall and out here this is a very clean, very smooth, very low profile. Look. Now, as you probably guessed this system's a little tougher to put in than that one because this is universal fit. That means you get to make it fit.

But

this is the one we're gonna use because we're gonna smooth that firewall down. So the first thing we need to do

is mock this evaporator into place.

Hey, welcome. Back to trucks where I'm finishing up some of the final details on project Copperhead and

showing you some choices you have when you lay out your own project.

Now, I've already got the wiring and the air conditioning all laid out.

Now, it's time to deal with a very common problem area on an old truck.

The firewall, it is ugly. Now, hold on. We got some choices for you to fix that. First, of course, you can weld in some panels, then you can smooth it down and paint it. And of course, that looks awesome

problem is that takes a lot of work. You basically need to disassemble the whole truck to do it

or you've got another option.

It looks just as good or better. It's a lot easier something most people can do.

And that is to make a custom panel

to cover the firewall. First make a pattern of the shape you want on a cardboard template,

then transfer the shape to the material that you want to use. In this case, I'm using polished stainless steel,

then cut it out.

Now dress the edges,

drill your holes

and finally mounted on.

Now, is that slick or what? Now the best part about doing it this way is you can use stainless steel, you can use aluminum, you can use regular steel and paint everything.

You can roll beads in it. This is where your imagination comes in.

You can make this look exactly. How you want. And if you don't like it,

just build another one and change it

look how a different style panel completely changes the look of this firewall.

Now, the most important thing here though is to spend the time

to make it fit, right? All your edges need to be straight bolts need to be evenly spaced. So when somebody walks up and looks at it, they go man,

where'd you buy that? Is that factory?

That's what you want.

Ok. Anytime you start talking about final details, plumbing always comes up and if you want something special,

you need to go to pure choice motor sports because when it comes to plumbing,

they've got it all. Take a look at this. They got complete systems for your brakes, hard lines, hoses got power steering setups, heater hoses, transmission cooler kits, fuel system, air conditioning. Heck, you name it.

Matter of fact, pure choice is the only place I know of where you can completely plumb your vehicle with one phone call. All right, let's take a look at the brake system we're going to use for hard lines. Pure choice has got this high quality seamless stainless steel line.

Then of course, you've got all kinds of A N fittings to go with them

and then they've got these really slick little banjo fittings to go on your master cylinder. These are cool.

Then for hoses, we've got braided stainless steel hoses

then to hold everything in place, we got some polished stainless steel clamps.

Now, to adjust the system, we got a proportioning valve and to help us build the system, got this little bending tool. Now, this will allow you to make some of the tightest bends that you can imagine.

Now, one thing that is very important when you are working on stainless steel lines,

you have got to do a 37 degree single flare with an A N fitting on the ends. If you try to do a 45 degree double flare, like you would on a normal system,

you are gonna get leaks.

This is probably one of the biggest mistakes that people make when they do stainless steel lines. All right. Speaking of leaks it, time to take a break. We'll be right back.

Hey, welcome back

today. We are doing some plumbing on project Copperhead and it's time to do some air conditioning lines, power steering lines

and of course, heater hoses. Now in the past,

you haven't had a lot of really good choices here. You could use original style lines that were

kind of ugly and never quite the right length and you had to cut them down

or you could have somebody custom make them for you.

But wouldn't it be nice if you could just make them yourself?

Well, now you can with these kits from pure choice motor sports. Now this is a set up for power steering.

Notice you have the different size hoses and all the fittings that you need.

This is for air conditioning. Once again, different size hoses, compressor fittings, bulkhead fittings and of course, this is for the heater.

Now, the best part about this pure choice stuff is all you have to do is cut the hose to the length you need,

put the fittings on and boom, you have a custom hose exactly the length you want it.

All the fittings are right. No leaks, no hassles. And the best part is

all your hoses match. That is the way it should be.

Now, look at this, the last piece of plumbing that we got from pure choice is this fluid cooler. Now, I know this looks a little different, but check this out.

Your fluid runs in here. It goes through a series of internal baffles and fins.

All that heat dissipates out through the aluminum body and these big exterior fins,

something like this will actually cool better while you're sitting in traffic. No airflow than a conventional style cooler. Now, add to that, it's low profile. It'll not right on your frame rail if you want it to.

And you've got a pretty slick set up. Now

that takes care of all of our plumbing.

I've got a little surprise for you. Come on over here.

Come on, come on. It's back here in my stash. Stop. You stay

now, obviously,

thank you.

Copperhead is gonna be really fast

as any hot rudder. Knows

you can't be too fast

or

have too much power.

So I thought it was only fitting.

I put one more surprise under the hood of Copperhead

and that surprise comes from bottle blown racing.

Now, bottle blown racing specializes in custom nitrous systems.

Yeah. Nitrous. Which means they'll custom build you any system from the most exotic to the most simple. Here is what they did for me.

There. It is.

Now starting with a bunch of hardware from N Os.

They plumbed my intake for a 250 shot of nitrous and it's blowing right into the intake runners. Now, notice all the solenoids are all set up. You get your gauges, your feeds for your fuel and your nitrous. This is a nice set up. Now, some of you might be thinking, man,

that is a lot of nitrous. No, not yet.

Hm. What are these little extra solenoids back here?

Well, to be a little extra sneaky,

they also put in a 150 shot of nitrous underneath the intake. You won't ever see this. You will never know what's there until I trigger those buttons

and hope the heck we're all holding on to something. Now, you can see by the workmanship here. Bottle blown racing really does a nice job. Like I said before. If you want a quality nitrous system,

you need to call them.

Now, if my math serves me correctly that puts copper headed over 1000 horsepower. That is sick. What are you nuts. Yeah, I guess we are. Now to go with that system, we got a couple of blue anodized bottles from N OS. These will go behind

seats.

Then of course, we got all the hoses and all the hardware

to make this a nice easy installation. Now, any time you start pumping in this much nitrous,

you need more fuel. So we got an auxiliary fuel system to go with our normal fuel system

to take care of that. It's a mallory series 140 comp pump

the filter and of course, the regulator.

Now, hopefully this gives you an idea of the planning that goes into this stage. You can't do your electrical until you do your accessories.

You can't do your plumbing until you

know what and where to plumb.

So make sure you're taking your time. So you don't end up having to do something over. Ok. Obviously, I still have a few things to hook up here, but

once I get them done, it will finally be time to take this thing down the road.

Now, I know I've made a big deal about this being the very first production 572 crate engine.

It's because that is a big deal,

but now that they become available. Well, a lot of guys are using these on their projects.

Now, one guy in particular is none other than Jay Leno.

Now, Leno took one of those huge engines and put it in a 55 Buick and it's a cool car

and it's really fast. But come here, take a good look at that picture.

He looks a little smug, doesn't he kind of like he's calling you out?

So, Jay, what do you say? We take that old Fancy Buick. Run it against my old truck. Now, it's just an old truck and,

you know, it's got some nice paint on it and,

you know, not much more. Let's drag that buick out and see what it'll really do.

You know that is unless of course,

you know, you're scared.

What do you guys think? You think Jay's scared?

What do you have to be scared of?

I guess we'll just have to find out

when you think performance Mufflers. The name Flowmaster usually comes to mind and their classic 40 series Muffler. Well, now you've got some choices. This is the super 40 series Muffler still flows like a flow master, but it's a little fatter to give you a deeper tone to give you that nice big block rumble. Now, space is an issue.

They've got these little hush Power twos which give you a nice

lo 50 style sound like an old glass pack, but they won't blow out.

Of course, it's all wrapped in a nice compact stainless steel package. Now, let's say you need more than just mufflers a whole system maybe. Well, they've got cat back systems like this one. For the new Hummer H two. Of course, it bolts right in place of your stock exhaust system. So if you have exhaust needs, flow, master's got your parts. You know, one problem

that you always have to face with a truck is lack of traction because there is no weight in the bed. So you throw in cinder blocks or sand bags or something like that.

There's a better way and it's called the Sure Tracks.

Now, this is a super strong, heavy duty bladder

that you just drop right into the bed of your truck. You fill it with water

and it allows you to put up to 350 pounds

right over the rear tires.

Now, you have baffling built right in so the water doesn't slosh around

and you can still use your bed because you can load up to 500 pounds right on top of it without hurting it. So

if you need to add some more weight to your bed, sure tracks is the way to do it.

You know, one of the cool things about doing a show like trucks

is testing new products. Remember this?

Now, in all fairness, I put this spare tire carrier through some abuse that it was not really designed to handle. And the failure came when this front foot started to bend

from that big 35 inch tire rocking back and forth. Now, once that bent

that allowed the rear to pull out and the rest is history. But the guys at RGR products didn't get mad. They just said that's cool

and they redesign the front pedestal. Now notice this front foot is twice as thick which will eliminate the bending and of course the flying spare tire,

but you can still remove it just as easily by popping off this wing net.

So if you want a removable spare tire carrier

that you know, has been tested for off road use RJ R products is who to call.