Update on Project Sergeant Rock

Hey, welcome to trucks.

You know, a while back, I introduced a project called Sergeant Rock involving a certain 1941 Dodge Power Wagon.

Now, this is a very,

very unique project in a lot of ways. But the main purpose of it

is to answer some of the questions that I get from you viewers on

a project that you're working on or something you'd like to be working on or something you've just always wanted to know

and to show you how to do stuff that you won't necessarily see on another show or in a magazine.

The first step was to show what's involved in reviving an old vehicle.

I'm talking about something that has sat neglected for years that most people would think is just a piece of junk like this old 41 Dodge. Ok. What I've got here is a 1941 Dodge army truck

that has been sitting in a field for years. It hasn't run in, who knows how long?

And I literally pulled it right out of the field and brought it into the shop. So it's completely untouched.

As you can see, it's still got weeds on it. And old tire chains on the tires and

a

custom made bed and check this out.

You got an old blanket covering the seat springs and that's all covered with rat crap.

Is this cool or what?

Oh, yeah. Look at this,

man. I almost expect a chicken to come flying out of here,

but a gearhead doesn't see junk. No, man, they see potential. So I wanted to show how to turn that potential into a running vehicle in just a few hours and a little bit of money.

First, we covered how to make sure the engine's not locked up.

And if it is locked up, how to get it unlocked without destroying it.

Now, if the motor is blown or if you've got mechanical damage like a rod sticking out the side or something,

you might as well just pull the motor out and rebuild it

because you're not gonna get it to run.

So finding out if the engine is free and turns over is the first step. Now, if your engine is locked up, don't give up. Not yet. What usually happens is a little bit of condensation gets into the cylinders, causes a little bit of rust around the piston rings and the cylinder and

holds them together

and you can break that loose and this is how to do it. Take some good penetrating lube,

pop out your spark plugs

and give a good blast of lube down into those cylinders and let it sit,

then

you can usually break it loose, taking a wrench, putting it down on the crank bolt and turning it.

Now, our motor, as you can see, it turns over. Well, so we are ready to go to the next step.

Next was the fuel system starting with the biggest problem area on a neglected vehicle.

The carburetor,

the flood bowl will either be filled with old rancid gas and sludge or the dried powdery residue of it.

So after disassembling the carburetor,

we'll completely clean it with solvent,

blow out the ports with air to clear any clogs

and then reassemble it using the parts and gaskets from the rebuild kit.

Finally, we install it on the engine.

After that,

I cleaned up the rest of the fuel system to prepare it for fresh gas.

Then I brought the electrical system back to life in the form of points and plugs and, you know, typical tune up things. Boy,

now you can try to clean these up and recap them and reuse them, but you are still messing with an old spark plug that may not be any good anyway. And you're gonna find that out when you try to start that engine. No, no new plugs are so cheap. It is not worth the hassle trying to restore one of these. So

just replace them and then you know what you got.

Well, you still have some ignition pieces to replace and they are all under the distributor cap

in the form of points and condenser and rotor. And of course, a new cap.

Now, the most important thing here is that you need to know what your point gap is. Now, you can get that at an auto parts store or service manual.

Uh, but that wasn't all I also covered fixing and correcting, butchered and hacked up wiring that can turn your project into a flaming pile if not corrected.

Now is the time to fix this kind of stuff. Because if you don't,

when you turn that key,

you know, you could put a whole new meaning to the term fire it up.

Now, most old vehicles have an old junk battery in them. So obviously, that'll need to be replaced

in this case is six volt. But another thing you need to look at are your cables and your ends. Now these get corroded over time and can give you a bad connection even though they may still look good on the outside. So if there's even a question that these might be bad,

you need to replace them,

finally, I replaced all those nasty fluids

and started that sucker up.

Here we go.

This is awesome

and drove it out of the shop just like it rolled out of the field.

Look at this, no power steering, no brakes, no floor, but it's running under its own power and that is what trucks is all about. This is great.

Welcome back. To trucks

and our update of the Sergeant Rock project, which is lurking back there in the shadows. But

before I show you where I'm gonna take it next,

I need to finish showing you where we've been.

So after showing you how to deal with an old engine,

the next thing I wanted to do also dealt with a lot of questions that I get.

How do you hand fabricate body panels when there's nothing available? It's also gave me a chance to show you what kind of tools are available to help you do this yourself.

First, I dealt with common problem areas like dog legs and door seals and windshield corners. Now, that would be the area around the windshield

or around the lip of the fender

or up under the cab or the rocker

or even into the door jams. Now, the reason that these are so bad is that each one of these areas create a little shelf that can hold water, moisture, whatever and that of course, will cause rust. So I'm gonna show you how to make a replacement panel for these areas.

Now, we're gonna move on to a tool called the shrinker stretcher. Now, this will actually shrink or stretch the metal

so you can form it to the exact contour that you're looking for.

Oh, look at that, a perfect replacement panel.

Then it was time to clear out that nasty interior

and the years of rat crap. So I could get to the floors.

Oh, that's nasty. Have a seat mo,

yeah, it was some raunchy stuff.

Oh, man,

there's some stink happening in there.

Wow.

All right.

Now that the nasty stuff is done, we can move on to the floors.

Now, you may remember that our old 41 Dodge has no floor.

Finally,

I could start building a new floor.

Now, an important thing to remember any time you are doing patch panel work,

you need to make it fit your application. Don't expect it just to drop into place.

Now, I'll be prepared to do a little bit of hammering, a little bit of twisting, a little bit of bending to get everything to fit right

because it is this step here. All this pre

fitting

that's gonna decide just how nice all this is gonna go together.

Look at that

with the perimeter frame done.

It was time to build the center structure to fit our needs in design.

I am going to build a removable panel over the shifters.

The next step in building our new floor insert

involves covering it with sheet metal, making it look finished. So that's what I did.

Ok. You probably know that there is not much strength in a flat piece of sheet metal, especially

the bigger it gets. So to give us some more strength

here in between these braces, you can see where I've laid out some lines where we're gonna roll some beads and we're gonna do that with the bead roller,

then punch holes in the outer edge where the framework is going to meet the skin.

Follow that by welding the skin to the frame

and finally dress the world.

Oh Man, that is awesome.

The final step was fabricating a removable cover to give us access to the transmission and shifters.

Look at this

and that looks like it came from the factory that way. And that is what you're after.

Now, chances are you're not gonna have to build a floor for a 41 dodge. But

the tools and techniques that I've shown you today you can use on almost any project that you tackle

and it is a much better investment to buy the tools and do it yourself than to pay somebody to do it for you.

Hey, if you're just getting here, today's subject is Sergeant Rock, an old 41 Dodge power wagon that

I'm getting ready to tear into here in the next few weeks

and right now filling you in on how this all got started. Now, at this point for all you knew

I was just working on an old truck. Hadn't called it, Sergeant Rock yet, hadn't told you which direction I was gonna go with it.

But that all changed with the introduction

of some really big tires

bigger than you can imagine.

This is the biggest dot approved tire on the market made specifically for light trucks.

Some big axles. These are 2.5 ton Rockwell axles

that came stock on big old military trucks. These are some of the biggest baddest axles that you can put under a truck.

A big legend

and some big guns

check

this

out. This

is,

it's a little something to play with.

The first step was to set up those massive Rockwell axles with hydraulic steering

but not just because I wanted to. No,

once again, I've been getting a lot of questions about Rockwell axles and why and how and when to set up hydraulic steering.

I'm using nice thick 38 inch steel plate for these brackets, but that alone is not a Knox. So to keep these brackets from bending and flexing on me, I'm gonna fabricate some gussets that I'll weld to the brackets two per side

and that will give us the strength we need.

Now, when you're working with thick metal, make sure that you grind a bevel into the edges where you're gonna run a weld

because this will allow you to sink the weld beat down into the center of the metal and give you proper penetration.

Especially important if you use an A mig welder

and there's my mounting brackets. Now, all you have to do is take the stock tie rod ends, put them into these extensions

and this axle

is ready to go in the truck.

Well, that pretty much brings everybody up to date. Now, I know it's been a while since you've seen this truck and a lot of you have been asking about it,

but now

the wait is over.

Yeah,

the only problem that you may have now is actually believing that this is the same truck that I originally rolled in here. But it is. But don't worry, you haven't missed anything

because next week I'm gonna tell you all about this paint.

I'm gonna tell you about the paint job

and then I'm gonna show you how to build the biggest, the baddest, the nastiest thing you can possibly imagine. You don't wanna miss it.

What I've got in my hand here is the typical cam that you'd find in a V8 gasoline engine.

This is a 60 series Detroit diesel engine, the type of engine you'd find in a big rig running down the road. Now, you can see there's quite a difference in the cam and the valve train.

You may understand how this works, but we are gonna show you how this works,

how it works is brought to you by Wyotech.

All right, Danny, we've got a big engine and big camshaft and a big roller rockers and

all the viewers are going. What the heck? Let's talk them through it. All right. What we really got here is an overhead camshaft engine.

Um, the camshaft was setting in the block in some prior engines, but now we've got it set in the head and that just gets rid of a lot of rotating mass. It really does and, and maybe even a weak point with the push tubes and push rods in there.

And now we're setting right up here in the top, right with our rockers and everything. Ok. Now, most of the viewers are used to seeing roller rockers on Chevys and Fords. This is entirely different.

Let's talk them through it. What we've got here is our roller fire exhaust valves, our roller fire an injector and a roller fire intake valves. Now, your injector is a little different. What's, what's going on here? It's made out a little bit different material because of the pressures that it takes to force that feel inside that cylinder.

Um, we've made out a little bit different material so it doesn't start flaking.

Now, most viewers are used to seeing

this kind of a cam lobe. You notice it comes up real smooth, goes around the top and then gradually slopes back down.

This is completely different. What's going on there. We can say again, this is our injector roller. This is gonna inject the fuel going in. You can see how quickly it ramps up. Oh,

yeah. So what we're gonna have is open quick. It is, it's just gonna be a real quick hit again. We're talking about shoving fuel in there 25,000 and pounds. It's got to come on very quickly and have a pretty hard hit and then that flat top will keep it open for a long period of time. It does, it holds it down. So we don't get those exhaust gasses coming back up into our injector and slam shut. Exactly. Ok.

Now, this has four valves per cylinder. Right. Yes, it does. Now, usually when you think of four valves per cylinder, you're thinking of a performance racing engine.

Why a big diesel more efficient? I mean, we're talking about two intake valves

to exhaust valves. We're gonna be able to draw in more air and again, exit, uh what we're burning there. Ok.

We see the exhaust valves, we see the intake valves. What is that big boy? Right in the center. This is the injector. Uh, we do have the same stroke coming from the camshaft every time. All right,

which is forcing and make, creating the pressures to force that fuel in.

And this is the actual, the actuator. Um, that actually is the timing and how much fuel is actually gonna be go

in there.

Ok. Now, can you tweak these engines tweak the computer and make them really hot? Absolutely. We can, we can change the parameters as far as more horsepower, um, the RPM, all of it. Just

the tires blow

the clutch,

all those

things. Why don't we start this thing up? How much oil is this gonna sling around?

Just runs, doesn't it?

Where's the

key you

took the key?

You're not

gonna have

that stuff.

That's how it works.

If you do any kind of off roading at all, you probably know that airing tires up and down is not just part of the game.

That's why most people want some sort of an on board air system. But before you invest in an air tank,

you need to check out the power tank from advanced air systems,

you feel this with liquid Co2.

Then when you open the valve, the Liquid Co2 evaporates into a gas which builds pressure and comes out here at up to 200 P si.

This not only gives you the power to run air tools, but you can fill up a 37 inch tall tire from 10 P si to 30 P si in

60 seconds. Yeah, that's smoking. Now, add to that you got the hoses and the hardware

and

this thing is completely portable

and you might find that the power tank just might be one of the best investments you can make.

Now, since we are on the subject of air tools, Matt Co has got the perfect companion for that power tank

in this model 1769 impact wrench. Now, the cool thing about this,

it's in a nice small compact package

so it'll fit right into your rigs toolbox,

but it's also extremely powerful. This thing will knock loose a nut that is tightened to 1000 ft pounds in just six seconds.

And that my friends

is nice to have when you're changing a flat on the side of a mountain

that's gonna do it for trucks. We will see you next week.