Prison Tats

[ Tommy ] You're watching Powernation!

[ Tommy ] It isn't any beach today on Detroit Muscle but it sure is sandy as Project Henchman gets some cosmetics to fix the cracks. [ Music ] [ engines revving ] [ Music ] [ Tommy ] People tend to modify their vehicles for a variety of reasons. Some of us enjoy taking these old muscle cars and cruising them down this road. Others prefer to raise a little cain out on the streets. There's one tradition that stands tall amongst all the different ways and that is building a car to do one thing and do it well and that's go fast in a straight line. Muscle car, a group of two door American manufactured vehicles that are produced for the thrill of hitting the gas, shredding the tires with their high performance engines, all with a purpose of stimulating the driver, passenger, and anyone close by with a pulse. In '69 you had serious choices to make if you were in the market for power. A big block Charger was it if you're a Mopar fan. Being lucky enough to have a 440 or the infamous Hemi living under the hood of what you were driving meant one thing, performance was your middle name. If you bleed blue a fastback Mustang would more than likely be the ride sitting in your driveway. When it comes to the engine you had options, anywhere from ripping small blocks to powerhouse big blocks. Let's say you wanted a GM but not a Chevy. If you crave something that was strong, powerful, and bold a Pontiac GTO Judge is all that and then some. That's what drove us to what we wanted to build. At first glance it's obvious, it means business. So let me describe to you what our vision is. We want to go black, and I mean all black, with mile deep paint. The trim, it's going black as well. Not paint though, black chrome. We want to take what Pontiac started with and give it a bad attitude. It's not a Judge. You can call this one The Henchman. We've been making some good progress with our Pontiac. The chassis, drivetrain it's pretty much taken care of. Now it's time to jump onto the body. Now I really enjoy doing some paint work but I'm not a fan of all the labor it takes to make a really nice paint job. One of the pieces that I've been dreading is this front bumper piece. It has what's referred to as the enduro nose. If you guys know what I'm talking about this thing isn't a piece of steel, not exactly. It's actually kinda like a rubber molded piece that is wrapped around a piece of steel. These things are notorious for having issues like this big crack. Plus this one's had some paint work done. You can tell because it's shiny up top and rather dry on the bottom. Plus there's a few nicks and gouges here on the beak, which makes sense with it being on the leading edge of the car. So to set ourself up for success that means we're gonna have to make a lot of dust. I need to sand or remove all the paint off of this thing. That means we're gonna have to spend some quality time with the d/a. Now to get the job done in this situation we're gonna be using a standard ole sandpaper method. Some folks have been known to sandblast those rubber bumpers and that can be done but you have to make sure to babysit it because if you get too aggressive with that media you'll end up damaging the rubber. I've seen them almost come out fuzzy because the sandblaster was just too aggressive. Before you throw this thing into cruise control mode there's a few things you need to look at and what I'm referring to is the piece that you're gonna be sanding. This nose cone has several different body lines on it. We've got two that run on the top, two on the bottom. Both of those are on each side. Plus there's a fender line that goes all the way up and down it. If you were to take this sander and run across those what you will do is reshape that. You will lose that definition. We want to retain this original look. So we've got to make sure when we're running this thing we don't do more damage than good. Where you decide to start is kinda irrelevant because all of this material has to come off the bumper. We're using some 180 grit sandpaper to get the job done. If you notice I keep the sander moving the entire time. I'm not putting too much pressure on it. Basically just holding it to the surface. That allows the paper to cut more efficiently and last longer. Well we have our bumper cover pretty much all stripped down to just the bare rubber. After a little bit of closer inspection this thing's a lot rougher than what we were anticipating. Now the shape of it is pretty much what we're looking for. However there is nearly 50 cracks in this thing. If you have some of these blemishes and you're not real sure how deep they are or if it's really a crack here's a tip for you. All you need is some glass cleaner. Simply spray it on the surface, wipe it off, and then as it evaporates if that blemish stays wet that tells you it's kinda deep. If it flashes off really quickly it's no problem. To repair these we're gonna have to "V" it out. That gives us a place to put the bonding agent. What we're gonna use is a two-part epoxy and that will make the repair. We'll have to use some 36 grit to get in there to give us that little trough if you will. We're gonna have to do that a bunch of times. [ Music ] We're gonna use some two part epoxy to make that bond repair. So what I'm gonna do is squish some of this stuff out onto my board here. That ensures that it's mixed properly. Then I'm gonna go over to the car, or the bumper, and squish this stuff in there. Then use my spreader to smooth everything out. That's some thick stuff. With this epoxy you have about five minutes of work time and then I like to let it set for over an hour before I sand it. To get the job done I've got this hard block and some 80 grit. Now it's time for some hand jiving. Up next, it's time this nose piece hit the paint booth.

[ Tommy ] We've got all of our cracks basically fused together. You'll notice by all the stripes that we have, and if you look even closer you'll see that there's some small imperfections. How we're gonna solve that is using some of this flexible polyester glazing putty. Now we're gonna put this stuff on from one end to the other and then sand it out and we should be in really nice shape. When you mix this stuff you want to fold it not stir it. If you decide to spin it together what you'll do is aerate that and create a bunch of little bubbles. [ Music ] We're not really piling this on here. Nice skim coat. Don't expect to wipe all of that in one go around. That's being a little ambitious, and if you mix that much up really you won't be able to get across there before that stuff hardens up and you'll throw a bunch away. You've gotta go! Can't stop that chemical reaction. [ Music ]

[ Music ] We've got our part here in the booth and it's time for us to start spraying on some primer. The guys have our other paint booth tied up but that's not gonna hold us back. We drug out our Mobile Environmental Solutions paint booth to get the job done. Now all I've got to do is get in here, hook up the hose, and then we can get to spraying. Our mobile paint booth is easy to set up. We put it right in the middle of the garage without any issue. Before we go to spraying on some primer/filler what we're gonna be applying is some epoxy. What that does is helps to ensure better adhesion. It's just as simple as spraying it on. A booth helps to contain the mess from your painting project but you still need to wear protective equipment like mask and suit to keep yourself safe from breathing in any harmful chemicals. We let that epoxy primer dry for right at an hour. Now it's time for us to apply our gray primer/surfacer. We're gonna put two coats of this on and then let it flash 15 minutes in between those two coats. Then after that sets overnight we'll be ready to start final sanding that thing to get it back to its former glory. [ spray gun hissing ] [ Music ] [ spray gun hissing ] [ Music ] [ Tommy ] Breaking it down is just as easy as setting it up, and you can see, no mess. [ Music ] Well we spent several hours rubbing on this thing but all of our hard work definitely paid off. We still have about another hour worth of work on this thing. There's a few little imperfections that we're gonna have to touch up and then do some spot priming, but after that this thing's pretty much ready to paint and it's gonna look nice. Should you use the wedge or the driver? How about driving a wedge, coming up next.

[ Tommy ] If you want to take down your enemies they say one of the best ways is driving a wedge between them. In the early '60s the best way to take down your enemies on the strip was actually driving a wedge, make that a Max Wedge. [ Peyton ] Mopar ruled the strips in '62 with its 413 Max Wedge engine setting over 100 records. In '63 they upped the ante to 426 cubic inches. You could get it in any full size Dodge or Plymouth, from the top of the line Fury down to this car, the no frills Savoy. Ray Nader bought the car brand new and campaigned it for 11 years under the name Nader's Raiders, a dig at Ralph Nader, no relation. Ralph would probably declare this car unsafe at any speed, and it got horrible gas mileage too, but Ray was too busy running mid-7s on the eighth mile to care. [ Ray ] We raised our kids pretty much at the racetrack. My wife was always there. It was like going to a picnic every weekend. [ Peyton ] The car is plain Jane all the way. No badges, stripes, or hood scoop. With the pipes corked you might think this was your grandma's Sunday driver. [ Tommy ] Of course under the hood it's a different story, 426 cubic inches of raw race power. Everything was beefed up. Forged aluminum pistons, hardened crankshaft, extra large two inch valves, solid lifters with heavy duty rockers, and three inch long branch exhaust outlets. The heads had larger ports and wedge shaped combustion chambers, hence the name. [ Peyton ] Dual quad carbs sat caddy corner atop an aluminum short ram manifold. This created longer intake ports which increased horsepower at higher r-p-ms. [ Tommy ] The design had its roots in the Ram Chargers car club from the late '50s. Cars like the High and Mighty suspended carbs over the engine with extra long intake tubes. Mopar engineers basically flattened that design to fit under the hood and wound up with long ram and short ram intakes. [ Peyton ] The engine came in two flavors, 13.5 to 1 or 11 to 1 compression like this one, capable of pounding out 415 horsepower at 5,600 r-p-m. It clocked mid-12s on the quarter mile in a stock tune. [ Tommy ] The Max Wedge package cost an extra $545 bucks on top of the $2,300 base price, and the sticker on the windshield told you it wasn't made for the street. [ Peyton ] It came pretty much stock from the factory except the wheelbase was shortened by an inch and the dual exhaust had lakes cut out. [ Tommy ] The driveshaft and rear springs were beefed up and a sure grip diff with 3.91 gears came standard. Most folks ordered theirs with a push button automatic but Ray just took what was on the lot. His is one of the few that has the three speed heavy duty floor shift. [ Peyton ] After retiring the car in '74 Ray held onto it and later had it restored. It's still got the original motor and sheet metal. With all those years of racing what's his favorite memory? [ Ray ] Beating a Chrysler dealer that I competed against all the time with the automatics. Any time I could beat him I was happy. [ Peyton ] Need a way to cool down your engine bay? Well we've got the scoop coming up next.

[ Peyton ] Welcome back to the shop. Tommy's out hard at work on the nose cone for our GTO but I'm gonna go over a couple of problems that have plagued hot rodders for years and that is heat. I'm gonna share with y'all some tips and tricks on how to keep your hot rod cool. [ Music ] Overheating is a problem that has plagued hot rodders for years. So I've taken the liberty of drawing up this little classroom if you say to go over some of the tips and tricks for cooling and what causes problems with the overheating. Everyone loves a stance hot rod. We lower them down and get them close to the ground as possible, and this causes a problem. When your car sits at factory ride height there's enough cool air flowing under the car to draw out a good bit of that heat from the engine bay. Slamming a car to the ground cuts the volume of air going under and out down significantly. Air will also enter through the grille pushing hot air out the vents in the back of the engine compartment. A lot of times with the amount of power and heat we're adding that's just not enough. Especially some vehicles like our Mustang, the front of the grille has got very small openings because the car made maybe 200 horsepower from the factory. Now we're making 600 and there is not enough cool air flowing through the front to expel all that heat out of the back. That's when we add something like this, vented hood louvres. Cool air comes across the hood as we drive and it flows across the vent and pulls the hot air out of the engine by. A vital part of the cooling system is gonna be the radiator and the fans. Now when it comes to a radiator you're all about square inches. So if you've got a radiator this big you've got a whole lot more cooling surface. A lot of cars from the '30s and '40s that get turned into hot rods didn't have room for a big radiator. So they ended up with a small one like this. As you can see there's not a whole lot of room for cooling air to come through it. A radiator is only as good as the fan that's driving or pulling the air through it. Your older cars are gonna use a mechanical fan that is driven by the serpentine belt, which accounts for some parasitic loss and us hot rod guys were trying to keep all the horsepower we can in our cars. A lot of people are switching to electric fans of which there are two types, pullers and pushers. Pushers will push cool air through the front of the radiator but you'll lose a little bit of the surface area to the fan blocking it. Puller fans draw air through the radiator and push it out. All that heat either way is being pushed into your engine bay and adding to the heat that's already there. That's where we're gonna come into our hood vents. [ Music ] I got these hood extractors from Summit Racing, and I've got them laid out pretty much where I want them to be but it's important that they're square and evenly spaced on the hood. I'm gonna show you a few tips and tricks I like to use to make sure that's so. I've already got my center line laid out on the hood in the front and in the rear but I want to take this line all the way through. So I'm just gonna use this piece of thin painters tape and carry it all the way through the hood. I want the front of my center louvre to match up with these factory vents on this hood. So I'll just lay another line from front of vent to front of vent. This kit comes with a cardboard paper template that has all your inside lines already cut out. You mark those with your marker. Do not, I repeat do not cut the outside lines or you'll end up with your louvre falling all the way through. Take that. Marking out the cut line. [ Music ]

Make sure you keep good pressure on this so as you mark you're not moving the template. Then you'll have to start all over. [ Music ]

[ Music ] Now I'll use a three-eighths drill bit to punch a hole in each corner so I can use the body saw and trim out the inside. [ Music ] [ drill humming ] [ Music ] [ Peyton ] I'll set my two side louvres out so that the vibration of this saw doesn't make them hit the floor. When you're cutting this out you want to take your time and make sure you can stick as close to the line as you can so you get a better fitment. [ saw buzzing ] [ Music ] [ Peyton ] We're ready to go ahead and attach our center louvre but I want to make sure that it's right obviously. So I'm gonna go ahead and drill this center line so that I can leave my tape, and then I'll pull it back up and rivet the center, replace the piece, and then I'll work my way out so that it conforms to the hood and folds down nicely. [ Music ] I'm ready to put the outside louvres on but I've got one more trick for you. Since I've already got this slanted line from the center piece I want to match up the outside with it. So I'll just take this same tape, match it up to the line here, and I'll pin it right at the slant. Make sure it stays straight. Pin it again. Good thing is this tape stretches pretty good. So it'll let me work it down without popping back up. I got the hood finished up and I hope this helps you beat the heat in your hot rod. I imagine Tommy's getting the dust out from behind his ears and I think I'm gonna go do the same. As always thanks for watching Detroit Muscle.