American Steel is the Deal!

Last time you were hanging out watching TV, you saw some sport compact guy couldn't even break the tires loose. Well, let me tell you, I'm here to prove it different. The days of the

hemi and the big block Chevy, they're back. Muscle Car. Spike TV.

Hey, guys, welcome to Muscle Car. The only show that's devoted to real American Steel. And I'm your host, Lou Santiago.

Here. We're gonna do three Bs.

We're gonna buy them, we're gonna build them. We're gonna beat the hell out of them. Let me show you a couple projects I got going on here. There's a 1969 Camaro and it's all new. That's right. It's all new. How about this vintage piece of iron? Straight out of a corn field. 61 Impala

co

didn't make many of these bad boys. Check out that vine on the antenna. We're bringing this baby back from the dead. But let me show you our first project.

1970 Challenger

Chock full of Mopar history. And you might have seen this one on the big screen.

Ours is one of seven identical challenges that they used in the movie. Too fast. Too Furious.

This one survived. Sort of, it's got no engine, no tranny. It's got some rot. It's perfect for a tear down. But when a job is big, you gotta have friends. So I made a call to Jessey and Ian an Xtreme 4x4.

Jessi.

What's up, man?

How you doing?

Welcome to family, dude. It's cool. Love the place, man. It's beautiful here. You're just jealous. I am a little, I don't blame you. You got a paint booth. Scary, isn't it? That's wow,

they're gonna let me do that. All right, you called us said you needed help. What do you got? I got a 70. Challenger. Is it four wheel drive? No,

no dude. Come on.

Don't bail on me. Give us more. Tell us more and we'll see what we can do to give you a hint.

Not for nothing. The 70 dodge Challenger Trumbo par muscle man. Those things. They started out in 6568. They had the first prototype by 70. The babies were rolling on the street. Gotta love

them. I know the Challenger. I helped a buddy of mine. We build one in high school to kill her cars.

Yeah. Well, you know, I remember when they were new

and they came in 18 colors. Nine different engines slant six all the way up to the

hammy.

When I was a teenager, I was in a car club and there was a guy there. He cut up a duster and turned it into the first pro street car I ever saw. It was pretty wicked, man. Yeah. But dude, you know, the duster is an A body. This is an E body school. Me more my friend.

Ah,

you know, when you were in school and you were learning your ABC S, you never thought it would come in handy for a mo part. Did you ABC

D?

All the different body styles. A bodies, compact cars. B bodies. Just a tad bigger your road running the Coronets. Then you go to CD

the land yachts. I'm talking the big grand sport furies, the Newports, the kind of car that we use spread out in man.

And Ebo

is like our challenges. They broke the mold

but enough of that, let's tear this thing down to bear steel like we do everything in the shop. You guys ready to do some work.

Yeah,

sure, man. Any time cool.

5, 10 years ago, guys with junk and mo parts like ours, some in even better condition than this challenges

that makes them extremely rare and valuable. Some in pristine condition can bring hundreds of thousands of dollars at auction. We scrape

so this car is worthy of restoration. The most important thing to remember is tag and bag as you go little stuff like nuts and bolts and other fasteners, put them in a safe place.

Oh,

no.

What

have you seen that?

I mean that's Standard Northeast

usually is what happens is you get leaves and trash like that stuck in there and it creates, you know, a moisture area and is what happens over time. It just rots out this whole cal vent area.

These doors are heavy and expensive, support them first with a door dolly or floor jack. So you don't bend the hinges or break or dent anything.

Beam,

beam.

Mhm.

This is Lexan, right. Lou or plexiglass probably

is.

So you'll have to source

flexi.

Yeah, you'll have to source some glass from somewhere

to replace all this. And if you were doing a restoration, would you,

you'd normally just get new glass anyway. Right.

Yeah. But I mean, depending on the availability,

you

can't get some you can't get,

hey, Lou, did you check out these seats? No. What's up, Jessi? They're like original seats. Oh God, these are nice Mopar seats till someone hacked up with a rusty Bunter knife. These are some valuable seats, man. A real Mopar guy would not hack up his seats like this. Even if it was a movie car. These guys were movie guys. Did you see what they did with the seatbelt? Yeah, they're going mountain climbing. That's why you'd use a Caribbean in a lock down your seatbelt. This is just screaming. I want to die today.

I just started screwing stuff. I am

case.

Oh,

uninitiated. Might think we're crazy to try and rebuild a movie car. But I'm here to tell you this challenge. It will be better than new, bad ass motor trick four link airbag suspension and all the comforts of a modern ride.

We

are

groovy

while they've been working on the front end of this car. I've been getting ready to pull out this rear axel and suspension that lou is gonna replace later with a Dana 60.

Here we go

part.

I think we're clear.

We're good.

There. It is all tore down for the rotisserie. Well, since we helped you get this far, you obviously don't need us anymore. We can split. No, I need you guys to hang out. I got some cool stuff to show you right on.

And there's nothing cooler in Chevy's most powerful muscle in the day. The Chevelle Ss 454. Check it out when muscle car continues after we get paid.

Welcome back to muscle car. That's right. Muscle car, our new friend Lou gave us a call and say he needed a hand over here. So Jessi and I popped in. Plus we wanted to check out the shop. He's got, I mean, look at the size of this paint booth, man. This thing is huge.

The whole attitude about this shop is huge. It's pretty overwhelming when you look at it.

Now, you guys know that thousands of people tried out for this job. And Lou Santiago is one of the guys that got it. Please tell us about you.

It's pretty scary. I uh was born and raised in New York City.

Then, uh, went to the Navy in 81.

My best duty station with seal team mate doing support for those guys. Blast, retired in 96.

But I've always had a love for these cars. I mean, I remember street racing in these things. You know, you raced it,

Fountain, uh, Fountain Avenue, Flatlands Avenue is what everyone called it. Then you had Red Hook in Brooklyn and you also had Front Street in Philadelphia.

Awesome stuff. Did you ever race to like your pink slips?

We had some big money runs but knowing that, you know, not pink sleeves, that's like a, it happens, but we didn't.

Sweet. So, you know, your stuff, huh?

I'd like to think so.

You guys will get to meet the other host of muscle car in just a little bit.

One muscle car that's always been on my personal. I wish I owned it. List has been a 1969 Camaro. So when I saw this thing being dropped off their day, I had to run over here and take a look. And now you can too.

Now, some neat. 1969 Camaro history. Is that in

that year? Gm actually did not allow Chevrolet to put any engine under the hood of this thing bigger than 400 cubic inches.

But dealerships had that problem solved. They were actually ordering these cars yanking out engines and putting in larger ones and just basically rebranding these cars.

Now the guys at Chevrolet went one step further. They came out with something called the Cobo

Camaro central office. Production orders gotta like them guys, man, because you know what they were doing, they were sliding these babies out the back door with LSE

two big blocks. Yanko Chevrolet took it an even step further.

427 cubic inches of all aluminum big block, Chevy,

you gotta love something like that and something like this.

Obviously, this is not one of those Yanko Camaros, right? You're right. But this is an extremely unique 69 Camaro.

You're looking at year 1, 69 all new Camaro. And yet every part on this car is all new. 37 years after it landed on showroom floors, you can now order every single part for this muscle car.

There are two ways you can have a 69 Camaro.

You can buy an old one and repair it or you can buy it new

for a long time. You guys have been buying parts from year one to turn your Rs

in the

Ases is to restore classic or even patch up your first baby.

You might think that buying a complete shell is a little over the top. But if you have a heavily rusted or majorly damaged original, this in turn will end up saving you a lot of money and a lot of time this thing is all new virgin sheet metal fresh off the chassis j

no hidden flaws or

fully repaired damage that you don't see until after your project gets home. No more long searches for the perfect car to start your project. This is a good place to start a project. You don't have to cut it up like you guys do it extreme.

I can see it now. A 1969 Camaro Rock crawler. I thought the same thing and I grabbed the tire check that out, dude. Can we do it, man?

No. Keep that at extreme.

Keep it as an option. Dude.

Distance

in 1970 the muscle car wars were in full swing. You had Kotas and judges just roaming the streets. But if you were a Chevy guy, you got the LS 6454. The most power for the day.

Flashback. Detroit's greatest muscle cars from the sixties and seventies. This week, the 70. Chevelle Ss 1970 was the year of American big bour muscle. The W 30 Os 442 the 426 hemi challengers.

Het

big 455 Gsx and the Ford 429 Torino.

The gloves were also off the Chevy with the Ls 6454 Chevelle Ss, the most powerful muscle car ever built.

It looked great too. The new mid size, a

sport, a quad headlights and a clean split grill

for that tough guy look, a pinned hood would call

induction. It let everybody know that this was one bad bow tie,

subtle fender bulges, a squared off sea pillar and five spoke rally wheels with why Goodyear complete the profile.

The SS rear end familiar to so many competitors is Uncluttered with a blacked out bumper insert and an SS badge.

While the base engines were stout,

the talent Ds

four speed LS six package

made the Chevelle a legend.

This nasty big block is underrated at 450 horses

and was busted out with factory speed parts, steel alloy crank which was cross drilled for better oiling. Also trw fours aluminum pistons and 11 and a quarter to one compression ratio.

Highly 780 carburetor aluminum intake

deep roofed pulleys. Would you believe the Ls six was a $263 option

that delivered 500 ft pounds of torque. It ran a quarter mile at 13 for

100 and eight miles an hour

spectacular performance for a two ton passenger car.

Those numbers in a low base price helped the Ss blow by the goat as the world's best selling muscle car.

But the Ls Six option was only offered for one year by 1971. Skyrocketing insurance rates

and emissions regulations spelled the end for the potent Chevelle power plant

in all, less than 4500 people experienced the joy of taking delivery of a new LS Six Chevelle

today in Pristine condition. These survivors are selling in the six figure range

if you bought it new and kept it in the garage. That baby is appreciated. 2500%.

That's a great investment and proof of the enduring appeal of the most powerful muscle car ever built.

Hey, guys, welcome back to muscle car. Now that we've got that 69 Camaro created it's time to turn our attention back to the challenger. Yeah, this car is gonna get sent out to be blasted. We could just throw it on a trailer and haul it off. But for us to get good results on a job like that, we're gonna put it on a rotisserie

like this one from accessible systems,

right? Slow down.

Lovely, lovely. This tool will allow you to mount the body of your project and then rotate it into different positions to make repairs easier.

Since every chassis is different, we'll need to modify the bracket slightly to make this one work.

If you don't have a rotisserie, you can build a simple dolly, cheap and trailer it to your be blasting.

Now that the Challenger is balanced on the rotisserie, you can spin it in a 360 to see what we've got going on

before we even think about installing the rear suspension. We're gonna have to completely rebuild the rear frame rails and trunk repairs are normal to see on almost any muscle car. But this sloppy fiberglass repair will get cut from this car

and obviously, there's rust everywhere.

So I guess you can say the Challenger is gonna be a little bit more of a challenge. Hey,

yeah, but you wait till you see what we got planned for this thing. Can you say

hemi?

Because we're getting an email from this guy, right?

And you're gonna get, he's gotta get used to him.

So this and this is verbatim and we're not making this up, right?

Send in Parlo

dear Xtreme 4x4. Your show sucks.

Me and Jessi know nothing. Horsepower TV, sucks. That kid on there knows nothing. Stacy David knows nothing.

I watch every week hoping that it's gonna get better and it doesn't.

And we wanted to send the letter back saying

thanks for watching. Keep watching. Maybe one day it will get better.

Well, that's it for a Mo Park project this week.

I appreciate you guys coming to the shop and helping me out. That's no problem, man. It was fun working on an old muscle car for a change. You know, this means you're gonna have to come over to extreme and help us out with our next off road project, right? Not a problem but talk to my agent.

Very funny.

Actually, guys say hi to Jared Zimmerman, our new car,

co hosts of muscle car and he didn't come empty handed. That's right. The challenger will be powered by this Mopar

performance. 528

hemi crate motor.

This thing has a massive 610 horsepower and 650 ft pounds of torque.

You got the ultimate power plant for the ultimate challenge.

Really appreciate the help guys.

See you next week. See you.