SubUrban Gorilla Gets Winched!

Today, this three quarter ton Chevy continues its transformation when Ian and Jessi dive back onto their ultimate tow rig. The suburban Gorilla. Plus what happens when one race shop produces two tough trucks vying for a championship. It's the battle of the General Lee.

Welcome to Xtreme 4x4. This week, we're working on our suburban Gorilla, the ultimate tow

rig.

That's a hard core custom truck full of lots of really cool one off pieces. But remember this thing just started as an 87 3 quarter ton suburban.

Now, we don't think that you're probably going to go out and build your own twin turbo

Dura

Max, but you may be swapping out a gas engine for a diesel engine. So these are just some of the tips and tricks you can use on your own project when we actually show you how to wire and plumb this thing later on.

And today's projects really do apply to almost any truck. We're going to mount two

size winches to this frame. Plus we're going to deal with some drive train protection underneath. We will put in the new fuel tank and then we'll take this blank canvas of a bumper and turn it into a work of art making it just as functionable as it will be looking good

since this truck is really going to be used for some serious towing. We had Hill Killer transmission put together this custom Allison 1000. This is a top of the line transmission for towing, but because it's also going to see just as much time off road, we need to build some protection in for this deep sump pan and that's going to mean heavy duty skid plate.

And when it comes to skid plates, you really do have some options. If you drive a popular vehicle, you can just go out and buy a heavy duty after market skid plate like this one.

But if you have drastically changed the location of your drive train, like we have, you're probably better off just building your own.

Now, building a custom skid plate on this truck is honestly not going to be that hard. There's no body in the way so we can get in here and take all of our measurements.

But when you do something like this to your truck at home,

you got to remember there's only two kinds of off road trucks, ones that are broken and ones that are about to break. So you got to be able to service components like the transmission, the transfer case. So your skin plates gonna have to be removable. Somehow.

There's a few things you're going to want to remember if you're building your own skid plate,

make sure that you're not welding the metal directly to the truck

and get protection for everything underneath.

But if you need to service anything, you're going to have to cut it out.

And another thing is make sure that you're not mounting it directly to the transmission or transfer case

because one hard hit and you can create a lot more damage.

We are going to mount our skid plate directly to our cross member system

with an additional mount at the front,

having a rosebud tip on your Oxyacetylene torch will make this job a ton faster.

The

1000 has an external oil filter. So to change the fluids with this skid plate should be pretty simple. But if you had a system with an internal filter, you're going to want to make this section of the skid plate removable so you can access in there. All I got to do is cut and finish up this end

and he is going to finish up the front.

Now, the front mount of the skid plate is very important. You can see we mounted it on poly bushings just like the rest of the cross member for the whole drive train. If we'd just taken the skid plate and welded it to the engine cross member, we'd actually be solid mounting the whole thing, which is a big No, no, when it comes to the drive train. Now you can see this plate still needs to be heated in the middle cut to the shape of these tubes and then fully welded. But that's gonna be a lot easier when the engine transmission are out of the truck. So we'll do it later

motor, whether it's gas or diesel requires a few extra parts like an inner cooler or for our case to inner coolers, he's high flow aluminum cores, respect by G

banks

to cool our intake charge after traveling through the turbos.

Now you may ask yourself why two

inter

coolers. Well, this engine really is two of everything. It's got two separate intakes, two turbos, it really is 24 cylinder engines on one crank shaft. Now, if we only had to mount one of these inner coolers, we could drop it right down between the frame rails there, fit below the hood. But with two,

there's a big thing in the way it's not gonna fit. So we, we're probably gonna have to cut out

some of this frame right in here so it can drop down.

That's what we're gonna have to do I think

get to

it

when it comes time to not your win.

It may be some special considerations depending upon what model you got.

Now, the

UG is not lightweight by any means. So we went out and got the biggest wish we could find. This is the 1 16.5 T

I

this baby

16.5 1000 pounds with the 716 inch aircraft cable.

Now, your installation instructions should tell you what you should be mounted it on.

Now, this baby suggests that we need 516,

but the bumper isn't big enough. So we

have to add another plate.

Is that gonna be low enough? I

think there should be somebody room because we gotta make the

covers. It'll probably sit there.

Really won't know until we get that bumper done.

Lock it into place.

I'm, I'm almost done with it, dude.

All right, dude. That

just so we can continue sitting on the front. I'll weld our winch mount plate to the bumper, then drill for the mountain.

I've already cut a hole for the control box and will match it on this side for air flow

ready.

Oh my God.

Why did you give me the heavy end?

This is the biggest and heaviest winch.

It's gonna go towards you.

Oh Karumba.

Now, the reason why we mounted the winch right now is to be able to check for clearances so we can go ahead and finish up this front end. And then once we get all the welding done on the frame rails, we simply take this winch and drop it out the bottom and the bumper ready for coating

up next. They are modern day Bo and Luke Duke with rigs worthy enough to be called General Lee. See these two shop brothers battle it out for the championship when Xtreme 4x4 continues,

this is about the closest we can get to a drive in movie with the gorilla right now, but don't worry about

it. It'll get done by the end of the season and I for one can't wait. But right now let's go racing. The four wheel Jamboree Tough Truck Series has some wild trucks, but there's only one race team that gets to wear the magical 01 number that is the General League.

Yeah,

after the old General Lee upset the new state of the art General Lee in the final round at Lime Ohio.

There was already talk of a rematch. Four months later in sporting a new coat of paint, the old General Lee was ready for the one off rematch at the world famous Indie Fairgrounds. We've been hearing about it every day, not just every other week, it's every day about this upcoming race at stake in this historic event was more than Daisy Duke's affection.

He still hears about Lima. He's not happy about that. Bring it on.

I took a closer look at the new General Lee and I liked its chances. Tough trucks. You got to admit some of them are ugly. All of them are tough but a couple of them are just all out back.

The baddest tough trucks is autumn woods racing. General League. You guys have basically borrowed a lot of engineering from a lot of different motor sports and really brought it into the tough truck racing series. So

like give me an example, what some of the stuff you got. We got drag racing parts, we got circle track parts in here. Monster truck parts,

all a lot of different designs and aspects of all the different racing worlds all into one package. What did you borrow from co man?

Pretty much our

Ale assembly here. We got a independent front end, like a pro four style. We got a four, nine inch center section.

Usually it's a straight axle, we cut it down,

put some bearing supports in there, made an independent longer on the ground and more horsepower puts on the track and that helps it right there. Right? That's what it is on the track. He's laying it down with a 2002 Ls one out of a vet

4 to 408. So we got the power in the engine getting to the wheels. How does it get there? How do we get it from there to here man? Right from the engine, we go right into a power glide. We got a dun and bear case on a power glide two speed transmission. Then we go straight from there into a jack shaft into an ses

transfer case, same kind of transfer case. Monster trucks. Usually that's the monster truck technology there. So there you got monster truck technology there. You've got power glide that you see all the time in a drag. You can't go to a drag race. I see a power glide and this is the kind of stuff when you look down here you see that type of trailing arm in a lot of pre runner desert trucks, right? So that's where you got that. Yeah, pretty much. That's where that come from. I mount down there, you get a little bit lower shock, keep the truck lower yet adding to your travel from being like

point. If you had the shock just right on top of that

axle, you're limited to the shock. L but by moving it up onto the arm itself, you actually get more travel out of a shorter

18 inches of travel out a 14 inch shock. All right, we got the new, generally pretty much tomorrow's technology today, but still out there racing is the old, generally under new paint, obviously. And Chris Mosier behind the wheel, tell me some of the differences between the old one and the new one, the older, the older truck, we're still running the old Corvette motor. The LT one, all cast block does have the

heads doesn't have the sleeves, it's not bored over it. It's still the stock 354. He also has that 49 inch was a little stronger in the front end. I'm running the Dana 44 with a clear cover so I can see the,

the gears saying it's not the stronger nine inch. He's got a little more stable of a landing out of his. So he gets no hop, no bounce that way his powers to the ground and it's staying to the ground. Chris knew he was outgunned but he was confident of another victory. He just better be on his game because I'm coming for him. Good luck, man. Thank you.

Come race time. Everyone had an opinion on which truck would prevail.

It's just too,

too fresh looking, you know, you need the old school General League

after his embarrassing performance at Lima. Jeff Dini

was out for revenge driving like Luke Duke, he handily won the rematch. I gotta tell you guys sitting here watching this thing this close. It was just amazing. Those trucks when you watch them come off that final jump in the end, you guys did a great job. Great race no matter what the results are, man. Thanks a lot. All right. Thank you guys.

Oh,

did they really hug and make up at the end? They did. I think that whole rivalry thing was just for like just for laughs, but the whole Autumn Woods team, they hope that the Tough Truck series eventually branches into something like the old Mickey Thompson Stadium trucks

door to door inside action. If it does, it'll be a blast. I'll go to him.

Welcome back to Xtreme 4x4 or ultimate to monster

the suburban Gua

or at least the frame.

The body was sent out to the local RNO lining dealer to get coded and as soon as we finish all the welding in the grinding on this thing,

it will get sent out to.

So obviously, the frame for this project has gone through a lot of drastic changes since it first came into the extreme shop. A couple of months ago,

the whole drive train has been pushed back six inches and down a couple for better weight distribution.

The front axle has a coil spring conversion. The entire frame has been boxed for strength and now the front bumper has been mounted with the Killer Warren winch. The next step is to mount this fiberglass one piece front end that came with the suburban gorilla kit.

Before the body went out, we took measurements to make sure it's going to sit in the right spot.

Indonesia.

Sorry about that.

You could build this brush guard out of one long piece of tubing with multiple compound bends

or you can build it in sections, which is what we're doing.

And we're betting that with good finish. Well, it will look like one long piece. When we're done

with the mountain in the center, we're going to build the brush guard to wrap all the way around the sides and there will be another piece that goes up over the hood.

Now, when you're trying to get your bends close to your body panels, it's really difficult because you have to do a lot of precise measuring and a lot of trips to the bender. So, what I'm going to do

is I'm going to go ahead and mark this piece for the slugs

that

the front.

But

in perfect.

Now, the point behind a slug is actually pretty simple. If you brought another piece of tubing up to this one and join it and just did a butt weld, you actually have a really weak joint, it can fail. So what we're gonna do is install what's called a slug inside the tube. We're gonna drill it and plug weld it just to hold the slug in place. That way if this tube ever gets hit, the inner tube actually has to fail. Along with the outside piece. It makes a joint like this really strong

with holes drilled in the outer tube. The slug is placed inside and plug welded.

You have that welder. Yeah.

Ok.

Cut up.

Let me make sure this sides

level and straight.

Hold on. Bring it in.

Ok. Right.

Right. There's our mark

on.

That's, that's good. Yeah,

you tack it. But don't burn my hand. I'll try not to, can you pull it out just a little bit so I can get some penetration

in good

stuff.

I want my thumb, but I'm ok.

Now we got a nice fit.

Always remember that slugging something like a bumper engine cage is ok.

But when you're doing some main support of part of your roll cage, you might want to reconsider

with the brush guard taking shape, we can flip it over and do all the welding on the inside. Then later rush are going to mount the fiberglass front end to the brush guard itself and the whole thing will flip in one piece.

Now

it's time to figure out where we're going to do with our off road lights.

The body itself is going to have some roof mounted long distance illumination,

but we wanted some lower mounted floodlights. So we with these Casey highlights, flood driving lamp.

These 35 walk high intensity

large beams will not only flood the entire ground in front of the truck, but this hard coated L

on cover will

take the ball from any damage or any rocks or whatever. So as soon as he is done with that bumper, we can go ahead and figure out where we're going to put

on. So we'll see in just a little bit.

Welcome back to Xtreme 4x4 with the front end of the suburban gorilla all welded up and looking great. It's time to tear into the back end, which means we can start cutting up the bumper, we could leave it just the way it is. But there's a few more things that we need to mount to it. So it's time to start modifying.

Wow, that was a very fast drill bit.

The war 16.5 T I winch on the front of the truck is going to work? Great. But what if we need to winch something that's actually behind the truck in an ideal world. We just turn the truck around. But what if we can't,

the only logical solution,

another winch on the back

to match the front, we're going to mount the winch behind a tubular structure.

Then we'll recess the body of the winch into the truck's bumper.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,

hold on one second.

Now, remember the last time we were trying to put a fuel tank in this truck, we're actually gonna be installing the 25 gallon plastic cell that came with the body kit.

Now, we thought, you know, 25 gallons. Exactly. How far do you think we're gonna get? So we called L MC truck and we had an original 87 suburban 40 gallon steel tank shipped in

and all we got now is figure out where to put it

and it's only gonna cost about 100 bucks to fill it up.

So once we figure that out, all we gotta do is finish grinding some stuff, make sure all the welds are finished stripper down and this thing can go get coated right along with the body. So the next time you see this thing, the body will be back and hopefully by the end of that show,

we can put the two together like peanut butter and jam.

Bye.

Mm.