SubUrban Gorilla Part IX - Pro Truck Series Legend Rod Hall

Take one clunker, add some inspiration and a killer to beast is born today. The suburban gorilla gets closer to being uncaged. He's won the baja 1017 times. Now, Rod Hall is passing the off road torch to Granddaughter Shelby that plus tech tips today on Xtreme 4x4.

Um

Hey guys, this is it the day that I know we've been waiting for and I'm sure you have too.

Yep. Call it the finale, the button up, Stephanie completion.

What else safe? And

maybe the putting the bed of a project basically by the end of today, everything on the suburban gorilla will be finished. Things like the cooler lines, the air filter, the intake tubing, uh

steer

links the axles. Let's show what we're talking about right

now for the ultimate to R

we of course had to have the ultimate

ales

starting at the wheels. We have 16 P in cal

and massive 16 inch rotors all mounted on a used 14 bolt that Mad Formal drive completely tore down and stopped with 456 gears and air B locker and 35 plan A.

Now the front axle started life as a 99 Dodge three quarter ton Dana 60. And as you guys know, those axles have a two piece passenger side axle shop with a center line axle disconnected, disconnected from four wheel drive.

So to clean things up and make it stronger. Mad four wheel drive basically pulled that whole tube out of the housing and replaced it so we could run a single piece axle shaft, the passenger side making it stronger, but the upgrades didn't stop there.

The dodge axle also uses unit bearings for wheel bearing, something like this. Now, the downfall of these is they're non

serviceable. So when they wear out, you've got to replace them at well over 100 bucks. And when you run oversized wheels and tires, these things wear out a lot more regularly.

So we went ahead and they installed a dyno track unit bearing elimination

kit

that converts the front end to the older style papered roller bearing, two wheel bearings, one on the outside, one on the middle that you can rebuild if you need to plus free wheel and hubs. And then the same as the rear will wood six piston calipers and 16 inch rotors that are actually from a Hummer H two big brake kit

to basically help pull this thing down off highway speeds, especially when it's pulling a big trailer

considering that we started with a pretty torn up 87 suburban. We look towards the hammer. Each one for both style and mechanical inspiration.

The result one bad ass truck

getting here was a huge undertaking with a ton of one off parts

like our twin turbo

max, all the super cool components inside and not to mention all of the wiring. But in the end, it's the little things that take forever

like the air intakes for our twin turbos. Originally, we thought about mounting an air cleaner up through the hood, kind of like a typical H one. But that looks silly.

So then we thought, what about mounting the air cleaner over here by the battery box? But we realize it's just gonna eat a whole bunch of mud and dirt off that front

tire

who likes to eat dirt.

So then we found that if we take an elbow cleverly twist it towards the front of the truck, we can mount the air cleaner, lots of fresh air off the grill, maybe a shield to keep it from getting dirty and only when it's cleverly twisted, will it really work

in? The tubing is made with four inch stainless steel pieces

and now that it's all welded up, all we have to do is snake it past the radiator and onto the two turbos

that is cleverly twisted.

Now, if you remember, we replaced our typical four wheel drive steering box, you'd find on a case series truck with a two wheel drive box conversion. There's a couple of things for us, let us have crossover steering, so fewer moving parts plus the four wheel drive box would have got in the way of our coal spring conversion. Now, we also move the box up and back a couple of inches towards the firewall to make room for our front bumper. Now, all this means custom steering shaft.

You should try to keep at least half an inch of clearance around the steering shaft. In our case, we have to clear the spring tower and the turbo

then through the firewall where we'll hook it up to the steering column.

The Gorilla requires a lot of hydraulic line for the power steering, the hydro boost break and of course, the hydraulic ram says

now you can go ahead and have some lines built with these crimp on fittings

or you can go ahead and build your own using Earls dash six steering line

and their high pressure steel fittings.

The Allison 1000 transmission we put in this truck was obviously the best choice for towing and heavy duty applications.

But the problem is the model is so new that nobody is making parts to support this type of transmission.

And with the cooler lines, we had a real problem.

The stock lines use a steel line 58 of an inch with a quick connector and this quick connector goes into a coupler in both the radiator and the transmission housing. But this thread is an M 22. Nobody makes an adapter for this thread pitch. So what we're gonna have to do is cut up a steel line, use this coupler and a tube nut and sleeve to make it all work together

with the line cut and the tube sleeve and nut in place. We'll flare it with a 37 degree flaring tool.

Now, this is going to allow us to adapt our GM steel lines to our dash 10 braided hose. But adapting the shifter took a little bit more work.

Now, although the Allison 1000 does have five forward shifting gears. A manual valve only has four D tens just like a 700 R four. So that's what we did. We went ahead and modified a 700 R four shifter cable to mount off the PTO cover right here

on the other side, we went ahead and installed this first quarter shifter

because the gate locks are easy to control with this large lever. And not to mention

this handle looks pretty beefy.

Next. We're hit in the desert with off road legend and Hall of Fame driver. Rod Hall. Stay tuned.

Welcome back to Xtreme 4x4 where the suburban gorilla is in its final build stage.

All we really have left to do is a little bit of plumbing issues and some new wires to run for the winches. Then it's pretty much ready for the road. And you know, when we first started breaking ground on this project, we looked at the Hummer H one alpha for inspiration and instead of modifying one, we cloned one. Now, Rod Hall racing doesn't need to clone any alpha H ones because they are team Hummer.

There are off road legends, then there's Rod Hall. My wife's very statement about me was early on.

If I didn't have talent to drive a truck,

I wouldn't have any talent at all with almost 200 victories including being the only driver to win the Baha

1000 in a four wheel drive truck. Rod Hall is a last of his own. He's a legend out here. He's won just about everything. He's one of the key men in the sport. I kind of sometimes think I was maybe born too late. You know, I might have been a pretty good cowboy too, you know, without the paved roads and all that kind of stuff at an age when most men are retired. This modern day sand slingers still races part time and runs Hummer's production team. I mean, this is where I want to be and why at my age would I want to be doing something that I don't want to do? You know, he doesn't go on vacation. He comes to races because racing is his golf game. That's where he gets his enjoyment from following in their father's tracks are sons, Chad in the H one. Hummer and Josh in the H two. Having my whole family involved with the racing program has been great

growing up the son of an off road icon.

Desert racing has always been a part of his life.

It's special being the son of Ron Hall. No doubt about that. You know, I never went to a baseball game

with my dad. I never went to a football game with my dad. We went off road. You know, they're great experiences and they're, what now is I think is contributing to, to my love for what I do today. Like father, like son Josh is taken to the stock production class with those winning hall jeans. This is, I think the most difficult class to be a consistent winner in. But the fact of the matter is, is this is where the drivers are, who are serious about competing against other drivers. So yeah, I love it. I love the H two. I love the class. I love the competitors.

I'm proud of being in the class and this is where I am even at age 44 he still looks up to his boyhood hero. He is the best driver I have ever ridden with and I've driven with a lot of outstanding drivers. My dad was the best

and he still is.

I mean,

he's right. Hall. It's a family affair

eagerly awaiting her turn behind the wheel is Rod's 18 year old granddaughter.

I love it.

I wanna hopefully someday be driving H three at the best in the desert race outside of Las Vegas. Shelby awaited her first go around inside the cockpit as the co driver. It's my first time and it'll be a lot of fun.

I was a lot more this morning. Now, the time is coming. I'm just trying to not think about it too much so that I'm not too nervous. Grandpa couldn't be more proud of another haul. Conquering the desert.

It would be really nice if he's hooked.

It'd be great to see my granddaughter get out there and, uh,

go race the guys and, uh,

keep the name alive. Huh?

It'd be good. Whatever the future may hold for Shelby,

there's no doubt where Rod Hall will be. We're looking good guys. 40 years is a long time to be doing something over and over and over.

But I certainly still enjoy the sport

and I'm gonna be involved with the sport

as long as I can. This is my life.

Well, I love it here.

You know, 40 years of off road racing, you gotta respect the guy that commits that much to the sport, especially when he instills it in generation after generation beyond him. It's pretty sweet

time now for an Xtreme 4x4 tech tip.

Here's a tip for you.

You've seen us weld bolts on our projects before to use the spare tire carriers or just to help out with a bracket. And we've told you before, you gotta watch out for the galvanizing fumes that come off those bolts. And if you just have one or two to weld, you can get away with working in a well ventilated area and wearing a mask. But what do you, if you have a lot of bolts to weld on? Well, go ahead and pick yourself up a gallon of

muriatic acid and soak the bolts in the acid for a little while before you weld them.

It'll burn off all the galvanized coating and you end up with a clean bolt,

this bolt, you can weld on all day long and you don't have to worry about the fumes.

What started as a small annoyance in our drive train turned into a huge endeavor. Our Allison 1000 transmission will not change gears if it doesn't know how fast the output shaft of our transfer case is turning.

The problem we have there is the 205 transfer case was never offered with an electronic speed sensor. So we had to invent something

we called the guys at advanced adapters and had them send us

one of their universal Reluctant Ring and speed sensor kits. Now, this

is

designed

to fit a

700

r-gene to

accept the Reluctant Ring itself. Now, we have a reluctant ring mount. We need to mount the speed sensor. So we pulled the rear

off the transfer case, they fly, cut it, drilled it and tapped it and that way we can screw the speed sensor in and set it to the correct distance away from that RUC

ring. And once we put this housing on the back of the transfer case. We'll be good to go while we're at it. We're going to update the output

fangs on both front and rear to these 1350 units. We got from quad four by four as well as install some dyno

Tech three inch heavy duty drive shafts.

You know, the end is near when the fluids are going in.

But when we was out on the road, people ask us, how did you get that shifted to work or how did you get that throttle position switch to fit on that motor?

So that's what we're doing today while we finish up this project, we're answering some of those questions that you guys have for us like the power feeds to the rear

mounted witch. When we mounted this 12,000 pound witch, it came with power feeds that are about 6 ft long. But what do you do when the battery is over 20 ft away? You obviously need new cable. So we're replacing this with street wires, zero gauge cable and attachable end pieces. Now, there's a couple of benefits here. Number one, we

cut it to length off of a 50 ft roll. Number two, there's less resistance in this cable. So there's gonna be less voltage drop across that distance and that's because of the stranding inside the cable. Now, a lot of people think that electricity flows through the copper inside a cable, but it doesn't, it actually travels on top of it.

So when you have a multis

cable like this, there's just less resistance, more places for the electrons to flow. It's just like adding more lanes to the freeway during rush hour

radiator hoses can be complicated. There are after market host kits like this metal one with an adapter or even a rubber universal fit hose. But we wanted to go with an OEM style and there's a couple ways you can do that in the custom world. You can take a welding rod and bend it in the shape that you need it to go, take it to the part store and match it to the closest

that fits or when you have the parts or just ask if you can buy a bunch of hoses and return the ones that you didn't use, which is exactly what we did with our upper hose.

Now, the 2005 dima

radiator is a closed cooling system, which means it doesn't have a cap in it. So we went ahead and mounted this

a recovery tank. You're going to want to make sure that you mount it as the highest point in the entire system.

Now, the guys at Mad Four Wheel Drive didn't have any heavy duty diff covers available for axles.

So they shipped them here, which is the stock stamp steel pieces. And if we back into a rock with these on the trail could possibly damage the gear set, the guys of Great Lakes off road hooked us up with these heavy duty tread plate units that'll definitely protect everything inside of our axle. And with this last little piece taken care of, we're ready to hook this beast up to the trailer.

Now, we stepped out of the shop in the power block tech center to finish up another project today. The ultimate trailer because if the ultimate tow ring is gonna hit the road, it has to have something to pull. And if you remember this thing started as just a pile of steel. And now it's a pretty awesome looking 26 ft gooseneck trailer. Now, today we're gonna be tackling all the wiring for the lights. Although that seems like a big job. Our blueprints actually came with a complete wiring schematic. So all we gotta do is follow this mount the junction box up on the goose neck

E pie.

We held off on installing this upper cross member until today for a couple of reasons. One is we wanted to make sure that the height of the goose neck was the correct height for the gorilla

and two, we wanted to make sure that the winch was going to actually clear the camper.

Thanks Daniel.

Now, this 1 4700 work horse win is going to be mounted to the center of this cross member.

Now, the breakaway box for the electric brakes includes the small 12 volt battery that gets charged hooked up to the truck.

But we're going to use this a GM deep cycle battery instead. That way we can power the winch and still get that 12 volt source just in case the trailer decides to break away from the truck.

Bye.

Oh,

turn to go old.

Well, there you have it guys. The suburban Gorilla, our ultimate tow rig is buttoned up and the ultimate trailer is finished and the package is ready to rock. Now, this has not been an easy project. Tons of one of a kind parts and a lot of work went into this thing. And I'm sure the question all of you guys are dying to ask is, was it worth it? Well, let's have a look and see what we have here as a total package. A

wild looking one of a kind truck powered by a monster twin turbo

D

Max

Allison, 1000 and triple stick transfer case combo, bulletproof axles, front and rear and 38 inch tires. Basically an extreme package for an extreme show. And that's exactly what we're gonna do next time. Take the whole thing out and test it. We'll haul on the highway, we'll camp at the trail and then we'll pull a dead vehicle off the trail with our tow rig and then we're gonna haul the whole thing back home. I know I can't wait. I'm sure you can't either.