S10 Truggy Part IV - All Stock Rock Crawl Nationals from Hannibal, MO

Today. It's an off Roader dream.

Our over the top trie

is back for its final bolt

off.

Plus he's the man from Oz who risked his daily driver for competition glory. Xtreme 4x4 starts. Now.

Now you guys are looking at a pile of parts and I'm sure some of you think you recognize a few of them. Well, you're right. This is our one of a kind big block powered hill killing truckie all tore apart. Now, if you remember, we started this project with a $750 wrecked truck and we've already put this thing together as a complete rolling chassis, but then we blew it all apart to take care of all the details.

All the sheet metal was dropped off next door at the muscle car shop

where Brent also known as the skinny dude did all the body work

then mixed up a base coat of heavy silver metallic.

The guys that auto body color and supply thought the heavy flake would give it that extra.

It was then followed up with the PPG Antifreeze green paint.

We took Brent's suggestion and had him paint the rims to match the truck

and they turned out very nice.

Now, when you're building a truck, like Rs 10, you really wanna pay attention to all the little things. Now, sure, over time the paint's gonna get scratched, the panels are probably gonna get dented. But when you first finish the truck, you want it to be perfect and most important, one of a kind. So you pay attention to the details. At the last minute, we went ahead and had our valve covers painted the same color as the ball,

the truck.

And we're also gonna swap out the plug wires on this motor to these cool lime green ones that we got from Taylor cable and then to truly make our 502 look unique. We went ahead and sent out the upper intake manifold to advanced plating. Went ahead and chrome plated and polished the entire thing to really make our 502 stand out once it's under the hood

since this truck has already been completely assembled, it goes back together like a set of Legos.

We even fired the motor before we tore this sucker down for paint powder coat and chrome

pull and push if that's possible.

The rockwells got sandblasted. Whoa,

right there

and painted with a nice gloss black paint.

Really help them pop against the silver powder coat.

We have a problem. It's up

the 02 sensor which goes right there

right into the O.

I'm

gonna have to fix that right now.

So a little cut, a little turn

and some time with the tig welder to exhaust as good as new, ready to be bolted back on.

Now, very often we get asked for a little bit more information about specific parts of a project. Now, here in our s 10, a lot of people wanted more information on our upper shock mount and how we got it into double shear. A double shear means the shock is supported by a bolt and tabs on either side of that he

joint.

Now for this truck, we were able to use these really cool adapters that we got from a and a manufacture,

they fit inside a piece of one inch dom tubing and downsize it to a half inch hole. And that allows it to run a half inch bolt, which is the same as the shock. And what we did then is we drilled a hole through part of the chassis to run the tubing right through a main support member and then supported the outside with this large plate using the tubing as part of the chassis. This way makes this mount super strong.

Now, at either end of our aluminum links, we have summit machines, new jimmy joints. Now these are a large, fully rebuildable he

joint that offer us up to 60 degrees of articulation thanks to them high misalignment spacers that are machined into the center ball and by rebuildable, I mean, you can simply take the joint apart by removing this sleeve to access the Teflon runners on the inside. If these wear out, simply have to replace them,

the joint will be as good as new and the outer edge is black zinc coated, keep them from oxidizing.

Plus they just look great. Now, I'm sure you're wondering why we have a bear housing in the front. Instead of a painted one like in the back, we still have some welding to do on this front axle. It has to do with the bump stops.

When this suspension fully compresses in the front, there's a lot of weight from this +502 and if it just hit the frame, it actually could bend it and cause damage. So we need to install a bump stop.

We're gonna be using Bill Stein's air bumps. These are what's called a progressive bump stop. As the axle comes up, we will contact this pad right here. It will slow the suspension down but still allow it to move. This is a nitrogen charged chamber just like a shock. This will slowly compress up to four inches and absorb a lot of that load and keep it from hammering onto the chassis and causing damage. Now, the first step to this is we have to build what's called a can and of some two inch tubing

D,

ok. Go ahead. Jack it up.

Now, you can see when the suspension is compressed and the nitrogen out of the bump stop. It hits this plate and slowly absorbs the shock when the suspension is fully compressed. One issue we do have though is the bump stop is hitting near the outside corner. So I'm gonna go ahead and change this plate out to a little bit larger one during the break and then we'll be ready for a rolling chassis.

That's perfect Michael

coming up, he drove his Jeep to the All Stock Nationals. But will he drive it home? Find out next?

Welcome back to Xtreme 4x4 where today's event of the week is all about you guys. The weekend wheeler where in Hannibal, Missouri,

we met a guy who not only drove his Jeep to the event, but then he wheeled it all weekend long, hoping not to tear it up too bad to be able to drive it home at the end,

usually relegated to undercard status at Hannibal. Missouri. The stock bonds were the weekend main event. This is, uh, the All Stock National. There's nothing bigger going on in the country. This is the, this is the big deal. These guys run the same tough courses. The super and pro mod drivers do the courses here are absolutely not. I can't imagine coming in as a stock mod competitor and looking at these horses because they are by far

the most challenging we've ever seen

competing are amateurs and pros taking a bunch of regional stock modified competitors and they're going to compete against the best of the best of the Pros. So it's kind of a Pros versus Joe's. I guess you could call it. 19 teams came to Hannibal Rocks. We've got everybody here that is the best at the top of their game at this day and time. Kurt

Smo

and Tim Florian rule. The We Rock Pro class. Those guys are

off the hook

and the regional drivers were in awe.

I mean, these are the big boys and here I'm the little guy from Pennsylvania. Who am I coming in here? You know,

this little guy is Chris

Osman.

I just go by Oz though. That makes it easy. Oz, a regular in the Pennsylvania RC Rock series. Oz wasn't looking for snapshots and autographs. He was here to win.

You could do it. I mean, the everyday guy could do it

if you want, go for it. He goes for it in his daily driver.

I build it so I could go wheel and drive home and go home. It's expensive to have a truck, the tow trailer, all those kind of things. And I didn't want to do that. I wanted to keep the street legal. I still do some of the things I've done to it is, uh, we started

with the suspension on the jeep.

The suspension is actually a rock crawler kit. So, what we have is a three inch stretch in the back

and, uh, rock crawler long arm, the axles, stock axles just don't hold up for heavy wheeling.

So I end up using solid axle D A sixties front and rear. I went to 513 gear

and then for a transfer case, that would be the next weekly,

we made a decision to go on to an Atlas swims stick.

Uh Atlas 24.3 ratio.

The engine and transmission are still stopped and uh they're actually still under warranty. So that's pretty cool. Oz has to use more brains than braun.

If he wants to get to work on Monday morning, does it limit me some?

Yes, I got to take care of the Jeep as I'm going through the courses and I can't hammer quite as hard. Not saying that I won't

on day one of the two day event, Oz didn't hold back.

Good job.

I'm ready. Where's our next one? Next one is not

when his regular spotter couldn't make the trip.

Oz teamed up with local Ben Melnick.

We met for the first time this morning and I know the rig.

He knows the the course is here. He knows Hannibal. So we'll make a good team. I think it's gonna work out just fine. The top six after two days would get a ticket to the title.

Shoot out.

Awesome.

By the end of day one, they sat in six. What more could you ask for? That's awesome. With the shootout within the reach

and upset by the upstart was not a fantasy. If I won the national championship up. Great, I'd probably have perm

on his first run on the second day.

All smiles were turned upside down.

I

think I should have hit it a little slower. Well, what do we do? We hit the super pedal.

Look what we got.

I want to get it up. Right. So we can keep going in the pump. That's what I wanna do.

Make sure we're not broke and go.

We're just now seeing if the radiator's got a hold of it. We think it's gonna be ok on the course. It quickly became apparent that the engine was not ok.

One of those days blocks that on our side, but we're not, we're not done. They limped to 1/17 place finish. I didn't make the shoot out but

I made the event I did DQ.

So I got through the c as far as I'm concerned, I did good with his daily driver. Hobbled.

Oz was gonna be a little late for work on Monday. Dude, this is awesome. I, I know that rig's got some issues but you know what, this is worth every penny every minute that I had here.

Now, you guys remember this roll over right here. Not only did Oz destroy his hood front stinger and his winch. He also did a pretty serious number on our pov camera. Here's the shot one more time.

Can I go clean the dirt out

then? I wouldn't be surprised if it fires up.

Pretty cool.

Same camera that just rolled over and crashed into some rocks and it still works. Thank you, Sony.

See, we don't just damage the trucks we take out w and even our camera gear falls victim every now and again. It's all in an effort to make good TV.

Welcome back to the extreme shop from concept to mock up, tear down to once again a rolling chassis. The attention to detail in our way over the top. Truckie is a thing of beauty.

You ready go.

Well, it certainly is the most beautiful chassis we've ever built. Let's just take a look at how this thing is sitting right now,

tearing this truck apart to take it over the top was definitely the right call. All the finishing touches look great together from the powder coated silver chassis and the chrome ram jet intake, seeing it all put together was definitely well worth all the extra work.

Now, obviously with a chassis that looks that good. It seems like a shame to cover it up with a body, but we have a plan to keep showing it off and we're gonna be using a pile of rock lights that we got from round eyes. Now, these are an led style flat mount rock light. They have 100 and 80 degrees of light plus the weather and shock resistant. Now, we chose the color green because it's really gonna pop against the silver powder coat. Plus it's just gonna match the paint

le technology is great for off road use. Each light is going to draw less than 350 million.

When turned on,

they put out a ton of light

and flush mount to the chassis to fit into tight spaces

and with 12 of them mounted

entire truck, it's going to look awesome in the dark.

The fuel cell cannot be supported just by the tabs on the side of the aluminum tank alone. It's going to need support. We're going to build a plate out of some eight inch steel,

dress it up. We'll add some dipple dyes

and then mount the whole thing in the back of the truck.

Now, our accessory pulley and bracket kit had to definitely be over the top.

So we went with a set of March billet aluminum, full polished pulleys and brackets. Now these are CNC machine and then they are polished and then coated with a clear powder coat finish. Now, the clear powder coat finish will keep the aluminum from oxidizing, which means we get to spend more time wheeling less time cleaning,

keep it tuned to extreme. The S 10 cab goes back on the chassis next,

that's it right there before we do anything else on our truckie,

this rolls a little easier. The cab has got to go on to the chassis

carefully.

But the problem we have here is failure to cooper

gravity

friend every time.

Now, we chose the 46 inch tall Mickey Thompson

Baha Claw tire for this project because the 46 inch height is perfect for our drive train gearing combination. The one downfall is that the tread is somewhat close knit for true Southern style wheeling with lots of mud and slop on the trails. It tends to get packed up. So to solve that problem, we went ahead and cut our tires. We took a Sawzall and sharpen the blade

went ahead and removed every second lug on the outer as well as the intersection of the tire. What this does, it'll give us more sharp edges that will dig into the dirt and less chance of this tire packing up. Now, we didn't touch the center section because these grooves here deal with steering. We still want the truck to be able to handle well when it's climbing up the hill. But opening the tire up like this will really help it bite in. We need to turn on that 502.

Now, our chassis was powder coated by the guys at Powder X and they spent a lot of time making sure that this thing turned out perfect. Now, it seems no matter how much planning goes into a project, you always forget one thing. And in our case, we realized after the chassis had gone out that we had no provisions for adding off road lights and we definitely want some, we've got led S for rock lights that's not gonna light up the trail when we're driving out late at night.

So we're gonna install these KC highlight pod lights. Now, these are a carbon fiber constructed light with a polycarbonate lens. They're a 70 watt H ID light with an integrated ballast on the back and these are extremely light as well as extremely strong, which makes them great for our over the top S 10 trie.

The downfall is how are we going to add a light bar without ruining that beautiful powder coat? Well, we're going to use these bad boys right here. These are Bengals tube clamps. They're specifically designed for people who forget things after they've been painted or powder coated. It'll clamp around the tube and provides us with a saddle to weld an additional piece of tubing tube for things like roof racks or in our case, a light bar. Now, these will save your neck if you spend a lot of time fabricating

and spent money on powder coat and you need to add one more thing.

The light bar will start by bending 2, 180 degree bends on some inch and a half tubing.

We lay them side by side on the bench and mark the center,

cut them, add some slugs and weld it together to make a nice little hoop,

add the Bengals mounts,

we'll set it on the truck.

All that's left to do is to decide whether to paint or powder coat it

and there you have it guys. A truly one of a kind ss 10 hit them rock lights, Chris,

you can really get a sense of just that green glow coming out from underneath it. The truck sure is mean, it's definitely green. It is definitely over the top. It's one of a kind truckie that's gonna hit the trails and be able to tackle anything that we pointed at

all in all.

Very happy with this truck.

What do you think, Chris? I think it's money.

Dollar, dollar bills.

Yeah.