[Derek] This time on Roadworthy Rescues,
we build a '38 Chevy.
[Dave] By unbuilding it first?
-Yup. -I... Just trust me.
It's fine.
[Dave] I don't know what's going to happen
-in a foot from now. -[Derek] Oh.
[theme music playing]
[country music playing]
[Derek] This week on Roadworthy Rescues,
something completely different.
We're doing a full build bumper-to-bumper
on this 1938 Chevy Coupe.
Vice Grip Garage fans on YouTube will recognize this car.
I picked it up five or six years ago
from a family friend of Luke McLean,
who was the owner and racecar driver of this car.
He started racing in 1958.
And this was his original racecar
and it was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2002,
along with himself.
He won many championships
in the '60s with this car.
It was a driving force.
It set track records.
It has probably more wins than anything.
It's an absolutely iconic car.
I did some racing with it, some rally cross,
some oval stuff, and then it's really been sitting.
My friend Andy and I blew it apart.
We wanted to rebuild it.
Our goal is to get this thing back on the track
and back on the street, make this thing street legal.
We've obviously got a tremendous amount of work to do.
We're here at my friend's shop in Minnesota.
We have tools and things in Parts Galore,
but we need to walk around this thing,
see what it's really going to take,
and then get after it.
So let's take a look here.
So this car is one of the most raw, radical,
and outrageous examples of a homemade racecar
and how things really were
just thrown together back in the day to go race
and have fun with your friends.
Luke and his friend put this together
with stuff they had laying around the yard.
And I'm gonna show you a few examples of that.
They had a drill pipe roll cage
and a bunch of homebrew suspension.
And he got really creative,
and that led him winning a lot of races.
One of those examples
is this hot little small-block in here.
Looks pretty stock, but I assure you it's not.
And if you notice, it's set way back into the cab.
The front of the engine is right here,
where traditionally it would have been way up here.
So he was playing with weight distribution.
The suspension was moved forward,
and we'll see a bunch of those cobbled pieces and plates
and things of that nature.
We actually...
Andy made this hoop for me
later on in the bumper.
We had to take some of this stuff off
just to make it somewhat safe.
We added the nerf bars.
There were just drill pipe nerf bars.
On this side...
look at the steering here.
Again, it's just pieces and chunks of metal
that they had laying around the yard,
and they just put it in there.
And now remember, this car is going around the track
at probably 80, 90 miles an hour.
And this is what's steering your vehicle.
Pretty sketchy.
So in here, this was, once again,
just bent-up drill pipe and really sketchy.
And because the engine is set so far back,
see this here, normally the firewall is way up here,
it's flush with the dash.
The transmission shifter was about here.
He actually shifted this car,
and I, between the legs when you're racing this.
And if you look where the steering wheel did attach,
the seat was actually set way back into the car,
offset to the center and angled
because there was only a tiny little pocket over here
to run the brake and the gas.
Mostly the gas.
I don't remember the brakes ever working.
That's probably why he always won.
So that's gonna be one of our challenges is,
we need to get the motor forward
so we can properly build a transmission hump,
make some room for feet.
I wanna put two seats in here.
If we're gonna put it on the street,
be nice to have a passenger
and things of that nature.
But we're not going to be using this engine
or the old transmission.
I've got big plans.
So, here's a high level overview of the build here.
Now, I've been collecting parts for years
and we brought some with us.
And hopefully, it looks something like this.
First of all, the frame needs to be
completely stripped down.
We've got a Mustang II manual rack front suspension
that has to go in here.
To get rid of this, that,
let's just call it what it is.
All this needs cut off and redone.
In the rear, I wanna do a four-link
and hang a quick performance rear back there
with 35 spine axles and a 3.55 gear.
So we got some whole shot
but we could still run it down the highway.
Up front, the business end,
I've got a BluePrint 400
that's been wrapped in a trash bag
for, I don't know, five years.
It made 515 horsepower, naturally aspirated.
That's quite a bit but I wanna pick it up.
So we're gonna throw a Blower Shop 871
on top of that bad boy
and really put the Ponies down.
Buying that, we have a TKX five-speed
I want to put in this.
Again, so we have a highway gear,
that we could still got
some grunt down low.
Okay. There's a lot to do here
in a handful of days.
And I think I need some help.
And I got just the guys.
Andy, you remember Andy,
or Alexi, DeLorean?
-How's it going, man? -Good.
[Derek] You're probably excited to get this out of your shop.
Yeah, it's been sitting about right there
for, yeah, a long time.
-A long time? -It's kinda been a centerpiece
for the shop but--
[Derek] And now, we also need four-link Dave.
Yes! He's back.
-How's it going? -[Dave] Yes!
Mobile fabrication unit.
[laughter]
Obviously, these guys
are tremendous fabricators,
which will leave me to doing things like
trying to figure out how to make motor on and wiring,
-and all of that-- -Because it needs a blower.
-Right. -That's what this thing needs.
-That's very important. -Needs a blower to run,
-clearly. -Yeah.
All right. That's...
-Blow this thing apart. -Yes.
That's all there is to it. There is...
There's three pallets of hard goods over there
that need to go on this car.
Purchase some Sawzalls.
-Yup, all that. -[Derek] Let's get at her.
[Andy] Yup.
[rock music playing]
[Derek] So here's the general idea of where
we're gonna start here. We've got three of us.
We don't wanna be crawling over each other,
but there are certain things that need to happen
so we can all work independently.
Primarily, the engine and transmission
needs to come forward so we can figure out cooling,
so I think we're gonna get the engine transmission set in,
get the front suspension done,
because then we can go to the rear
and actually hang that four-link
and get a drive shaft measurement.
We're gonna have to get that out right away
because that's gotta be custom made.
We're not gonna worry about any of the sheet metal,
or tin, or wiring,
or any of that to the very end.
Basically it's bending tube,
welding, cutting, purchase, all of that stuff,
engine transmission placement.
If there's time at the end,
we'll doll it up.
Now, it's just disassembly.
[machinery whirring]
[Dave] There it is.
I'm gonna give that back to the ice cream...
-[Derek] Holy cow. -[Dave] man.
[upbeat music playing]
[Dave] Huh.
[Derek grunts]
[Dave] Hang in.
[Derek grunts]
[Dave] How close are we?
-Oh, wait. -[Derek] Yeah, hold on.
-[grunting] -[Dave] Where's the rest of--
[Derek] We need another tall guy.
[Dave] This seems really wrong.
Pull up. Let's evaluate.
-[Andy] Okay. -[Dave] I don't know
what's going to happen in a foot from now.
[Derek] What if we tip it over?
[Dave] Oh, jeez.
[Derek] This is the wildest thing.
[Dave] Can someone take a picture?
[Derek] Is this gonna work?
I can't see nothing. Oh.
[Dave] This is actually going really well.
[Derek] Yeah, what were you guys worried about?
[laughter]
[country music playing]
[Derek] We're gonna pull off the fuel, make it happen here,
actually use a tool as it's intended,
a cherry picker, and lift the engine out
and then redo all of this.
Front axle goes away, shock hoops go away.
-[Andy] Yup. -[Derek] This gets cut off.
This gets cut off.
Everything gets ground, cleaned up.
We got to fit the front end in here
because that's gonna dictate
where we put the engine.
And I got a foam block,
put some accessorize on it.
We can start setting that in
because then we could put the radiator in,
make sure it fits in the nose cone,
and then build that way.
[Andy] Piece of cake. We'll be done by noon.
[machinery whirring]
[rock music playing]
-[Andy] Yeah! -[Derek] Yes!
[Andy] How many grinders do you think we're gonna kill
-this week? -[Derek] All of them, 14.
[rock music playing]
[Derek] We're gonna divide and conquer.
Dave's setting up the torch.
He's gonna start cutting a lot of this.
Andy's gonna come in here
and actually weld this cage together
because as we're cutting a lot of this out.
We're losing some of our stability.
He's gonna weld that in, zap it all up,
maybe put another bar in there.
He's also gonna work
on the running board.
And I think that'll probably
close up big.
I'm working on the little step plates
that I had done on the other side,
so I'm trying to copy it.
I had done it by hand years ago.
So I'm trying to use the technology
and draw it in CAD,
and then go put it on the CNC plasma
and cut it out.
Save some time, so we'll see.
So far, so good, I guess.
[country music playing]
[Dave] The front of this thing was on a straight axle
with leaf springs.
All the stuff was like moved forward.
It was welded in the wrong places.
It had scabbed over patch panels.
It's nuts how much stuff we cut off of this.
This is the weirdest way I've ever built a car.
All right.
It is back down to almost a bare '38 Chevy frame,
which is really cool.
It's a great starting point.
If we keep hustling tonight,
we should be able to have this thing
like fresh and clean.
So tomorrow we can come in here.
We can throw a crossmember in it,
do that Mustang II suspension
and actually start making forward progress.
But the amount of disassembly today
has been amazing.
It's just crazy.
So much work.
[country music playing]
[Derek] Well, good morning. Day two on the '38 Chevy.
You didn't miss a lot last night.
It was just grinding and grinding,
-and grinding a lot. -Lots of cutting.
And grinding. So I think you guys
are gonna work on a Mustang II and stuff.
[Dave] Yeah, I wanna to square up the chassis
a little bit, even just...
Even if it's just trying
to, like, pull the tape measure on it.
And then I wanna get that
Mustang II crossmember welded in
and start sort of fixing
these front frame rails back up,
so they're not total Swiss cheese garbage.
[Derek] Yeah. So what he's talking about
underneath here after we got everything off,
it's really rotted metal, stuff like that.
So he's gonna try to put some stability in it.
But to help Andy, I'm gonna stay out of these guys' way.
I'm gonna go over here, start working on engine stuff.
So I'm gonna assemble the blower,
I gotta get the transmission out,
we're gonna see if the clutch is correct.
We've got the accessories to figure out,
we got a body built kind of back behind us,
and then our power is combined,
and in 40 minutes, we'll put the motor in.
-Yeah. -Okay.
[country music playing]
[Dave] We are not throwing
the solid front axle back in this thing.
That was old news. We're now throwing in
this Mustang II front kit from heights.
This is actually a fully independent
rack and pinion front suspension.
These have been on the market for probably 30 years now,
and they always work really good.
So they usually fit well. They go together.
You don't have problems with them.
It's gonna be a coil spring,
and then I think it has some sort of an adjustable shock
that goes in here.
We're gonna go and fit this to the chassis.
It's actually made for this frame width,
so it should go together pretty quick.
This is one of my favorite kits to do.
I've been doing these things
since I started doing chassis work,
and it's always a good time.
It is gonna get a little bit weird
when we're trying to set up that engine in place
because we're gonna have a steering rack
that goes kinda right past
where the motor mount needs to be.
But we should be able to get creative,
build some, like, little tube mounts,
and get the engine where it lives,
and have all the room for Derek's gigantic feet.
I feel like I can actually weld this thing in
and not have to worry about the thing
driving down the road crooked.
[country music playing]
So this is the crowning jewel of the car.
It's gonna be the engine assembly.
This is a BluePrint 400 small-block.
I picked this up years ago
and have had it just sitting in the shop
waiting for the day to build this '38 Chevy.
This thing here made 515 horsepower
at around 5,900 RPM.
Naturally aspirated.
But this isn't complete
without the Blower Shop 871 blower.
This is a Ritz blower that's gonna be going on top.
Apparently, the Hot Rod Garage budget is a lot higher.
Their credit card went right through for this blower.
So that's pretty sweet.
Thanks guys. Appreciate it.
And then we've got a CVF Racing accessory system
that ties everything together on the front
with one nice belt.
It's gonna be rad. So I gotta build this thing.
I'm gonna use a dummy block over here
to figure out all the accessories,
start measuring, start assembling.
So when the suspension's done,
we can start figuring out
where to place this engine in the frame rail.
I need to move it way forward
so I could fit my big old cowboy boots in there
and run the pedals,
which we still haven't hung either on something.
We need a firewall
and then everything's gonna be fine.
Just you wait and see. We got lots of time left.
No, we don't.
[country music playing]
[Dave] Derek's messing around with the engine.
He's gonna get that thing mounted, which is awesome.
So I figured I would move back here
to the four-link for the rear axle.
We've got this drag style four-link kit.
These are just the brackets for the frame side
and the axle side.
And just kinda brainstorming back here with Andy
on where this stuff is gonna live.
I kinda feel, like, we're gonna end up
doing some tube work on this one.
This is actually designed for, like,
when you back half a drag car
and you have a frame rail that comes up real steep,
we don't have that, but we do have
open space to work with.
So I think what we're gonna do
is shoot a round tube
across the frame
and that'll give us sort of a starting point.
Eventually, we'll probably tie
that tube in with the cage
and then with the transmission mount.
This guy here is pretty cool,
but you can see, it's designed to, like,
get welded to an axle
before it has the end bearing cups on it.
So, we're gonna end up having
to trim this out here and there
so that we can slip this onto the axle.
We'll get her in and out, side to side,
make all this stuff happy.
And later on today,
we should have four bars in here
and an axle that kinda goes up and down.
[upbeat music playing]
[machinery whirring]
[Andy] I'm trying to get the motor mounts
situated in here.
We've got a couple different styles here,
and I'm gonna get creative on the captain side
because we've got a steering rod
that comes off the rack
that has to travel through here
and make its way into the cabin there.
There's another bracket that I'm gonna try to use
to push this forward to give us more height,
but I've got to start making marks
to make sure this is in here square,
get everything figured out where I think it needs to be,
and I gotta pull this back out,
put the bell housing and transmission on it,
get it back in.
We know this lift is level,
so we can start eyeballing
where we want the engine to sit as far as tilt
and final height and everything,
and then we'll burn those in
and we're off and running.
[country music playing]
[machinery whirring]
[Dave] Get in there.
[country music playing]
Hell, yeah.
-[Andy] Got it. -[Derek] Okay.
That's pretty good.
Bang that blower pulley right off on that crossmember.
Hold it. [laughs]
[Andy] This goes down.
[Derek] Well, it's end of day two
and we kicked butt today.
We actually got a lot done.
Crossmember's in for the Mustang II.
Dave's been working in the back.
We got the four-link started here.
Andy's got all the cage welded in.
Did a bunch of other welding and stuff like that.
Engine and transmission are
kind of sort of mocked in here.
This is where it's gonna live.
It's only day two and I feel like we've...
-We're killing it, dude. -We got a lot done.
[country music playing]
[Derek] It's day three and we are almost finished.
-It's really getting there. -[laughter]
We have a plan though.
Dave's been absolutely rocking on this four-link back here.
He's got, like, all the bracket do-dabbies welded on,
-and the thing I'm sitting on welded in. -[Dave] Yeah.
And you're gonna do the arms, levers?
Yeah, this morning I'm busting out four-link bars
so this thing can swing in its own axis
-or whatever you call it. -Mmm-hmm.
And then I wanna do coil over mounts
-and kinda wrap that thing today. -Nice.
Andy and I are gonna throw in
a transmission crossmember quick.
And then we're gonna get a driveshaft measurement.
And hopefully, we gotta get one made,
and then I'll come back
and help Andy clean up the frame horns.
And I think we're gonna try to paint everything.
The cage, front suspension, all of that.
That's our goal by the end of the day,
is to have some wheels hanging on this thing.
And it should look like a car.
Yeah. And it's definitely gonna look like a go-kart.
[laughter]
[machine whirring]
Yo, I am gonna be making some four-link bars here.
I've never done one of these drag-style four-links,
so I'm not sure where I'm supposed to mount everything,
but I think what I'm gonna do is find the middle spot,
top and bottom,
and middle spots over here
and just make bars that fit,
and it should be fine.
So I'll pull measurements on all these things,
get the axle centered.
Then go and weld the bungs into the tubes
that this thing comes with
and, hopefully, in a couple hours,
we'll be like cycling this thing.
[Derek] Poor Dave. Every time he hangs out with me,
just welds for five days straight.
Sorry, Dave. Love you.
[machine whirring]
So a guy brought in two transmission crossmembers
to give us some options on here,
'cause I really have no idea
what we were getting into.
And there's one that's already lowered
but it wasn't quite enough.
So we're actually taking the straight one,
running it through the bender here,
and adding our own 19 and a half degree.
Whoop.
And then Andy's gonna hack this at an angle,
weld it into some plates.
I've cleaned up the frame over here
and got the plates ready.
And then we have a custom crossmember
and the transmission will bolt right up to this thing.
[country music playing]
Oh. So now that we have
this essentially bolted in where it's gonna live
and we're just gonna have to deal with it at this point.
I'm gonna go ahead and just yank this back out.
I still have a ton of just pebbly stuff
that takes up time to do.
Put a starter in. Put the sparkulators in.
Put the oil in.
Now that I've casted the accessories in
the foam block, I gotta build everything out here,
get all the pulleys to line up, do all that.
I got a different bottom pulley
for the blower I gotta put back on.
And then I got things like I gotta plumb oil lines.
I gotta drop the distributor in.
I need to time it. There's just a lot that needs done.
[upbeat music playing]
The four-link all kinda lives in its own,
and now I'm trying to figure out coilovers.
I'm trying to figure out like
how to have adjustability up and down.
And I'm gonna build a little crossmember over here,
some tabs off of it that'll grab that.
And then I believe after that,
I need to figure out a driveshaft loop.
That crossmember I just put in is right in line
with where the driveshaft's gonna live.
But, at least, now I know where the hoop needs to go
and how big it needs to be, up or down.
[upbeat music playing]
[Dave] The goal today was to get to a spot
where we could sort of blow it apart
and start painting parts white.
And I think this is pretty close.
I'm gonna do a little bit of fab work
for a driveshaft loop
and then I can kind of put a bow
on this thing and say it's done.
[upbeat music playing]
[Derek] Well, we put in the hours last night
and, look, the chassis is all white,
just like Luke and his friends
did many times in the past.
There was a few different Sherwin Williams
and some sort of out Behr Paint.
-[laughter] -All sorts of stuff.
But, look, we've spent every minute we've been here
repairing, patching, replacing,
fixing, welding, boxing this original frame
and building this chassis because we all agreed
that was kinda the cool thing to do.
It's got a lot of history. It's been around.
And it's the affordable, realistic way to do it.
Now, could we have borrowed the Hot Rod Garage
credit card again and bought a Roadster Shop chassis
and just rolled that thing in and already had the body
and engine in? Yeah, but it's not as cool.
It's really expensive.
It's not realistic, really.
And don't get me wrong, they're really nice chassis,
but that's just not what we're about.
So, now, we finally get to do legit assembly
and start putting all the pieces back together.
One of the things I've gotta do here
is trim this body to fit back on the car.
One of our first challenges was trying to figure out
where to put this engine and transmission,
because, remember,
the way that Luke had the engine was set
way back in here like this, but the exhaust, tucked.
It went under the vehicle.
Well, now we've got some really cool side exit headers
that kinda complete the look that I wanna do with the car.
So I'm gonna have to trim
and it's gonna clean up the look of the body
from the side anyway.
And then Andy's gonna have to figure out
how to make different mounts
and tie this into the chassis,
most likely with some gussets
along the A pillar and B pillar.
So we're getting ready to grab that thing,
walk it over here, and just throw it right back on.
The problem is Andy did such a nice job with this cage.
It's really tight on the car,
so you have to like stretch it and fit it over
'cause the cage follows the body lines.
Things are gonna happen quickly.
It's gonna be awesome.
Okay. Down.
How's it going over there?
-How far are we? -Going good.
Guys, if you get your hand out, it might go.
-Who? -You.
-Yeah, you, yeah. -What's wrong with it?
-We're gonna go down. -Oh, we were going down already?
I thought we were going forward, further.
Oh.
Just fall right in place.
-Is Travis still alive? -There it is.
Travis.
-All right. -[laughter]
Okay.
Now back.
Up and back.
Oh.
Oh, oh, okay.
-That's it. -That's close enough, I guess.
[upbeat music playing]
[Derek] We are putting the motor in, finally.
It's starting to look like a real car.
[upbeat music playing]
Okay. Easy.
Whoa. Easy.
Oh.
Yeah, you just need to go... Look. There you go.
[Dave] I'm out back. I was just gonna throw some paint on this,
but I think what I'm gonna do
is actually like put the center chunk in,
do the RTV, clean the whole housing,
and paint it put together.
It'll be less masking
and a little bit less work in the long run.
So I'll be out here. We'll get that thing in.
We'll get axle shafts in it,
kinda button this thing up,
and then paint the whole thing white all in one shot.
[upbeat music playing]
[Derek] So a guy pulled the valve cover off here.
Out of necessity and curiosity,
I wanted to see what was inside of this engine.
Again, I've had this for years after I got it
and it's just been sitting.
It's got top valvetrain in it.
It looks really nice. It's got the BluePrint heads.
Obviously, it's a Rollercam.
But we needed one valve cover off
to slip that blower manifold in,
otherwise it's sat on the edges of the valve cover.
And I'm also going to take advantage of this,
setting this to top dead center
by watching the valves here operate.
So I'm gonna hook up a jump box here in a minute,
crank it over.
We'll watch this valvetrain move.
And once that piston's at top dead center,
I'll have my timing marks
and I can set this at initial timing
and then drop my distributor in.
So when we go to fire this thing up eventually,
bam, it should light right off.
Now is also an excellent time
to get any of this dirt and debris.
It's been sitting in a barn for years.
And I'm gonna dump in my engine oil,
slather up all the valvetrain, good opportunity.
That'll be in and we could take off this
"no oil" sticker as well.
[upbeat music playing]
[Derek] Well, since a guy has never owned
an engine part this nice,
I'm gonna go ahead and take a flap disc to it.
Here's why.
I just went to plop this thing on
and it is not playing nice with the BluePrint heads.
There's these tabs here
over the intake ports
and these are interferencing with the heads.
So I've traced out an intake gasket here with a marker.
That's our do not enter zone.
I've got to come in here and just angle this chunk
right here and here, on both sides,
so hopefully this sits down on that engine.
I really don't have a choice.
I can't go carve into the heads
because then the valve covers will not seal
and will be blowing oil up everywhere else.
So this is gonna be terrifying but fun.
[machine whirring]
[upbeat music playing]
I am getting ready to figure out plates
to try to cage in to the body,
because now we don't have any body mounts on the front.
We should do it anyway 'cause everything kinda just needs to...
The body needs to be one with the cage
when the cage is tied into the frame like this.
So I'm gonna go around
and make some dimple died sheet metal frames
to tie it in here and around the top of the cage
and then there'll be a pillar back here somewhere
and then we'll be good to go and all one piece again.
[upbeat music playing]
-[Dave] Driveshaft coming in. -Coming in hot.
I guess through that hole.
-Right here? -[Dave] Yeah.
-Oh, okay. -And then up to that thing.
I was gonna say, "Why did we put that there,"
but, you know...
Oh, thank God, it went in.
-Oh. -[Dave] Look at that.
That was easy. You just let it hang
and I'll go grab the axle
and, hopefully, all these things attach
to other things in the right spots. That was cool.
We just like randomly gave the driveshaft guy
some notes yesterday
and now we have a driveshaft.
We'll find out if it's the right length
or not here in a second.
[upbeat music playing]
You wanna come down with the lifter bump?
-[Andy] Okay. -Oh, God.
My hand was in there.
A little more.
No, that's good.
Dude, I'm dialed.
The driveshaft is gonna be perfect.
We're gonna connect all these dots
and there's gonna be a car here pretty soon.
[upbeat music playing]
[Dave] Can I get a hell yeah?
-Look at that. -[Derek] Looks like a real thing.
[Dave] It is a real... It's crazy.
It just went from like a bunch
of stuff laying on the ground
to a bunch of stuff on a race car.
The integrated shock mount thing is pretty sweet.
That makes it nice.
Great work, Dave.
[Dave] ♪♪ Awesome
♪♪ Slowly becoming a car
[upbeat music playing]
[Derek] We had to modify the blower manifold.
We got all that figured out. Went through the valvetrain.
We got it on top dead center.
Got some clearance here on the valve covers
and gaskets, air, got everything mounted.
Now, I'm gonna probably stab the lightning whirler
in the back here while I still have some room
and get that set to initial timing.
I gotta pull up the paperwork on this.
I'm guessing it's probably 16 to 18 degrees.
That's pretty much every small block.
[upbeat music playing]
[Derek] After that's done, I'll get the blower belt on,
after I torque on the case,
and then we can find our throttle body
and throw that up here.
We have a single and a double.
Right now, we're just gonna do a single.
But, ideally, we're gonna have two big carbs on here
or two Snipers or something like that.
Fuel injection would be great
just because this is gonna be at events
from West Coast to East Coast,
different elevations, different weather.
It'd be really nice just to lean and hit a button,
thing fires off, and you don't have to...
-[whooping] -What's the elevation
-at the Atlantic Ocean? -Yes?
And then Pacific Ocean is different?
-Oh, yeah, big time. -Okay.
[laughter]
[upbeat music playing]
[machine whirring]
[Dave] Check it out. The axle housing is in place
and suspension's hanging there.
And now I'm gonna do the axle shafts
and throw these guys in.
These are custom made to length
for this rear end, which is pretty cool.
And we've got this disc brake kit
that also needs to go on with it.
So I'm gonna go ahead and slide these in,
do a little RTV in here,
start marking up the brake caliper stands,
and then we should kinda have fully complete rear axle
here pretty soon.
[upbeat music playing]
[Derek] Well, good morning. We're back on the '38 Chevy.
We're here in Central Minnesota,
at my friend Andy's place,
trying to get this car put back together
that he and I started,
I don't know, five years ago probably.
I'm not quite sure it's gonna run, Andy.
Yeah, but it's gonna look cool.
[Derek] Today, Dave and I are gonna slam together on this front end.
I'm gonna get the control arms put together,
get all the hard burn here,
spindles on, springs, shocks.
He's gonna pack bearings.
We're gonna knock some studs out.
We gotta convert that for our wheels.
And hopefully here shortly,
we're gonna have it down on the ground
on all of the paws.
[upbeat music playing]
[Derek] Well, we ordered a standard Mustang II front end,
but looking at the ride height
and everything going on, we switched to drop spindles,
but then we've got standard-height coil springs here.
And we're gonna fix that
with the old band saw lowering kit.
So I'm just gonna come in here and take one coil off
and that'll give us, well, essentially that in lowering.
[upbeat music playing]
Okay. Keep going.
Keep going.
Okay.
[upbeat music playing]
[machine whirring]
[Derek] So a guy is going with the manual rack here
for a couple reasons,
mostly to simply
but also keep the old-school stuff alive.
So you'll see here, we don't have a power-steering pump
or anything on the engine,
which means we would have a big, traditional honk and gearbox
and the hydraulic lines and all that.
Instead, this is going to take care of it for us.
This is a manual rack.
This simply... Basically, it goes up
and attaches to the steering wheel
and you muscle it around.
I say muscle it
but it's really not that bad.
This is gonna attach right here.
And then we'll put some duo daubers on right here
that... [whistles] right into that.
And then we can adjust our toe in,
we'll have to do camber and all that.
We're gonna kinda rough it in.
Then we can start on the steering shaft
that's gonna work our way under there
through the firewall and up into the cab.
[upbeat music playing]
[Derek] There's a whole chunk of front end here
that I just sawed all off.
We gotta start redesigning that
and come up with some way to mount the radiator
and shape the front.
It's gonna need a bumper or a push bar,
something that can get through the wall of a tavern
and that stuff.
[machine whirring]
[upbeat music playing]
[Derek] Well, it's funny how some of the little things
or things that you would assume would be easier,
actually take up more time.
We're trying to get the original sheet metal
back on this front end, which actually surprisingly
is somewhat falling right into place.
But if we make a tweak here, that's way off.
We move this, that's thrown.
We're gonna keep fiddling around with this.
It's gonna be quite a night trying to get this figured out.
Eventually, we'll have this all supported in here,
gusseted in, get it to look somewhat straight
and we gotta get the steering shaft in there as well,
but we'll catch up with you tomorrow morning
and share the progress.
[upbeat music playing]
Well, here is the hall of fame 777 1938 Chevy.
No, it doesn't run
and we didn't get to the interior and stuff like that.
We ran out of time. But in no way is this defeat.
This is incredible and we did a lot of work,
thanks to Andy and Dave,
in the amount of time that we had.
I mean, this thing basically
is brand new other than the body.
-[laughs] Everything was such. -It was pretty wild.
I was looking through my pictures on my phone
and thing was blowing apart...
-[Derek] Yeah. -like two days ago.
[Derek] This is an early '60s champion dirt track car
that was inducted to the hall of fame,
along with Luke McLean
around 2007.
And he actually went back and rebuilt it again
with his friends and started racing it
and winning once again.
And you drove this and raced it around the track
-in that same form? -[Derek] In that same form.
Yup, it was wild.
So I've been dreaming of this car,
how it looks right here, for a long, long time. And this thing was rad.
We actually ended up spending three full days
repairing and patching
and adding to the original frame
and basically made a custom chassis on this thing
which I think was really cool.
Yeah. I agree. I think doing all this work
to the stock frame may have been a lot of hustle
but it's still cool to be able to say
-that's the original frame. -Yeah.
-It's imperative. -[Derek] Yeah. Absolutely.
Now it's got a hyped Mustang II front end on it
and Dave killed it on the back end
with like a very racy
adjustable four-link back there
and custom driveshaft hoop and all sorts of stuff.
[Andy] It's pretty trick.
[Derek] We've got a BluePrint 400 in here.
And it's got a Blower Shop, 671 on that.
We're gonna have some sort of Holley fuel system.
I haven't decided if we're gonna poke it through the hood
or go duals out.
Time will tell on that.
We've got a Silver Sport Transmissions
TKX five-speed in here
and the package of one
is gonna be a handful and a lot of fun.
I hope to do road course stuff, drag racing,
dirt track, cruising events,
-drag weeks, ice cream... -Yeah.
[Derek] tavern trips, you name it.
-[laughs] -Yeah. Everything.
-Yeah. -But it doesn't run.
Nope.
[Derek] So there's a track back here.
-Mmm-hmm. -[Derek] Do you have something
-we could maybe, you know-- -Yeah, I got a couple...
Two, three things we could grip.
All right. We'll take this end on a high note...
-Yeah. Let's do it. -and go break something.
-Gotta... Dirt tracking. -[laughter]
[upbeat music playing]
[engine revving]
[Dave] Oh, my gosh.
-Oh. -Next time on Roadworthy Rescues,
we're going racing.
-[Derek] Oh. -[Dave] Oh, jeez.
[laughs]
-[car engine revving] -[Dave] Oh, wow. That was...
-That's enough. -[Derek] Oh.
[Dave] Pipe it down.
-[laughter] -Victory. Victory.
Woo-hoo!
Let's find... Look out.
-[cheering] -[laughter]
[Dave] Oh, God.
That little tree.
[Andy] Pulled my hand in.
-Oh, my. -[Dave] Derek.
[laughter]
[upbeat music playing]
Well, that's gonna do it for this episode
and season of Roadworthy Rescues,
but stay tuned.
-There's plenty more to come. -Yeah.
[car engine revving]
[upbeat music playing]
Woo!
[Derek] Like Christmas.
-[laughter] -[Dave] Darn it.
It's too narrow right there, evidently.
What are you doing down there?
[car engine revving]
[upbeat music playing]