'94 GMC Part I

Today on search and restore

the guys hit the highway to pick up their next project.

And this time, what they find is a rusted out old GMC,

a house full of miles to feed and a mom and dad who believe in paying it forward

by providing a loving home for needy kids.

You

know,

kids being maybe mistreated, neglected or, or abused. It's, it's too hard not to look out and try to help those kids.

Our give back starts now

it's been an incredible first few months

as tens of thousands of applications have come in for our makeover project

and selecting our candidates. Hasn't been easy.

Welcome to Ohio

Build. Number two takes our team across West Virginia into Megs County

and the Ohio River town of Pomeroy.

This area was especially hit hard by the recession.

Over 31% of families here live below poverty level with a total of 13.5% unemployment

on the way to Anthony and Cindy Rowe's place to pick up the next project. These people have given their lives, they fostered

parents then adopted some kids.

So it's kind of cool. They've given up their life to help other kids in need.

And in this modest a frame tucked up against the cool hills of southern Ohio is not your typical family unit.

Say hi to Anthony and Cindy and their Children, all eight of them.

My name's AJ Rowe and I'm 18 years old. My name's Amelia and I'm 18 years old.

My names Alyssa and I am nine years old.

You're a smart one. You can't remember your name.

My name is Jessi and I'm 11 years old.

We

need,

yeah,

my name's Keisha and I'm 16 years old. My name is Adriana and I'm 15.

My name's Katie and I'm 18 years old.

It's,

it's going on.

My name's Ken and I'm 12 years old.

Anthony sent in his application with the modest request,

like I

said,

fix up his daily driver. Nothing fancy.

He just needs a reliable set of wheels that won't break down on him twice a month.

But a guy sure can dream. I like trucks that are jacked up big wheels and,

you know, like the, the step bars on the sides and

the cool paint jobs and stuff. But

when they start up and it's got that,

who, who,

who,

who, who

sound to it, that real deep hollow sound

I get in this and start it up. It doesn't sound cool. You know what I mean?

Can you make the sound?

It's like

he's always been there for me. He's always worked really hard, I think. You

could keep him.

Yeah,

she ain't got no choice. I couldn't afford child support.

That's a good one.

What makes this couple special is they've opened up their hearts and their home to five Children. Three of them siblings who years ago were in desperate need of a loving caring home.

Cindy herself, grew up in a household with no less than 35 foster kids.

So when the time came to give back the rose obliged

first as foster parents then with the swing of a gavel adoptions one after another

and we started doing foster care. We had a bunch of kids in all the homes and stuff. And uh, first two we adopted was

Adriana and Kenneth

and we had them for like two years in foster care. And, uh when, when they said that the state was going to take permanency of them.

I was like, man, I don't wanna see them kids go anywhere, you know, I've had them for years, you know. So by then I've become so bonded to them. I didn't wanna watch them go anywhere. So we,

we made sure we adopted them

and then uh,

two

little girls that we got, we, we had them for about what, 2.5 years

and they came up for as lords of the state and we adopted them.

The thing is you can't always have that thing. It's about me, me, me, you have to look outside of that and see that there's a kid, I mean, it, it's like any one of us wouldn't walk down the street. See a little two year old sitting there on the street and not try to pick him up to help them if they were by themselves.

It's the same thing with foster care. If you know, a kid being,

um, maybe mistreated, neglected or, or abused, it's, it's too hard not to look out and try to help those kids. Uh My only regret is that

with the family of the size I have, I'm not able to do it anymore, but it was definitely fulfilling knowing that you're doing something for somebody else. Cindy continues to give back by working for an Ohio state sponsored nonprofit called the Children's Hunger Alliance.

They coordinate with school systems and communities providing free and nutritious meals to Children from low income families.

Anthony, an ex military man works the 12 hour night shift as a corrections officer across the river in West Virginia.

You

Anthony,

I'm

Tim

with a house full of kids and two full time jobs. There's little time for mom and dad.

They're givers which makes them a perfect choice to receive our search and restore makeover.

Nice.

Coming up with a royal purple build team assembled at the shop. Tim and Joe set the scene for the next 30 days and what they find leaves a bad taste in everyone's mouth. No,

it's not good.

So we'll get this baby back to the studio. Everybody's waiting to tear it down and get going on it.

P

V6 power right there.

It may be underpowered but at least it still runs

inside the shop. Our royal purple build team anxiously awaits our latest project.

There. It is.

What's wrong with the truck? A

little bit of everything

for one. It's got this really little motor in it. Ok? I need to fill this general area right here with another couple cylinders. I'm thinking, let's, uh, tear it all apart. We'll need the drive train out of this truck and then you can have it to do your body work. Awesome.

He may be on the right path.

Anthony is gonna be amazed when he gets his, uh, daily driver back because he takes this thing to work every day back and forth. Pretty rough drive.

Told him that

for any truck driven on the snowy, icy roads of an Ohio winter corrosion kills.

When we were in Ohio picking up the truck from the family. We started noticing more and more and more and more rust

as they removed the bed liner. There's a brief glimmer of hope.

Yeah,

it's actually pretty solid

but to know the true condition of this vehicle, they've got to get it up in the air.

We're gonna continue tearing it down on the lift so we can get it up and start unbolting stuff underneath, get the motor and tranny out.

You know where people learn how to do this by watching Ian's show,

Tim, make a sign of my show.

He'll go wh

hiller

our

game quickly attacks the underside of the halftime. Only to find corrosion everywhere.

Oh, it's a map.

Pretty much everything you touch. Makes a big cloud of dust from

dirt, rust

trucks in through a lot.

It's like my wife's cooking.

But amongst all the rust and dust

is the thought of our number one priority. Anthony

here is a guy who's living as an example of how we would like to live.

Let's help this guy out. He's always doing something for everyone else but never himself. Let's get back to him.

Fa well, boat, make sure we label them.

So you know where they get it

a little

way off

and get heavy

one.

Let's pull the bed off, take it over there.

I

love that.

This is why we're getting a new bed. Look at, look at all that

got the bed off of the back and we noticed that all the body braces in the bottom of the floor pan was all gone too if you could grab them and just break them with your hands. So we found a used bed today that should be here tomorrow

and the frame, it's even in worse shape pretty bad right there.

Frame is really, really rusty back there.

I would have expected to see this at the bottom of the ocean for 20 years before it came out, there was parts of the frame that were just not there.

Luckily, the front half of the GMC is in good shape. And after removing the engine

radiator

and the rest of the interior,

the team can take a little time to reflect on their involvement with Anthony's restoration.

You know, Anthony's story is not unique.

There are hundreds of thousands of Anthony's and what makes those people so special is they're still giving back. They're still part of their community.

That is an inspiration.

Next on search and restore,

making. What's old, look new again? Plus we'll meet this pro football player turned fabricator. When I heard Anthony's story, I felt compelled to close my shop and come here and donate my time and effort and skill. Awesome.

Wow, Chris gets to do body work on this build.

That's the best one they had.

Day two of our GMC build and the parts are rolling in

some new, some salvage. We found a really good bed at a local salvage yard. We sent Chris out to get it.

He picked what he thought was the best one. He got a really good rust free bed. This one's a little beat up on the one side. So Chris gets to learn body work tomorrow,

but for Tim and the crew waiting till tomorrow is not an option.

Our overall goal is to give Anthony the best truck that we can

in the short amount of time that we got

it, we could have just sprayed some bed liner stuff on the bottom of that made it look ok. But it would have started rusting worse again

and just a little bitty imperfections that probably would have almost primed out on this side. But I wanna make sure that it's nice and straight top of these rails had a whole bunch of dents on them. So I'm just gonna put a quick, easy little skim down the side of this

while Tim sands the bed. Eli Sweets works on the body

cardboard, sheet metal. Punishing hammer.

We're ready to rock and roll. I'm just gonna mark this cap corner here. I'm gonna use this cardboard

to make a template

easy.

Then I'm gonna go over to the punishing hammer,

make a crease in my sheet metal

and then by hand, I'll fold it over

when the call went out for volunteers. This fabricator shut down his hot rod and cycle shop in Maryland and drove in to help.

How's it going? Sweets? What's going on baby? Holy cow. Look at that. W we gonna chrome plate that when he's not on his drag bike, he builds one of a kind custom choppers and Hot rods. Sweets brings tons of energy and compassion to Anthony's restoration. Whenever you open your household and share love with Children,

it doesn't matter if it's, it's your Children or Children you adopt or foster care.

The greatest gift you can give to a child is to open your house. So I, I love him.

Meanwhile, it's time to tear down the old transmission

and Ian likes what he sees

just a little bit of clutch material in it, but I don't expect to see anything really burned up.

It's actually not bad for 200

some odd 1000 miles

into the cleaner

for 20 minutes. The parts are cleaned of dirt and grime and grease.

That's a delivery homeboy.

The fact that we're gonna be running royal purple max A TF synthetic fluid will also help keep the transmission running at optimum temperature. No matter how hard this guy works. This rig shiny and pretty. It is after a coat of duplicate called their cast coat iron paint.

I can set this transmission up to basically break his neck every time it shifts. I can set it up to be a little bit firmer or we can set it up as stock just a little bit firmer. A little bit firmer. Yeah, that would be awesome. Ok. I like to go a little bit firmer than stock because then the clutches don't wear out as fast and then we'll just run with it from there

for six. We leave out eight

next out with the old in with the new as the transformation of Anthony's GMC continues stay tuned

to nominate a worthy candidate to donate or to volunteer log on to search and restore tv.com.

Special delivery kicks off day three of our daily driver redo,

we picked up this rust free junkyard frame that build leader Tim Strange will make look like new in a few hours time.

It's very important that bites into the bare metal

and gives a good base for the paint to stick to. If you just paint over bare metal, it's gonna flake off, it'll rust through.

Then we use some uh single stage

PPG, shiny black on it. So it'll look really good and it gets it muddy, it'll wash off really good.

Multiple layers of clear code will provide gloss and protection.

It looks like a brand new frame actually looks better than a brand new frame in there because they were satin black original

and now it's shiny.

Donations from after market companies like L MC truck make this build possible.

And one of their call induction hoods will give Anthony's a high performance look.

It's like something Batman would put on his, his Batmobile.

I think it's lovely. The hood looks great. Like as much as they packed it, it looks really straight. I don't think it's gonna take much to get it ready for paint. A light scuffing and you're good to go.

The guy determined it would have taken about 20 hours of labor to get the original doors ready for paint. So instead, Tommy knew a guy who got us a clean junkyard set for 300 bucks.

Oh,

yeah, this is like brand new compared to the other door. Look at the drain hall. Perfect. I need some help with this other door. Quit bumping your gums. Let's throw.

Even after a quarter million miles. The guts of the old transfer case still look good with no signs of wear or damage.

A quick coat of paint

and back together. She goes,

uh,

sanded roof down and see where the dents were sanded behind the bed. Make sure that this is nice and straight the cab corners, we sanded them down.

We just like to put our touch on this truck and make sure it's a perfect, we can make it

a lot of it's field. I go to field kind of watch your sandpaper, your motion, your light pressure of

D A in it. Milestone is real honored to get the opportunity to come and search and restore and actually give back to somebody that helps a lot to his life and give back to other people in need.

Chris and I were working on tearing down the control arms to put in the new bushings and ball joints

and the rivets that hold the original ball joints in

were not giving

away.

We started with the grinder and then the press and the air hammer and the torch and

the best way

was to take a cut off wheel and make a little waffle pattern in the top of the rivet. If you just go with the air hammer, there's a lot of resistance.

You know, it's kind of pushing Chris is holding it across the shop with it. But if you do those relief cuts, it comes right off

and then we press them out with a bolt as our guy

next, Liz tackles the much easier task of fitting up some bushwhacker cut out flips.

These combined with a three inch lift will open up the wheel well, to fit a set of 30 fives

from a tired rusted workhorse

to a torn apart shell.

Anthony's 1500 began a major transformation this week

inside the paint booth as the larger pieces are primed. The progress is visible. Yeah, this is going to be a daily driver. This guy's gonna drive, but I still want the paint just to be a slick on this as somebody that would take it to a show. When we get it all done, it'll look like an awesome truck with a custom paint lift kit and a new set of keys.

Next time on search and restore donated parts. Keep rolling in body work seems never ending.

And Anthony's better than new frame becomes a rolling chassis with V8 power.

Oh, tag me in, tag me in, tag me in.

Yeah, I'll stand on it.