'94 GMC Part III

Previously on search and restore

this GMC was rescued from 17 harsh Ohio women and began its transformation into a better than new four by four with rust free parts including frame bed and new fenders today,

custom paint graphics and thanks to Mario Andretti,

an exhaust that goes from this

to this

like that

day nine. And our GMC project is right on schedule. The guys planned this one, right, creating several assembly areas so work could get done simultaneously

when we got it,

this 94 4 wheel drive half ton was far from being considered a collector's item.

But the truck meant the world to owner Anthony Rowe.

He sent in his application for a makeover with the encouragement of his family and it's a big 18 total with two biological kids, five adopted Children, and even a son in law,

all of whom are priority number one along with his wife, Cindy.

I can't say that. I think I'm the best father. I think I've seen a lot of guys that I think are extremely great fathers.

It's just when my kids will say something just little or when they give you that I love you

or they wanna come in and sit on your lap and watch television or something. That's the things that mean the most to me.

So, Tim Strange and a royal purple volunteer build team are out to make this truck something special.

And for a build leader that means it starts with block and paper.

What is it with you? And Sandy?

I don't know.

This is gonna look. Right.

Well, Rob, the camera guy keeps telling us to stop sanding. He doesn't understand what it takes.

You think he would

all the time that he's standing right behind that lens right now, laughing at me.

He thinks, oh, you sand it once you're done,

they're standing right over there too.

What do you guys want to scotch? Write the floor

where the bed liner is gonna go?

Scotch,

bri is where you're making the little teeny tiny scratches

that scratch up the surface just enough. So that way the paint will stick to the body.

All right, Clarence, why do you get all the crappy jobs

asked

Tim. That question. Where is Tim?

Seriously though? Tim stays pretty busy himself. We're getting ready to shoot Sealer

on it first and then jam it, which is short for spraying all the door jams and we're actually gonna spray some red and some black on it

while we got it apart.

Uh Since there's no graphics that runs across the roof, I'm gonna go ahead and spray black on that

I talked to his kids quite a bit that they said that their dad liked red and they liked a lot of black and some chrome.

The two tone paint job and custom graphics will give the truck an impressive look but requires an incredible amount of extra work.

We were painting a solid red. We'd shoot it

all that stuff today.

We're gonna two tone it and carry some graphics down the belt line

So it needs to be all assembled so we can get the stripes laid out just right. Tim knows that Anthony's truck will spend a lot of time in the woods. So he's made sure that the paint is also practical.

We're using straight out of the can colors with no metallic, no pearl, no candy apples. So if he scratches it sometime when he's out in the timber, it's not that hard to touch up.

The PPG colors look bold and vivid but will look even better after some clear coat.

Two painters are better than one, but only if they can work without crashing into each other. Both Tim and I have a background in collision repair and production painting. So, you know, not to step on each other's hose or bang your hand into the other guy and when you coordinate, you can really get a lot of stuff done. We're under a deadline with this truck and there's a ton of work that needs done. So two painters, it just gets it done faster.

All right, you got two designs for your custom fab roof rack and you got a vote on which one earlier, Ian just wanted to ask the crew a couple of questions about the roof rack. Who could expect so many in return? What would be on the floor of that? How much wages I can add? Would that be too much for that? What's the support at the front? Is it anchoring to the bed rails? Will that cause a problem when, when you go off road, the cabs and the frames flex so much on these? Do you have time to build that

a lot to chew on? And after the break cut bend notch. Plus later, there's a new boss in the tech center. Now get back to work

day 11 and the paint booth is nearly running 24 7 with pieces going out and others going in

buying a salvaged rust free bed was a Godsend

less metal work. Plus the old bed gets new life and mock up.

Ian can build a safari rack without worrying about dinking up. Tim's precious paint.

Weirdest vehicle that Tim has probably ever built because he's got

basically a street rod paint job on a hardcore work truck.

So we're throwing at him some parts that are like you'd see on a crawler. So we got cool headache rack and roof rack. It's really kind of west coast style kind of pre runner. Look people call it a Baha

basket. Usually the beds are full of all your spare tools and your tires and you'll put fuel jugs up here and just more stuff that you need. Because when you go into the desert, you gotta take everything with you because there's nothing there.

So it's kind of cool to throw one on East Coast truck. It's definitely gonna be the only one that you'll see riding around in Ohio.

And it really takes this truck and gives it just one more little custom touch like paints cool but fabs way cooler

and what's cooler than adding a little powder coat to this one of a kind piece

back in Tim's paint booth is a guy. You've been seeing a lot of on this build. His name is Jacob Miles volunteer paint and body specialist

and wanna be bull rider.

This Tennessee farm boy joined the Navy and was chosen for the elite presidential ceremonial guard

from Bristol Motor Speedway to the White House. Jacob presented our colors after he returned home. He opened milestone custom paint and body.

He and his team have worked on everything from custom hot rods to classic El Caminos to modern muscle.

You know, you've seen us through the body work.

Let me go in there and paint something just so it don't look like Tim was doing all the work around here.

He's uh putting base coat on the outside, he sealed all these parts.

Uh

We're gonna put the panels together in the bed on so we can carry the graphics. So he's doing the two tone across the front of the bed and putting clear on that.

It's painting the inner fender wells

and he's doing the fender flares also the day

it took some effort, but Tim was able to hand over some of the painting to Jacob, but he just couldn't resist keeping an eye on his work.

I could feel those beady

eyes on me.

It's nice to know that people are watching in on you maybe seeing how you're doing or

just see what kind of job you might turn out. So there's a lot of

preparation. I wanna make sure that looked real good when it came out.

Every painter seems to paint a little bit different.

Jacob sprays with a pattern like this big and

air pressure just clear, bouncing off the truck. You can't even see on his side of the booth.

I spray with this nice, neat little pattern and smaller air pressure. And it's kind of neat to be able to see how another guy that makes it look really good when he gets done with it. Does it totally different to get to the end result? But it all works out. It's pretty cool.

Some of the major pieces come together

and Tim spills the beans on what we have planned for the Rowe family next week.

It's, it's like one of those amusement park rides. With the little kids. You think you're staring but you're really not,

uh,

day 13. And it's a big one when it comes time to make the cab to the chassis, it's a check mark. That really feels good.

Then there's the inner fender wells

doors.

It's a process that gets some excited more than others.

Yeah.

Oh,

a

little more subdued. Is Chris charged with installing a donated stainless steel magna flow cat back exhaust.

Normally you can just use B

clamps at these connections, but we're gonna tig weld it to make it extra nice

with it. Installed. Chris sends the GMC up to the rafters for an inspection by someone who knows a thing or two about high performance.

I think I know who you are. Hey, Tim,

how are you? Good?

Why you got the whole thing cut and everything

from front to back? It turned out real nice.

Wow, this is really, really nifty. Do you ever drive a vehicle with big old tires like this on it? Uh

Just briefly. I had just a little bit of a pre run at the BA.

Yeah.

Yeah,

but uh not

just checking up

by next week,

next week.

Impossible.

Well, you gotta think about it this way.

Some people change tires really slow

but when you race, they get them done just like that.

You've got something there.

Yeah.

This crew we got work on. This truck is like putting Andretti in a race car.

You know it's gonna be done, right? And it's gonna be done fast. You guys really perform miracles. I heard all about it. If you need any help, just don't hesitate. Can you paint?

I can,

no, we can teach you,

I'll teach you to paint. You teach me to drive. I

can tighten things. That's probably not a fair trade. Is it

Anthony's real picky about the sound of his vehicles? We've got some tape on him.

You know, it's funny you mentioned that because I saw the tape

and, uh, he was not

very impressed with what the sound of his

truck was. And, uh,

and so we, I think Magna Flook

is gonna, is gonna cure all that.

It's a wonderful thing and I'm sure that, uh,

you feel like you get him back much more than you're putting in.

Hey, who are me? Jacob? Jacob

Clarence

harry.

Great job, great job, really wonderful job you guys are doing

now, get back to work.

You

great advice from the Great Mario Andretti.

But before we do,

we hook up our web cam once again so we could spring a little surprise on Anthony and his family.

Hey, guys, how you doing today?

Hey, we're all doing really good.

So we gave you a call today to let you know that we've all been working really, really hard on your truck. So it should be ready for you when you come at the end of the week to drive it home?

All

right,

thank you.

Thank you very much.

Do you notice anything behind me?

That's all we have left of your truck.

He looks, he looks a little worried. Look at him.

That is seriously, what's left of your truck?

See,

see the bed, the doors, the hood, the bed liner.

While you come here to town, we've got a few surprises for you. Are you ready drum roll, please?

Drum roll.

So we called up our friends at Gaylord Hotels and told them about you fostering and adopting all these kids. They thought it was really, really awesome. So they decided they wanna step in and give back too.

So you Cindy and all those kids standing behind, you are getting to come down here and you get the full VIP treatment for a long weekend at their luxurious Gaylord Opera Land resort in Nashville.

You will all get complimentary meals prepared by award winning chefs,

three incredible swimming pools, free ground transportation and a lot more surprises. What do you think about that?

And one of those surprises I have right here in my hand

right next door to the Gaylord hotel is what the Grand Ole Opry and we have VIP passes and tickets for all of you guys.

You guys will have a blast at that though. That'll be really cool. Thank you guys

so much.

Thank

you.

So I guess we'll see you at the end of the week. We gotta figure out how all these parts go back together. Hopefully, Kevin will remember. So, drive safe and we'll see you Friday,

we'll see you.

No guy,

you guys are awesome.

Next, the truck is back in the booth for the graphic layout. Stay tuned

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

15 and complete assembly of Anthony's GMC is well underway

since this truck will sport a graphic treatment, the body must be locked down solid. So all the lines match up.

I'm thinking this,

if you remember the tripe that I put on the side of the hood,

it was kind of like that.

This is kind of spinning this way. It had that

back and forth thing.

You hear that? You hear it. I, I heard the

right there and then maybe about here

start dipping down a little bit, bringing the graphics to life on a real three dimensional surface calls for the process of elimination.

I don't know if that's the right arc.

This buggy right here bugs Jacob

if you make this one smaller than the one on the front, just so it kind of tapers back, you know. Do you like how this comes down this much here? Think that goes up too much. I think. So. What's the graphic gonna be? Dude? We haven't fully decided yet.

That's the

best part, isn't it? Yeah,

it's nice getting free rein and not having a customer say I want it here and here we can do,

we can do whatever we want.

Why don't you do the first one? And then we'll just mimic it and copy it on the other side.

It's hard for me to get inside your retina and climb inside your mind. It's some scary stuff in there, isn't it? I don't even want to go there.

Just the one color on the body alone took over 2.5 hours. Lay out the stripes with time and patience. Tim transforms the lines of tape into smooth flowing curves.

I think I like that. It's enough but not too much.

All right.

What?

Right

here.

No,

no, no,

no, we don't shake our paint up here.

Go weld something, go weld something.

Maybe it's best to leave a job like this to a professional painter. Jacob lays down a line of PPG silver that'll live at the center of the graphics strike.

After the paint is dried, the graphics are taped up to protect them from the layer of red paint which will be sprayed down the sides of the truck.

Ok. We just got this other color mask. We're ready for the last of the four colors.

Spray a little black on there. Jacob's gonna paint it,

then we'll let it sit for just a few minutes

unmask it, pull all this tape off for all the stripes.

It's like watching kids on Christmas morning, everyone feverishly pulling it paper and tape, anxious to see what they've got when Tim first told me he wanted to put baby blue as the accent color in these stripes.

I both thought to myself. He's crazy. And I looked him in the face. I said you're crazy. It's not gonna look good, but check it out.

It looks awesome.

Now, the clear coat

lots of it. Tim and Jacob spray the first layer.

Tim puts on a second coat.

Jacob a third

by the time they're finished the GMC sports seven layers of clear coat.

I mean, it's gonna be the shiniest thing on the block. That's for sure.

You'll be able to see him coming for a mile. A

lot of guys thought it was just a little too mini trucky.

Too many zigzags and colors going everywhere. Once it's all together and the racks and everything on it, those big wheels and those thunder flares, it's gonna be over the top. But I think Anthony is just gonna totally freak out when he sees this thing.

Yeah. Now we're gonna sand it

seven or eight more times before we buff. It

sanding may be tedious but the crew enjoys spending time with their host. A guy who's earned the name. Tim. Strange.

Who would take out the trash?

So

sexy. Oh, look what we have here.

Oh, sanding blocks? Oh, I've missed you. Sanding blocks. Yeah, he's pretty strange. But it, it's been the blast working with him.

It's been nothing but a great time with him.

But, uh,

I can't

see,

we've

got a lot done this week. We've been working our butts off.

I know I've been sanding enough. It feels like my knuckles are already dragged the ground.

I know you could use some beauty sleep. You too.

Let's call tonight. Let's come back Monday.

We quitting.

Sounds like a deal to me

next time on search and restore. The crew has three days before the big reveal as the truck gets tuned and test driven, plus the entire Rowe family visit the tech center to pick up Anthony's pickup.