Mud Truck Part 1

Three letters mud

today on Xtreme 4x4. This full size Chevy gets stripped naked as Ian and Jessi transform a clunker into a mud bog beast, plus high alpine wheeling rocky mountain style

to say that a lot of wild trucks could build here at Xtreme 4x4 would be an understatement. Everything from big B

powered trail killers like our S 10

to nice little trail buggies like our diesel powered Suzuki.

We built some lifted

three trucks, a

pile of jeeps and even a full blown race track. But even with that long list of vehicles, there's still some Xtreme 4x4 that we haven't even gotten to.

And so today we're going to jump feet first into an area of our hobby that a lot of you guys have been asking us to do ever since the show has been on the air. And that is

those of you into it, know what it is,

but those of you scratching your head, it's hardcore, full throttle, deep sticky mud,

high horsepower, big tires, screaming engines, mud flying. Basically, just a good old time.

We picked

up this 87 GMC, three quarter ton pick up because it's a pretty popular platform.

But it's easy to shut a lot of weight to help it go faster

and you got all this room in the engine compartment so you can use any engine and transmission combination that you choose.

Now, this truck is going to be a mud racer. It's gonna have to go on a pretty serious diet

that's going to include almost every body panel on the whole truck.

This trucks already had a lot of work done to it, but we're going to strip it to the frame,

ok.

That way we'll know exactly what we're working with. Lose the parts that are just extra weight, bolt in what we need and get ready for the mud.

There's only four B

holding this cab on, taking it

off will make

the m

much easier.

Now, the one constant with Mud

Boers is high horsepower engines

and this baby that we just pulled out as a 400 cubic

inch small block

an engine that you can pull a lot of power out of with a Stroker crank and some high flow head.

And since we have one awesome engine building team right down the hallway, we thought that they would really like to build this one.

What is this pile you brought us this time? This is the best part of the truck we bought, man.

It's beautiful.

Want some magic work on that. A lot of power. What's the plans? Simple mud truck, straight fast, high horsepower, redneck, high horsepower this little piece of, you know what, 400 small block, buddy. I've seen you work magic. Do it again, man. Do it again. Pump gas. Race gas.

Oh,

really? It doesn't matter. It's, it's just, just a frame. So sure. Race gas. Why not? I leave it up to you guys. Your decision. Well, power wise, what do you look as much as we can get, as much as you can get?

This thing probably would have went a lot faster if it was cleaned up.

Well, it does

have a pressure washer. You don't clean the mud trucks,

you gotta clean it to build it,

you

set it up and well, anyway, so, uh have fun guys left all the accessories on there for you.

We

just

follow the trail, you follow your trail back to your

point,

but

there is on this thing. Thanks guys.

Now we pulled the body off the frame to make, removing the engine and transmission a lot easier. And now that they're out of here, we simply dropped it back on. There's only four bolts to hold it in place and now we can start working on some body panels and we'd originally thought about reusing a lot of the stock panels, but they're pretty rusted and pretty beat up. So we got all new ones from L MC truck. Now, these are direct factory replacement panels and they are in such good shape. You honestly could just scuff and shoot these things with a paint job and they would look great. Now, these are going to save us time and weight because we don't have to fix the old panels. Plus we're going to go in and cut out a lot of the internal structure to make them lighter

in the rear. We'll just run the bedsides with no floor. This will save us a ton of weight

on the front. We'll cut out the inner body of both fenders and then bolt them to the calf.

Once the hood is attached, we'll have a lightweight steel one piece front end that we can lift off to service the engine,

the doors, we're going to deal with those later, but bumpers front and rear

them's for city folks.

This

is not a trail truck. We're not going to need the traditional style of a roll cage. What we need is more of a drag racing style to protect the driver in case of a roll over. And since the bad glass is gone, they should make this job really easy.

Now, for our cage, we're gonna be using inch and three quarter 120 wdom bent around a six inch radius. Dye. Now this larger size tubing as well as a larger dye will help give us a big hoop that we can put over the driver in what's termed as a funny car roll cage

in the cab of this truck. The only person needing a roll

will be the driver because we're not gonna have a passenger. Passengers needs extra weight. Slow us down in the mud

after the break. Four by four rock climbing 2.5 miles straight up. We'll take you four wheeling in the Rockies. When Xtreme 4x4 continues

of all the off road parks we've taken you. This has to be one of the most picturesque, the Colorado Rockies outside of Aspen, we're talking high alpine wheeling. 12,000 ft elevation where a couple of must haves for good day. Wheeling

are some beefy tires and a good camera

with mountain peaks busting past 14,000 ft.

The Colorado Rockies make grown men fun like new mothers. Colorado scenery out here is, is phenomenal. This is what it's all about right here in Colorado. For some. They don't want to look at these mountains, they want to conquer them.

Let's quit

and go

forward

littered with hundreds of trails. The Rockies aren't just for bird watchers. We've been to a lot of different places around the country, to wheel and a lot of big name places and we keep coming back to Colorado. It's hard to match the scenery and the hard trails that we have here just an hour south of Vail sits the Holy Cross City trail. This trail says Colorado. This is a classic Colorado high country leading the run with Stephen Watson. What was once

access road for miners just to go to work is now a

recreational scenic, difficult four wheel drive trail for us ascending 3500 ft in less than four miles. The goal is to reach the Cleveland Rock obstacle at 11,500 ft. Wheeling at high altitude like this is a whole different ball game. You'll hear motors bogging down where they normally wouldn't do.

People are the same way you'll notice walking around here, everybody's going to be breathing hard. You don't walk and talk quite like you did. It's not just altitude, slowing them down. Most of it is rock. These are the rocky mountains after all to get through the rocks and alpine river crossings. These men know

to go big tires out here are very important. The size is really a big deal. There's a lot of rocks in there that will grab your differentials, your axle tubes, your approach and departure limitations

and tire size makes all that smaller. Our smallest tire is a 37

and past that, we jumped right up to a 40 inch tire at 10,500 ft. They reached French Creek. The river crossing can be tough. It's slick, taken out of the drive shaft before at the river crossing. Those with for

blew right through it. It's not that easy but it looked easy for Tom Cherry. No obstacle came easy. It's a rough through.

Tom battled the Holy Cross City trail with those 37.

I went with 37 s because that's what I had it limits me airing down the tires for traction is a, is a key thing. His rubber may limit him,

but it hasn't stopped him from sticking with his big tire trail mates.

If you're going to be in this and afraid of

tipping the truck or leaning the truck over,

you're going to get yourself in trouble at French Creek. Tom was fearless. I'm not nervous, no confidence, no Colorado.

After getting caught on the rocks, Tom's friends were ready to give him the pink Fancy

award. Tom said,

put those pink panties away.

That last run was great. Loved it. Feel it hanging up on stuff and banging around but

just kept at it

with

NIA Slacker holding them back by lunch. They reached 11,000 ft

and the Holy Cross City mining ghost town as you can see, it's a beautiful sight.

It was a lot of fun getting up here. That's the fun part. You can come up just to the city and come look at it. And then when you're ready to play on the uh the big boy obstacles go up to Cleveland Rock and see what you've got

at 11 5 sits the rock. I don't know if impressed is the word. It looks kind of intimidating. A

slate of rocks. There's only two ways up and both are extreme.

It's a good thing. Those winch anchors will probably end up needing them for a few vehicles. Tom Cherry pass on the winch some of it is finding out just how far you can go before something bad happens. I don't think I'm crazy. I just, I like a challenge. This challenge was one that Tom couldn't overcome the obstacle up there is just, it's just too large for the tire, for my size of tires. It's not that frustrating when I see trucks that are way more capable, struggle with it. It'd be nice if I could make them look bad. But with the tire issue, I mean, it's an issue his day may have ended in failure but Tom Cherry doesn't see it like that. Giving it a try is a good thing. I come out here again with them and do it.

I'm happy with myself, my truck and everything else.

I love to see those full size Chevys taken on those rocky mountains. And if you want to take the ascent to Cleveland Rock, you better have a good wrench because one phone call to the forest service to get you out can set you back at least $500.

I take a whole set of wrenches.

Not just one.

Hey,

guys, welcome back to Xtreme 4x4 where today we started tearing into this 87 Chevy pickup, turn it into a killer mud racer truck.

So far we stripped it down to its bare frame, pulled out the drive train and took the engine down to the horsepower guys. Then we have some light up sheet metal and once we get this new plastic seat that we got from Summit racing inside the truck. We have a place to sit too.

Now for tires and wheels on our mud truck, we went with what could be truly considered an old school set up on the back. TSL boggs from Interco 39.5 inches tall. And with their integrated three stage lug design, they're basically gonna work like a paddle tire, especially since they have this unique scoop feature built into the lugs. Now, before we run these tires, we'll go ahead and cut, cut out these smaller logs to really give these things some bite in the mud. Now, the front, the original TSL super swampers, same size as the rear and these are just basically gonna act like rudders on the truck. They will get some grip in the mud, but they're honestly just there to steer it and to keep with that old school feel, a set of 15 by 10 black and chrome modular wheels from summit races,

be

locks really won't be necessary for this type of truck. But what we don't want is the tire spinning on the rim. So we're going to drill through the outer lip and screw in some rim screws that we got from summit race

vehicle share a lot of the same technologies.

You'll see desert racing parts on rock crawlers and rock racers. But when it comes to mud,

Boers, believe it or not, you actually see a lot of drag race influences.

Now, the rear axle in this truck is a 14 bolt and it would be plenty strong for what we're building. The problem is, is it's going to kill us on weight. So we're going to pull this out and replace it with a lightweight nine inch that we can build super strong

on the front end. We'll be using the original axle but obviously upgrading the shafts and changing the gears,

but we won't know what gear ratio it'll go with until we get the

dyno sheets back from horse power for now, we need to take care of the mismatch bolt pattern.

The rear nine inch has a five on 5.5 bolt pattern just like a Ford pickup. So we grabbed a bunch of outer knuckles for the front end.

Once these are swapped in, we'll have the same bolt pattern on all four corners.

This is a popular swap for you J guys who want a full with 44 but don't want to buy new wheels.

Hey

guys, welcome back to Xtreme 4x4 in our first ever mud truck.

Today, we started with a relatively stock GMK series pick up. We got to the entire thing and then we h

and stripped down body panels through the roll cage and swapped the 14 ball out for a nine inch rear and then we swapped out the front knuckles so we could have a matching B

pattern all around. Now, we get to see what the truck looks like with the super swampers on

and with the engine done on the horsepower shop, we can go ahead and start working on the rest of the drive train for this truck and it's gonna start at the transfer case. Now, depending on what class you want to run with your mud bog race truck will determine on how you get power down to that front axle in open or outlaw classes. Guys will just run two gears and an external chain on a prop shaft just hanging off the frame, but we don't want to limit ourselves in that situation. So we're going to tear into this new process

208 stock transfer case. Now it's a lightweight aluminum case that's found in most case series trucks.

It has a chain to deliver the power to the front axle and the low range is accomplished by a planetary gear set inside this front housing. But we're going to be running this truck in high range almost all the time. So we're going to tear this case apart and remove that planetary gear set that's going to take some of the rotational load off of our drive train and therefore more power.

The first step is to completely tear down the 208,

then remove the planetary gear set and set it aside

with the synchro hub welded in the four high position.

This case is going to be four high all the time.

Racing is just like any other form of racing. You got to be prepared for the worst. And when we were out shopping for

cases we picked up to

that, we have something went wrong. We had a backup plan

now to make sure we're taking full advantage of the modifications were making of these cases. We're going to be feeling with Royal Purple and

gear loop, not only will help keep everything cool inside, but it will also provide less drag on the rotating.

Thanks, dude. Sure.

Now, for the transmission and the mud truck, we honestly had a lot of options. We could have used 700 a turbo 400 or even put a standard back in it. But instead, we're going to use an automatic and we went to the junk yard and picked up this turbo 350

we chose this model for a couple of different reasons. It's a really simple small three speed automatic train

mission that you can get dirt cheap. We got this one at a local junkyard for 25 bucks.

Plus we've never torn one of these apart here in extreme. So it's a new adventure for us. Now, this one is a two wheel drive model, but we're going to show you guys how to convert it using an output shop and an extension housing that we just picked up at a local transmission shop.

We

knew that building a turbo 350 would require a lot of upgraded parts. And those of you that build transmissions know that getting all those parts in one stop is not that easy, but one called monster transmission. And they had everything we needed. Thanks to their monster box back

now. Unfortunately, we're not gonna be able to open that today because, well, we're out of time, but the next time we got the mud Bog truck back in the shop, we'll rebuild that transmission. Hopefully get our engine back from the horsepower. Guys. See what kind of numbers they came out with. They better be good.

Oh, yeah,

because we want to go like this.

Oh,

it's gonna be that loud. Get ready.

Yeah.

Earplugs.