More than any other episode
Category
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MotorTranscript
00:00 (engine revving)
00:02 On this episode, there is so much not fail
00:12 that I am pumped up and ready to fix up that thing
00:15 and drive it home.
00:16 - Oh, it's full of wind.
00:17 - We set out to take the Crusher Camaro to Indy,
00:19 do a three-day engine swap,
00:21 and drive the thing home with 700 horsepower,
00:24 and we did it.
00:25 Was I enthusiastic about that?
00:27 - It was long.
00:27 You lost me after like 10 seconds.
00:29 (engine revving)
00:32 (upbeat music)
00:38 - This episode of Roadkill has the highest stakes ever.
00:55 There was really no option to fail.
00:58 This whole deal was blatantly bankrolled by Holley,
01:01 who challenged us to pull the big block
01:03 out of our Crusher Camaro and install an LS engine
01:06 in three days in front of the entire industry
01:09 at the Performance Racing Industry Trade Show in Indiana.
01:12 And what that was gonna mean is taking the car
01:14 all the way cross country from LA to Indy,
01:17 and then swapping the engine and driving home
01:19 with that brand new motor,
01:21 and doing it all in the freezing rain in the dead of winter.
01:24 Have you seen the news?
01:26 Did you know there's a winter storm warning
01:28 in both Dallas and Indy that we're going to?
01:31 Literally, Jenny just emailed me and said,
01:33 "You know it's freezing rain here right now.
01:35 "There's an inch of ice on the roads."
01:38 So I thought it might be prudent not to drive
01:40 the Crusher Camaro from here to Indy.
01:42 So we're gonna ship this thing.
01:43 The car's getting picked up by pilot transport
01:45 5 a.m. tomorrow morning.
01:47 Finnegan's having dental surgery right now,
01:49 and he has a flight, but unfortunately it's into Dallas.
01:51 We have to get him now into Indy,
01:53 because I don't wanna have to try and backtrack
01:55 from Nagadoche.
01:56 - He's a girl.
01:57 He's gonna wanna fly home too.
02:00 - Finnegan, what's up?
02:01 - Hey there.
02:02 - The whole plan went upside down today.
02:05 - Yeah, what happened?
02:06 - Travis and I are gonna head out 5 a.m. tomorrow morning
02:09 in the box truck and Cannonball directly to Texas
02:12 to get some video of the engine,
02:13 and pick it up and head to Indy.
02:15 Everybody else is just gonna fly directly to Indy,
02:17 and we're gonna start the live feed there, obviously,
02:20 but also just start roadkill there.
02:22 The Crusher is not running and driving as we speak,
02:25 but it will be by 5 a.m. when the pilot truck comes
02:28 to pick it up.
02:29 - I guess I'm gonna have one on the new start.
02:31 - Yeah, that's all right.
02:32 Wouldn't be the first time,
02:33 and the tables will turn soon enough.
02:36 We're not really getting the band back together.
02:37 We're sort of scattering the band to the wind,
02:39 but one way or another, we'll all make beautiful music
02:41 in Indy in about a week.
02:43 The biggest deal about this whole thing
02:45 is trying to think of everything to do an engine swap
02:49 in three days, 'cause literally it could be,
02:52 you know, three torque converter bolts
02:54 that prevents this thing from driving away
02:56 a week from today, and that would just be ugly.
02:58 See this?
02:58 That's the Terminator eye.
02:59 My eye gets red when I'm all stressed out and don't sleep,
03:02 and I haven't slept for three days.
03:04 It's 5.30 a.m., and the transport truck is running
03:08 like half an hour late already,
03:10 which is a good start for us,
03:11 but it's kinda good that he's late,
03:12 'cause I'm working out a few last minute details.
03:15 Driving it out with the blower for the last time,
03:17 at least for now.
03:22 At Hot Rod, we ship cars all the time,
03:25 but I haven't shipped one of my personal cars
03:27 in a long, long time.
03:29 Poor underside of this car has never seen salt in its life.
03:36 On the way home from Indy,
03:37 it's probably gonna get ugly filthy.
03:39 Yep, thank you very much.
03:40 We'll see you then.
03:41 Yep, have fun.
03:43 Cross your fingers.
03:44 (truck engine roaring)
03:47 So with Finnegan on an airplane,
03:54 our plan with the box truck was to head as far south
03:57 as we could to stay clear of the weather,
03:59 and on the way, we were gonna need to pick up some tires
04:01 and some tools.
04:03 Unfortunately, the road trip did not go smoothly.
04:06 The southern route was screwed.
04:10 It was as icy and brutal as anything,
04:13 and every place we looked on the map,
04:15 we just kept on cutting further and further south
04:17 until finally we ended up on the 10 in Houston.
04:20 We're in the middle of Texas on the I-10
04:23 between San Antonio and Houston,
04:25 and now we're stranded here in a gas station someplace
04:28 with the freeway closed,
04:29 with no hotels open anywhere around here,
04:32 and with nothing but gas station food.
04:34 Now I'm sleeping in the truck.
04:37 (sighs)
04:40 (upbeat music)
04:43 We finally made it here to Nagadoches, Texas
04:59 in Mast Motorsports, where we met up with Horace Mast,
05:02 who I've known for a while, but I've never been here,
05:04 so he's gonna show us around the shop.
05:06 This whole thing is his brainchild.
05:09 He's a young guy, he's incredibly smart,
05:11 he's an engineer who got involved first
05:13 in these Gen 4 GM engines,
05:15 but now he's got projects that are ranging
05:17 all the way up into stuff in the OE world,
05:19 including this little tiny V4 that I'm dying to check out.
05:22 This is the 427-inch LS7 that Mast Motorsports
05:26 is loaning us for the Crusher Camaro.
05:28 As you can see, they've topped it
05:29 with kind of an unusual intake for them.
05:31 It's got the Holley tunnel ram on it
05:32 with two 4150 throttle bodies,
05:34 and the guy from Holley was down here the other day,
05:37 and they fully calibrated this whole engine,
05:39 and it made a little bit more than 700 horsepower.
05:41 We're gonna run it today, just so you can check it out.
05:43 It might not make exactly the same,
05:44 but we just wanted to sort of witness it make noise,
05:46 make sure that we've got all the parts for it,
05:48 and bolts, and little chinguses and stuff,
05:50 and then I am outta here, and the guys from Mast
05:52 are gonna drag this up to Indy for me.
05:54 (engine revving)
05:57 (engine revving)
06:00 Bottom line, on the good tune-up,
06:12 it made 710 at 6,900, and 577 foot-pounds at...
06:17 - If you're trying to squeeze everything out of this engine,
06:19 you're gonna make about 710.
06:21 We're gonna put it out the door
06:22 at around 695, it looks like.
06:24 So you're going up there with absolutely nothing figured out,
06:27 and handled, and you still expect
06:29 to be out of there by Saturday.
06:29 - Of course, have you met me?
06:31 (laughs)
06:32 That's what happens.
06:32 No, I put a lot of time into making them lists
06:36 over and over and over and over,
06:37 but yeah, they'll be something
06:39 that completely shafts me, I'm sure.
06:41 Finally, we arrived in Indy,
06:46 and so did the pilot transport truck,
06:48 and we met up with Finnegan in a parking lot
06:50 outside the Indianapolis Convention Center,
06:52 where we needed to get the Crusher off the trailer
06:55 and loaded into the Performance Racing Industry Show.
06:57 You think that turned into a debacle?
06:59 Yeah, roadkill.
07:00 - We were supposed to be in the Convention Center
07:03 at seven this morning, it's now 7.30,
07:05 we've got a dead battery,
07:07 and nobody can figure out how to pop the hood
07:09 on a Range Rover so that we can jumpstart this son of a gun.
07:12 And I've got the world's skinniest set of jumper cables
07:15 trying to jumpstart a big block Camaro
07:17 in about 20 degree weather.
07:19 Come on, baby.
07:20 (engine rumbling)
07:23 (tires screeching)
07:26 (engine revving)
07:30 Crank it with the ignition off.
07:35 Hurry.
07:36 - We're out of it, we're out of it.
07:37 - Yeah, the car should have caught on fire,
07:38 'cause, I mean, rule number one is
07:40 you don't spray starter fluid on paper air filters.
07:44 But we had no tools, couldn't get the air cleaners off,
07:47 and we did what we had to do to try to get the thing running
07:50 and out of that trailer.
07:53 I hope they let us in the convention center.
07:55 We're like two hours late now.
07:56 Should have known this was gonna happen.
07:59 The bummer of this is, is man,
08:01 just cranking all that starter fluid through this thing
08:03 and making it ping and backfire,
08:05 it's like, we probably need to go through this motor now
08:07 when we were planning on just dumping it back
08:09 in the car at some point.
08:11 My giblets are frozen.
08:12 It's 'cause it's 20 degrees in India right now,
08:15 and I woke up at two o'clock a.m. my time in California,
08:20 so that we could come out here and try to start the crusher,
08:23 which we were unsuccessful at,
08:24 and now we're gonna tow the crusher,
08:26 and we bribed a security guard with frosty cold beverages.
08:30 He's gonna hook us up and get us into the convention.
08:32 Loading into trade shows always sucks.
08:34 Okay, you can work your way right.
08:37 - You have to get the gas tank filled, right?
08:45 - Yeah.
08:46 (rock music)
08:49 - So finally, it was the moment of truth.
09:00 We actually had to start wrenching on the crusher
09:02 right in the middle of this giant trade show,
09:05 and worse than that,
09:06 the whole thing was going to be on a live video feed,
09:10 and you can go check that out
09:11 if you really wanna watch the full 24 hours of suffering
09:14 while we wrenched on this thing.
09:16 Just search for Roadkill Live on YouTube,
09:19 and you can watch all of the replays.
09:21 Day one, our first challenge
09:23 was just to get the blown big block out of the car.
09:26 The really big roadkill moment of the day
09:28 came when the transmission, whoa!
09:31 - When the transmission slid off the dowel pins
09:34 in the engine block and nearly landed on my dome,
09:36 I was surprised.
09:38 - That was new.
09:39 - Hurry, and when I mean hurry, I mean hurry.
09:42 - I am.
09:42 We got the big block out of the car
09:45 and went to work bolting the new
09:47 Gear Star 4L70E transmission up to this LS7.
09:51 David, just, I don't know if you can explain or not,
09:53 but why the transmission swap as well?
09:55 Why go from the 85 to the 70?
09:57 The Holley swap parts are meant
09:59 for the smaller cased 4L60 or 70.
10:02 The kit includes engine mounts, headers,
10:04 and a transmission crossmember that all work together
10:07 to get the LS motor into the car,
10:10 and you know, it worked perfectly.
10:14 We were moving along really well
10:16 because we actually got the LS7
10:18 and the new Gear Star trans in the car
10:20 with the headers and the crossmember
10:22 at the end of the first day.
10:23 We thought we were killing it.
10:25 Day two, it seemed like a lot of the glory work was over
10:29 because that bitchin' lookin' motor
10:30 was sitting right there in the car,
10:32 but we were a long way from making it run.
10:35 One of the things about this deal
10:36 is being right on the floor of the trade show,
10:38 we were not allowed to use a welder
10:40 and we could not have a compressor.
10:41 So we were doing all of this with hand tools.
10:44 We had a big old box full of stuff
10:45 that was donated by Eastwood, which was super cool.
10:48 But there came a time when we had to grind some stuff,
10:51 had to cut some stuff, and had to use the Sawzall.
10:53 So there we are, throwing sparks
10:55 in the middle of the trade show
10:57 and probably annoying guys like, oh, say,
11:00 NASCAR, who was right next door.
11:02 So it's day three, ton of pressure.
11:05 It's the shortest day at PRI
11:07 and we have a ton of wiring left to do.
11:09 We've got to put an entire EFI system in
11:12 and neither of us have ever done that before.
11:15 - We were not gonna be able to fail at this
11:17 and the clock was ticking.
11:20 - Sam is in high school.
11:21 Sam had his phone taken away at school yesterday
11:23 'cause he was watching the live feed.
11:24 - Awesome. (laughing)
11:27 - The people watching on the live video feed
11:29 were bigger than ever.
11:30 We had a little bit more than 5,000 people sitting there,
11:34 probably hoping for us to screw this whole thing up.
11:37 At 4.15, we finally turned the key on that LS7.
11:41 (dramatic music)
11:44 - Everything's hooked up, right?
11:45 - Yep.
11:46 - Thank you.
11:47 (engine starting)
11:49 (cheering)
11:52 - I gotta tell you, the second that thing fired up and ran,
11:55 a huge weight was lifted off me
11:57 because if that engine wasn't gonna run,
11:59 it was not going to be pretty.
12:01 - That's the most on time we've ever been with anything.
12:03 - That's 4.15.
12:05 - 15 minutes.
12:06 - Now the hilarious part is we fired this thing up
12:08 right there on the trade show floor
12:10 and then we get screamed at just for firing up our LS7.
12:14 (engine revving)
12:16 - Can't hear you.
12:17 - Sorry.
12:21 I can't come back here anymore.
12:26 - Okay, all right, we're done.
12:27 By roadkill standards, this was a miracle,
12:31 but we still had to drive the car 2,500 miles back home.
12:39 It's the day after our big PRI show win.
12:42 You can see the place is virtually empty.
12:45 We're still here because we are learning
12:47 about the Holley EFI from Rick Anderson
12:49 and Robin Lawrence here from Holley.
12:51 And it's taken a couple hours
12:53 to go through all the screens.
12:54 We're just like, it's incredible what this thing can do.
12:57 - I am sealing off the cowl vents
13:00 because I don't care about having fresh air on this trip,
13:04 no matter how much you fart in the car.
13:06 I do not want the cold air in there.
13:08 - Don't challenge me.
13:09 - So it's a piece of cardboard cut to shape
13:10 with a cowl wrapped in plastic.
13:13 So it's waterproof mostly.
13:15 And held on with gaff tape that hopefully
13:18 will not rip the paint off the car when we get home.
13:21 Oh, that's cold.
13:22 - Thank you.
13:24 - That's gonna hurt.
13:25 Go off and on then.
13:27 - Yeah.
13:28 (engine revving)
13:33 (laughing)
13:35 - I have to work on the cold start a little bit.
13:41 - Yep.
13:42 Cranking fuel is fine.
13:43 Let's go to after start enrichment.
13:45 Now in the base map,
13:47 we're gonna need more fuel in the base map.
13:49 I would highlight the whole area over here.
13:51 I would do a 5% hit, send it to the ECU.
13:56 Okay, go ahead and turn the key off
13:57 and then turn it back on.
13:58 - Key off.
13:59 - Yep.
14:00 - Key on.
14:00 - Now start it.
14:02 (engine revving)
14:05 - But we cannot go anywhere without marking our territory.
14:08 That promise was fulfilled when a hose
14:10 popped off the transmission cooler.
14:11 So we're pretty sure that that is not Earl's line
14:14 and this is an Earl's fitting.
14:16 And so the ID and OD mismatch.
14:18 We've got four fittings or three out of four fittings
14:21 that we changed on these hoses.
14:23 And we're scared that they're all gonna blow now.
14:24 And so we're trying to figure out how we can get
14:26 to a race shop or something and just change all of the lines
14:29 'cause ATF burns.
14:31 And while it would nice to be warm,
14:33 I don't exactly want to defrost my hands
14:36 against the Crusher Camaro on fire.
14:38 I'm using Facebook to try to find someone to rescue us
14:41 with the fittings and hose right now.
14:44 All right, let's check the power of the internet.
14:48 People are liking my status.
14:49 I don't know why they should be liking my status.
14:51 I'm broke down.
14:52 And oh look, picture of bacon.
14:53 Tony, you hear me?
14:54 - Now Ben, are you local?
14:57 Are you still in town or are you gone?
14:59 - He's got the crimper.
15:00 He's got the bacon crimp with a professional.
15:03 - But can we tell the car over there?
15:04 - We don't need to, we just need hoses.
15:07 About 40 people responded to my plea for help on Facebook
15:10 with various fixes and answers and rides and tow trucks
15:13 and parts and all that.
15:14 But in the end, none of them were top fuel racer,
15:17 Tony Pedrigon.
15:18 So as much as I appreciate their help,
15:20 I really want to go see Tony's car and his tools.
15:23 So we're headed to Tony's shop.
15:25 I'm Mike.
15:26 - How you doing?
15:27 Tony.
15:28 - Nice to meet you, Tony.
15:29 - Just saw you guys the other day.
15:30 You walk into his lobby
15:31 and there's about a hundred Wallys sitting there.
15:34 And if you don't know what a Wally is,
15:36 that is the heavy trophy you win
15:38 for winning an NHRA national event.
15:40 They don't just give those out in a gift shop.
15:43 You're kind of a badass if you have one.
15:45 He had enough that the line of Wallys went up the stairs
15:48 and around the balcony.
15:49 This is crazy.
15:51 So we're inside Tony and Cruz Pedrigon's
15:55 racing facility right now,
15:57 going through their supply of Earl's fittings
15:59 to build hoses for our Camaro.
16:02 I feel like I'm in an alternate universe right now
16:04 and it gets better than that.
16:06 Tony didn't have everything we needed
16:07 in his racing trailer.
16:09 So he's raising,
16:10 he's raiding his brother's trailer right now.
16:12 And his brother's not even here.
16:14 So thanks Cruz.
16:16 These are the old tranny lines.
16:20 And this is some off-brand hose
16:22 that we had in the car already
16:23 that we stuck brand new Earl's fittings onto.
16:26 We had to because the fittings went
16:29 in different places on the new transmission.
16:31 And these blew clean off as soon as we fired the car up.
16:35 The fittings that these guys use,
16:36 because they're professionals in the race
16:38 and they can't afford to have lines blow off.
16:40 This has a crimp style collet on there.
16:43 And so it uses a pneumatic machine
16:45 to put the hose together.
16:47 It never occurred to me that this might be
16:48 a bucket list item.
16:50 Coming to Tony Pedrigon and Cruz Pedrigon's shop
16:53 and making two hoses, but it kind of is.
16:56 This is best day at work ever, man.
17:00 Hell yeah.
17:01 All right, let's get out of here.
17:02 Meanwhile, we called in more favors
17:05 and Adam from Steve Schmidt Racing Engines
17:07 came and brought their tow truck
17:09 and hauled the crusher from there
17:10 all the way to their shop
17:11 so that we could keep working on the thing into the night.
17:15 If you recognize the name Steve Schmidt Racing Engines,
17:17 it's because Steve is an NHRA Pro Stock racer,
17:20 but his shop is like nirvana for huge horsepower.
17:26 Wow, that's all I can say.
17:29 You know what's really, really cool about it
17:30 is that it's not like a super sanitary race shop.
17:35 It's like a regular old school mechanic business,
17:39 but they've just got bitchin' motors everywhere.
17:42 - I bring Teflon, the good stuff.
17:47 - Really?
17:48 - Crimped and pressure tested by Tony Pedrigon himself
17:51 to 400 PSI.
17:54 That guy was so cool.
17:56 And he didn't have to be cool
17:57 because he drives a car that goes 315 miles an hour.
18:00 - Is the shop like full on pro, engines everywhere?
18:04 - I wanted to lick the floor.
18:05 (upbeat music)
18:08 - Zip tying everything just to keep it
18:11 as far away from the exhaust as I can.
18:13 There's about an inch of air space there,
18:16 which is pretty good.
18:18 Could be better.
18:20 So it's late enough tonight
18:21 that we're going to leave the Camaro
18:22 sitting here in the shop overnight
18:24 and go sleep, come back in the morning
18:26 and fire it up and take off with no problems whatsoever
18:28 for the next three days.
18:29 - We're going to drive home in winter
18:35 and be a little spoiled
18:36 because if we don't like the way it's running,
18:37 we just tap a few buttons here and give it a tune up.
18:40 I love hot rods, especially high tech ones.
18:43 (laughing)
18:49 You get us stuck already.
18:51 - You put it in gear and it spins the tires.
18:53 - As soon as I hit the parking lot,
18:55 I realized this could be a lot uglier
18:58 than I expected it to be.
19:00 The ice was bad.
19:02 Feel the sliding in the ice?
19:03 - No, I just thought earth was spinning the other direction.
19:08 You realize right now we're the only yellow Camaro
19:10 with an LS7 driving through Indiana on a snowy day.
19:13 - The only.
19:16 - Only one.
19:17 - Hitting the road in the dead of winter
19:21 in a 700 horsepower, 67 Camaro
19:23 might not be the smartest thing to do.
19:25 And a lot of guys on Facebook made sure that I knew
19:28 that it was not the smart thing to do.
19:30 But you know what?
19:31 It really wasn't that bad.
19:32 The way I look at it, what did people do in 1967?
19:35 They drove their 67 Camaro in the snow.
19:38 And we had our Continental tires,
19:39 which were way better than what was available back then.
19:42 And yeah, we had 700 horsepower,
19:44 but we were able to keep it under control.
19:46 In roadkill fashion, we ended up finding ourselves
19:51 on the way to Arkansas and the Crusher was running money.
19:56 It was really good cruising down the road with this thing.
19:58 The drivability was a lot better than the old big block.
20:02 Not as cool looking, but plenty violent.
20:05 Right up to the point where the fuel pump died.
20:10 Ollie gave me three reasons why this was gonna happen.
20:13 One, because the fuel pump is vertical instead of flat.
20:17 They say that can get air in it
20:19 and tend to over strain the pump.
20:21 Two, because we've got the regulator
20:23 before the fuel injection rails,
20:25 which is a pretty normal deal,
20:27 but they say that it causes the pump
20:29 to work at the higher pressure to then regulate down.
20:33 So it overworks the pump once again.
20:35 And three, because the pickup on the pump is about,
20:38 I'm gonna say that much higher than the bottom of the tank.
20:40 And in theory, you want the whole pump
20:42 below the bottom of the tank
20:43 so that the weight of the column of gas is feeding the pump.
20:46 I naturally thought all of those things
20:48 were like hyper scientific things
20:52 and that we would get away with it.
20:53 And apparently I was wrong.
20:55 That pump has two pumps inside it, a redundant one.
20:59 So I can just wire the other one and it should work.
21:01 - Go ahead and do it then.
21:03 My dome is to the highway here.
21:04 I'm not gonna look, I'm just gonna ignore it.
21:09 All right, do it.
21:10 Hit the key.
21:11 Yay!
21:13 Let's hope it lasts.
21:16 And in roadkill tradition, we're late.
21:18 In fact, I think we're about two days late,
21:22 which really sucks because my wife's birthday is coming up.
21:24 And if I'm not home in time, she's gonna kill me.
21:27 We're in Missouri and we've got to drive
21:32 right through Arkansas to get home.
21:34 And that is where my parents live.
21:36 We grew up in SoCal, but at some point
21:39 the kids went off to college
21:40 and mom and dad retired in Arkansas, sort of.
21:43 They bought a store there
21:44 and my dad is there working today.
21:46 So we're gonna try to surprise him
21:48 because I only see the guy like once or twice a year.
21:50 And with any luck, he'll be in tears
21:52 when we give him a roadkill shirt.
21:54 - Bennington, this is Patty, can I help you?
21:57 - Hey Patty, it's Mike.
21:58 Is dad around?
22:00 - Yeah, hold on, let me go take him to the phone.
22:03 - Hi Mike.
22:04 - Good morning.
22:05 - No, it's not.
22:06 I've got a mess like you wouldn't believe.
22:08 - What happened?
22:09 - The main line to the septic tank
22:12 is clogged and the basement is filled with you know what.
22:15 - Wow, all right.
22:16 - So let me call you back.
22:17 - Okay, well I'll call you tonight
22:19 and you can give me an update.
22:20 - All right, love you son, thanks.
22:21 - Love you dad, bye.
22:22 - Unfortunately, when we're on these roadkill trips,
22:28 we sometimes can't see everything that we want to
22:30 at the side of the road.
22:31 But we passed this one junkyard
22:33 that gave us no option but to stop and check it out.
22:36 We're in Missouri somewhere and driving down the road,
22:38 saw this massive junkyard.
22:39 And we've passed a whole bunch of little,
22:41 really good old cars, but this was huge.
22:44 And the sign said, "Come meet Bob."
22:46 So we're gonna come meet Bob and look at his junk.
22:49 How much does he want for this?
22:51 Because that is the next episode right there.
22:53 - Somebody could have used that car.
22:56 Oh, did you see that?
22:57 Oh my God, that hurts.
22:59 - Coming.
23:00 - Oh, hold on, I'm watching the train wreck.
23:03 This is like watching a horror movie.
23:05 Hey there, how you doing?
23:08 - Are you Bob?
23:10 - Yep, sign said, "Meet Bob."
23:12 - Glad to meet you.
23:13 - And I'm David.
23:14 - David. - Yep.
23:15 Oh, I completely feel home at a junkyard.
23:17 It's so hard to find stuff like this
23:19 around California anymore.
23:20 But when I was a teenager,
23:22 the yards were full of stuff like this.
23:24 This is a '49 Packard, '55 Dodge, Cornette.
23:28 I used to have one of these in a two-door,
23:29 except it was tri-tone.
23:31 Cool original Jimmy Six is neat.
23:33 '64, five Ranchero.
23:35 Ooh, M38A1.
23:37 That's a genuine military Jeep.
23:39 Ooh, is this an international?
23:41 Yes, it is.
23:42 '65 Thunderbird.
23:44 Oh, no way.
23:46 What year is this dude?
23:48 Oh, M715.
23:53 He is such a Jeep geek.
23:55 This used to be a fire truck.
23:56 And the crazy thing is, is he never drives Jeeps.
24:00 He's just got a lot of them, you know?
24:02 He likes the theory of owning the Jeeps.
24:04 This is like new.
24:07 Okay, that's the one I need most.
24:10 All that and the M715.
24:11 And the '54 Ford.
24:12 Ship 'em all home.
24:14 (upbeat music)
24:19 - Oh, (beep) there he is.
24:31 - Do you want me to pull up?
24:32 - Yeah, just pull up.
24:33 He's gonna (beep) his pants.
24:34 - That's him right out front, Travis.
24:36 He's right out front.
24:36 - Go, go, go.
24:37 Pull right up to him.
24:38 This is gonna be awesome.
24:39 He's getting the mail.
24:41 What are the odds?
24:42 Pull up, pull up, pull up, pull up, pull up.
24:44 Hey.
24:46 - Son of a bitch.
24:49 (laughing)
24:51 - Hi.
24:55 - Oh, son.
24:57 - Good to see you, Ted.
24:58 (laughing)
25:00 - You are the last person on the planet
25:02 I expected to see today.
25:04 - Surprise.
25:06 - So am I in an episode of Roadkill?
25:08 - Oh, you are now.
25:09 (laughing)
25:11 - So anyway, I hit the garage door opener.
25:14 And this truck that I had helped him buy
25:16 four months earlier
25:17 is in a million pieces
25:22 on the floor of this three-car garage.
25:24 He's never gonna get this back together.
25:29 And I'm gonna kill him.
25:31 I'm back for a visit in the summertime.
25:33 And this truck is all back together.
25:36 And that's when I knew this kid knew
25:39 what the hell he was doing with trucks
25:40 and doing things with his hands.
25:43 - So my dad's owned this store for quite a while
25:45 and I've worked it a few times.
25:47 You know, not enough to be a seasoned vet,
25:49 you know, in the pizza kitchen,
25:50 but I've, you know,
25:51 I know how to spread out the pepperoni.
25:53 So I made a couple of pies for the crew
25:55 and gave dad his Christmas present a little early,
25:58 the coveted Roadkill t-shirt.
26:01 - Coolest t-shirt next to the Finnegan's Country Market.
26:04 - Finnegan's Country Market t-shirt.
26:06 Thank you.
26:07 - What are you doing there?
26:10 (laughing)
26:11 Sure, go and visit your father and leave me out of it.
26:16 When you guys got to the four o'clock mark
26:19 and I thought, oh, you're so close.
26:21 Fry Burger kept saying, we only have one piece,
26:25 one piece, we need one piece
26:27 and we can start the car and you guys finally found it.
26:30 - Wow, you were watching.
26:32 - And the Fry Burger went over there
26:34 and turned it over and it fired up.
26:36 The biggest oopla, it was nice.
26:38 I enjoyed it.
26:39 It was a good show.
26:41 - All right, mom, I love you
26:42 and I'll call you later, okay?
26:44 - All right, hon, bye.
26:45 Drive safely.
26:46 - All right, bye.
26:47 Dad's got a sense of humor.
26:49 So of course he wasted no time in telling my friends
26:52 all of the embarrassing stories from my youth.
26:55 And when it was time to go,
26:57 we did our first proper burnout in the crusher,
26:59 right in front of his store.
27:01 And this time he didn't yell it.
27:03 (car engine roaring)
27:08 Now this was pretty cool.
27:19 There were some viewers who were actually looking for us
27:22 on the I-40 because they knew where we were traveling
27:24 and they gave up and stayed at a hotel overnight
27:27 and in the morning woke up and came out
27:29 and there we were with the crusher.
27:30 We just totally happened to run into each other,
27:33 which was pretty cool.
27:34 We checked out the guys Imperial,
27:36 which had a few problems that we fixed for them.
27:38 - The wire was twisted together here with tape
27:40 and twisted together here with tape.
27:42 And this one looks like it was attacked by a piranha.
27:44 You can see all the bear marks right here.
27:46 So we'll fix all of these.
27:48 - We have power here now.
27:50 Okay, turn the key.
27:51 (car engine roaring)
27:55 - Magic.
27:57 (upbeat music)
27:59 (car engine roaring)
28:04 - We decided that we were gonna head to Cadillac Ranch
28:17 outside of Amarillo.
28:18 And I put a post on the Roadkill Show Facebook page
28:21 that said, "Hey, you know what?
28:23 We're gonna be here around four o'clock.
28:24 You guys should meet us there."
28:26 And sure enough, we showed up
28:27 and there was like a dozen Roadkill fans
28:29 there with their hot rods to meet up with us
28:32 and check out those Cadillacs
28:33 with their noses stuffed in the ground.
28:35 - Oh, that's a nice car.
28:39 Hi.
28:41 - Nice to meet you.
28:42 - Nice to meet you.
28:44 Thanks for coming.
28:44 - Are you really with them?
28:45 - Yes.
28:46 - Are you serious?
28:47 - Yeah.
28:48 - I have about 200 cars
28:51 and I have a Camaro that would make with that Camaro,
28:53 make a super Camaro with all its five engines.
28:56 - Yeah?
28:57 - Yeah.
28:57 - You have 200 cars?
28:58 That's worse than me.
29:00 Do you build them?
29:01 - Yes, I do.
29:02 - Yeah?
29:02 - Actually from the ground up.
29:03 - Cool.
29:04 - Yes, sir.
29:05 - Would y'all like to party?
29:06 - Yeah, we have beer with us.
29:07 - Just a little bit.
29:08 - We just showed up at Cadillac Ranch
29:10 and there's a whole bunch of guys here.
29:11 Check it out.
29:12 El Camino, Roadrunner guy, Mustang guy, truck, GTO, hot rods.
29:16 So this is pretty cool.
29:18 It's nice that all these people came out.
29:19 We've been chatting with them for a while
29:20 and now we're gonna head out and look at the Cadillacs.
29:23 Cadillac Ranch has been here since 1974
29:26 and it's actually like an art project that some guys did.
29:30 Yeah, I've been by here a dozen times
29:32 and never had time to stop.
29:33 Yeah, look how many layers of paint are in there.
29:36 It's cool that this is basically like an art installation
29:40 where it's not just car guys who are into it,
29:42 but apparently people from all over the world
29:45 come here to graffiti these things.
29:47 And once again, I just don't see that many stickers on them,
29:50 which I'm adding,
29:50 and they might come get peeled off or something.
29:52 It's strange to me that they're not just plastered in decals.
29:56 So I'm handling that situation as best as I can right now.
29:59 As much as I wanted to hang out at the Cadillacs
30:01 and shoot photos and shoot the bull
30:04 with all the random Facebook fans that showed up to see us,
30:07 I really had to get moving.
30:09 When we left Cadillac Ranch, the Crusher was running great
30:17 and we figured it had all been shaken out and proven
30:20 and we were just gonna cruise right home.
30:22 But we were behind schedule,
30:23 so we decided to fly Finnegan out of Albuquerque.
30:26 And on the way to the airport,
30:28 things didn't go as smoothly as we thought it would.
30:30 First, the engine chucked a fan belt.
30:33 See, the tension that's building now
30:34 is will Finnegan get to the airport
30:36 or will he not get it to the airport
30:38 in time to get home for his wife's birthday?
30:40 And second, for the first time in "Roadkill" history,
30:44 I actually got a moving violation.
30:47 I got ticketed for not pulling out of the cop's way
30:49 while they were at the side of the road
30:51 busting someone else.
30:52 So I dropped Finnegan off in Albuquerque
30:54 and then headed back to LA by myself,
30:56 which also turned a little bit hairy
30:57 when I ran into a big snowstorm in Flagstaff.
31:00 So we both made it home in time for Christmas,
31:05 but the story didn't end there.
31:07 There's no reason to put a 700-horsepower engine
31:09 in your car without drag testing it.
31:12 We decided that we wanted to compare this new engine
31:14 to the old-blown big block,
31:16 which ran 10.62 at 128 miles an hour.
31:20 So we headed to Sacramento Raceway
31:22 to find out how quick the LS7 would be.
31:24 Finally, we've made it here to Sacramento Raceway
31:31 to drag test the Crusher
31:33 and find out if the LS7 is quicker than the blown big block,
31:36 which ran 10.62 at what, like 128 miles an hour
31:39 or something like that?
31:40 One of the cool things about putting the LS7 in this car
31:43 is that it's an all-aluminum block,
31:45 and between that and the smaller transmission,
31:47 the 4L70 versus 4L80, and the coilovers,
31:50 we threw 343 pounds off of the Crusher Camaro.
31:54 Even with the steel wheels and the cage and everything,
31:57 this thing weighs 3,145.
32:00 - It's not a half-aluminum block, it's an all-aluminum block.
32:02 - Yeah. - Cool.
32:03 - Well, I mean, block and heads.
32:05 All-aluminum long block.
32:07 - I had to point it out
32:08 'cause somebody on the internet will.
32:09 - It doesn't make even a fraction
32:11 of the torque of the big block.
32:13 The big block made literally 700 pound-feet,
32:16 and it had everything that it needed
32:18 in order to pull a really high rear gear set.
32:20 It had 350s in the car,
32:22 but to take advantage of the 7,000 RPM capability
32:25 on this engine, I ordered some 457s from Moser Engineering.
32:29 I geared it so that if it runs 130 to 135 miles an hour
32:33 in the quarter, it should run through the lights
32:35 right at the peak horsepower number,
32:36 right around 68, 6,900 RPM.
32:39 (engine revving)
32:42 (tires screeching)
32:45 All right, this is a first run in the Crusher Camaro
32:49 with the new LS engine.
32:51 (engine revving)
32:54 (tires screeching)
32:58 (engine revving)
33:09 - Holy (beep) this thing is faster.
33:12 (laughing)
33:13 Oh, wow.
33:14 - In the very first pass down the track,
33:16 Finnegan was all over the rev limiter,
33:18 and it didn't even matter 'cause the junk ran 10.55
33:23 right off the bat, quicker than the big block,
33:25 and it was obvious there was a whole lot more left in it.
33:28 - It accelerates so hard now with these gears
33:30 that by the time I looked down to see
33:31 when it was time to shift, 'cause the tach is too low,
33:34 it was too late, and I was on the rev limiter.
33:36 It's a lighter car, man.
33:37 It's way more fun to drive.
33:40 So we're gonna go again.
33:42 (engine revving)
33:44 (tires screeching)
33:50 (engine revving)
34:07 - All right, so that run, I just put the trains in drive,
34:12 let the computer shift it all on its own.
34:14 Same problem, bumping up against the rev limiter.
34:17 - We got to tuning on the thing,
34:18 getting into the Holley Dominator computer setup,
34:21 and adjusting some of the shift points at the rev limiter.
34:24 (engine revving)
34:27 - It's way faster than we thought it was gonna be.
34:34 I think, what'd you do, 10.19 at 132?
34:37 - Yeah.
34:38 - So we are jonesing for the 9.99
34:40 and throwing everything at it we can.
34:42 We had some problems early on
34:44 where it was hitting the rev limiter,
34:45 and there was a couple of issues with that.
34:47 One, we didn't tell the computer
34:48 what rear gear I had put in the car,
34:50 and two, we just had some parameters set up
34:52 in the computer that we weren't gonna catch,
34:54 but Ricky from Holley dialed us in on that.
34:56 - Here's the problem.
34:58 We have two pretty restrictive air filters.
35:01 This is the solution.
35:02 I'm gonna take these out,
35:03 and I'm gonna make a new hold down
35:05 using this strap that we got at the local hardware
35:07 store, a drill, a cutoff wheel, and this trash can.
35:12 My belief that if we can get some more airflow
35:14 into the engine, we can make some more horsepower.
35:16 So we're gonna take these out and replace the filter,
35:19 which is what holds down the scoop tray mount.
35:22 We're gonna replace it with this piece of strap.
35:25 So a nice, beautiful 90 degree bend for one side.
35:28 Without the death wheel, there is no roadkill.
35:32 (engine revving)
35:35 (drill whirring)
35:38 That's gotta flow better.
35:47 We don't have these big old air filters in the way.
35:50 It doesn't look great.
35:52 And this is pretty much backyard hackery,
35:54 but this is what happens when you're trying
35:56 to modify a car to drag strip.
35:57 (engine revving)
36:02 (dramatic music)
36:05 Here we go.
36:06 (engine revving)
36:09 (upbeat music)
36:11 (engine revving)
36:14 (upbeat music)
36:17 (upbeat music)
36:19 (engine revving)
36:25 Come on baby, go.
36:31 (upbeat music)
36:37 Finally, after we were like 10 or 15 passes deep
36:45 on tuning on this thing, we got it to the point
36:47 where the Crusher ran 10.10 at 134.8 miles an hour
36:52 four times in a row.
36:54 (laughing)
36:58 We let the car sit for a little while, completely cool down.
37:03 We saw the density altitude go below zero at the track.
37:07 And sure enough, the Crusher put down
37:09 its best time of the day.
37:12 (engine revving)
37:15 The 10.07 honestly was way quicker
37:27 than I thought the car was gonna be.
37:29 I figured it would be right in the 10.30s or 10.50s.
37:32 But in fact, if we put a torque converter in this thing,
37:34 we would have a 990 car with the Crusher Camaro.
37:38 So it gets 17 miles per gallon,
37:41 almost runs in the nines.
37:43 It's capable of driving 2,500 miles
37:45 across the country in bad weather.
37:47 That LS7's got a big edge on our six mile per gallon,
37:51 10.60 run and blown big block.
37:53 So really what it comes down to is
37:55 the car doesn't look anywhere near as cool,
37:58 but it's a lot faster and drives a lot better.
38:01 So what do you wanna do?
38:02 Go fast or look good?
38:04 Like we always say, going fast is looking good.
38:08 (engine revving)
38:11 I once drove here from California.
38:17 - You're gonna embarrass me.
38:18 - Yeah, I am.
38:19 Drove all the way out here.
38:21 I get into town, drive right up to the gas pump.
38:23 I'm on fumes, start pumping the gas.
38:26 And dad comes out, "Hey, how you doing?
38:29 "Good to see you again."
38:30 We're hugging and everything.
38:31 And about 30 seconds later, he goes,
38:33 "I'm gonna need the money for that gas."
38:35 (laughing)
38:37 I just drove from California to see you and you're going to charge me.