On this episode of Roadkill
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MotorTranscript
00:00 (engine revving)
00:02 (laughing)
00:09 - How'd I do?
00:09 (rock music)
00:12 (engine revving)
00:18 - Welcome to the 25th episode of Roadkill,
00:25 where we brought all of our junk that still runs,
00:28 and a junk Datsun, and the dog.
00:30 And we're gonna find out if the dog
00:32 can outrun the guys from Motor Trend in our garbage.
00:35 - This is our zip tie and duct tape special.
00:38 (engine revving)
00:40 (gunshots)
00:43 (rock music)
00:56 - We put together nine cars that we're gonna shoot out
00:58 in this episode, but people ask us all of the time,
01:01 what happened to many of the cars that showed up
01:03 on Roadkill that they've never seen again?
01:06 Looking back, we've got that '73 Catalina from episode one.
01:09 I sold that thing to a couple back in Ohio,
01:11 and they're still driving it.
01:13 In the Cheap Truck Challenge, the Bronco,
01:15 we unloaded that thing for like 500 bucks
01:17 when we were done.
01:18 The Lamborghini, that went back to its rental agency,
01:20 and the rat rod is still being used
01:22 as a promotional tool by Sailor Jerry.
01:25 When we did the Thrash Battle with the van and the wagon,
01:27 yeah, when we were done, both of those things
01:29 went to the junkyard.
01:30 But the '55 Chevy that we put on the gasser chassis,
01:33 that is still in our shop, and it will come back.
01:36 I promise you will see that Hemi-powered '55.
01:39 Down in Australia, Gup loaned us
01:40 that 727 cubic inch Holden.
01:43 He brought it to the United States
01:44 and ran Hot Rod Power Tour with it,
01:46 and now it's back down under,
01:47 and he is still doing killer burnouts in that car.
01:50 The Junkyard Cuda was a funny story
01:52 because we auctioned it off, and long story short,
01:54 it ended up back at the junkyard that we bought it from.
01:57 And it's not getting crushed, but it's still sitting there.
02:00 Kind of the same story with the cop cars.
02:02 After we were done thrashing on those,
02:04 the guy we bought the Crown Vic from
02:06 bought them both back, fluffed them up, and sold them.
02:09 The Jeep rod, you know the fate of that thing.
02:11 Some guy bought it for like 500 bucks,
02:13 and last we knew, he was trying to sell it
02:15 on Craigslist for 3,500 bucks.
02:18 The Monza is still sitting behind Jeff Lutz's shop,
02:21 maybe to be seen again someday.
02:23 The Prius is flat as a pancake,
02:25 although the tank still lives over at Bulletproof Diesel.
02:28 Then there's the hugely popular muscle truck
02:30 that we really wanted to shoot out in this episode,
02:33 but we've been converting the thing to EFI
02:35 and just didn't get it running right in time for the show.
02:37 Our Bonneville car, yeah, we blew the motor up.
02:40 I haven't worked on it yet,
02:41 but that car will come back to the salt flats.
02:43 Our custom Mercury went to Jim Norman
02:46 at Norman Wineries in Paso Robles, California,
02:48 and he has been working on that thing,
02:49 painting it, doing some stuff to the engine,
02:51 just make it into a cool cruiser.
02:53 And then, of course, there's the Dragwar,
02:55 which everybody's been dying to see.
02:57 It's sitting around with no engine in it,
02:58 but we do have a blown Blueprint Engines
03:01 383 small block for it.
03:03 We just came up with a brilliant scheme,
03:05 and I'm not gonna tell you what it is
03:06 because it's that good, and we probably won't pull it off.
03:10 Because we didn't have enough to do
03:15 trying to get all of these old project cars
03:17 running and driving after they'd been sitting around forever,
03:19 we decided to throw another one in the mix,
03:21 and the one that was right in reach
03:23 was our '71 Datsun 240Z.
03:25 This is pretty easy to push.
03:28 - This is why this would be great for the autocross.
03:29 It's light.
03:31 I love 240s, and they are classics,
03:33 but this one is pretty bad.
03:35 - Oh, look at this.
03:36 Check this out.
03:37 See all the rust.
03:41 - That's metal falling out of the deck lid.
03:44 I can peel the car apart.
03:50 - Our '71 Datsun 240Z came from the guys
03:52 at White Flag Racing.
03:54 This is a $500 rust bucket of a Datsun.
03:57 - It's gonna be fast.
03:59 It's got a 4.3 liter Chevy V6 out of an S10 pickup
04:03 that I rebuilt with a set of bullet high compression pistons,
04:06 a Comp Cam's valve train, a new Holley carb.
04:09 It makes 295 horsepower and has a five speed
04:13 out of a junkyard S10.
04:15 This could be fun, but we've never driven it.
04:17 It's sat here for a year,
04:18 and now we're gonna try to make this thing run.
04:21 It's a race car, see?
04:22 Push button to start.
04:23 - Does it have a dead hole?
04:26 - This is gonna end well.
04:28 You sure that's gas?
04:30 - Yeah, or it was at one time anyway.
04:31 Nice!
04:36 Okay.
04:41 - It needs a battery.
04:42 - Let's start making a list.
04:45 - Okay.
04:48 - This is the sleeve that's going over
04:50 the formerly broken half shaft.
04:52 You can see it's been welded back together
04:54 and then sleeved with a piece of tube
04:56 and welded around it to, in theory, make it bulletproof.
04:59 Over here, it's welded, but not sleeved.
05:02 This is the one thing we might have to fix under here.
05:05 - And it had a bunch of other problems.
05:07 It didn't have a fuel system on the thing.
05:09 - So I'm thinking plenty of heavy duty zip ties
05:10 hold that pretty well right there.
05:12 - You wanna zip tie the fuel pump
05:16 to the rear end of the car?
05:18 - Well, it's not moving.
05:19 - We'll let Carlos drive this one.
05:21 - 'Cause I didn't hurt my feelings.
05:23 - What are you guys doing?
05:24 - Cutting the axle in half so we can weld it back together
05:26 with a sleeve on it.
05:27 - That makes sense.
05:28 - Yeah.
05:29 - On the car.
05:32 - Technically, this car ran and drove,
05:34 but the reality was it was gonna break
05:36 as soon as it hit the parking lot.
05:38 We're gonna drill holes in it first
05:41 and rosette weld it here and around the ends.
05:44 It'll be stronger.
05:47 - I mean, is it gonna last?
05:48 I don't know.
05:51 - You know, there's zip tying stuff,
05:52 and then there's craftsmanship.
05:54 This is just going over that line right now.
05:57 Flawless.
05:58 - Good God, man.
06:00 Call up Nissan.
06:02 Tell them they're doing it.
06:03 - It's like factory, right?
06:04 (upbeat music)
06:08 (engine revving)
06:10 - We planning on driving this there?
06:20 I just moved it 100 yards and I'm scared of the brakes.
06:23 - So it's ready for the autocross is what you're saying.
06:26 - Ah, 232 angry cubic inches.
06:30 I was driving the Gremlin in here
06:34 and I noticed that the brakes are really bad.
06:37 This rotor is warped and gacked.
06:39 That is a big part of the problem right there.
06:43 So the Gremlin needs a new rotor,
06:44 which it's not getting right now.
06:46 So that'll be fun on the autocross.
06:48 Ah, precision handling.
06:50 Yeah, I think this thing's a contender.
06:53 Look at that baby.
06:55 - The Gremlin is present and as autocross ready
06:58 as a car with warped brakes can get.
07:01 The El Camino is present.
07:02 And we haven't driven the ramp truck since last summer
07:05 and we cannot find the keys.
07:07 I'm gonna go to the ramp truck
07:08 'cause I vaguely remember a hide a key
07:10 being not so well hidden under the front bumper.
07:13 Maybe that will save us.
07:14 (engine revving)
07:18 Yeah.
07:26 Bingo.
07:28 Nice.
07:31 Aha, door open.
07:33 There we go.
07:36 Two things are telling me that this show is a good idea.
07:42 One, I found the spare key of the ramp truck
07:44 and it fired right up.
07:46 And two, if this was really a bad idea,
07:49 somebody would have already come back in time
07:51 to stop us from doing this.
07:53 (engine revving)
07:57 (engine revving)
08:00 We got a pretty good indication
08:06 of how well the Datsun was put together.
08:08 I hit the brake pedal and the parking light slid up.
08:10 (engine revving)
08:14 Oh, the brakes are really bad.
08:15 Brakes are really, really bad.
08:18 (engine revving)
08:26 All right, well, we have two gears.
08:28 Okay, I take it back.
08:29 It sounds like a UPS truck.
08:31 So the Datsun wasn't registered or insured.
08:36 So we were gonna put it on the back of our ramp truck
08:38 and haul it out there.
08:39 We were gonna do that tonight,
08:41 but unfortunately the radiator leaks like a sieve.
08:45 We got to deal with that
08:46 or it's not even gonna survive the autocross deal.
08:48 And so we're beat for tonight.
08:50 We're gonna clean up, wrap it up.
08:52 We're gonna meet here in the morning,
08:53 wrench a little bit more, and then start.
08:56 Hauling nine cars 40 miles away
08:58 for an idea that's getting worse and worse
09:01 as time goes by.
09:02 - Look what I got.
09:07 Freshie.
09:08 - That says champion on it.
09:10 - Yeah, that's what we're gonna be with this car.
09:12 (upbeat music)
09:13 - Next day, first thing in the morning,
09:15 we installed a brand new radiator in the Datsun
09:17 that was clearly worth more than the entire rest of the car.
09:20 (engine revving)
09:22 - Wow.
09:26 - And we also needed to dig out the Ranchero.
09:28 I sense the fear in the Motor Trend staff's eyes
09:30 as we drive by.
09:31 Oh yeah.
09:34 Show 'em the power.
09:35 - The dog has proven that both you and I are expendable
09:39 as far as the audience is concerned.
09:41 We don't even have to be here
09:42 to do the brains and the operation.
09:43 It's too bad that dog's so lazy.
09:45 Doesn't appreciate what it's got.
09:47 - And on the way there,
09:52 Finnegan decided to surprise me with the news
09:54 that we weren't gonna have just one dog on this deal,
09:56 but two.
09:57 - They were doing maintenance on the apartment
09:59 and I had to take the dog to work today.
10:01 - So you had her groomed?
10:02 - Normally Bella doesn't get along with other dogs.
10:04 (laughing)
10:07 (upbeat music)
10:11 - We've had a lot of stuff stored
10:14 in the Automobile Driving Museum in El Segundo, California
10:16 for quite a long time.
10:18 And so we went over there looking for our leftover projects
10:21 and we didn't even know where they were.
10:22 - Still says hot rod on the building.
10:24 We found it.
10:26 Draguar, stock car and Ranchero.
10:29 - The original plan was we'd buy that
10:31 and see how far we could drive it on the street
10:32 before it got impounded.
10:34 And then the lawyers got involved and they got spooked.
10:36 And so there it sits.
10:39 - And that's genuine Alaska dirt.
10:41 - Look at that, we didn't even unpacked from this trip.
10:42 The jack stands and wheels are still in here.
10:44 - Nope.
10:45 And look what's clean is the registration sticker.
10:48 So we're good.
10:49 - Oh dude, there's dirty Alaska.
10:53 These are yours.
10:53 - Yep.
10:56 - Okay, this car is nasty.
10:57 This is it.
10:58 This is what was in this car when we left Alaska.
11:00 Freiburger's dirty clothes.
11:04 (engine revving)
11:07 - There you go.
11:11 Wow.
11:12 - It's like it's ready to go to Alaska.
11:15 - Mint.
11:16 Ah, memories.
11:17 - Charging system's not quite working.
11:20 So we're gonna leave the jump box under the hood,
11:22 tied down with a fan belt
11:24 and drive about a mile back to our office.
11:27 (engine revving)
11:30 - It's kind of cool that we're finally getting
11:34 all of these cars running at the same time
11:36 after neglecting them for something between months
11:39 and years at a time.
11:41 But this is a hassle.
11:42 I think this is only vehicle number one, two, three, four
11:46 that we've gotten running.
11:46 So we've got another five to go.
11:48 (dog barking)
11:51 - It's probably not good with the office and everything.
11:53 - Both times we drove the Ranchero long distances,
11:56 no matter how we twisted the distributor,
11:58 this thing pinged.
12:00 So with David under the bottom of the car,
12:02 cranking the engine over slowly,
12:04 I slid a piece of welding rod through the spark plug hole
12:07 of the number one cylinder
12:08 and we figured out where top dead center was.
12:11 - That's probably about half the dwelling right there.
12:13 - So when we set the ignition timing
12:15 to 30 degrees advanced max,
12:17 that was actually 60 degrees.
12:20 Thus the reason this ran like poop for two years.
12:24 We've remarked the balancer, we're about to fire it up.
12:26 And I really think the amount of effort
12:27 we just put into this balances out
12:29 the number of zip ties we put on the Datsun.
12:32 - Mint!
12:37 I can't hear you!
12:41 - You got to put on your Tom Cruise Maverick face
12:45 when you do that.
12:47 (upbeat music)
12:50 - Like all the other cars,
12:53 at the last second I remembered
12:55 this had a big problem with the brakes
12:56 and it was that I let a coworker drive it.
12:59 He'll rename nameless.
13:01 - Politically correct.
13:02 - Brandon.
13:02 And Brandon wears like size 14 combat boots
13:05 to work every day.
13:07 And he must have panic stopped when I loaned it to him
13:10 and put his foot through the floor of the car
13:11 'cause he actually bent the rod going into the booster.
13:15 We're taking it apart and cutting the bent part off
13:17 and hoping there's enough thread left there
13:18 to put the adjuster on and...
13:20 Yeah, last minute roadkill.
13:23 This is more roadkill hackery.
13:31 We cut the bent part off the push rod for the booster,
13:34 which now made it too short,
13:35 so our clevis, which connects to the brake pedal,
13:38 is too far away from it.
13:39 There's no adjustment there.
13:41 So I'm gonna extend it just that much.
13:43 I'm gonna weld a nut to a nut to the clevis using a bolt
13:47 that is the same thread as the push rod to align everything.
13:50 And then that fixes everything.
13:52 That gets us on the road.
13:53 Fixed.
13:57 Woohoo.
13:59 Let's go.
14:00 It is 8.30 at night.
14:02 All of our vehicles are still scattered to the wind.
14:05 We have about five of them here.
14:07 We're gonna try and get four of them
14:08 out to the track tonight by calling in reinforcements
14:11 from the staff of Hot Rod
14:12 in order to load up the Datsun onto the ramp truck.
14:15 We're gonna shuffle a bunch of this junk out there,
14:17 leave it there overnight,
14:18 meet at my house in the morning,
14:19 drag some more crap over there,
14:21 and so on and so forth until we finally have a show.
14:24 This morning, we brought the El Camino and the Super B
14:33 to the racetrack,
14:34 and now we're at Fry Burger's place
14:36 picking up the Charger and the Crusher Camaro
14:38 and the Macho Grande.
14:40 I think after that, we can actually start racing.
14:42 This is the inside of just one of Fry Burger's garages,
14:47 and when I first met him,
14:49 we came in here and actually cleaned
14:51 and organized this entire place.
14:53 This was empty.
14:54 You could walk in here,
14:55 and now there's no less than eight motors sitting in here.
14:59 This man is a speed parts warehouse.
15:03 Here we have a perfectly good running driving car,
15:05 and we can't drive it out to Santa Anita
15:07 because I can't get it registered.
15:09 This thing hasn't been on the books since 1983,
15:11 and when I took it to the DMV to get the VIN verified,
15:14 the woman came out and looked at it and freaked.
15:17 She literally, because it didn't have glass in the interior
15:20 and 'cause it looked rough,
15:21 wigged out and would not sign the paperwork.
15:23 It's 10 o'clock now.
15:26 The Motor Trend guys are already over at Santa Anita,
15:28 and I'm picking up this junk that has a dead battery,
15:31 and you'll notice this is drag strip fresh,
15:33 and we still have not put the air cleaners back in it,
15:34 which is a pain in the neck.
15:36 And you might see this green pile sitting here
15:38 and wondering, "Why isn't that going with us?"
15:40 Well, the F-Bomb's not a roadkill car.
15:42 Yet, it's waiting its turn.
15:44 The battery on this thing has been stone dead for six months.
15:55 So I take my jump starter that we just used on the crusher
15:58 and drive around with it under the hood.
16:00 Perfect.
16:01 - We've got the last car ready.
16:03 We're really late, and we're headed back to Santa Anita,
16:05 which means right about now,
16:07 Johnny Lieberman is standing in an empty parking lot.
16:10 - How about Carlos?
16:11 - I don't think Carlos was coming till later,
16:14 but from what I understand, Johnny's on time, if not early.
16:17 - We gave them both the same call time.
16:19 That just reveals Carlos watches the show
16:21 and shows up at noon when we say 10.30.
16:23 Johnny, not a fan.
16:25 We weren't gonna shoot these things out by ourselves.
16:29 We brought out the experts,
16:31 Carlos Lago and Johnny Lieberman,
16:33 both staff editors on Motor Trend,
16:35 both guys who you've seen on the Motor Trend channel,
16:37 YouTube, doing all sorts of professional driving
16:39 in cars way better than this.
16:41 - I'm near Modena, Italy,
16:43 driving Horatio Pagani's personal Zonda S Roadster.
16:48 - And so we were gonna meet them there at the racetrack,
16:52 but of course we were late.
16:54 I let Finnegan make that phone call.
16:56 - Hey, Finnegan?
16:57 - Yeah. - Hey, dude.
17:00 - How do you like the autocross course?
17:01 - So Fryburger sent an email last night,
17:03 like be here by 10,
17:05 and so I've been here for an hour and a half.
17:07 And where are you?
17:09 - We're late, you know.
17:10 - Oh. - You're right on time for us.
17:11 - I know you wanna be really helpful with this deal.
17:13 - There's about 70 or 80 cones there
17:15 that need to be set up into an autocross course,
17:17 if you could just make that happen.
17:19 - Just make an autocross course?
17:21 - Tell him he's got the expertise that we lack.
17:23 - Yeah, yeah, 'cause we know you guys are big on testing
17:25 at Motor Trend and you know the best way
17:27 to configure those cones,
17:28 given the cars that you have in front of you.
17:30 - All right. - All right, bye.
17:33 - I don't know why I believed anything he said.
17:35 Like, 10 a.m. for these idiots.
17:37 It's just, it's noon for other people.
17:40 (upbeat music)
17:45 - Oh, there goes the neighbor's car alarm.
17:47 (car engine revving)
17:50 - They're like suburban terrorists, you know?
17:59 Like, if you own a house in the suburbs,
18:01 you see these cucumbers.
18:02 I'm kind of scared, to be honest.
18:04 - Yeah, yeah, yeah, a little bit.
18:05 (car engine revving)
18:09 - Is that a driver's thing?
18:11 - I wanted to be safe.
18:13 I've seen the show, I know how it goes down,
18:15 so I brought a couple things to prepare.
18:17 - Wow, is that rubbing alcohol?
18:19 - That's hydrogen peroxide.
18:20 Rubbing alcohol is flammable.
18:22 I brought this, 'cause I'm sure, actually this is a gift.
18:24 - That we need.
18:25 - This will be a present to you guys.
18:26 - He's gonna prove useful with it.
18:28 - I also brought some condoms,
18:29 just because you never know.
18:29 - Some wishful thinking condoms, check those out.
18:31 (laughing)
18:33 - I learned to always be prepared.
18:35 - Two questions.
18:37 One, is your wife's El Camino one of the cars?
18:40 - Yeah. - Yep.
18:41 - Okay, and is the ramp truck racing?
18:43 - Yeah. - Yeah.
18:44 - Everything you can-- - Can I drive the ramp truck?
18:45 - I just wanna drive the ramp truck.
18:47 (upbeat music)
18:48 - As it turns out, I gave Lieberman way too much credit
18:51 for actually working, setting up the racetrack,
18:53 'cause there was some chalk marks on the ground
18:55 from a car club that had been racing an autocross there
18:57 just like a weekend earlier.
18:59 And so we ended up using that track,
19:01 and it was perfect.
19:03 Carlos and Johnny brought out a Kia Rio 5,
19:06 which I'd never heard of.
19:07 Apparently, it's a really high-end rental car.
19:09 And they were gonna do some lap times with that thing
19:11 to set sort of a baseline
19:13 with which to judge the Roadkill cars.
19:16 And then we were gonna run through each car
19:17 in the Roadkill fleet,
19:19 and we were all gonna drive 'em.
19:20 I'm extremely happy we're finally gonna get a Kia
19:23 into an episode of Roadkill.
19:24 - Three, two, one, go.
19:26 (tires screeching)
19:28 - So first on track in the Kia was Carlos Lago.
19:31 He was the guy to beat today.
19:32 We've seen his videos.
19:33 Guy knows how to drive.
19:34 We've watched him drift some stuff
19:35 that we don't even know how to pronounce.
19:38 - Here are those all-season tires
19:39 working as hard as they possibly can.
19:42 - And so he got in the car and laid down a baseline
19:44 of a 101.68.
19:47 And Johnny backed that up with a 104.11.
19:50 - I mean, you're in this because I asked Finnegan,
19:54 and he's like, "What would piss off Fry Burger the most?"
19:56 And he's like, "Probably a Korean car."
19:58 (laughing)
19:59 So we brought one.
20:00 (tires screeching)
20:03 (groaning)
20:04 (engine revving)
20:06 - I beat Johnny with a 101.91,
20:09 but then Finnegan saved the day,
20:11 bringing the glory back to Roadkill.
20:12 - You have a lot of dust.
20:14 - Well, it does that when you drive on the chalk.
20:15 (engine revving)
20:16 (tires screeching)
20:18 - Oh!
20:19 - Beating Carlos with a 101.46.
20:22 - Yeah!
20:25 - Next up, ramp truck.
20:27 - So far, pretty good day at work.
20:28 - This is our 1973 Chevy one-ton ramp truck,
20:32 the genius vehicle that you can load a car
20:34 onto the back of, eliminating the need for a trailer
20:37 so you can haul stuff anywhere.
20:39 It is powered by a 454 and a turbo 400,
20:42 and probably 456s in the 14-bolt rear end.
20:46 And let me tell you,
20:47 this thing is a precision handling machine.
20:49 We picked up the ramp truck at the very end of episode 19,
20:52 and it was one of the best deals we have ever had.
20:55 $3,500 for this thing, and the air conditioning works.
20:59 So does the cruise control.
21:00 We've said it before, this thing is way too good for us,
21:03 so we were gonna try hard to wreck it today.
21:05 - So I saw something dangling down underneath.
21:08 - Oh, just fuel line.
21:08 - That's the fuel line, okay.
21:09 - Yeah. - Yeah, yeah.
21:10 - Good. - Yeah, race it.
21:11 - Good luck.
21:13 - Three, two, one.
21:16 (engine revving)
21:19 - Go, baby, go.
21:20 - Oh, God.
21:24 (engine revving)
21:26 - Oh, I got a water bottle under my foot.
21:28 That might be an issue.
21:29 - Looks great, though.
21:33 - Yeah, it sounds great. - It's majestic.
21:34 (engine revving)
21:37 - Oh, this could be bad.
21:42 - Oh, I can't reach it, look out.
21:44 (engine revving)
21:47 (tires screeching)
21:51 (upbeat music)
21:54 (tires screeching)
21:57 (laughing)
22:02 - Look how far he was past the, look at where he stopped.
22:07 (tires screeching)
22:10 - That's better and more fun than any Ferrari.
22:14 - Okay, 114.3.
22:16 - 114.30.
22:18 - I wanna drive it.
22:20 - You know, the Ram truck wasn't nearly as bad
22:22 as I expected.
22:22 I thought it was just gonna wallow
22:24 and be a complete disaster.
22:26 And don't get me wrong, the thing understeers
22:28 and does not stop, but you can actually throw it around.
22:31 I thought it was pretty good.
22:32 But the best part of the entire run
22:37 was trying to get stopped in the stop box.
22:40 (tires screeching)
22:43 - Oh, late brake, late brake.
22:46 (laughing)
22:50 - Gonna kill David, he did that on purpose.
22:52 In the Ram truck, the Motor Trend guys were really close.
22:55 Carlos put down the slowest time with a 118.85
22:59 and Johnny outran him barely with a 118.81.
23:03 My driving skill in the Ram truck proved itself
23:06 with a 114.10.
23:08 (tires screeching)
23:11 This is the 73 GMC Suburban Sierra Grande,
23:20 better known as the Macho Grande.
23:22 (whistle blowing)
23:24 We picked up this car and used it to drag
23:26 Finnegan's '55 Chevy from Los Angeles
23:28 all the way up to Oregon and back,
23:30 but I didn't know how fast it was gonna be
23:32 because the 454 is worn out.
23:35 This truck has 350,000 miles on it.
23:37 - I think it's gonna be slower than the Ram truck.
23:41 If you drive as if there is no trailer back there,
23:43 it should be really close to that.
23:44 - We figured it just wouldn't make sense
23:45 if we didn't do the autocross with the trailer attached.
23:48 There's no pin in here.
23:50 The coupler has no pin.
23:52 - Yeah, what's Spanish for bad idea?
23:54 - Three, two, one, go.
23:59 (dramatic music)
24:16 (laughing)
24:19 - Yes, I didn't kill the trailer.
24:30 - I gotta be honest, I did not want to beat up
24:32 my 350,000 mile daily driver,
24:35 and so only Finnegan and I ran it.
24:36 - That looked pretty good.
24:39 - Yeah, that was pretty good.
24:41 (dramatic music)
24:43 (engines revving)
24:46 - He ran a 115.30, and I beat him
24:59 with trucker arm out the window at a 108.55.
25:03 So far, the Kia is still in the lead,
25:05 having outrun both the Ram truck and the Macho Grande,
25:07 and so we brought out the big guns.
25:12 (engine revving)
25:15 (upbeat music)
25:16 Our Gremlin is a 1975 model, and everyone,
25:19 yes, we know, it has a 1976 grille in it.
25:22 It also has a completely worn out 232 straight six,
25:26 and the torque command automatic transmission,
25:29 and a suspension that is essentially destroyed.
25:31 But it does have new tires.
25:33 Now we're going to Grammy, and the argument is,
25:35 will the Gremlin be slower or faster
25:38 than the Macho Grande with the trailer on the back of it?
25:40 And will it outrun the Kia?
25:42 - It looks like the Gremlin got punched in the face.
25:44 It's kind of got a black eye going on.
25:46 - Never actually been around a Gremlin
25:48 and not had a joint, so this will be different.
25:50 But the exhaust leak might, you know.
25:52 - Three, two, one, go!
25:56 - Ah, yeah, nice leisurely drive in the Grem.
26:00 (engine revving)
26:03 - It's not looking quick.
26:08 (engine revving)
26:12 - It's funny, you gotta get on it way early
26:15 because of the delay in throttle response.
26:18 (engine revving)
26:21 - Now, warp brake discs.
26:24 (tires screeching)
26:27 - Yeah, you want more bands,
26:31 'cause what it does, it disperses the energy
26:34 across the width of the area.
26:36 - Three, two, one, go!
26:39 (engine revving)
26:42 - Yeah!
26:46 Yeah!
26:50 - It should be that it handles like a refrigerator
26:57 full of bowling balls,
26:58 but this is the next level worse than that.
27:00 The Gremlin handles like a nun carrying a mattress.
27:03 (tires screeching)
27:09 - I think we're making a new course here.
27:10 Just keep moving cones.
27:11 (tires screeching)
27:14 - Oh!
27:17 (tires screeching)
27:22 - Solid third place.
27:26 - Once I got behind the wheel of the Gremlin,
27:28 I remembered how bitter I was about the fact
27:30 that it tried to kill me in the middle of the desert
27:32 when we were flat towing the Prius.
27:34 So, when it came time,
27:36 I made sure to turn the front tires into stop signs.
27:39 - I think the car that the Motor Trend guys
27:44 were most excited to drive was the Gremlin.
27:46 It's really bad, and it's gutless, and it bogs,
27:49 it sometimes dies, and the brakes lock up.
27:52 That said, that's a great little car.
27:54 (engine revving)
28:03 Next up was our Roncero,
28:06 the '68 Ford Ranchero that we built up
28:08 to look like the car that Hot Rod used
28:10 to win the very first Mexican 1000 off-road race.
28:13 And it has manual steering that is slower than slow.
28:17 This thing was the car that we hauled
28:18 all the way to Alaska for the ice races,
28:21 and it was a riot to wheel around the autocross.
28:23 (engine revving)
28:26 (tires screeching)
28:29 The thing about all these roadkill cars
28:38 is watching them go around these corners
28:40 is really like a ballet.
28:42 It's really just a work of art.
28:44 And to supplement that, we took our box of shop towels
28:47 and left them in the back of the Ranchero
28:49 so that it could wave its victory flag as it drove by.
28:52 (engine revving)
28:56 (tires screeching)
28:59 Don't waste the tires.
29:06 How'd I do?
29:09 What a style.
29:10 Go!
29:11 Forgot about the manual steering.
29:17 (engine revving)
29:20 (tires screeching)
29:47 We were all so busy laughing our asses off in the Ranchero,
29:50 it's a miracle that we even got it
29:52 all the way around the track.
29:53 But we did, and the finishing order
29:55 is starting to look pretty familiar.
29:56 Next up, naturally, the '68 Charger
30:04 we call the General Mayhem.
30:06 It sounds epic.
30:10 But you put it on pavement with a little bit of traction
30:16 and suddenly the single worst sampling car we had here.
30:20 We cobbled this thing together out of a Bear Hulk
30:23 using used RV parts.
30:25 It has a 440 out of a full-on Pace Aero motor home.
30:28 Is it faster than a Kia?
30:31 'Cause nothing so far faster than a Kia Rio 5.
30:35 It just sounds like metal flexing.
30:39 I like that.
30:40 (engine revving)
30:43 Look at all the just (beep) coming out of that car.
30:57 (engine revving)
31:00 (engine revving)
31:03 (engine revving)
31:05 It handles really badly.
31:32 This car is bad, so bad.
31:36 I think each of us only wanted to make one lap in the thing
31:38 and that's what Finnegan and I did.
31:40 It handles so horrible with no sway bars on it
31:44 and worn out front suspension.
31:46 That thing needs some help before we ever drive it again.
31:49 But we're gonna, I promise, it's coming.
31:51 At this point, as much as we tried to make fun
32:01 of the Motor Trend guys, they were still owning us
32:04 because their Kia was still quicker
32:05 than every single car that we had brought out here.
32:08 And the next one up was Finnegan's wife's El Camino.
32:11 The El Camino is your typical hot rod muscle car.
32:18 It doesn't have a lot of money in it,
32:20 but where it does, it counts.
32:22 It's got killer Falcon Azena's tires.
32:24 It's got some Beltex suspension with big sway bars on it.
32:27 And I had a feeling it could win on the autocross.
32:30 But is it faster than a Kia Rio?
32:32 This is the car that we did the engine swap
32:34 up in the parking lot of Summit Racing in Nevada.
32:37 It's got the original turbo 350 automatic in it.
32:40 It's got the regular old 308 open rear end.
32:43 But I think there's a chance this thing's gonna run hard.
32:46 Frankly, my wife had no idea we were racing it that day.
32:50 But I had a feeling this thing could be the quickest car
32:53 around the autocross and I was out to prove that.
32:55 Three, two, one, go!
32:59 (engine revving)
33:02 That looks really good, actually.
33:16 I'm thinking Kia's pretty scared right now.
33:28 (engine revving)
33:31 (beep)
33:38 - All right, I got one, Greg.
33:45 (laughing)
33:56 - That was a really bad, funny noise.
33:58 - What happened?
34:00 Remember our trick, welded together nut, brake jump?
34:02 Oh, broken half when I came through here.
34:05 How quick was it, though?
34:06 - It was faster than the Kia, you beat--
34:08 - Faster than the Kia!
34:10 - Yeah! - Win!
34:11 So much win!
34:13 Yes!
34:13 - This is very telling and this is maybe the difference
34:16 between Hot Rod and Motor Trend.
34:17 The first car to go faster than a Kia cannot go anymore.
34:20 - Hindsight is a wonderful thing
34:21 and I know I shouldn't have slammed the thing in park.
34:24 But at the time, it didn't occur to me to shut the engine off
34:27 and I couldn't stop.
34:28 - This car is two seconds faster than a Kia Rio.
34:31 - Is that good or bad?
34:33 (laughing)
34:36 And finally, we brought the violence,
34:38 pulling up the Crusher Camaro.
34:40 You've seen this car a lot lately
34:41 and you know that we just stuffed it
34:43 with 700 horsepower worth of Mast Motorsports LS7.
34:47 (engine revving)
34:49 Three, two, one, go!
34:51 (engine revving)
34:54 - I was the first at the wheel on the Crusher
34:57 and I was just throttling this thing.
35:00 (laughing)
35:02 Anything below like 80 miles an hour,
35:10 this thing is gonna blaze rubber.
35:12 - I really thought the Crusher Camaro
35:15 could have destroyed all on the autocross course
35:18 if it had a good set of summer tires on it.
35:20 We were still rocking the snow shoes
35:22 from when we drove home from India.
35:24 - Oh!
35:26 - Two, one, go!
35:28 (engine revving)
35:32 - Impressively, Carlos Lago from Motor Trend
35:50 took the win in the Crusher with a 1.0055.
35:54 And of course, it beat the Kia.
35:56 That's good, 'cause can you imagine the humiliation
35:59 if a Kia had outrun the Crusher Camaro?
36:01 Finally, at the end of the day,
36:04 we looked around and we had two cars left,
36:06 the Superbee and the Datsun.
36:08 The Superbee wasn't running quite right,
36:10 so we dragged out the Datsun
36:11 and then somebody let it sit with the key on forever
36:14 and it killed a fuel pump.
36:15 - Stupid road kill.
36:17 - And with that, we were done for the day.
36:19 (engine revving)
36:22 - Well, what did we learn?
36:25 - Curio.
36:26 - Absolutely nothing.
36:27 We had a lot of fun beating on junk for no reason.
36:29 Tomorrow, we still need to beat on the Datsun
36:31 and the Superbee.
36:33 - And if I could be serious for a moment.
36:34 - No.
36:35 - Carlos called it the Crusher Corolla,
36:37 but I gotta say, we drive a lot of cars,
36:40 I'll speak for myself,
36:41 that's one of the coolest cars I've ever driven.
36:44 - Oh, cool. - That is a hell of a car.
36:45 - That is amazing, I love that car.
36:46 - Thanks, it's entertaining, does good burnouts.
36:48 So you're back tomorrow, you're not?
36:50 - Yes, can't make it.
36:51 - All right, thank you very much.
36:52 - Yeah, it was fun. - That was cool.
36:53 - It was fun. - Yeah, it was a lot of fun.
36:54 - For sure, for sure.
36:55 - All right, clean up.
36:56 (cash register ringing)
37:02 The plan for today is to wrap up our autocross testing
37:06 with the cars that haven't run yet.
37:07 Gotta do the Datsun, because that's really
37:09 the whole premise of this whole show
37:11 is making the Datsun run.
37:12 And we gotta run the Superbee,
37:14 which is going to be perhaps
37:16 the single worst vehicle out here.
37:18 (engine revving)
37:21 This is my own 1970 Dodge Superbee
37:25 that you've seen in a bunch of issues of Hot Rod Magazine.
37:27 And it's been on the Motor Trend channel a bunch too.
37:29 It's got a 484 cubic inch Dick Landy Hemi.
37:33 It makes about 600 horsepower.
37:35 It was in the episode of Roadkill
37:37 where we drove it and the Crusher Camaro
37:38 up to Salt Lake City together.
37:40 - Three, two, one, go.
37:42 - Uh-oh, I see that thing.
37:46 - The front tires are so skinny
37:48 and the car is so heavy and the brakes are so mediocre.
37:52 Oh, steering is so heavy in this thing
37:55 and it's wallowing so bad.
37:58 Oh, and the brakes do not work.
38:00 Oh, and the front tires are just folding under.
38:05 I was sort of wimpy and cut a 115/56.
38:08 (laughing)
38:11 - Well, I can't nail stop it.
38:14 - It's gotta be dead last.
38:15 - Three, two, one, go.
38:17 (engine revving)
38:22 - It wasn't fitting in his car,
38:37 so he drove the thing like a man and ran a 109/76.
38:41 (upbeat music)
38:43 - This is the most butchered Roadkill car ever
38:51 and I think you know the level of that statement.
38:54 - When we finally got the Datsun running under its own power
38:59 I was so fired up, I hopped in it and tried to make a lap
39:03 and that didn't go so well.
39:05 (engine revving)
39:08 (upbeat music)
39:11 - I think I spun it out twice, it came out of gear
39:29 almost every time I tried to put it in second.
39:31 The thing was a disaster.
39:33 (engine revving)
39:37 (upbeat music)
39:40 - No, he doesn't have it.
39:41 (engine revving)
39:44 - 102/25.
39:54 I risked my life for nothing.
39:57 - Oh, no big deal, the battery just fell out.
40:01 - Oh, good.
40:02 - In the last turn of the only lap this thing completed,
40:05 the battery fell over and welded itself to the head.
40:07 - That's not safe.
40:11 - You know it's a good sign when the hood of a car's open
40:14 and there's four guys standing around it.
40:16 Turns out the problem with the Datsun is everything.
40:20 - So at this point it's drizzling and the pavement is wet
40:30 at the paved acres of destruction
40:32 and the destruction was going to be big
40:34 because we lined up nine cars side by side by side
40:37 to do a short little drag race.
40:38 It probably was about 330 feet.
40:40 - Everyone set.
40:51 Three, two, one, go.
40:55 (tires screeching)
40:58 (engine revving)
41:01 (laughing)
41:24 - The results of drag race number one,
41:25 Superbee in first, El Camino in second,
41:28 Ranchero in third, Charger next,
41:30 Macho Grande behind that, then the Ram truck.
41:33 The Gremlin was essentially dead last
41:36 in the cars that actually moved
41:37 because the Crusher spun out
41:39 and the Datsun never left the starting line.
41:41 So for our final drag race, we turned the course around.
41:44 That gave us less stopping distance,
41:46 but at least we had a launch pad with zero dirt on it.
41:49 - Let's do this.
41:50 Three, two, one, go.
41:52 (tires screeching)
41:57 (engine revving)
42:00 - Once I wasn't driving through dirt,
42:03 the Crusher actually came in second place to the Superbee.
42:06 I didn't spin out this time.
42:07 And then it was the Ranchero in third,
42:09 then the El Camino, the Charger, the Macho Grande,
42:11 the Ram truck, and once again,
42:13 bringing up the rear, the Gremlin.
42:14 - So finally in the two drag races,
42:19 the Superbee redeemed itself
42:21 because out on the autocross,
42:22 it was slower than the Macho Grande hauling a trailer.
42:26 But on the drag race, it was good
42:28 because I was able to get the thing hooked up
42:30 and absolutely tromped the Crusher Camaro both times.
42:34 So in the end, we didn't prove a whole lot here,
42:35 but we had a bunch of fun.
42:37 And yeah, Finnegan and I aren't really handling car guys,
42:40 but we will say we managed to outrun the Motor Trend guys
42:43 in every one of our pieces of junk.
42:45 And we were able to trample their Kia.
42:47 The El Camino and the Crusher Camaro
42:49 were able to go faster around an autocross
42:51 than a Kia Rio 5.
42:53 And I'm standing on that statement,
42:55 proudly, because we've got another seven cars
42:59 that did not outrun that junk.
43:01 It proved that the Ranchero, as bad as it was,
43:03 was the most fun car to drive on this deal,
43:06 and I can't even tell you why.
43:07 It had decent power.
43:09 I went all the way around in first gear
43:10 and just shrieked the thing up to like 6,500 RPM.
43:13 For me, the biggest disappointment was the charger.
43:16 It just didn't handle well at all,
43:17 but it motivated me to fix the thing.
43:19 And we've got a good plan on what we're gonna be doing
43:21 with this car in the future.
43:23 So this is only our 25th episode.
43:24 We hope there's plenty more to come,
43:26 and we guarantee you,
43:27 you're gonna see some of this stuff again
43:29 and a whole lot more of "Roadkill."
43:32 (upbeat music)
43:38 - Ah, no!
43:41 Sewage breath!
43:42 You smell like the Santa Monica Bay.
43:44 Get lost.
43:45 Ah!
43:47 Ah!
43:49 I got choked again!
43:50 (upbeat music)
43:53 Okay, meanwhile, just need the...
43:56 (upbeat music)
43:58 (upbeat music)