This time on Roadkill, we finally drove Stubby Bob
300 miles on the highway...
-[siren wails] - ...went to vehicle jail for a little bit
and make it here to the dirt drag strip.
Look at Stubby Bob!
It's chucking dirt everywhere.
[engine stalls]
[tires screech]
[theme music playing]
[engine rumbling]
[rock music playing]
[David] Well, it's deja vu.
We are back in the Hot Rod Garage shop
and back with Stubby Bob, our 1950 Ford F6 that does giant wheelies.
Stubby Bob here is core Roadkill.
As Finnegan often says,
it's one of our greatest achievements.
Used to be a dump truck, but we shortened the thing up,
we put a blown big block Chevy in it.
We ended up stabbing it in the back
and that's where the whole thing gelled.
We realized that this thing would probably do wheelies.
Sure enough, we overcame, we made it happen.
And in that very first episode
where we put the big block in it,
we stood this thing up
and actually rubbed the trailer hitch into the ground.
[engine revving]
One of the greatest Roadkill moments of all time.
But there were more.
Actually, unfortunately, in an episode that I wasn't in,
Mike Finnegan and Tony Angelo did even more greatness with this truck.
They put a lighter front axle in it,
changed some other things
and did even bigger, badder wheelies.
Six wheels off the ground, a visual that the fans will never forget.
[both whooping, cheering]
[Mike] Yeah!
[David] Now in the last episode,
we began the goal.
We fixed a bunch of stuff on the truck,
and we hit the road to Yuma, Arizona,
because we were gonna go to the sand drags.
Unfortunately, once we got on the highway,
reality set in and there was too many things wrong with the truck.
We weren't going to make it.
And it's sort of the same story as last episode.
Yeah, I'd still like to go to the sand drags.
We didn't make it there the last time for a lot of reasons.
Lots of leaks, lots of overheating,
fuel system problems, bent the axle while doing wheelies.
So we're back at the Hot Rod Garage shop.
Yeah. Trying to fix all of that stuff again
to make it all the way to Yuma, Arizona,
where we plan to meet up with a friend
and go sand drag racing.
That's new for Stubby Bob.
So broken tail shaft housing,
-drive shaft's the wrong length. -[Mike] Mm-hmm.
V-drive front axle is bent again.
Oh, we have to build a trans tunnel.
Yeah. It would be great not to see the thing
that wants to chop our feets off.
-[David] Yeah. -[Mike] Yeah.
[David] All right, we're gonna pick this thing up
and start working on the transmission.
In the last episode, it was gushing gallons of ATF all over everything.
It's got a crack in it, so we're gonna replace the whole extension housing,
then we also have to work on the V-drive.
Remember that we have an engine back here
going to a transmission pointing forward into a V-drive
that then sends the power back to the rear end.
And that V-drive has a two-to-one ratio inside it.
And in the last episode, we figured out
we could flip it upside down to get a half-to-one ratio
so that we could drive on the highway.
We're going to have to pull it out of there and sort things out
on the drive shaft length and remove some spacers, et cetera.
Roadkill stuff.
[groans] Knew that was gonna happen.
[strains] Ah-ha!
Look at that little guy.
Drive shafts are out.
Now we have to pick up the transmission
and try and get that extension housing off.
It's not moving.
You know what we need to do is just sawzall that corner right there.
And then this thing will come out.
Oh yeah, totally.
Well, the extension housing is now trapped up in there
because of all our booger welding fabrication.
So we're gonna have to sawzall a little bit off
so that we can get it out.
Finnegan really struggled to get this thing out of there.
Look at the damage on this old extension housing.
This was ramrodded right against a piece of eight-inch plate
that we had built as a shield, which is what he cut out,
and it bent it so bad that it destroyed the seal.
And that's why this thing was gushing fluid.
Fortunately, it looks like the new used one that we got is the correct one.
So all I have to do is put the gasket in it
and slam a new seal in it and we're good to go.
[rock music playing]
[Mike] Okay. Well, tail shaft housing is in.
Pretty sure that's not gonna leak.
However, one of the other big leaks we had was out of our V-drive case.
This Casale V-drive case is three pieces,
a front half, a back half and a mid-plate,
and it leaks everywhere.
We're gonna pull this out, pull it apart,
find out how do you put one of these in upside down correctly
'cause clearly we did that wrong.
It's out.
Our problem here is that gear oil is leaking out of these fittings,
and that's the water passage for cooling this.
So gear oil shouldn't come out of there,
so we've got a leak inside.
-Now I'm splashing. -[Mike groans] We've got a gusher.
-Let me get the dead blow. -Okay.
Why don't we get rid of this thing, just set it on these?
[chill guitar music playing]
-[Mike] There we go. -[David] Got it.
Yay!
Here's what we're dealing with.
This is a water passage that is connected by two fittings.
We didn't have a good seal on this wall right here,
so the gear oil was getting into the water passage
and then spraying out of the little fitting and barbecuing my leg.
We stuck sandpaper to the table to try and mill this surface flat,
which was a little bogus but may have helped.
Oh, this is a good moment putting it all back together.
-Okay. -Flat side to the back side.
Bueno.
-Beauty. -Pretty good.
Definitely not going to leak.
The V-drive is back together and we're going to water cool this thing.
This is how that's going to happen.
We're going to fill that with water.
We're going to pump it with this.
The water is going to go through this transmission cooler.
It'll go in this side, travel all the way to the other side
and go back out and return here.
And because this is mounted upside down,
we're going to be cooling the bottom half of this
and hopefully the gear oil that's in there.
And even though it's gonna be 105 degrees
out in the desert when we're driving
and David and I feel like we're on fire,
it should be much cooler than it was the last time
we drove this truck down the highway.
[David strains] I want to lower it down onto that cross member.
Whoa!
There.
I think we're gonna have to cut out the floor tunnel thingy.
I'm okay with it just going up and over right there.
-[Mike] Yeah, could just be a box right here that fits. -[David] Right.
The V-drive is in.
Next thing we're gonna do is rig our whole water cooling system.
All right, we're gonna weld this water box
to a cross member that's in there.
So it'll just sit there, and then I have to plumb it.
Of course, I have to put the cooler in the front, too.
Okay, we're done. That's not falling off.
Look at this absurdly enormous cooler
-and... -[Mike] Ah-hah.
Prepare yourself for the wonder of zip ties.
In, out to the cooler.
So this should point down.
-The inlet is that? -[Mike] Correct.
-[David] Yeah. And the outlet is-- -[Mike] Here to here.
-[David] This is our out. -[Mike] Yeah.
And the cooler is installed.
Tomorrow is a bummer.
We have to tackle the problem that we found
with our front steering situation
with the drag link that's at an extreme angle
with a bound up Heim joint.
If we don't fix that, honestly, I'm not riding in this thing
because I think it's pretty bad.
[Mike] It's a new day.
Our water cooling system's sorted out.
We are going to finish off this transmission tunnel.
If the V-drive blows up,
it's kind of right around your kneecap slash ankle area.
And I don't know about you guys,
but I like having both of those things,
so we're gonna protect ourselves.
Let's close this side, this side.
Take that down.
If we weld it all to this cover,
that means it's removable.
We have the basic layout in place.
What I get to do now is just tack the two pieces together
and see will this actually come out.
It's kind of important that it does,
because if it doesn't, then well, it's gonna be hard to work on it later.
Oh yeah, I'm calling that success.
That does come out.
[David] Here's what's about to happen.
We need to mount our shifter on the console.
It needs to be lifted up off the surface
because the cable hits.
-So we're going to do that with pyramids of nuts. -[chuckling]
These will be welded together
and then welded to the plate.
This is absolutely nuts.
[Mike chuckles] Yeah, I know.
[David] Attached.
Wow. This is genius.
Rock solid.
Better than it ever has been.
We're really close to hitting the road in Stubby Bob.
But we do need to fix the steering.
We've got to do two things.
One, make a new drag link, which is the connection,
between the pitman arm on the steering box
and the steering arm out at the wheel.
You'll see that later
because the first thing that we're going to do is make an axle truss
to keep this one from bending.
Okay, here is the downside of sandals.
Nailed it.
-Nice work, Freiburger. -[David] Thanks.
[Mike] Okay, now we weld.
I gotta grind the backside of the axle.
[Mike] Axle truss is cut.
Axle is ground down. We are ready to weld.
Done.
I don't think that's gonna fall off.
[David] Now we're moving on to the next disaster,
which is our steering linkage.
Imagine that this line right here is our tie rod.
It's the thing that connects both wheels together.
And up here is the drag link.
The drag link connects the steering box to the tie rod.
And what we've got here is a really severe angle between these two.
What you should have is like this.
Here is the tie rod, and here is the drag link.
And you can see that they are much closer.
Now if we're attached with a big angle right here
as it swings like this, you get a big arc.
The travel of this point goes way over this way,
and when it droops, it goes way over that way.
As this swings, it has to pull the whole axle and tie rods side to side.
When you're driving around the road and you hit bumps,
you're going to be chasing the steering
because it has what's called bump steer.
When you've got the drag link almost parallel to the tie rod,
look at the same amount of travel from here to here.
In this arc, there's almost no side to side motion.
What we're going to do to fix all this is roughly... this.
[laughs]
We're going to do a big drop in it.
[Mike] But we could start here and then bend up.
I don't think we should do 90.
-I think you want about a 45. -Okay.
If we put one 45 in it, we can go test fit it and see if it looks right.
We're just going to bend tube and see what happens.
Wow. Once it's sproings, I think we did pretty good.
[Mike] All right. We got our bar bent.
Now we're gonna take a measurement
between both ends of our rod ends
to figure out how long does this need to be.
Then we'll cut the bar, weld the tube adapters into each end,
and then our steering should be good to go.
[David] Yes. I nailed it.
[Mike] Nailed it.
-[David] Look at that. -[Mike] Wow.
[David] Looks like we got it right.
We're gonna weld it up now.
Well, our drag link with a huge angle to it was no good.
So we ended up making one with a Z in it, which was pretty neat.
We bought some ends that weld in that take the tie rod ends.
Finnegan's making me weld it together
so that when we die I can be blamed.
You're doing great.
You're doing so good over there.
Boom.
Okay. We got our new drag link in.
There was another problem
that wasn't helping the steering situation,
which is that we had different back spacing on each side.
Two different wheels.
And so we ended up just buying two of them
that are the same back spacing, same size tires.
After this, we have to add the Dually wheels to the back.
[Mike] So we are really close to being ready to hit the road.
And ultimately our goal is to get to Yuma, Arizona,
to go sand drag racing,
where I have a surprise for Freiburger.
He's expecting paddle tires on the back of this.
But the thing is, nobody makes a 38-inch tall paddle tire
for this kind of vehicle.
Called my buddy Andy Rawls
and what he came up with was his own version of a paddle tire
that isn't rubber at all,
and there is no air in this tire.
But it should be just as effective
at digging a massive hole in this racetrack
as we try to launch this thing.
You're gonna love this. I can't wait to see Freiburger's reaction.
He is not expecting this.
We got new driveshaft.
This should be about a half inch shorter,
which means it should fit perfect.
Okay. David, you got the other drive shaft handy?
[David] Coming.
[strains]
I'm gonna roll out of here. Find a beer.
[David] Um, here's the thing.
This is an obscure, two-speed rear axle.
The problem is they make no parts for this thing
except for maybe a seal, if you're lucky.
Now the reason why [chuckles] that's a key point
is that we stopped driving this on the highway in the last episode
because it was making evil growling noises.
So this could be a showstopper.
But I'm at least gonna try and put some fluid in it
because maybe that's why it's graunching.
[Mike] Let's go ride.
[engine starts]
Round two.
[Mike] I already like the steering better.
I bet.
Yeah, this is better.
[clanking]
-Uh-oh. -Uh-oh.
I think we just lost the drive shaft.
[loud clanking]
[clanking stops]
-[both laughing] -I just broke a drive shaft.
We were even doing wheelies.
-[Mike] How? -[David] I don't know.
We were driving along and all of a sudden, man,
hard core crunchy, bad sound.
Well, we made it two miles.
A drive shaft has fallen out of it, the upper one.
The U-joint just completely fell apart.
Last time we didn't make it off the same block.
So this is progress.
Well, it broke down,
and turns out it was a drive shaft issue.
But lucky us, we brought our spare wheelie drive shafts with us.
So I'm hoping to cannibalize the U-joint caps off of this.
Pop them right on the one that's under there,
bolt it all back together and we're back on the road.
[David] The last time we did this, we welded these straps
on the sides to retain the U-joint.
But the problem is, the U-joint is too narrow,
and it's just sliding back and forth in the caps.
So that's not gonna live either.
[Mike] I got an idea.
I think we're just gonna fix it
-by sliding one US quarter between the cap and the yolk. -[coin clinks]
-And-- Yeah, there we go. -[David] There it is.
-And I believe... -That's your tip.
All will be right with the world.
No, we might need a dime. Anybody got a dime, too?
[David] It would be nice to have it even on both sides.
It would be more balanced.
[Mike] Two quarters. And I believe...
-[winces] -[David] About a dime.
[Mike] About a dime and two quarters.
-I think it's a 60-cent repair. -There.
Yeah, there we go. Watch.
[David] Saved by spares.
This is the cap that Finnegan removed
from our spare drive shaft, which was a used drive shaft.
And a bunch of the needle bearings
that are inside it are broken in half.
So what I'm going to do is fish out all the bad ones
and replace them with bearings out of the cap
that we just destroyed, which is the only one we have
because the other one's on the road somewhere.
All right. I rescued this cap.
All the needles are in there.
We got the drive shafts back in the truck here at the side of the road,
and it's pretty good, except for one thing.
The output yoke on the V-drive,
which is where the U-joint slides in,
should have caps on each side
that retain the joint side to side.
And in our destructive event, one of them broke off.
And surprisingly, that can make
for failure like that. [snaps fingers]
So we're gonna head back to the shop
and weld something on there to solve that problem.
But we need to go really slow between here and there
because it will break.
-[loud clang] -[groans]
We did as much as we could at the side of the road,
so naturally we're back at the shop.
Finnegan found this little tiny piece
of, I don't know, quarter inch rod.
What I'm going to do is hold that up there in the yoke,
zap it in and it will become the new tab.
Okay, it's not good, but it's done.
Let's get out of here again.
-[Mike] Engage. -[engine starts]
Okay, Bob, let's do it.
[David] Is this the freeway?
[Mike] Yep. Here's the real test.
[David] Oh. Well, we don't have to worry about the speed.
[Mike] Ah, perfect timing.
[David] Good thing we got in the carpool lane.
I've got a pretty good heat blast right here.
How about you?
[Mike] I wore pants because I had a feeling.
The steering's pretty good?
[Mike] Yeah, it's much better.
If we had rear suspension, this thing would be wonderful.
I think we've officially gone further this trip
than we did all of last trip.
Today's our first day driving.
[hollow whistling]
Uh-oh.
I think we're out of gas.
[sighs] Success.
Whoo!
I think that was a solid 40 miles.
[David] Something like that.
It was further than we went the last time we tried this.
Yeah, we had a victorious moment there in the cab.
It steers better.
The back end still sucks.
We still have no suspension travel at all.
Well, the great news is it's only 200 more miles to go.
I feel like we can do that in three days.
[upbeat music playing]
[David] This might be our speed record.
Yeah, it feels pretty spicy.
[David] That was the drive shaft butchery.
-That was really butch. -[laughs] Yep.
[David] My favorite is the 60 cents.
[Mike chuckles] Yeah.
The one thing I'm not sure that you, the audience, can hear on the video
is how loud the V-drive is.
It is screeching like a jet plane the whole time.
That's the sound of performance.
The ocean.
This is why people live in California.
[David] Yep.
[twangy surf music playing]
Ah, this is cool.
We are in posh Carlsbad, California.
-How do you feel? -I feel good.
That's the furthest we've gone in this, dude.
-By a lot. -Yeah, we probably went 70 miles, maybe 80.
-[David] Not puking. -[Mike] It's fine.
Yeah. 60 is its sweet spot.
180. More to go. We're there.
-[David] Beers? 180 beers? -Yes.
-Beers. -Yeah, I'm sweating.
It's the next day, and I have amazing news for you, my friend.
-What's that? -Unlike the last time we did this trip,
this time, there are only two puddles of liquid under this truck.
And none of them are ATF.
-[Mike] That's right. -[David] Yes.
We're doing so much better this time.
My new motto is not good, but better.
-So we're on the way to that. -Yeah.
[David] Yeah. So we have a spot, we have a plan.
We're gonna make it less hot.
We're going to make it hopefully ride a little better,
and we're going to see another beach 09. Because why not?
So we'll do some wrenching
and suppress to our ultimate destination
Yuma, Arizona, and the sand drag track.
I've never been here.
I spent a lot of time down here as a kid.
[David] Wow, this is pretty cool.
Yeah, it's a great spot.
You can sail in here, you can ride jet skis.
I had no idea this was even a thing.
We're on Fiesta Island down--
Are we like, near San Diego?
We were in San Diego County.
We were near Mission Beach.
[David] This place is awesome.
You can drive all the way around the island and drive on sand.
[beach rock music playing]
Okay.
Thanks for going along with this.
[Mike] No, this is a worthy cause.
This is my attempt to not go deaf.
We went and got some sound matting.
I think it's gonna work.
I'm gonna stick this stuff on the tunnel.
What I'm really trying to do is damp the sound
so that thing doesn't just shriek in my ear the whole time.
But it's also gonna help heat
because I think we're gonna use it
to patch a bunch of holes in the floor.
Grab this end and pull it towards you.
[Mike] Ah, this is cushy.
I got half a mind to just put this on top of my seat.
[exclaims] Installation complete.
And as you can see, very professional.
Now we're going to hit the road.
We're not even gonna try to fix the suspension yet.
I figure we'll save that for later.
We've only got two and a half days to go 180 miles.
We've proven that's difficult for us,
so there's plenty of time to work
on the back of this truck down the road.
[David] Well, maybe we made it quieter.
I'm gonna find out from the driver's seat
because I've got fewer miles at the wheel
than anybody who's driven Stubby Bob.
Let's ride.
[engine revs]
It didn't even spin the tires.
[Mike] How's the noise for you now?
[David] We're not going fast enough yet for it to be a problem.
Maybe that happens above 80. I don't know.
I think it's quieter.
-You think it is? -I think so.
I know there's less hot air blowing in.
Well, my first stint driving it was mostly traffic,
and so I overheated the guts out of it.
But I did motor it enough to know
that the steering is way better.
Everything is pretty cool about it.
It drives like it has the loosest converter in the world
because with our V-drive giving us a 0.5 to 1 ratio
and the rear axle in a 6.33 ratio,
that is like having a 308 rear gear with 38-inch tall tires.
So when you drive it,
it just... [mimics engine groaning]
You have to get into the converter before it goes again.
It's not snappy at all.
The worst thing about it, though, is definitely the rear suspension.
We need to get to fixing that.
Pretty good.
Cheers.
[David laughing]
[Mike groans] I missed.
I want you to go, "Oh my God, I'm wet!"
[all laughing]
David, you want me to drive?
That would help me.
[Mike] What's the water temp?
Well, water.
Oh yeah, I smell water.
Well, the transmission's at 220,
so I guess that's about where the engine is.
Yeah, we're smoking the transmission.
225.
Don't automatic transmissions blow up at about 230?
I try not to think about the numbers.
-[David] There's our exit. We'll be good. -[Mike] Yeah.
Oh, when that gauge says 230, you know you're in trouble.
We may have to find a way to burp it in the morning.
Yeah.
We found a new limit for abbreviated Robert,
and it seems to be climbing a hill,
slipping the converter all the way in the heat.
I saw 240 degrees on the temperature gauge,
and on the transmission, it said 230.
So it's going to be even better tomorrow in Yuma when it's 110 degrees.
We're at 2,000 feet.
We've got to get up 5,000 feet,
then down 5,000 feet to where it's 108.
-And that's an us tomorrow problem. -Yeah.
[David] Those beers won't drink themselves.
-Beers. -Yeah.
Good morning.
Our problem here is that Stubby Bob rides like a two-ton truck
that's been shortened and has no load in it.
We didn't see that part coming.
[laughs] The problem is, this rear shackle for the leaf spring
is completely bottomed out against its own hanger.
So the only suspension travel that we have is in the leaf spring.
This shackle is supposed to be able to move back and forth.
So what our plan is, is to jack up the frame,
loosen all the bolts, slide the hanger back,
then that's gonna help that shackle stand up
so that it doesn't bottom right there.
[Mike] Shout out to the construction crew at the Viejas Casino
because we borrowed their lumber
to make this whole project happen.
-Okay, that has less depth. -All right.
-Hey, now. -[clangs]
-[Mike] Oh. -[David] That's what we need, though.
-[clangs] -[David groans]
It's actually worse.
We now can't bolt it back together where it was.
-[David] Right. -[Mike] And it won't go over.
-Yeah. That's what we do. -[Mike laughing]
What we're facing here is that we can't get the frame high enough
to get this bracket sort of free
so that we can move it where we want it.
-Okay, that's looking promising. -Woah. It moved.
-Okay, easy. -[Mike chuckles]
We're set.
Now, while you have the shackle back here that swings,
the front of the leaf spring is a solid mount.
It's just holding it in place.
So if you have a leaf spring that has an arc to it
as it flexes and rebounds, it changes length.
And the shackle has to swing to accommodate that length.
Once again shout out to the construction crew
here at the Viejas Casino
because we didn't have a drill. They did.
I mean, it's only a half inch thick frame.
Wow, these are good bits.
-[metal clang] -You can go in here.
[drilling]
Both hangars are half installed.
Now we get to set it down, see what happens.
-Oh, look at the angle that went into it. -[Mike] Oh yeah.
-Perfect. Yep. -We have travel now, I think.
[Mike] Let's see.
[David] That I believe is a first.
We got all the wrenching done, but we still need to fill it up with coolant.
The thing has been overheating on this big grade
that we need to climb, and there's more to come.
We think that there might be an air bubble in the engine,
and so we're going to drive it up this hill
in order to let the bubbles rise to the front,
and then I will top it off with coolant.
[engine rattling]
Took 4.5 gallons.
That's a lot.
-All right. Ready for this bump? -[Mike] Yep.
-Oh! Dude, that might be fixed. -Right?
Gotta be better.
[Mike] I think it's better. I think it rides better.
The back of the truck's not bucking.
So it's not wandering like it was.
-Like, you can... -Oh!
-You can take your hands off the wheel now. -Right. Cool.
Trans is 180 degrees.
We're still in third gear. We're going 65 miles an hour and 2,700 RPMs.
Going down to one lane.
I do smell hotness, though.
Yeah, yeah.
[upbeat music playing]
-[music stops] -[engine dies]
Pretty sure we just ran out of gas.
-Seems that way. -Yeah.
-It smells real hot. -Oh, yeah. Wow.
There's a river of coolant.
It was all going so well.
Rear suspension, much smoother.
Everything was going good.
[David] So, the overflow goes into the container.
[Mike] Yeah, it's coming out of this.
[David] Yeah.
This gauge now says 190.
It seems to only read when it's radically overheated.
[Mike] This overheated again.
Not sure exactly why.
Other than maybe it's the fact that
half the radiator is mounted above the grille.
And the radiator is about 2-feet behind the grille
and the air is escaping up and down.
So I'm gonna try to make some cardboard ducts
to block the air from not going into the radiator.
I got a box from a tool we just bought.
With any luck, this will solve some of the problem.
[David] We're driving on the highway and strangely it just died.
We thought we were out of gas.
It was just overheating bad.
I blame myself.
You can blame yourself, and now you've solved all with your cardboard.
It works so good now.
The rear suspension is so much better
that I didn't realize we were going 70 up a mountain.
[David] This is like the oven, man.
It's so hot, it's 113 degrees ambient.
It's way worse inside Stubby Bob.
My feet were getting blasted with what felt like 200 degree air. It was bad.
Anyway, we've got it all topped off again because, of course,
when we pulled over it puked.
We think that we can make it to El Centro in the next hour or so.
And then from there we're just gonna call it, 'cause this is so punishing.
And in the morning we'll just get up really early
and drive when it's cooler so that we can make it.
[upbeat music playing]
Antifreeze is coming through the floor, the tunnel.
I believe it.
[David] Really, our only hope is that it's only 80 degrees at 6:00 a.m.
[Mike] Yep.
We're not even to Arizona yet. It's supposed to get worse.
-I think we're 60 miles from the track. -[David sighs]
One thing I gotta say, that 454 is a trooper.
How it's still in one piece, I don't know.
At this point, even if it doesn't go down the track, just getting there... Wow!
Oh, man.
I am all charged up, dude. It's our last 90 miles.
-Shocking -[both chuckle]
[David] We're in El Centro right now.
We're about to blast past Yuma to the sand drag track.
This is the final stretch.
[upbeat music playing]
All right.
Stopping for another new failure.
[music stops]
Well, I can show you the blown head gasket.
What happened is, we were driving along
and it was surging evil, so we pulled over.
And as soon as I hopped out I saw that it's puking coolant out of a head bolt.
It's also dumping oil out of the back of the cylinder head
where it meets the block,
and also out of the back of the intake manifold.
This is the head gasket leak, right there.
So our plan is to top it off with water,
make it the 20 miles to the next town.
By that point, it will have puked all the water out again
and we'll put some head gasket sealer in it, cross our fingers.
And if we make it to Yuma we can still go to the sand drags.
-[Mike] All right, here we go. -We got this!
It took five and a quarter gallons.
[siren wailing]
He must have lit us up for a while and we didn't know it.
Well, we're getting pulled over.
[dramatic music playing]
[Mike] He's like, "You have exposed rear tires throwing rocks at cars."
And I didn't even think about that. I'm like, "Yeah. You're right."
He's gonna impound it. I think what he was looking for is if it's stolen.
-[Mike] Yeah. -We'll likely never get it back if that happens.
This is how we lose Stubby Bob.
Uh-oh. He opened the back door.
[David] That's not good.
So we're cruising along,
headphones on, completely deaf to anything.
And the California Highway Patrol had to pull up next to us
and light up the lights and put on the siren to get our attention.
And that didn't put the officer in a good mood.
He was firm but fair. Because, let's be honest, we deserved it.
But ultimately, they called the tow truck, they pulled it away.
-It's gone. - [Mike] Yeah.
[David] So we're trying right now to figure out
how to get all of the paperwork from back home,
and go to the Arizona DMV to get a permit
so that we can pull it out of impound in California.
So now we're gonna go hangout by the pool.
But the real question is,
will we get this paperwork done or will producer Taylor,
and will we be racing tomorrow?
Or is this the "whomp-whomp" end of the show
where I have to come up with, like, that VO at the end that ties it all together
and makes it seem like a good thing?
Oh, everybody tunes out at that point. You don't even need to record that.
-That's true. Yeah. -Yeah.
Jail break!
-We got Stubby Bob out of impound. -[upbeat music playing]
-Pretty good story, though. -I'm so excited about this.
Me too. We're here at Dome Valley Raceway.
Turns out it's not so much a sand drag as sort of a dirt drag.
-[Mike] Yeah, this looks like Georgia clay. -Yeah.
[Mike] Which means traction, actually.
Yeah, it's gonna hook up.
This is 300 feet long.
And I need to find out from these guys, what's the scale.
Like, what's quick.
-[Mike] A top-fuel dragster went 216 miles an hour here. -216!
Yeah. In 300 feet of dirt.
-Wow. -Yeah.
-I don't know if old Bob's gonna come close to that. -No.
But we're here, it runs.
I mean, never forget there's a boat gearbox
and 0.60 cents worth of spare change booger-welded to the driveshaft.
And yet, somehow, it drove 280 miles.
[David] Yeah. Getting it out of impound wasn't that special.
Using some booger-welds to hold the rear driveshaft in,
that was Roadkill.
Yes. If it breaks the beams, I'm happy. But if it does a dirt wheelie... Oh, boy.
-[David] You ready to race? -Yeah. I am. But I have a surprise for you.
Oh! I didn't even see these hidden [chuckles] behind Stubby Bob.
[Mike] Are you ready for this?
They don't make rubber paddled tires for 39s,
so our good buddy Andy Ralls made these.
-Yeah! -[David chuckles] Oh!
-Okay. -[Mike] Right?
-Uh... Steel paddled tires. -Yes.
So the way this works is,
you take the outside wheel off, slide this on the hub,
and put the outside wheel back on, and it sandwiches it and goes around the tire.
So you wanted to go fast at the drag strip, so you added, what?
Eighty pounds per side to the wheels?
Eighty pounds of traction, bro. Look at that.
It might not go faster, but it might do wheelies on dirt.
[upbeat music playing]
Will it start?
[engine starts]
Well, this is the moment.
He's gonna make the first pass at the dirt drag strip in Stubby Bob.
Which is what we've been trying to do for two episodes.
Right now Stubby Bob is exactly as it was straight off the highway
after we drove it to Arizona from LA.
This is gonna be awesome.
Let's see how quick that's gonna be.
If it starts to spin him, it should spin him really hard.
[Mike] All right, pre-stage.
Stagged.
Oh! [laughing]
Wow. That was fun. But so damn sketchy.
Had a surprising amount of traction.
But it fishtailed all the way down the track.
Six-fifty-six at 52.83 miles an hour.
And looks like he's good. He's gonna drive it back.
They said that their new Bronco Raptor should run somewhere in the 7s.
And you went 6.50-something at 52 miles an hour.
Sketchy. That was not even wide open.
-[David] Really? -No.
No. It doesn't have much traction,
and it's fishtailing all the way down the track.
[David] It doesn't look like it's spinning the tires at all.
Oh, it does. I basically made an arc.
[David chuckling] I see that.
[Mike] And then, turned back right. I'll try again.
[upbeat music playing]
It's weird. It doesn't look or sound like tire spin to me, but he's the one at the wheel.
Straight off the highway, our best pass was 6.56 seconds at 52.83 miles an hour.
Apparently, a little quicker than a new Bronco Raptor in 300 feet.
Now, we're gonna go put on a whole lot of weight
with those steel paddle wheels.
[upbeat music playing]
[Mike laughing] Oh, my God!
I think I just threw a rooster tail.
I'm pretty sure that just spun the whole length of the track. [laughing]
[David] I was so excited about the rooster tail
I missed the fact that he must have lifted because that looked awesome.
-Dude, the rooster tails looked great that time! -Okay.
Okay. I was like, "This is really slow, but it's gotta look amazing."
-'Cause the mud was going over the roof of the truck. -[David] Yeah.
-Oh, it was fantastic. -Wow.
I don't care the fact that it was way slower, you lifted, or whatever
'cause it looked great.
I didn't lift. That was it.
-[laughing] -Really? Okay. Well, it slowed down a lot.
You only went 8.60-something at 33 miles an hour.
-I believe it. It just spun the whole time. -Yeah.
[Mike] This thing looks medieval with these paddles on there.
Now Stubby Bob throws dirt rooster tails.
Which I know for a fact chicks dig that.
So, uh, I don't care if I loose.
All right. We know Stubby Bob looks awesome now
with the paddle steel wheels on it because it throws mud everywhere.
Who cares if it's slow?
You know what else looks awesome?
Andy Ralls' little Manx-style dune buggy.
This is the guy who built the steel wheels for us.
His, uh, shop guy, Noah, is driving it right now.
The reason we wanted to do a side-by-side race
is a little bit of, uh, this kind of context...
The rear wheel entire assemblies on Stubby Bob
now weigh, roughly, as much as the entire dune buggy. [chuckles]
And so we're gonna run 'em side by side, see which one's quicker.
The dune buggy better win. But which one will look better?
[upbeat music playing]
Look at Stubby Bob! He's chucking dirt everywhere.
-Whoops. -Oh, no.
[laughing]
[David] We just got smoked by a dune buggy.
But you know what? We drove that garbage 300 miles to get here.
We pulled an absolute miracle getting it out of impound.
We fixed a lot of stuff on it. And he broke the driveshaft.
[Mike chuckles] It's overheating, it's got a blown head gasket.
It's fun though!
[David] Did our 0.60 cents let us down?
Uh, no. I think it was upper.
I feel like 0.60 cents
down on the bottom driveshaft was probably all right.
So, let's clarify.
We fixed a lot of stuff,
but then we blew up the driveshaft,
broke the tail housing,
and blew a head gasket, and overheated it to the moon.
Let me look.
[David] Maybe my booger-welded on little tab failed.
[Mike] Oh, wow.
Remember how we put a new tail shaft on the trans?
-Oh, is that gone now? -Yeah, we're gonna need another one.
[David] Okay.
That's for another episode, though.
-[David chuckles] Yeah. -But the steering is money.
Mmm!
Freiburger's right. Don't get it right, just get it running.
Thanks for watching Roadkill.