My car's a 1956 Bel Air Custom Deluxe.
Looks nice, but it doesn't go straight at all.
There's no way you can use that rear end.
Is that a unique way to fill a hole?
[man 1] Do you have the rear seat?
Look at that weld on the engine support.
We'll have to redo that one.
[man 2] What do y'all think?
[hammering]
[man 3] That's a lot straighter than the old one.
[Shorty] There we are, Junior.
My name is Javier, but most people call me Shorty.
I was born in Mexico.
And when I was four years old, my parents moved to Texas in search of the American dream.
Now, I'm living that dream
with my own custom shop and a team that builds the coolest cars on the road.
We make dreams...
-[man] Wow. - ...come true.
[crowd cheering]
-Hey, Joel. -[Joel] Yeah?
We'll go check out our new build.
Oh, man.
Say, did you pull in a classic with a classic?
-I had to, bro. -[Shorty] Damn, that little truck pull that car good, huh?
Yeah.
-What's up, man? Doing all right? -Nice.
My name is Sanders Martinez.
My car is a 1956 Bel Air Custom Deluxe.
-[man 1] What have we got here? -[man 2] A '56.
-'56 convertible Bel Air. Nice. -[Shorty] '56 Bel Air.
Well, that looks pretty nice already.
It looks nice, but it doesn't go down the road. It doesn't go straight at all.
Got a bunch of parts laying around.
Nobody even knows how to put 'em all the way back the right way except these guys.
From what we talked about, did you just wanna reassemble it the way it's supposed to be?
Kinda like a Grease style, classic-looking car, you know? Something in between.
-This vato said Grease? He wants to take it way back. -Man.
Me and my kids love the Bel Air. Especially the '56 era.
'Cause of the movie Grease. We watch it all the time.
[indistinct]
[Joel] Uh, is that a unique way to fill a hole, or what's going on there?
How many times have we seen that, man?
Well, the question is, have we seen one from that state?
[Martinez] You guys wanna check out the rear end?
Let's see what we've got.
-[Shorty] The body is pretty gnarly underneath there. -Okay.
[Shorty] Uh, I don't know if you can see it, but they used a lot of fiberglass.
[Pete] It's like it's no good.
[man] You need to look at this rear end, too.
[Shorty] Yeah, there's no way you can use that rear end.
There's no way.
They wanted to cover up the holes with fiberglass instead of metal.
No, we need metal. And right here, it looks like it has a hole back there, man.
[Shorty] Yeah, because, uh,
the patch is coming off. You see the rivets.
I mean, that rear end is junk.
It's pretty bad. I don't think we've got one this bad.
The holy grail, Shorty?
This is the holy grail, Joel.
-Oh, you see the gas tank's still over here? -[man] Yeah.
-Yeah, we've seen that before, Sanders. -[Martinez] Love it.
-You love it? -I love it.
-Okay, we'll take it out. -[all laugh]
The good thing is that you have a lot of the most important pieces
that people struggle to find.
-[man 1] Original seats. -[Martinez] Yep.
-Original seats. -[man 2] Panels back there.
[Shorty] Yeah, it looks like you got a bunch of parts for it.
[Pete] Do you have the rear seat to the car?
No, I bought those seats from another car.
-[Pete] One of the hardest things to find on a car. -[Joel] Yeah.
Bad-ass.
Should we look at what's underneath the hood?
The weld's not terrible, but we're definitely gonna have to go back over.
Well, now we know why he towed it. No motor.
Now that puts a lot more work on Joel's hands.
Look at that weld over there on the engine support.
We'll have to redo that one.
-[Joel] For sure, man. -[Pete] Yeah, looks like popcorn over there.
Hey, Sanders, I thought you said this was an easy one to fix.
Well, you know, to the untrained eye, it looks easy.
[all laugh]
-It's a beautiful car, man. -It definitely is gonna be a beautiful car.
All right. Well, let's get this thing unloaded, man.
-[Joel] Yeah, man. Let's do it. -[man] Let's do this.
[Joel] Let's get it, Junior.
Here, Junior, put this on just in case it gets dangerous.
All right. I got it.
All right, Junior. Get in this thing.
Let's go, June Bug.
Come on, June Bug.
-Hey, brother. There ain't no brakes. -[Joel] I know.
-Does it have steering? -[Junior] No.
What? What does it have?
[Junior] Nothing.
Oh. Come on, man.
-Come on. -[Shorty] Oh, here it comes.
It's coming! It's coming!
I don't got no brakes!
It's bringing me with it!
[Junior] Oh, man. It wasn't that bad.
[Joel] 'Cause I was holding it.
I thought it was gonna yank me across that damn trailer.
-[Shorty] I guess it is heavy, right? -Oh, it's heavy.
Basically, the plan totally changed.
So there is no plan as of right now.
Man, the column is, like, super loose. I mean, look at that.
[Shorty] Let's pull this seat out, Joel, and see what kinda floor we got.
[Joel groans]
-The main floor, it doesn't look bad. -[man] Yeah.
Look at the tubs.
The tubbing on this car, I don't even know how to describe it.
Not sure what size tires people were planning on putting on this car.
Looks like you can put, like, a 30-inch tire on here, man.
I mean, the tubs are this wide.
And check out these welds.
Check out these we-- No, they're not...
Wait a minute. They're not even welds. They're rivets, Joel, look.
This is the most gnarly part of the car back here.
We thought this car was gonna be an easy one.
Between the interior, the frame, the rear end,
the motor, and everything else,
it has a lot to be done.
Damn. They took the seat that normally fits four to two.
PG's got his work cut out for him. He's gonna have to make a custom seat.
The original seat, it's not gonna fit.
[Joel] All right. Let's look at the trunk, man.
-Ooh. -[Shorty] Whoa.
Let's take all of it out.
You know, this car came in for reassembly.
But it's gonna turn into a big build.
Let's figure out what's going on with the suspension.
'Cause that's kinda funny how... You see how they cut
this one in the back and cut this one?
Something ain't jiving there, man.
Put it in the rack. Let's see what's going on with the car.
The welds are not solid at all.
It looks like we're going to have to do quite an extensive amount of metalwork,
and then Joel needs the whole front end pulled off the car
so he can do what he's gotta do in the front.
[Joel] Look at that.
-What happened? -[Joel] It's sand.
Somebody blasted it, huh?
Dude, there's a lot in there, man.
With that breeze going through here, and that sand, I feel like I'm at the beach, man.
-You feel like you're at the beach? -I feel like I'm at the beach.
[Shorty] Hey, what's up, Joel?
The thing is that what was told to me and what's here is two different things.
-We don't even have these top pieces. -[Shorty] Oh, the top trims.
So I was looking at the door panel,
and I'm like, "Man, that's... That's gonna be a problem."
So this is garbage.
I'm not an interior guy, but I know that's... [speaking Spanish]
You kinda want something kind of interior to this era, you know what I mean?
More factory along the lines here,
but here's our biggest problem, PG.
You're gonna have to make the seat.
We really haven't looked at it, looked at it.
So we don't even know what direction we're gonna go in.
He wants something like an original look, but custom at the same time.
-You know what I mean? -Yeah.
I kinda feel like we need to use some ABS on the doors,
and give it that stock look with the modern armrest on it.
-[Joel] I like that. -Yeah.
These looks like my parachute pants when I used to break dance.
-[Joel] You used to break? -Yeah.
[Shorty] You used to break...
[Shorty] Show me some moves, man.
-I don't know. -Come on, man. I know you still got it.
-All right. -Come on, PG.
-[Shorty] Come on, check it out Joel. -[Joel] Let me see.
I can't, I'm too-- I'm overweight.
Hey, man. Don't hurt to the interior guy, we gotta get this damn car done.
-He almost did it, man. -[Joel] Yeah, he started to.
He sized it up. I've seen it.
[indistinct]
Hey, we gotta start somewhere, so let's figure it out and go from there.
We'll get it done.
All right. In the meantime, I gotta get the guys
to come over here and assess the situation back here, so...
I'm gonna go and take a lunch.
I'm getting hungry. You wanna go?
[Joel] Man, that sound good, man. What you got?
[vehicle creaking]
-[Shorty] You see that, Charlie? -[Charlie] Yeah.
Everything that has been done to the car hasn't been done to specs.
So now we're gonna have to redo just about everything.
We're looking at the rear end and we wanna make sure that we can get it centered.
To have a good starting point.
Drop center, if you're unlevel, you're never gonna be right.
[Joel] We're walking up on Charlie. He's finally getting this rear end outta here.
And this is a nice rim. This is a nine-inch, you know,
four grand, super styled, super strong...
Well, it was.
[Shorty] Hey, Joel. Is this crooked? Or am I imagining things?
[Joel] Oh, no. That's crooked.
I'll say they got it hot.
-[Shorty] And look, they got spacers on it, on top of that. -[Charlie] Ooh.
[Joel] There's no spacer over here.
-You don't have a spacer on your side? -[man] Uh-uh.
[Charlie] So that's why they're trying--
Oh! To one side?
[laughs] You're right.
[Shorty] Yeah.
At the end of the day, this rear end is trash in multiple ways.
It's bent, for one.
The other side of it is that, you know, its offset is wrong.
Basically, when it got installed, the brackets got put in,
it shifted over to the driver's side and we need it to be centered.
They thought that this was actually gonna work?
[Joel] I believe somebody was gonna try it, Shorty.
Wow.
The drivetrain lined up with the rear end is very important.
You wanna keep your wheels in line with your front wheels as best as you can.
And this is just... This is crazy.
[Shorty] We got it out. We know it's not gonna work.
We're gonna get a new one, so it doesn't do that.
[machine whirring]
[Joel] We've got the rear end out, and, man, it looks bad.
So what I'm gonna do is call a buddy of mine.
[Joey] Hey, what up, man?
-Yo, McGrath, my man, check on this rear end for me. -Yeah, yeah.
Joey McGrath. I own Diligent Speed Shop in Waxahachie, Texas.
And we do a lot of hot rod stuff. Anything that goes fast.
[Joel] What do you think? Get rid of these?
[Joey] I'll cut some new brackets out on the plasma table.
Strip all the insides out of this rim. Get this one to scrap and we'll
get something set up that'll actually...
[indistinct]
[Joel] It looks like it got in a wreck with a train or something, man.
We're getting down on this '56 Bel Air.
The paint looks okay,
but there's still interior and a lot of fabbing that needs to be done.
Looks like we got a classic patch panel.
Oklahoma, to be exact.
It's a license plate.
[machine whirring]
In the '56 Bel Air, you know, they had this little patch panel over the tunnel here.
So I went ahead and cut out a piece.
Shaped it similar to what was already here.
And then what I'll do is I'll make a cut with my wheel,
then follow that cut with a smaller offset.
Then keep that line and gap real small for where I'm welding.
It makes a tighter fit.
[machine whirring]
Finished grinding up on this old patch here we made.
And moving on to holes all over the floor.
I was driving down the street,
and I happened just to pass by a "for sale" sign.
I ended up buying the truck from the old man.
And I was supposed to be running errands. So now,
I'm here at the shop and just added more work to the guys.
Hello!
-[Pete] What's up, Shorty? -[Shorty] What is that, bro?
Pete pulls up in a square body C-10. And I'm like, "Wow."
I hear it from miles away, I know it's not stock under that hood.
I know we don't have time for more work, but I couldn't pass this up.
-[Shorty] We've got time for more money. -[Pete] Yeah, more money.
This is what we call a buy, fix, and flip.
What are we gonna do?
I know we ain't just gonna leave it 'cause that would be impossible.
[Pete] To start with, that's a nice, solid truck.
Factory red truck. It is a real short wheel base.
So it hasn't been converted or anything from a long wheel--
[Shorty] I guess these days, since there've been so much,
that's another thing you gotta look out for now.
-[Pete] It's hard to find them. -[Shorty] Yeah.
We're gonna lower it to start with.
The rear, we're gonna do a C-notch.
[Joel] It can definitely use that.
And then we're gonna get some new wheels.
What we wanna do with this '84 C-10,
I wanna get it down, closer to the ground.
Definitely wanna take off the ugly cowboy bumper that's in the back.
We're gonna change the gauges out, but let me tell you why.
[Joel] Do I wanna know why?
Oh-ho. Somebody did an LS1 in here, huh?
What's cool about it, when you pop the hood, well, it's been upgraded to an LS.
So the motor and train's been already upgraded.
The rear end's already been upgraded also to be compatible
with the motor and the transmission.
And guess what?
-Not guessing. -[Pete] That AC blows snowballs.
Do the gauges work? 'Cause I don't think the gauges work.
[Pete] Gauges don't work.
The motor is LS1, 4L60 automatic transmission.
Pretty neat, pretty cool. Something that feel like you
can get in there, and hop in and drive in.
Go on. Drive it around and let's see what it really needs, Junior.
[Pete] Check it out, Junior.
Don't be scared. Oh, yeah.
[engine revving]
[Pete] You hearing it?
Not bad.
[Pete laughs]
Truck's gonna get an upgraded suspension, wheels, a tier,
gauges, so you can finally see what that LS is doing.
[Joel] We got this rear end the other day. I just wanted
you to take a look at it before we get our finals on it.
What do you think? That's what you wanted, right?
[Joey] That's a lot straighter than the old one.
I had Joey get us a new rear end for the '56.
Now comes the fun part, getting this rear end to fit.
[Joey] You have plenty of weld tub on the inside,
if you wanna change how much the lip sticks out.
Sanders wants a big lip on it, so we're gonna shrink the rear end an inch on each side,
-and that'll give us an inch of lip on the outside. -[Joey] Okay.
We've got all the measurements we need.
Let's get it over to the shop and get this thing welded up.
[machine whirring]
[Shorty] You got a plan?
Yeah, man. I'm gonna replace this right here.
This is the old piece. Core support, radiator support.
It goes on to the front end, and obviously, the welds were never good enough to stick.
The only thing I want is it to give me enough slack
to move the front end sideways
-like this if I have to. -Right.
And then that way, I can shim it up or down.
'Cause you know how these cars are.
-They need a lot of adjusting. -Right, yeah.
A lot of adjusting,
so if we do that, I think we're good.
So, we'll put plates on each end of the cross member.
It's gonna be bolt on and bolt off.
And we'll slot the holes for adjustment.
-What's up, Charlie? -Hey.
It looks awesome, Charlie.
Yeah, yeah, it's getting there.
Looks bad-ass.
[Charlie] Little bit of a cross member with a bolt on.
-We'll add some holes here. -[Shorty] That's awesome, man.
-Put a little tab over here, like so. -Yeah.
-Slide out the holes... -Yeah.
-...from side to side, you know what I'm talking about? -Yeah, yeah.
Once you get it cleaned up,
it's gonna look like it belonged there.
-Appreciate you, brother. -Yeah, yeah.
[man] Man, I hope this thing knocked us out.
Now that we've got our housing,
we need to get some measurements,
so we know exactly how far to cut it.
[metal creaking]
[Joey] 4.9, so we can take
five inches off our measurement
and that's how long we'll cut our tubes.
We know that our axle needs to be 28 inches on this side.
Plus, we're gonna subtract five inches
for our whole assembly here.
So, we'll make a mark at 23 and cut it.
[motor whirring]
Now we've got our fresh, new housing.
So we'll weld this one together with the jig,
that way everything comes out straight when we're done.
So, whenever we weld the back brace on it,
it's gonna wanna try to work for two to pull 'em in.
So, we're gonna strap it to this to try to hold everything in place.
All right. So, now we can weld the back brace on it
and not have to worry about it pulling it up too far.
It's nice to watch somebody else working for a little bit.
[Joey] Here we've got our center section.
We'll run the lineup bar through here
and this will make sure everything is centered.
Then we'll put our pucks on the end
and make sure everything lines up just right.
[machine whirring]
[Joey] It lines up perfectly.
As you can see, there's a nice, tight fitment
and the tube and everything lines up how it's supposed to.
That's the whole point of it now 'cause
as you weld it and heat it up,
it'll shrink the metal and pull it up to warp it.
Since we took our precautions and expected it to happen,
now our end result is a perfect lined-up housing.
Now, all we need to do is grind a bevel on this side
and then we can weld it all together.
[machine whirring]
The rear end for Sanders' car is coming out great.
You know, it's really cool to come over here and
spend some time with Joey
and watch him, watch his technique and learn some of the tricks
that he uses to make this stuff happen.
I can't wait to get it back to the shop and get it underneath the car.
This thing's gonna be bad-ass.
[Shorty] It's killer. You did awesome work, man.
So, I guess now, what are you guys, uh--
[Joel] We're gonna slide it up under here and, um,
get all this set up and--
[Joey] Make sure my measurements weren't off.
[Shorty] One, two, three.
There we go. Get this damn thing right.
[Joel] We just propped the rear end up, we set it up in the car,
and, man, phew, perfect.
The rear end's set up straight,
not only is it going to go down the road straight,
but it's gonna ride tremendously better.
[Joel] We've been pretty busy on the Bel Air, especially underneath it.
We're gonna set up the rear shocks.
You try to get a little bit of angle on your shocks.
Sometimes it's not possible. In this case, we're going
to try to angle it just a little bit.
Probably won't get much out of it,
but I want... Just a slight angle will change the ride.
These are just universal brackets,
and basically, we're just going to set these up.
Set the ride high and go from there.
[Joel] Even though we're busy on the '56,
there is some work to do on the '84 Silverado.
Today's a big day for this truck.
To get the stance right in these trucks,
you got to go low.
So, we're gonna do a mini C-notch on it,
and do a rear-end flip kit on it.
And that will bring it just right at the back.
We should end up around five in the front, seven in the rear.
Joel is really busy right now between the '56 Bel Air
and the C-notch on the '84 Silverado,
he's got his hands full.
Basically, what we're doing is a flip kit on this '84 C-10.
You can see your leaf springs are on top of your axles.
But we want to go low, like, real low.
So, in order to go low-low,
we're gonna take these leaf springs and put them underneath the axle.
So basically, what that's gonna do is move your axle up,
and then we're getting low.
-Forward. -Yeah.
A little bit.
Oh, too much.
[all grunting]
The mini C-notch allows for a lower stance on the truck.
However, it doesn't slam it on the ground.
So, basically you get to travel
between the axle and the frame.
We're gonna C-notch the frame a little bit.
All that it involves is just cutting a little C-notch out of it,
so the frame can basically accept the axle going into it.
So, we got the '84 C-10 here and, man, was this speedy.
I forgot how bad it was to lower a truck.
Well, especially this truck.
But check it out, we got the flip gate installed.
We got the mini C-notch installed.
We got the snubber installed. We're ready for some lifts.
So, we're putting the LS in the '56.
First things first, we're gonna use a mock-up motor
to kind of figure it out what direction we're gonna go in.
'Cause we're having to move the motor mounts.
A lot of stuff is getting moved around.
All right. Hold up.
[Joel] The first mount will be right at the edge.
You need to get it something. Like, set it up over side.
So, we can raise the car up and actually
set the motor into the top and be able to work.
And then from there, we'll take the measurements
from the motor, from the block to the frame,
and figure out what direction we need to go in with our motor mounts.
The biggest thing that we're gonna encounter
is the steering, because the rack is so low,
we're gonna have to make our way up around the motor mounts,
but we'll use heim joints to do that,
so that it'll rotate.
I guess, my next question is, are we gonna put...
You know, the radiator normally mounts on this side.
I'm putting the radiator on this side, this time around.
So we're gonna have the mounted radiator on that side
and the condenser. That should give us enough.
It's gonna be tight either way.
We're working on the gauges on the Silverado.
Junior did an awesome job making me a plate
for mounting the brain and the adapter
to translate the LS to the gauges.
It helps, you know. A good team is what makes you finish.
One of the things that you run into
installing an LS into an older vehicle,
when you take out factory stuff, it's not really
designed to house newer stuff,
so you got components and little modules that you have to mount.
So you always want to come in and take a little time
and kinda design it, kinda position where you're gonna put everything.
That way, you get good placement and your wiring stays clean.
We're doing a little bit of the wiring that has to be done
to get the translator to communicate with the engine and the truck.
And then we'll be installing this into the housing.
This is basically your control module for your digital gauges.
And as you can see, it accepts all the signals
from either your lights or all your sensors.
And what this does is translate everything that the ECM puts out
into a signal that this can read, so your gauges can work.
[machine whirring]
Sweet.
[engine starts]
Luckily, we didn't have to wait long
for the actual motor to come in for the Bel Air.
Here we have a Fourth Gen 6.0.
Our buddy, Adrian, hooked us up with it.
It's a Gen Four. This thing is going to produce
massive power for what we want in this car.
Now we'll run through the motor, change all the gaskets,
all the seals. Get it freshened up.
Put some color on it. We're gonna be replacing its DoD.
Got a fuel management cut-off system,
and all that is controlled by the cam.
So, we're gonna be replacing all of that.
Basically, we're just gonna use the block and replace everything else.
Junior is gonna take it outside and give it a bath.
[Junior] This is the driver's side 1, 3, 5, 7 on the coil pack.
These small blocks, before, they had pretty much a distributor
with a coil inside of them,
versus this is a coil per each cylinder.
As this coil gets signal, it shoots a spark into the spark plug.
They are color-coded wires,
but if you don't have that diagram on hand,
pro-tip, just always label them.
So, we're about to make the '56 Bel Air motor mounts.
And I went and got me a piece of stock.
We're gonna cut it with a plasma cutter.
You see this straight edge here,
I'm gonna use this as a guide,
and then the rest of this, I can hand-cut.
Well, there is the piece we cut out,
there is our template, it's a good match.
Little bit bigger, easier to remove than to add.
So, don't be scared to make it a little bigger.
So, now we got the motor mount all chewed and it looks great.
Next thing we're gonna do is we're gonna put our motor mount hole
where the bolt will go through and mount to the motor mount.
All right. Let's see how good we are here.
That's awesome.
That's really good.
So, now we get this thing welded up.
Get this mock-up motor out,
get the real motor in this thing now.
While Junior's working on the motor,
I'm gonna go ahead and build this transmission mount.
It's got to be custom because of the way it was built before.
We're gonna have to go back and match it,
so that it'll mount up to the transmission.
All right, so we're getting the trans mount set.
Now, it's looking really good.
That's a winner.
[Joel] On the '56, today we're assembling new brakes.
The unit had brakes but, uh,
let's say they were out of commission,
and we needed some new ones.
We're gonna get these ready, get 'em on the car.
Hopefully, set the car down soon.
'Cause I'm ready. It needs to be on the ground.
These brakes, not only are they big, but when you
have a car with this kind of power,
you definitely want to go with a good size rotor.
That way, you have good stopping capabilities.
You go with the stock rotor, the problem with that is,
you know, you're repeatedly hitting them and hitting them and hitting them,
and what happens is the pad actually starts heating up
and you start getting a glaze on them.
These are cross drilled, high-performance,
they're able to take the weather and heat,
so this should be able to stop just fine.
[Joel] The brakes are coming great on the '56.
I don't know if you guys know this or not,
but usually, when you put these aftermarket calipers on here,
you know, you have these little shims,
and what you have to do is basically
get the center of the caliper
right in the center of the rotor.
It's very important, because that's
gonna determine how your wear is on your pads.
What I do is, I'll take it and kind of set it up there.
You can see more or less if you need to come
to the inside or to the outside.
So, if you need to come to the inside, you'll put the shim right here,
and that way, you can move the caliper in or out
to get it to the center of the rotor.
So, now with the shims in there, the rotor is basically
right dead in the center of the caliper.
And that's what you want.
We got the rear seat for the '56 Bel Air.
We're gonna take this top section off
and then use the base of it only.
We're gonna foam it, then we'll have a back seat.
So, now that we cut everything out,
we got the back side of it in.
It's gonna sit right around in this section here.
We're gonna build the bottom section over here
because this car was already tubbed out,
so the bottom seat does not fit,
and then from there, we'll just start foaming everything up.
[machine whirring]
-Like a glove. -Look at that, man.
[chuckles]
That's bad-ass, guys.
The '84 red truck, Pete found it.
He wanted to lower it and put some wheels on it,
and so, me, Joel, and Junior jumped on it.
-What's up, Junior? Oh, yeah baby. -Check this out, Joel.
[whistles and whoops]
Just got to mount it. Ready to put it on the truck, man.
[machine whirring]
[Shorty] Ooh!
[all] Looks good, man.
[man] Exactly where I wanted it.
Hey, man! We got a little room in there.
The 24 is fitting a little snug.
We can't get tubs in time.
So, we're gonna go with 22s all the way around.
What's so cool, man,
is that usually, when we knock 'em out,
we say, "Hey, they're up for sale. They're ready to go."
I have a list of people
that are lookin' for square bodies.
And hopefully, I get somebody out here to come and take a look at it,
and see if they're interested in it.
-[Joel] Let's do it. -So let's do it.
-All right, guys. -Thank you, man.
I appreciate it. It came out amazing.
-[Shorty] What are you up to? -Trying to tackle those...
Find one thing and it's onto the next,
and then that thing leads to the next.
The way I see it is there's too many obstacles.
There's a lot of things here that you cannot see.
The hardware for the spindles is missing,
the lines were missing.
You look at it, and it looks like a car,
and you're thinkin', "Oh, man--
-We can bridge right through it. -Yeah.
And it's totally opposite.
It's becoming something that
I'm starting to wonder what we're gonna be able to do.
At the end of the day, man, I'm gonna keep grinding.
We gotta tame it sooner or later. It's gotta be tamed,
-you know what I mean? -Okay.
[Joel] Look at that, man.
[Shorty] Damn, Junior.
[Joel] What is this, man?
-Is this a radiator? -I ain't opened it yet.
Junior came through with a radiator in this '56 Bel Air.
At this point, we take any win we can.
All right, be careful.
It's already got a couple little dents on it.
It does?
[Shorty] Yeah, just a couple.
Hey, why is this thing so little, though?
It's already set up for LS.
[all] Mmm.
LSs are smaller.
Junior, I hope this thing fits, man.
Here, let me do it.
-You seem a little excited. -Uh, I'm excited.
[chuckles] The dawg's ready, man.
You brought the light, Junior.
-This thing's heavy, man. -I'm telling you.
[Shorty] You know what? It looks like it's gonna fit just fine.
You said that this side has more room,
so that's why we chose to go this side,
-versus the other side. -Yeah.
But I can see that the angle, like, down there,
it's got the angle for the tub.
So, yeah, it goes from this side.
There we are, Junior.
Good job. You found it.
The guys worked really hard on this '84 Silverado,
and now it's Pete's turn to get it out of here and get some money.
Finally came the day,
all the crap that I put on the guys,
it's all knocked out. And I'm excited because,
well, I get to invite someone that's on the wishlist to show the car today.
What's up, Shorty?
What's going on, guys?
Shorty, this is Abel, man.
He's the guy I sent the wishlist.
-Looking for a C-10. -Hey, how are you doing?
My name is Abel Jimenez.
Came out here to look at a
'84 Chevy pickup that I'm interested in.
That's the type of pickup that I had before.
Family comes first,
so I had to get rid of my trucks.
But now I've had the opportunity to purchase one.
What we got here,
it's a all original '84 pickup truck.
We ended up going around, ripping up
all the original trim.
We ended up putting it on a lift,
turned down the whole suspension,
and replaced it with a whole brand-new lowering kit.
New wheels.
We did a 22 by 8-and-a-half up front
with a 22 by 10 in the rear.
Go ahead and take a seat.
And I'll show you what we did inside.
-[engine starts and revs] -So we upgraded the gauges,
and what better yet than some cold AC?
[air blowing]
-Yep. It's cold. -Yep.
The '84 Silverado,
to start off with is a nice, pure,
preserved Texas truck.
You open up the hood...
What we've got here, it's a LS1,
followed with the 4L60 automatic transmission.
You got the aluminum radiator with dual fans.
And you also got the power steering and the power brakes set up.
That's one of the major perks,
is the engine of this whole truck.
It's not a full custom truck,
just a mild custom. And I just figured,
seeing you on the wishlist and the ballpark
where you wanted to be around, I figured,
maybe you'd be the right person for this truck.
[Shorty] So what do you think, Abel? You like it?
[Abel] Yes, sir.
[Shorty] You bought it?
-[Abel] Not yet. -He hasn't talked to the other half.
Yeah, that's what I figured.
-Hey, I have to do that too, so... -Yeah, talk to the other half.
It's the perfect stance.
The tires, the staggered rims, it is perfect.
I'm really happy.
Now, I just gotta go back home
and convince my wife
this is what I want.
We'll see what the other half says.
And if she says yes,
I told him, 30-mile radius, I'll deliver it for free.
Joel, need some help.
[Joel] So, we got the rear end mocked up.
Fits great. Sent it off to powder coating.
But, man, did it come back fast.
Now, it's time to get it into 'the 56.
There's no way. Is that possible for you to do it that fast?
You dropped her off at lunch time--
And you get her back two hours later.
-Right? -[laughing] Yeah.
Hey, look, it's still hot.
-[Joel] Yeah, I know, that's what I'm saying. -[Shorty] Check it out, man.
-[Joel] It's awesome, huh? -It looks good, man. It's awesome.
Oh, man, check that out.
That looks too cool.
Customer's gonna love it.
Once you get it back from the powder coater,
everything should be good to go.
Just make sure you clean up the holes where the bolts are gonna go,
and then set it on the car.
[machine whirring]
Junior's got this thing set up already,
so I think we're almost ready for some paint.
-Hey, Shorty. -Yes, sir.
You gonna paint that motor for me today?
-Mmm-hmm. Yeah. -Okay.
Well, we're thinking about doing that turquoise color.
You think you can whip something up?
[Shorty] I think I can make something real quick.
[Joel] You know, hand-mix it.
[Shorty] Yeah, I'm gonna hand-mix it.
This is white.
We're just gonna play it by ear.
Let's try some, uh,
blue-green.
[Joel] That one's crazy, man.
[Shorty] It looks like it's getting closer.
Let's come over here and see.
-[Joel] It's good. -[Shorty] Is that close enough?
[Joel] I think so, man.
-It's on the motor, so, I mean, it's gonna be-- -Yeah.
It's a little bit on the blue side.
It needs to be on the green side.
-Yeah, I can tweak it a little more. -Yeah.
-That was quick. -Just a hair.
It's gonna be on the engine, so it doesn't have to be, like, uh,
I would say, like, perfectly dead on.
As long as it's really close.
Just a little bit more tweaking
and I think we'll have the color dead on.
Ensure everything's shining.
You wanted blue,
you got blue.
I think it looks pretty cool.
[drilling]
Mark this and cut that.
[spraying]
What do y'all think? Look at this.
Contrast of this material makes everything pop.
The thicker thread on this,
I think it's coming out great.
Man, I wish I could do this to my truck or something.
I think I'm gonna have to keep this in mind.
-[Shorty] They want a cup holder. -Cup holder.
Have to have a cup holder for his drinks.
So, that will be mounted in front of the seat,
on the center trans tunnel.
Sanders wanted cup holders.
So we're gonna build him a little small console with cup holders
and add a little cellphone pocket on there.
Little tray for his keys,
-his little phone. -[Pedro] Keys, quarters, phone.
So, on the center console, we're gonna use
the same material we used on the top insert on the seats,
onto the console, so it ties everything all together.
Man, that would look cool.
If you run this around it and then run that insert in there.
-Yeah, that would look cool. -Yeah, give it a contrast.
[Shorty] Yeah.
[machine whirring]
[Shorty] That must be the smallest console I've ever seen.
But you know what?
Sanders wants a cup holder, so that's what he gets.
In the '56 Bel Air,
we finally got the steering issue figured out.
We decided to go with just a single on both ends
and build the motor mount around them.
And it still turns with no problems.
We're gonna set up the front runner on the '56 right now.
Tapping the holes right now for the motor mounts.
And then Junior is getting the hub mart balancer installed.
Well, it's tight.
-I got you, bro. -[Joel] Super tight.
[engine starts]
All right, come up.
I got you. It's gonna clear.
All right, we're in.
[drilling]
Joel and Junior are laying down the sound deadener.
And I'll tell you what,
this thing is starting to look really good.
I see you're laying down the boom.
You know why? This car needs to boom out of here.
-Yeah. It's almost there, bro. -[Shorty] Right?
It's almost like you should have
done this first so you can get in here and work.
But I know why you don't wanna put it down first, Joel.
I'll turn it into a tarring animal.
That looks beautiful, man.
Everyone is getting down on this '56 Bel Air.
Junior and Joel are wiring the motor.
And PG and his team are installing the interior.
So, the upholstery came out real beautiful.
I think those colors just hit the spot on it.
Ooh! [grunts]
Boy, that looks nice.
Oh, that feels comfortable too.
[Shorty] Since all the engine compartment is blue,
these red letters just don't jive,
so we're gonna tone it down a little bit.
Everything came together really good.
Everything on the engine bay that was done, it looks great.
Everything looks really clean.
Joel did a heck of a job again.
[Shorty] It looks like it's supposed to.
All right. All right.
Can we get that delivered pretty fast?
Okay, sounds good.
It looks like we're gonna miss our deadline on the '56 Bel Air by about a week.
[Pete] Oh.
Y'all had me worried when I talked to y'all earlier.
I got a call from Sanders this morning. Well, as always,
customers always want to get a update
and, uh, get a confirmation on how we're looking on the delivery date.
You made it seem like it was just still in pieces.
It kinda is.
We're way more ahead of the game
than I expected, to be honest with you.
The car is almost there. We're in the final lap.
For the most part, the car looks complete, you know.
-[Pete] Yeah. -[Shorty] It's your special, right there.
[Pete] That's my favorite right there.
-[Shorty] Picasso special. -[Pete] Love it.
Every time we tackled something,
uh, we moved on to something else,
it had to be reconfigured.
Just too many obstacles to overcome.
The car, however,
if you look at it right now, it looks awesome.
The interior looks great on it.
All the mechanical, as far as what Joel and Junior have done,
it looks amazing.
And then PG's touch.
Look at that. I like that touch on top.
Gotta go back to the old days, the nostalgia days.
I'm kinda excited about it because, well,
it came out amazing.
We set the seat back just a little bit.
Gave us enough leg room between the dash and the seat.
The motor looks amazing, man. The transmission looks amazing.
[Joel] When I first got Joey over here to look at that rear end,
man, I could see it in his face.
This is one thing that we're gonna have to tackle pretty fast, and,
man, oh, did we get it tackled.
This thing is awesome.
New brake lines, new fuel lines,
new gas tank.
Every inch on this car we touched, you know.
The only good thing is it had a solid paint job.
The trim was pretty solid. There was a few pieces missing.
We got that on order, so I think we're gonna make this a really beautiful car.
[Pete] All the wiring is hidden. You can't even find it.
The LS looks amazing.
The matching color to match the body of the car.
Small little details in the back covers
that Shorty touched came out amazing.
[Shorty] If Pete fits in there, anybody gonna fit.
[grunts] Oh, yeah.
-I mean, how does that feel to you? -Yeah.
That's good right there. Just real tight dash to the seat.
Sanders is almost my height,
so I think this will be perfect.
I know we got some silk plates on here.
They're on back order. Other small things are waiting to get here.
Especially the wheels.
We got some nice raceline billets coming for the car.
I can't wait for them to arrive
so we can put this car finally on the ground.
In the end, I think the motor mounts worked out great.
The steering is dead on.
This thing should probably do around 450 to the wheels,
so it's gonna be an unstoppable car going down the road.
We're way ahead of the game.
We're not done, unfortunately,
but, I think, with Sanders,
if he were to walk here himself,
he'd be excited about it.
I'm disappointed, but I'm excited.
-Yeah. -Both,
because, you know, I know how Joel is, you know,
he wanted to get this car done.
If you look at the car now, compared to how it came in,
I mean, it's amazingly different.
This was a big challenge for us.
On the back seat, it was like a puzzle
without the parts there, and we got it done.
Once we button up everything we need to,
it's gonna be like Sanders wanted,
Greased Lightnin'.
Let's find out what he says. I hope he's excited like I am.
And I appreciate the hard work, guys.
It looks amazing, man.
-Let me know what he says. -Okay.
-Thank you, guys. -All right, man.
We just got the wheels in for the '56.
Super excited to see what they're gonna look like.
[Shorty exclaiming]
Damn! That's a bad-ass wheel.
Man, that makes a huge difference.
The new racelines that we just put on the '56 Bel Air
look amazing.
The wheels make all the difference.
So, I heard, Pete, you're a break dancer.
I'm here to challenge you and Junior.
We never turn down a challenge.
I need to sit down for this.
-Oh, let me see. -[rap music plays]
[all exclaiming]
[all laughing]
Bring it on.
-[dance music playing] -Oh, man.
-Oh. Oh, my God! -[all cheering]
[man] I haven't seen one of these in a long time.
[all cheering]
[Pedro] Grandmaster PG.
And I'm stuck in form and hitting the saw machines.