Finishing Touches On The Joe Gibbs Truck

Hey, welcome to trucks and the second and final installment in Project Blackjack. Now, I hope that you have been following this project because I'm building it for one of you. That's right. This

is a giveaway truck. It is cool. Now, just in case you don't know what's going on. Not quite sure what we're talking about. We're gonna bring you up to date. Roll that footage.

This is a 2003 Joe Gibbs, Silverado

and it comes decked out with leather seats,

special front fascia

badges and wheels

and of course a supercharger.

Now, what I've added to it so far

is a performance air ride suspension to make it handle better.

Now,

this involves dumping most of the original suspension,

cutting the frame for notches,

notching the bed for clearance

and mounting the compressors and tank and hardware in the bed. Finally, I topped it all off with bare brakes to make it stop better.

Ok. We have the performance taken care of, we have the breaking taken care of. We have the handling taken care of.

Now, let's do something about the appearance starting with that hood. It's just flat and bland and stock

Well, we have a solution to this problem. Right over here.

This is from Keystone Restyling products

and they call it their twin scoop Ram air hood for

obvious reasons. Now, these are specifically made for the 03 and up Silverado and avalanches. Now, take a look at this.

You got all fiberglass construction, fully finished top and bottom. So it's gonna look good when you raise the hood, we'll show you that here in a minute.

Then up on top, you have two functional very cool scoops

with the grills already installed.

Now to go with that,

you have the air box and what this does is allow the air that comes through the scoops to make it into the engine.

If you wanna change the look and attitude of your truck, one of the best ways to do it is with the custom hood.

Alright. You got it.

Installing a keystone good hood is really easy because they bolt right in place of the stock hood

and they use all of the original hardware.

Matter of fact, all you really have to do

is line it up

under the hood. We are gonna make a few changes because even though this is supercharged, notice it is pulling air through the stock filter box

now. No, you can't do that. No, that is so restrictive. That's like making the super charger suck through a straw.

You have got to get some air to this thing now. Like I told you before, this hood has functional scoops. Here's that hook them up,

simply pull off the stock filter

and the air box assembly

then install a new ram air box

and the high flow filter.

All right, what's going on here is this box keeps all this hot air from under the hood from getting into the engine

as rubber seal seals up against the hood where all that cool air coming from, the scoops goes down through the filter and into the engine.

This kind of setup will definitely give you more cool fresh air

than that old stock box did.

All right, the next appearance item we're gonna put on

involves graphics and striping.

Now, Joe Gibbs performance has just come out with a striping kit for the truck. So that's what we're gonna put on.

Now, the first thing you wanna do is clean the truck thoroughly

and then

saturate the fender

with a solution of soap and water.

Now lay the decal in place and position it.

The soap and water solution will allow you to move the sticker around

until you get it in the perfect position.

Now, once you've got it right and you're sure,

then you want to take a Squeegee

and Squeegee out all the soap and water

and the sticker on

for door gaps just cut in the center and roll them in.

Ok. Since this is a special truck, it needs something to identify it as such.

So we went to a

apps.com

and how to make this special blackjack decal

for us. Now, check this out. It's just really cool. You've got the Ace and Jack playing cards in Spades.

You have the blackjack logo and then you have the actual blackjack right there in the center just to

serve as a reminder that this truck has the ability to pop you and leave you shaking your head if you mess with it.

Now, the cool thing about a wraps is that they'll do little decals like this or they can do a full wrap to completely cover your vehicle. Matter of fact, if you can dream it, they can do it.

And of course, they install just like a regular decal, which I'm going to do while you are taking a break.

Hey, welcome back to trucks and the final stage of project blackjack where I'm getting ready to dig into one area that's almost always ugly

and is usually overlooked by people on a late model truck and that is the bed. Now, take a look at this,

you know, the sides and the wheels wells. Now they still look really good, but look at that bed floor.

This is just a stock metal ribbed floor and of course, it's all scratched up because

it's a truck. But you know, what are you gonna do? It's not like you can put a,

a nice wood bed in there like a classic truck.

But what if I told you, you could put a wood bed in a late model truck.

Well, you'd probably say, now, show me, dude,

that's exactly what we're gonna do.

The first stop is to Bruce Hockey's wood and parts to get what they call a show bed.

Now, at first glance, this looks like a typical wood bed kit.

You've got high quality oak planks already have the shoulders cut into them.

Then you have the stainless skid strips that go between the planks and actually hold them in place.

However, this kit also comes with extra hard we

and this aluminum sub floor because the show bed actually mounts down on top of your stock metal bed. That's right. You don't have to cut or drill your stock bed to put this in.

Ok. The first thing that you need to do is also the most time consuming and that is to put a finish and a sealer on your wood. Now, as you can see, we've already done that here

because I have shown you numerous times in the past how to do this properly. So there's really no reason to go into it again.

But I do wanna give you a couple of reminders. First of all, make sure that you're putting sealer on the sides and on the bottom of the wood. This will protect the wood from moisture. Also,

you need to put at least three coats on the top because it needs the most protection.

All right.

We'll start by setting out the Subra

pieces for each side,

then we'll lay on the skid strips

followed by the boards.

Now, don't get nervous here because these pieces are clearly marked. So, you know exactly where to put them.

The boards and strips are held in place with special bolts that allow you to tighten them from the top.

But

before you cinch them down, make sure that everything is evenly spaced and square.

Next,

just assemble the rest of the boards

and strips on the sub frames.

The kit also comes with a rubber padding.

So the show bed doesn't rub or squeak against the metal floor.

Now carefully set the sub frames in place.

Then follow that by installing the sideboards

and the short strips.

Next comes the center plank

and strips

finally slide on the rear seal plate to finish it off.

Now take a look at this.

Wow, what an incredible difference. A real wood bed in a late model truck, but it gets better than this. Let's say you wanna carry an engine or something heavy and greasy

and all you have to do is pull out this rear seal plate, take out this center board and those two side pieces will lift right out. Take you all of five minutes.

Well, there it is project blackjack. Now, the good news is if you wanna build a truck like this or put some of these parts on your own truck. Well, you can

because almost everything that I put on this rig you can get directly from Joe Gibbs performance. However,

it will not be a blackjack truck.

There's only one of those and it's going to one of you. So

good luck,

you know, one of the most popular trucks ever made has got to be the Chevy S 10.

They were cool,

they were cheap and they just begged to be customized.

So when Chevy decided to replace the S 10 with the Colorado,

that was a big deal, man. Some people hated it. Some people liked it.

Most people were like, yeah, it's ok.

Well, Trent Van Arden

and Trent's trick upholstery saw the potential in the new Colorado

and decided to build one and somewhere along the line

it went from a Colorado

to Colorado.

The first thing that received attention was the front end.

It got a customized lower Facia billet grill

and a custom hood.

The headlights were also blacked out to give the front a more subtle sinister feel

and eliminate that stacked grill on top of a grill, headlight look,

two different colors of paint and a black accent

were not only used effectively on the bed

and the body

and the wheels,

but also under the hood and everywhere else you can imagine.

Now, since Trent specialty is custom upholstery,

the interior of this thing is spectacular.

The door panels, handmade

floor mats,

handmade

the dash,

handmade, stuffed with state of the art electronics.

The center console is a wild original design

that works perfectly with the custom seats and everything is wrapped in leather,

but it doesn't stop there. No,

no. The interior continues out into the bed.

And if you thought the stereo was great inside, check this out what used to be drums. Now, house custom speakers,

custom electronics are everywhere.

And of course, once again, leather, leather, everywhere you look

now, no custom truck is complete without dealing with the stance

and this one is easy to deal with.

You've got big inch rollers on low profile tires

and an air suspension that allows you to lay that body right down low where you want it

and there you have it, the trance truck upholstery, Colorado. So what do you think? Do you like it?

Yeah. Well, you're not the only one like we already showed you. It's not only been featured in magazines,

but it's also walked away with numerous awards at major auto shows with a most prestigious being this GM design award at S A.

Yeah, pretty impressive. So will the Colorado ever be as popular as the S 10?

Only time will tell on that? But if this is any indication,

it's definitely off to a good start.

You know, when you're talking about big rigs, there's just some things that people associate with them, the smell of diesel and the smoke out the pipes and this sound here.

Now, most people have no idea. What that sound means. Well, it's an air system but since you don't have it on your car or truck, well, most people don't know what's going on, but we're gonna change that

because this is how it works,

how it works is brought to you by Wyotech.

All right. What we've got here is an actual working model of an air brake system. Like you'd find on a big rig.

Now, Danny and I are gonna talk you through it. Keith is gonna hit the brake pedal when we need him to.

All right, Danny, what we got here? Well, this is the heart of the system. This is the air compressor that supplies air to the tractor and to the trailer. Ok. And behind you are the front brakes because this is a steering axle. Let's see how they work.

All right, pretty simple, pretty straightforward.

What is this here? This is the air dryer. It takes water out of the system and it is very, very important.

Yeah, I would think. So.

Did you have to drain that at all? No, it does it all by itself in the air governor.

Now, of course, the regular brake pedal

that controls brakes all the way through when you hit that

in the tractor and trailer all the way through. Sure

does. Now, what is this trailer? Control valve only to the trailer? We're not putting any air to the tractor at that time only to the trailer. Now, why would a driver want to use that if it would happen? This trailer would get out of control just a little bit. We can put some uh braking to that and kind of straighten it up just a little bit. All right.

Now you got valves here. And what are these two guys? This is our parking brakes for our tractor and for our trailer

locking her down. Sure does.

Ok. And obviously your tanks. Now, this is everything that's in the cab. For the most part. It sure is. Everything here is still on the tractor. But now we're getting back into the rear ax.

We are. What are these tanks? These are the primary and the secondary tank. Again, we've got some safety features here to where if we would lose air it out of one tank, we still have air in the other. So we've always got air. Yes, we do. All right.

Now, this is an example of what you'd find back on the tandem axles. Keith, go ahead and hit the brakes.

See how that works pretty straightforward. Opens the drums, locks it down.

All right. Moving back here. This is an example of what we just saw down on that brake drum.

All right, explain this to us. This is the service just like we were looking at and when he hits the foot pedal,

it actuates the, the cam.

Go ahead, Keith.

All right. That's your normal brakes.

All right. What's this? Canister back here. This is our brake canister. All right. And you can tell that we've got air in there right now. When we pull the lever back there, it releases all the air and it's actually a spring in there. That is our parking brake, your parking brake back in this little bit.

Ok.

Now, once again, the

factor, now we're moving into the trailer.

What do we got here? We've got some glad hands. Now, why are they called glad hands? Because they're really, really happy.

Good answer. Good

answer. These tanks primary and secondary again. And we do have those safety features in there. And then of course, we've got just the normal brakes. Keith, go ahead and hit them

and that's just

lots of breaks down on the trailer, same process in the trailer. All right. So the next time you run it down the road and you hear this sound

now, you know how it works. This is really cool

simplistic, isn't it? Yeah, it does a great job

and it's got a lot of stopping power.

If you wanna get a gearhead, talking, start talking about engines and we love them. However, not everybody has got the time or the tools or the ability to build their own engine. And that is where AutoZone comes in with these performance long block engines. Now, these have all the machine work done.

They're board out, they're lion

honed, they're decked

and then the crank and the rods are reworked to put them within spec

and then all the things like pistons and rings and bearings and the timing set, that's all new.

The heads are reworked with new valves and springs and it's got a three angle valve job. So basically all you have to do

is drop it into your vehicle, put your accessories on it and you are ready to rock and

AutoZone backs these up with a three year warranty, which is pretty amazing considering

how most of us drive.