Legends That Shaped The Industry

Hey, welcome to trucks. I have got an awesome show planned for you today

because we're gonna take a look at some of the legends and the icons that have shaped this industry

and help make it what it is today.

Now, this first guy just might be the greatest driver of all time. Now, I know that is a huge statement but you know what's even cooler? Some of his wildest victories came behind the wheel

of an old Ford Bronco. Yeah. Roll it, Scott

to

be

with the

born in 1933 Parnelli Jones grew up driving the rough and tumble dirt tracks around the country.

He quickly rose to the top with his aggressive driving style and ability to win races.

Before long. He had moved up to driving the fastest, most advanced cars of the time, the open wheel indie cars

then in 1963 Parnelli not only won the greatest spectacle in racing, the Indy 500

but he also set a record in the process.

So you pretty much raised everything

and why was that? You just like to raise people calling you up? I always think it more as anything is I like to see what's on the other side of the hill.

You know, I guess that's the best way I could describe it because once I seem to accomplish something,

you know, I kind of want adventure into trying something else.

The next few years saw an amazing evolution in racing with the development of the rear engine design.

Then in 1967 Parnelli drove the turbine powered car to a near victory at Indy.

When after leading most of the race, the car puked out on him with only three laps left.

When I drove the turbine car, you know, I was leading the race. I was thinking winning again was not gonna be as great as it was the first time.

And of course, when it quit, uh, toward the end, you know,

I, uh,

it helped me make a decision

during this time, Parnelli never the type to do the same thing twice partnered with V

Miletic

and established one of the most successful racing teams of all time.

Vel's Parnelli Jones racing.

It was this team and their Johnny Lightning cars that Allen who drove to back to back victories in 7071 at Indianapolis.

Now, during all this car racing,

Parnelli was approached by Bill Strop

about doing some off road racing.

He knew how to get to me and he said, well, you're probably not man enough.

So Parnelli decided to try it

and found he was not only man enough,

but it was a heck of a lot of fun.

So Jones and Strop

decided to get serious

and they hatched the plan for the big lie. Bronco

named for sponsor Olympia beer

and painted like a big beer can.

Big lie was based on the Ford Bronco. A

highly modified Ford Bronco,

the body was fiberglass. So there were no doors to dink with.

Now it's not only safe weight but it also made replacing the panels very easy after Parnelli bashed them all up, which was quite often I play a lot powered by a 400

horsepower small block Ford engine,

the two wheel drive tube chassis off road racer, not only dominated Baha and set new standards in design and engineering,

but it also became one of the most famous racing vehicles of all time.

Now, one of the most unique features of big lie, of course, was this big old wing on the top and it was fully functional. It pulled on all of Parnelli experience running indie cars.

Now you had an air intake here in the front air came in, came out, the vents here went across the bottom of the wing and of course, as the driver, it would go over your head, you wouldn't feel it.

If you reached up there at about 100 miles an hour, you would definitely feel it.

Now the wing was also fully adjustable. All you had to do was pull this lever here

and that would change the pitch of the wing and allow you to adjust how much down force that you had. Yeah. Really cool. That's not all though.

Say you're running at night, you need some auxiliary lighting. See where you're going.

All you had to do is flip this

auxiliary off road lights during the day, pull them down, aerodynamics return.

This is cool as steak, especially for the early seventies.

I'm sure that it does. Parnelli and Big Olie were so popular. They also made a movie appearance in the original gone in 60 seconds.

Just get my Bronco back. I guess when I was racing,

I didn't feel like anybody could beat me,

you know.

Uh, that's all, I mean, you know, I, I know

that, uh,

every

race driver that I've ever raced certainly has a lot of respect for me.

You know, my peers have always had a lot of respect for me.

So,

you know, what can you say? I just quit early. I mean, I was only 33 or 34 years old when I quit running Indy cars

and, uh,

people couldn't believe that I would quit, but, you know, I started when I was 17 years old and,

you know, and,

and like I said, uh,

yeah,

winning again that Indy wasn't gonna be as great as it was the first time, which helped me make a decision that

if you're not gonna be that great, what the heck are you doing it for

now? I'm sure you can see why I built crazy horse to pay tribute to Parnelli and Big Oli. He was an amazing driver with a fantastic rig.

But was he the greatest driver of all time?

I don't know. That's, that's a tough one. There's been a lot of really good ones. Let's see what some other people think if Parnelli were in his prime today and he was a contemporary of Jeff Gordon and

Earnhardt Junior and all of them.

I honestly believe Parnelli Jones would kick their ass.

I regard Parnelli Jones one of the very best that ever lived.

And the reason I'm saying that, uh, not only because we're good friends, it's because

I've seen him drive anything. I mean, put him in a mi

put him in a sprint car, put him in a Ken M car, put him in a stock car, put him in an Indy car

and he's a winner.

And guys, I can't think of another driver with that kind of record, which means all these great drivers today,

just like all the great drivers back then are still trying to keep up with the Jones.

You know, one of the most popular racing vehicles ever built was not a truck,

but then again, it wasn't a car either.

It was a belly tank

out of a World War two airplane and

it said

socal speed you up on the side. But

why is that important? And

what does that have to do with trucks?

Well, you're gonna find out as soon as I get out of this thing.

The SOCAL speed shop was opened in 1946

by a man named Alex

Exitus who had a burning desire to go really fast

and figured other guys did too

before long. The SOCAL vehicles all painted red and white were a dominant force at the Dry Lakes races and of course, the Bonneville Salt Flats.

This is where Alex drove his belly tanker to a world record speed of 205 miles an hour.

However, around 1967

Alex closed the SOCAL speech shop to pursue other interests and the name went dormant

and tell Pete

Sapura stepped into the picture.

I wonder if Alex has still got the SOCAL name

because I didn't know that if he did or not. So I called him.

I, you gonna have lunch tomorrow?

Yeah.

So he comes down here, we go to lunch.

I says I got a plan.

I says, I, what do you think? I said, what about in SOCAL?

Now, Pete

Chorus was no newcomer to hot rodding. No,

no, it was his legendary 34 Ford. The California kid

that ignited the imagination of a whole new generation of hot rodders as it ripped around the screen with Martin Sheen at the wheel.

The power of TV is unbelievable. I mean, we've been over there beating ourselves to death and the minute that, the minute that car hit the screens, man, I mean, our phone started ringing, it made our business. So the car gave us an awful lot over the years.

It, first of all, it brought Jake and I together and it brought Gray Baskerville and I together

which put us in with Hot Rod magazine and Rod and Custom at the time.

And then the movie turned a whole audience on to hot rotting of a whole new genre

and it just took our business right to the moon.

It was just spectacular.

It was Pete's desire that the new Socal

Speed Shop be what the old one was, a legitimate speed shop packed with some of the best builders around.

This group demands the highest level of quality. These are a lot of young guys

and it's amazing. Some of the, some of the stuff that they're cranking out. I'm really proud of what they do.

Now, there are some shows on other networks

that portray hot rod shops as full of a bunch of buffoons that do bad work and can't get along with each other and have an idiot for a boss. Now, that might be entertaining,

but you sure as heck wouldn't want to take your car truck to them. Now, you're not gonna find that at Socal Speed Shop though. Now, you got real craftsmen doing real work on really, really cool vehicles.

Now, obviously, Socal specializes in traditional style hot rods but

that's not all they do. Now.

They're also on the cutting edge of technology

and working with GM on the SSR,

as well as pursuing a world record with the new GM four cylinder Ecotech

engine, which is stuffed into everything from the new H HR body,

heavily modified, of course

to a modern version of Alex's old belly tanker, which is a nice tribute to where this all began.

So as you can see, Socal

Speed Shop has got a legendary history buried clear back at the beginning of Hot Rotting, but

they're not just stuck back in the past. Oh man,

they're moving forward into the future and that future involves building some really cool trucks.

Now, you might be thinking that's great, but

they don't build them like they used to. No,

they don't.

Socal

builds them better.

You know, one guy that's been kicking around in the automotive industry for a long time is Gail Banks. You've seen these commercials and you've seen me install his products here on the show with some pretty amazing results.

But

just who is this guy? You know, what's his credentials? Does he really know what he's doing or is he just mixing up some snake oil? Well, we're gonna find out because we're not only gonna take you inside gel banks engineering, see what's going on,

but we're also gonna show you how they continue to push the envelope for the whole automotive industry

tucked in back of the massive facility is a state of the art race shop where all kinds of research and development goes on to squeeze more power out of both gasoline and diesel engines.

Now, this is a highly secretive thing that Hale is working on. So secretive that you can't show it to anybody. We'd have to kill you,

but

Gayle's not around here. So.

Oh, man, check this out.

This wicked little truck is being built to go road racing. Not wild enough. Huh?

Well, it's gonna be running a high RPM, 700 horsepower

Duramax diesel engine

and run against Porsches and Ferraris.

Yeah. Now that's wild.

This dodge Dakota just happens to be the world's fastest street legal truck running over 220 miles an hour at Bonneville after towing its own trailer to get there.

This World War two tank engine,

well, it's being fitted with twin turbos to go on Jay Leno's massive Roadster that

just happens to have one of those huge engine stuff somewhat under the hood.

But what is all this high performance stuff? Really? For simple.

It provides research to develop products that you can use on your rig.

And that's where the engineering part comes in.

Electrical parts and components are designed and developed in house.

So the electrical systems will be compatible with the rest of the engine and produce the desired power increases.

I'm kinda into an endurance

to have endurance. You have to have air,

you have to deal with the air to the turbo,

the turbo itself,

the ducting out of the turbo,

the intercooler, the ducting into the engine and the cylinder heads.

And until you've done that you've never made the freaking horsepower you can make

with airflow,

inner coolers are developed and tested for flow and efficiency.

Using state of the art equipment,

engine parts like intakes or air boxes are first sketched out

modeled in the computer

and then the piece is fabricated so it can be tested.

Now, this is what a finished piece would look like. Now, it's an exact replica

made out of a BS plastic and you can literally bolt this on an engine or a flow bench and see how it's gonna perform. Now, if it passes the test,

the piece will then be replicated

in metal or carbon fiber or whatever banks decides to use. If it doesn't pass the test, it's not good enough. It goes back to the guys in the design room and they tweak on it

until it's exactly how they want it.

Cool.

Then the parts are

dyno and tested and basically put through the ringer to see what kind of improvement there is. If it's acceptable, the part goes into production so you can buy it.

But that's not the only benefit

by putting so much

emphasis on design and engineering to get legitimate power as opposed to quick easy fixes to make a buck banks has influenced this whole industry and what is expected from aftermarket parts. That is something

we all benefit from

when you spend a lot of time and money painting and finishing out your vehicle. The last thing you want is to see the weather or birds or whatever,

destroy the paint and the best way to protect that is to cover it. Now, I'm not talking about one of those cheap plastic tarps from Home Depot. No,

I'm talking about a quality cover from cover craft.

Now, these are made out of a special four layer material

that is extremely waterproof and also protects from the sun and dust and even those pesky birds,

but

the fabric is also breathable. So any moisture that gets underneath will be able to escape.

This inner liner is also very soft so it protects your paint. Now cover craft has these for almost every vehicle ever made. But if you have something crazy like crazy horse,

they will custom make a cover. All you gotta do is send the measurements. So if you wanna protect your investment,

a cover craft cover is money well spent

for you. Diesel performance guys. Bully dog technologies has just come out with their latest version of the power programmer.

It's called the Triple dog power pup.

Now, this thing features four shift on the fly settings to give you up to 230 extra horsepower,

but

it's also upgradable so you can keep it current

and it is compatible with all the current Ford Chevy and Dodge engines. So you can transfer this from truck to truck.

So if you wanna check out the newest evolution and power programmers,

give bully dog a call.

You know, some of the worst news to come from Ford since they

introduced the

EDO

is the fact that they're canceling the lightning. All of a sudden one of the most incredible performance trucks ever built is no longer available.

So what do you do?

Well, you build your own starting with this super charger kit from Rausch

perform.

Now, this is specifically designed for the newer Ford F one fifties with the 5.4 L V8. And you get everything you got all the bracketry, all the hardware, the pulleys have the manifold and of course the super charger and this is all designed to tuck up under the hood all nice and sneaky. Now putting on a supercharger will not only give you a tremendous horsepower increase when you need it,

but it will also keep the truck drivable and reliable when you don't.

So rush

performance. If you know the reputation, you know the name, now you and your Ford can be part of that.

You know, one thing we try to do here on trucks is keep you informed about new technology and new products even if it's just motor oil. And that being said, Castro's got something they want you to take a look at

and this is called Syntech and it is a full synthetic motor oil that Castro claims is pretty much superior to anything on the market.

And it could be, you know, Castrol does make a good product. So if you're thinking about going synthetic, you might wanna give that a try,

that wraps it up for today. We will see you next week.