Shannon Campbell Crawler Build

Today on Xtreme 4x4 cocktails and dreams fun in Mexico and even more fun in the shop with a champions rig. Plus the launch of our bottom drawer buggy project. This twisted episode of Xtreme 4x4 starts now.

Welcome to Xtreme 4x4. Today we're going to be taking a look at a brand new vehicle.

One of the perks of being on TV, people bring a brand new models, sometimes even prototypes today isn't any different.

But if you think we're gonna be having a look at that new GMC, you got it all wrong this week in the shop is the latest competition buggy to roll out of the shop at Campbell Enterprises. Now, the builder and driver of this thing is none other than world champion dirt sports driver of the year. Shannon Campbell,

rowing competitions are more like battles, gladiators in their chariots, fighting for survival on Mother Nature's Arena.

Campbell is one of those gladiators along with Spotter Big Mike do.

We'll look at different angles ways we can

cheat basically but not cheat. You know,

find a line that someone hasn't seen.

Sometimes you get in positions where the car wants to wash out. You're at too great. Of an angle or something. And I mean, you just got to do whatever it takes to,

to get your car back on track. You know, if it, if it means taking a cone,

whatever it takes to keep the car from rolling and you roll over, you're usually going to get a 40.

So you do whatever it takes to win.

He's not only a past Super Crawl and New Rock Series champion. His fabrication company, Campbell Enterprises is a family run business building competition chassis and a variety of performance parts.

Earlier. He brought his latest rock crawler into extreme for us to check it out.

This chess is pretty similar to the one we ran last year.

Uh, we've done a few things to lighten it up. We got 10 more degrees of steering, switched up to a double ended Ram

Curry built us a 13 inch rotor, a little bit more stopping power.

We switched up this year and went to a supercharged Ecotech GM builds and we're hoping it's going to get us a little bit more bottom end for when you, when you knock it out of out of gear and you want to burn the front around it lights up like right now

this car weighs 2200 without weighting the tires. We ran

300 pounds in each front tire last year.

It keeps the car on the ground when you're on some insane angles and stuff. One of the things we found out last year is

we had trouble on a lot of the big hill climbs this year. We're going to take two sets of wheels and tires

and we're going to try some different stuff.

Last year, they used lead shot as the weight to help keep the tires on the rocks this year. They're going to be experimenting with water.

Now, when you're in an actual competition, it's all about getting a tight turning radius to get you on the course. Now, you heard Shannon talk about getting an extra 10 degrees of steering and we're going to show you exactly how he did that go ahead and fire this thing up and crank the wheels all the way to the left, please.

That's got.

Now, the cast inner sea on the curry axle is actually made a little bit deeper than a stock casting that allows this knuckle to actually turn 10 degrees farther and then in turn allows the tire to go further. This works hand in hand with the double ra M that Shannon was also talking about

this RA M allows us steering to be pushed back right on top of the axle. Now, last season, he ran a single ending ram that would be a ram here running over to this tire. You'd have another rod sticking out here coming across this way, that rod can get hung up on obstacles and basically top end the crawler. But by using a double ended ram here. It's pretty much guaranteed to go over anything.

Now, inside the cab, it's all business. Of course, you have a suspension seat with the head rest

and the low back gives you good vision for the entire drivers view. Plus you have all the controls right here within arms reach.

Now, the shifter is a standard competition shifter, the Campbell Enterprises,

all the details.

So you can go from first to reverse with no problem and only left the gates in for park. Now, most competition crawlers have four wheel steer, but we only have two wheel steer

to get around that. All we do is use our cutting breaks and to be able to do a front d this is what you do.

The first step is to shift the rear output of the Atlas two a neutral

to dig. Left, you lock up your left rear wheel with the cutting brake,

put it in gear rev the engine and it will pull the front end around until you want it to stop.

Yeah.

Yeah,

up next Margaritas and multi meters at the Mac code tool Expo in Cancun Mexico. And for one lucky guy who buys a box this year,

we're locking her in.

Welcome back to the extreme shop. As you know, we are pretty lucky to be able to wrench on the projects that we work on

and not to mention the shop we get to work in and obviously a great shop. Starts with great tools. Now, this may seem like a real shameless plug gear, but honestly, we're super proud of the relationship that we have with Mac O Tools who recently held their annual Tool Expo featuring the latest and greatest.

It's our job to bring you guys information about parts and tools that makes working on your truck a lot easier and we'll go just about anywhere to find that information. Even Cancun Mexico,

it's here where the tranquility of this coastal resort town

is interrupted by the latest in strippers dikes

and of course, toolboxes,

the dreams of these Macco

distributors begin early in the year and come true for some when the top sales teams are recognized at this annual gathering

for the rest. It's a chance to see the latest and greatest from

Mao's 200 plus manufacturers.

We have a new battery tester, the MD 9300 where

it's down on the corner there. It's a digital battery tester

and that's the brand new product that actually hasn't even hit production yet.

One of the things we do for Mac, that's real nice is we've got this 1769 Q. It's got a patented muffler system in it. That's got all the power

of our standard, empty, empty 1769 with a fraction of the noise. We're all pretty excited about this. This is the biggest handle, pry bar on the market right now. This is a 58 inch uh screwdriver type pry bar. Most important thing, guys working on it, vehicle, he throws a fender cover on and you've got a light.

Well, this is after years of research and development came out with the finest lights in the business. What we did was we did a slim head design on there.

We also put the Matco logo all over. So when the guy's looking at that tool, he knows he's working with the best in the business. This is what we call our hand impact driver.

Uh What this one does if you get a nut bolt, that's uh frozen tight spot,

this either tighten it up or loosen it up.

What you do with this item here,

you're able to put in a position, you put your socket on it, you hit the center with a hammer

and that will actually turn that and that will loosen up that frozen fashions

don't show that on TV. Whatever you do,

Matt Co uses the Expo to debut a lot of new products like their toolbox line. They've added a bunch of new colors and new styles on the drawer front. These boxes are actually huge. It's the new trend now

and so big. In fact, you can fit a whole person inside

and for one lucky guy who buys a box this year,

we're locking her in.

Wish you luck, man.

What are you about

when you're at the expo? You get to recharge your batteries,

you get to visit with other distributors. You get to see the vendors, see what the new tools are. You can learn sales techniques,

better ways to run your business. And ultimately everybody's goal is to provide better service to their customers, which is a win, win for everybody.

I'll make more money, they'll make more money, that will make more money and everybody will be happy.

And of course, everybody was happy at the Twister Contest

and,

and you will event in every Tool Expo.

And this year, Jessey part with, well, I hope a couple of your new best friends. Yeah, Don and Lisa and then my partner is Stuart. That's Stewart and my left arm was gonna fall off right there.

I swear.

But Jessi hung on and with her help, Stewart was able to win himself a brand new toolbox that he's able to take home right from the expo. Yes, it is beautiful and it is awesome and he's lucky.

Call me.

Ok.

Welcome back to Xtreme 4x4 in our tech, talk around Campbell Enterprises. Latest competition crawler.

Now these axles are custom built for all of Shannon's comp cars by Curry Enterprises starts with a 49 in center stuff with a RB lockers and 620 gears. And then that power is transferred out to the wheels by a set of full floater axles.

The benefit of a full floater axle is that you can remove the entire axle shaft with the tires on the ground

if you broke an axle during a competition, you could easily swap it out without losing too much time.

A

competition vehicle is always about weight and in rock crawling it becomes a real tug of war. You want a lot of power, but you don't want a whole bunch of weight to weigh the crawler down.

So this year, Campbell GM, performance and turn engine supply, all teamed up to stuff this supercharged Ecotech four cylinder into the crawler.

Now, it needed some changes from the factory and turnkey took care of that.

It needed the drive by wire throttle body removed and replaced with this LS one unit. So it could actually have a throttle cable to make it right.

They put a marine grade wiring harness in the whole thing which is great for off road, custom Water Act had to be built. And then finally, this engine has never been installed in front of an automatic transmission. So they had to build a custom one off flex plate to adapt it to the power glide.

Now, the power from that engine heads directly into a power glide transmission that Hughes built a custom torque converter for with higher stall speeds. And then of course a staple in rock crawling. The Atlas two transfer case

considered the strongest transfer case in the after market. The Atlas two from advanced adapters is a hell

multiple ratio gear set that is also fully synchronized,

all housed in a one piece aluminum alloy

356 T six housing.

Although it works like a typical transfer case splitting the power coming from the transmission to both the rear and front axles with the high range 1 to 1 and different low ranges from 3 to 1 all the way up to 5 to 1.

The Atlas

who is more than just a power splitter.

The massive gears are supported by needle bearings riding on beefy 8620 steel shafts with sink rows to allow for shift on the fly capabilities.

The output shaft assemblies are designed with large paper bearings with 32 flying shafts

available for both the front and rear output.

Aside from the Atlas is brute strength.

What really makes it the ultimate off road case is the separate ship rails for the front and rear axles

by placing the rear output neutral and the front and low power from the engine is diverted from the rear, sending 100% of the power to the front axle.

This allows maneuvers known as front or rear digs to occur.

Once facing the direction you want, you can simply shift the rear output lever into low range and you're back on your way.

Next, orphaned parts become Ian and Jesse's next project when Xtreme 4x4 continues.

Welcome back to Xtreme 4x4. You know what people say really is true. Every time you build something, it gives you ideas about how to build something else a little bit different. And every time you look at stuff that other people build, kind of inspires you to build something of your own.

So after looking at this machine,

we started thinking and I think we're gonna build a, something of our own.

Who are you looking at the buggy? We're gonna build a friend

and we're gonna build it with ideas from you guys. No sense in reinventing the wheel here. Even we like to check out other guys' website, share ideas and incorporate what we like into our rigs.

So we came to a conclusion. We're gonna build a buggy with a low center of gravity, really big tires, four seats. We're gonna integrate a lot of cool stuff into it. Like

we,

the coolant through the tubing

and the exhaust through the tubing,

but we're gonna do it for cheap.

Now, when you start to build and design your own tube chassis, it may seem like a really big deal, but it's not. The first step is to have a plan, which we do, we know where we're going and now that we have that we start getting some parts together.

So let's go get the other parts. I've got one right here.

Well, I'll go get the other ones

to

the point of this buggy will be to get the most thing

for a block without having to drop a lot of cash. And to do that, we're going to use leftover parts from some of our previous projects.

I can

you do

me

a favor?

Can you help me get this transmission out of here? No problem

like this Dana 300 from cheap Jeep. Perfect.

3123. Go.

Well, I push the engine back

now. Let's jack us up and pronounce some jack dance.

Let's set

up.

Oh, I didn't go nowhere.

Normally when fabricators build a buggy from scratch, they lay out the drive train and then build around it. which is exactly what we're going to be doing.

So we're going to use this four day 50 that we had gotten for another project that ended up going another way

right there. That's

good.

I

think so.

The front axle is a GM 10 volt that was in the same three quarter ton suburban that the engine and transmission came from

come up.

So we wanted really big tires for our boggy

and that's just mainly to crawl over things with no problem. Look at it this way. If we have a 2 ft rock and a 35 inch tire, the tire actually has to crawl up the rock before it can get over it.

With 46 by 19.5 M

Thompson,

it's going to drive over it like it's a little

wall with the heavy duty lugs. These things will grab onto almost anything and with the four ply side wall, we can air down with ease.

You can really get an idea of what we had in mind with everything sort of laid into place. The one thing that will change is this engine is gonna have to come up about a foot to give us more ground clearance underneath.

But we can start bending up the tubes that will make up the floor right now and then move the whole assembly once it's welded together.

And when you're doing a buggy build like this, there are certain pieces of tubing that have to go in specific places like the floor tubing. That's gonna

what the heck happened there?

Where did you go for lunch?

And when you're doing a buggy build like this, there are certain pieces of tubing that have to go in specific places like the floor tubing that's going to run all the way from the front to the back needs to be above this transmission output shaft.

I said, is this ever nice working with tubing? That's not all covered in crap.

That's because it's California metal supply

to help make things easier. You can build your chassis in sections on the floor to help keep things flat.

Right now. We'll just pack everything into place with some beefy tacks

because you know, things are going to get moved around.

That's the first step to building your own custom chassis, just determining where these first few tubes are gonna go.

And the best thing is if you design and build it yourself, you can add a lot of real custom tricks to it like we're gonna be running the coolant from the engine all the way back through this tube up into a rear mounted radiator that's gonna make the chassis more than just a spot for the drive train components and a roll cage for the driver and passenger. It actually turns it into a functional part of that motor. And throughout this entire build, you'll be able to see how easy it really is to do something like this in your own garage. If you have parts laying around, you don't have to go out and buy an entire brand new crate engine. If you have one laying around, you can just start building around it and build your own. It's easy. It's cheap. It's fun. All you need is parts

and some time

and some jack stands

just a couple

8

million.