Skyjacker F250 Project

Ford builds them for the Kuwait oil field. But today Ian and Jessi show you how to build a sop

truck for work and play. Plus two wheel legend, Jeremy mcgrath hangs with the big boys. Now, watch him make the switch from Motocross to trophy trucks today on Xtreme 4x4.

Welcome to Xtreme 4x4. I'm sure you guys know that over half of the new vehicles on the road today are trucks

and it seems as though the new trend from the manufacturers are borderline off road trucks. Kind of like the new Dodge Power

wagon. Even Toyota has reissued their classic FJ.

But what if you want a real off road truck? Something that's hard core with heavy duty skid plates, functional bead locks and a little bit of power to get you out of trouble. Well, nobody builds that truck or do they?

This is the Ford Sop

truck, a special off road production vehicle based on the power stroke F 250.

Ford builds these trucks in limited quantities, but you can't buy one unless you're a corporation or a government that needs a truck that can survive in places that don't have roads like oil fields, mining facilities and private security vehicles in third world countries.

The

trucks have suspension upgrades, power at

like performance, exhaust, heavy duty bumpers, front and rear. But since you and I can't buy one, the only other option is to build one like we're going to today,

we're going to start with this bone stock 2006 F 250 super duty. We'll upgrade the suspension

and a set of B blocks

reel off road tires, heavy duty bumpers and give it some more power under the hood.

Now, this project is going to start with a complete new suspension system from Skyjacker.

Now, this truck is going to be driven every day. So I'm going to pretty moderate four inches of lift.

It's gonna have nitro 8000 shocks at all four corners, new coal springs up front radius, serum drop brackets, a

heavy duty sway bar and their newest adjustable skid blades

to get the lift in the rear. The kit includes new soft dried spring.

These all American steel springs are shot team for extra strength

and the leaf packs are secured using bolt style spring clips to eliminate friction between the leaves and allow for more articulation

to get the left on the front end. We're going to be using these new diesel coil springs and to keep all our alignment angles in check, we'll be using these drop brackets.

This truly is one of the easiest lift kits to install in the front of a super duty.

I

like all Skyjacker suspension systems. This kid comes with the

T pro stainless steel braided break lines.

Now, a steering stabilizer is very similar to a shock except that it's laid on its side. This nitrogen charged cylinder is here to remove any kick back or feel in the steering wheel when you drive your truck off road, especially with larger tires. Now, in this truck, we're gonna install the Skyjacker dual Hydro 7000 series stabilizer, basically anchors off the front axle and then attach it to this front crossover bar. Once this is bolted up, we can go ahead and install that skid plate that we showed you earlier

made from eight inch thick steel and dimple dyed. The chrome powder coated skin plate is also adjustable to fit lips from 2 to 8.5 inches

to help keep this trucks on road stability. We've installed this heavy duty sway bar as well as the Skyjacker nitro 8000 shocks on all four corners.

They equipped with multi stage velocity sensitive valve,

which means the faster that the cycle, the stiffer, the shot gets

this in turn will help keep our tires on the ground.

And while the truck's up on the hoist, we're gonna install a little piece of that power package that we talked about earlier.

Now, as you guys have figured out by now, diesels are basically d tuned from the factory and you can get in there and pull some serious numbers out of them just by adding things like high flow exhaust systems or programmers. Now, we're gonna use the bully dog, triple dog power pup in this truck and their four inch rapid flow exhaust. I

know what you're thinking, another programmer and exhausted on a diesel. Well, the reason we do it is it works, honestly, we're gonna be able to pull an extra 140 horsepower to this truck just by using these two things. And the best thing is, is this just isn't a cat back exhaust system. This is a completely new exhaust from the head pipe all the way back to the rear bumper. The only thing we're gonna use out of that truck is the cat litter converter.

Later on, Jessi takes our sort truck out for a performance test. But up next, what humbles a 10 time Supercross legend. How about 800 horses? Jeremy mcgrath's trophy truck debut. Stay tuned.

Hey, we're back on extreme and I was just about ready to find out what Ian's most favorite thing is that he's done since we started extreme.

I think my most favorite as you like to say would be a toss up between driving the Ramn

Monster truck or even like all the projects we build. No one gets to build the stuff we build. So it's kind of a tie. Mine's close, but mine is driving Greg Adler's core truck. That was so awesome when we were in Denver. Remember that? I almost peed my pants. It was so cool. Now, the core race in San Diego, we found a guy who made the switch from two wheels to four just for the rush

with 200 career wins,

12 titles, best selling video games as well as appearances on Jay Leno and MTV.

Jeremy mcgrath single handedly brought motorcycle racing into the mainstream as far as competing full time professional Motocross guy

that's gone

now, 34 years old and semi-retired Baldwin racing, hooked him up with a core ride

or racing. It's probably the closest thing you can get to Motocross without being on a bike. So I think that's the appeal to it. I mean, you can get a lot of air,

you have a lot of horsepower,

it's pretty hairball and the adrenaline gets going for sure. I'm loving it. Making the jump from 2 to 4 wheels required all

new approach to tackling the track with the bike. You lean the bike, you hit the route, you turn, you accelerate.

And when I first started driving the trucks, I was spinning out a lot

because I was always, I would flick the truck in the corner and then just stomp on the gas.

And so I would spin out. Everything is a little bit of, more of a delayed reaction and I'm figuring that out. He's not the first to drive down this path of discovery. There's a lot of guys that have had a lot of motorcycle experience

after winning 10 Baja

one thousands on a motorcycle,

Larry Rossler went on to win Baja in a truck.

He believes Jeremy has the training needed to compete. There's definitely a learning curve but I think, you know, the, the motorcycle pro rider, our learning curve is a lot quicker. It's a lot faster. It crosses over a lot of it, reading the terrain, having a feel for the equipment, having a feel for the suspension. Those are things that a good motorcycle rider

can transfer over.

Jeremy's ride is a far cry from the 250 CCS he's used to. This is the truck that Baldwin racing has built for Jerry mcgrath and this thing is bad.

So this machine here would roughly cost around 250,000.

It's a Ford F 150. This thing will haul the mail. It puts out 850 horsepower 750 for

Toque

as lead mechanic for the number two machine. The glare of the spotlight doesn't rattle Ryan Waggoner. There's a lot of pressure riding

for,

you know, all on Jerry mcgrath. It's just you gotta keep your head and stay focused and do what you come out here to do and that's to get first place being this close to

racing royalty made this season wrenched a little starstruck, having someone like Jerry mcgrath, you grew up watching him on TV. And as a little kid watch him race and want to, you know, just meet him and hang out with them and

having the chance to do this is just like a dream come true to me. Even the veterans were a little gaga over the rookie driver. He's gonna be one of the youngest guys out here. He's born again, so to speak. Well, I think it's extremely exciting to have guys like Jeremy. He's obviously

an

credibly talented person and he's going to do very well at this. After finishing in the top five of his first three races, some drivers couldn't help being a little jealous. There are probably a few guys that are a little upset that I come in and get the best truck out here and get this opportunity because

they've been doing it for such a long time and maybe some of them maybe never even finished where I finished so far so I could see where they'd be a little bit upset. But for the most part, everyone, everyone's been awesome

heading into the final race. Anything less than victory would be unacceptable. I've been a little bit conservative up to this point, but today is the final day and it's time to let it hang out running fourth. A mechanical problem, forced an early retirement.

Mcgrath

handled the setback like the champion. He is,

stuff's gonna break a lot more than it does on a motorcycle. So,

you know,

the experience has been, uh something I'll never forget. And if I never do it again, it's, it's, it's been an unbelievable ride, but

we'll try and see what we can work out for next year.

You know, it's been over 20 years since Jeremy's been considered a rookie and even though he was, we gotta say he did a really good job. Yeah, hopefully he gets a ride next year. And speaking of rides, we got quite a few more improvements to do on our super duty and then we need to take her out and thrash her. So don't go anywhere. We'll be right back.

Welcome back to Xtreme 4x4. Well, we're right in the middle of building our Ford special off road production truck or sort truck for short.

And we've already got a four inch suspension underneath this thing and now that we have it down off the lift, we can put in the rest of the power ladder to match that bully dog rapid flow exhaust. Now, it's going to start with this bully dog, triple dog power P programmer that's gonna program our PC M to give us more power up to 100 and 40 horse. And when to control that run on the road, we're gonna mount this bully dog outlook monitor up onto the A pillar of our truck.

The triple dog hooks into the truck's diagnostic port

and uploads a new program into our truck's PC M.

This downloader will work with Chevys Dodge and with Fords and is transferable between vehicles

to keep an eye on our engine.

We will mount the outlook monitor into the A pillar pod.

I

moved into the pain

to show you some of those heavy duty pieces we were talking about.

The source truck uses trail ready bumpers, both front and rear. We ordered ours in a bare steel so the optional powder coating so we can pay it to match the truck

design in 3D. Computer modeling.

The Trail ready bumpers have a 316 in skin and a quarter in sub frame making them some of the strongest and lightest aftermarket bumpers.

There's no air.

Our truck is the king ranch to to.

So I'm painting the bumpers,

Arizona beige to match the bottom portion of the truck.

Since the bear steel is clean and prep, I can spray on the primer

followed by the base coat

and finally a couple coats of clear for durability.

Since this truck is gonna see just as much work as it is play. We thought it'd be best to put in some kind of bed liner

and we could take the truck down to a local dealer and have a spray in liner put in or we could buy one of those big drop in plastic one piece liner.

But this time we decided to try something different. This is a basically a bed liner in a box from DAC.

Now this thing is fully Shipp

right to your door comes with multiple pieces and it's simple to put in

with the front and side pieces in place. The bed mat simply rolls out to complete the install.

Now, the final step would obviously be to install this tailgate cover onto our tailgate. But for this truck, we got something else in mind,

we're gonna replace our tailgate with this tire gate from Wilco,

this tooth,

your constructive tailgate, since it replaces your stock tailgate using all your factory fastening.

Not only will it allow us to carry a full size spare, but since it still swings like a tailgate, you'll get a great look and you can still use your truck as a truck.

They're done.

What do you think?

They look lovely? Thank you.

Thank you, Jimmy. Now that the bumpers are painted, we can go ahead and install them. The best part about these bumpers is they mount right into the original locations of the original bumpers.

Hold on. It's gonna go up.

The rear bumper has diamond checker plate for foot treads and openings for rear auxiliary lights.

Now, the front bumper also has provisions for auxiliary lighting, but the recess back in this housing to protect the lenses when we're off road and it's also drilled and cut to accept most popular planetary winches. Now, since the F 250 is not a lightweight truck, we opted for Ram

Wins Patriot 15,000.

This winch has a 251 to 1 planetary gear ratio comes with 90 ft of 7/16. Great aircraft quality cable and all the relays and switches to control. This winch are housed in this water resistant housing

to make the install easier. We enlisted the help of a couple of buddies so we won't scratch Jesse's new paint job who scratched the bumper and like the rear it mounts to the factory location.

Thanks Lou.

The last thing we need to install today are the wheels and tires. Now get ready for this. These 17 by nine trail ready wheels are

the first ever production prototype

dot approved the blocks.

That means we can still air down. We need to off road, but we can still balance and so on capabilities won't have any issues.

Wish me luck.

Jump with your right.

Hold

on.

Bye.

Now with the wheels all taken care of, we can have a look at the tires. Now for this truck, we chose

NTO mud grappler 35 by 12 5. Now this is a great dual purpose tire but it really shines off road because of this aggressive trend with this high void ratio

that'll really clean out. Well, when you're tearing it up off road,

next, Jessi gets thrown the keys to this newly tricked out F 250. See how this for handles her punishment when Xtreme 4x4 continues.

Welcome

back to extreme all E is cleaning up the shop. I'm taking our new sort truck for a test run

first to the part star to show this Ford

off.

What's

up

guys doing? All right.

Yeah, I'm doing all right.

Here's the latest one we're building right now.

Huge, man. It's nice.

What have you done to it? Heavy

duty bumpers.

Um, I painted those myself, by the way.

Yes. Lift kit, heavy duty skid plates,

wheels and tires

out on the road. The truck works great. The extra power from the bully dog, triple dog really woke up this three quarter ton where it was needed

by lifting the truck four inches. The road manners at highway speeds feel like stop.

But the extra 140 horses can put you back in your seat when you mash the gas,

the outlook monitor makes it easy to keep our eye on the engines, vital signs

and the on the fly power adjusting

means we can keep the engine in stock tune until we need that little something extra.

A

35 inch tire on. This truck is only about one inch taller than the stock wheel and tire combo.

This means we won't lose any of that low end torque when we need it the most.

The benefits of this total package truck are obvious

increased, ground clearance,

extra power

plus the ability to air down our off road tires.

This truck walks,

there you go, guys, a special

road production truck that will handle all of your heavy duty needs, whether it's government work, construction work or stuff for your own home. All you gotta do is just build it yourself. I'll see you next week.