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Freiberger here and I'm on the
set of an episode of Roadkill Garage
where we're doing a showdown between
Dulcich's D100 pickup and the original
Roadkill Muscle Truck and today is also
the day right after the Roadkill
Zip-Tie Drags it's an event that we
held in Tucson Arizona and my voice is
shredded from screaming on the
microphone all day it was an amazing
event and when we did the event we did
that shootout between the two trucks and
this thing ran 13.10 and on a different
pass it went 109 miles an hour,
the 13.10 pass was 105. so with the highway
gears in the back and everything I was
super stoked with that I thought I would
take it as an opportunity to give you a
deeper inside look at the ever popular
Muscle Truck this is one of our most
asked about vehicles and it's been in a
lot of shows and extras and social media
and stuff like that but you don't always
get to see every little nitty-gritty
detail about it so I'm going to try and
show you some things now that maybe you
haven't seen before and don't know first
of all I was surprised at the event how
many people ask me is this a '73 or a '74?
not that critical it's like exactly the
same truck but I checked the title and
it's a 74 I think the confusion comes
from the fact that I miss speak often
when I'm talking about it sometimes I've
called it a '73, sometimes I've said '74,
but it actually is a '74 the thing though
is that this thing is patched together
from a bunch of trucks when I bought it
the guy was restoring it and had
actually had the frame off the cab and
everything had sandblasted and
powder-coated the chassis the underside
of this thing is truly mint it's nice
but these fenders you know that we hacked
these in an episode of Roadkill and
so these are replacement fenders the
fenders that we hacked they were also
aftermarket fenders it's an original
hood which doesn't have the kink in it
that most
these trucks do usually the hood hinges
seize up and there's a dent right across
the middle of the hood it folds in half
it's got two different doors off two
different trucks this one's actually off
of a later model you can tell it's like
weird it's got thinner glass slightly
thinner sheet metal than the other one
because it's from a newer truck and then
the bed came from a completely different
vehicle here's something that I found
out a couple years ago that blew me away
I stuck my hand up in here on the inside
and found out that there's a weld mark
right here on both sides and I assume
here my conclusion being that this top
came off of a different cab which is
kind of strange but the guy did it
really well you can't tell from out here
I think the color of this cab was
originally red if you look up under the
dash that's what you can see but
obviously the rest of the truck is a
multitude of colors the big Roadkill
sticker on the back window people ask
about that all of the time people want
to buy that thing and we don't sell them
because they're expensive to make it
expensive to ship that was just a
one-off that I had done at a local shop
so that's where that came from good
backstory on this fender this whole
truck was originally built when I was
doing a thing called Car Junkie TV and
one of our Roadkill directors Dustin
Gould was also working at Car Junkie TV
that's where I met him and that's how we
started doing Roadkill together and we
built this truck initially me and Chad
Reynolds ended a cross-country trip to
the second LS fest in Memphis with it
but Dustin actually painted this fender
it's like one of the few things
automotive things that he's done for the
show and he was obsessed with trying to
mask off the pin stripe on it so this is
not like a tape stripe it's actually the
fender was primer gray and he masked it
off and put I forget the brand of this
metallic orange but it's actually lasted
pretty well because that was about nine
years ago and this right here the black
spot which I noticed when people
mimicked the muscle truck either in toy
cars or in real trucks they'll always
put this black spot here this was a Car
Junkie TV logo that he had also masked
into it and then you see there's more goo
on it and then
goo sticker leftovers everywhere on the
truck when we took this on Power Tour
last year we got into a sticker war with
Rutledge wood we put Roadkill stickers
all over his Toyota and we came out one
morning and there was Rutledge stickers
all over the truck and they left some
goo and they peeled some paint off right
here in the bed there's some green we
considered painting the truck at one
time and this was some spray can green
that we actually thought about doing it
thank goodness we did not you know that
we changed the wood in the bed on an
episode of Hot Rod Garage and we also
made this thing which we obviously did
not paint and is rusting that is
covering the kick up in the frame it has
C notch in the back. and let me think
if there's anything else I need to tell
you about the body on it I don't think
so the other thing people ask about all
of the time on this is what is the wheel
and tire package so let's figure that
out these are Crager Soft 8 wheels.
they're really cheap I use them all the
time Finnegan hates them and this is a
285/6017 on the back. it's almost 31
inches tall it's a huge tire but narrow
enough to fit in there and I don't
remember the backspace on these wheels
but it kind of doesn't matter if you're
building a truck like this because the
rear end in this thing isn't even Chevy
it came out of a '78 F100 complete full
width I don't even know what the width
is but it might be different than the
Chevy and it might affect what the back
spacing is so even if I told you the
number it might not even apply to a
Chevy and the same is true with the
front back spacing it's all weird with
spacers and a bunch of stuff and the
other wheel and tire package that fits
on this on the drag strip is this this
is a wheel vintique just original steel
wheel looking thing 15 by 8 and it's
wearing a 30 x 12 50 15 ET Street this is
the old kind of ET street they don't make
anymore let's see what the front tire
size is on this pile it's a 225 / 55 17
again on a 17 by 8 and because the
rear end came from a Ford it's got a
Ford wheel bolt pattern
and so this has an adapter on it to go
from the Chevy pattern to the Ford
pattern and that adapter feels like it's
also roughly a 1 inch spacer so it's
moving the whole thing out now the front
suspension on this is a two inch drop
spindle and the upper control arm is
from Ridetech and the lower control arms
from cpp like a mishmash of parts it's
got got McGaughys shocks, I never know how to
pronounce that company's name and Dulcich
it's just set this thing up with regular
old mechanical coil springs last week
that air ride on it for a long time but
this truck ends up getting driven by so
many people who couldn't figure out how
to work the air ride system and one of
our assistants who doesn't know anything
about cars tried to drive it with the
front end drag on the ground and I was
just over it and so it's now got coil
springs on it to keep it simple for
those guys let's see what's oh this
grill notice it says 454 in the grill
the Muscle Truck is not an original big
block truck this grill came from a
Gardner's truck that I bought years ago
I mean like in the mid-90s to pull a 454
out of it I still have the grill sitting
around when I bought the truck it had a
tube grill in it so under the hood this
is an all aluminum Corvette LS6 and its
stock with the exception of a little
train camshaft but I don't remember the
specs on it has crane roller rockers on
it it does have mid length headers and a
BBK SSI cast aluminum intake manifold
but a lot of people complain about
because it retains a lot of heat versus
the plastic manifold it is controlled by
MSD atomic EFI and we've got a nitrous
plate on it and a couple solenoids over
here but the rest of the nitric system
is not hooked up anymore it's got
Aeromotive fuel system you can see the
regulator here on this little custom
bracket that I made off of the frame and
course Optima battery here's the roll
control that Dulcich made a bracket
for on a recent episode of Roadkill
Garage you should actually look up that
episode there's a lot more on the Muscle
Truck there and while filthy right now
from driving to and from Arizona and
everything you can tell that the inside
the engine compartment was actually
painted up and dealt with pretty nicely
at one time back to the drivetrain
transmission of the dynamic turbo 400 at
the full manual valve body it's got
about a 4,000 stall converter in it
which is a little loose for driving
around especially when we put highway
gears in the back right now I have a 350
rear gear in it and it has a Gear
Vendors overdrive and so 80 miles an
hour is about 3100 rpm no problem
cruising it all day that way it has
gotten as good as 20 miles per gallon
let's see if there's any interior
details Oh people ask me where the
steering wheel came from all the time
which is weird to me because it just
looks like a leftover as Brad comes
around to show you the interior I will
say forgive the road trip disaster
inside this thing look at all those
blankets and junk and food pretty normal
for making a big long road trip the
steering wheel actually came off a 70
Buick GS 455 but it is the same as a '70
Chevelle upgrade factory steering wheel
so you can actually buy that thing from
like original parts group or other
reproduction sources year one I used to
have a GTECH tachometer in the Muscle
Truck but when we converted the thing to
fuel injection and everything it has a
bunch of features in that G Tech tack
that I wasn't using and it has gotten
kind of scratched out so I changed it to
that Automator Street tack same one that
is in Crop Duster I like that tack it's
just real basic you can see the
controller for the MSD efi over there
hanging off the dash that red screen
this seat came out of a junkyard I
remember carrying it out of the yard by
myself in the rain to put that together
recently we made the cab of this thing
much more comfortable with new carpet
and jute pad and underlies from LMC
Truck and I also dynamatted the inside
of the doors we added a Pioneer stereo
in the dash it also has six by nine
speakers in both doors and in a couple
of enclosures behind the seat and so
that's pretty good unfortunately the
truck is so loud that even with that
thing fully cranked the
exhaust just kills all of the high notes
and I need to get some tweeters up on
the dash or something because they're so
directional because the exhaust is so
loud and that's the last thing I'll tell
you about the number one thing people
ask about on the Muscle Truck is what do
I have for exhaust so here is that it's
got the mid length headers on it which
have a ball type two and a half inch
collector on them and we've got that
stepped up into three inch tube which
goes back to a four inch dynomax bullet
muffler that's only about that long and
then steps to back down to three inch
tube and goes into dumps right ahead of
the axle and it does not have a
crossover pipe and that is the secret to
the shrieking famous exhaust sound of
the Muscle Truck let's give you some of
that right now as I head out
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