This is part 1 of an insane adventure that my friend David Newbern and I just went on. A super rare '89 GMC Sierra 3500 Crew Cab Ramp Truck hit the internet last Wednesday and I couldn't help myself; I had to have it. So we flew to Cincinnati on Friday and bought it, intending to road trip it home. The seller claimed it had just 35,000 miles on it and that it was ready to road trip. The mileage claim was correct. The road trip portion of their statement was total BS! Witness the joyous discovery and test drive of the ultimate hauler and then watch in horror as we nearly get destroyed by tractor trailers when the 454ci V8 shuts off as we reached the top of a two-lane bridge and had to roll backwards down the highway.

I'm calling this a ramp truck because if you open up the roll-up door, inside the 24-foot long cargo box is a pair of ramps to park a car on. Also, to load the car atop the truck you have to drive it up...drum roll please...ramps. lol. Anyway, in Episode 59 of Finnegan's Garage, David Newbern and I flew to Cincinnati to buy this 1989 GMC Sierra 3500 truck, which had been converted for race car hauling duty way back in 1990. We probably paid too much for this pig but with only 35,000 original miles on the odometer she needed no lipstick. There's hardly a scratch on this truck and although she broke down almost immediately and we spent 7 hours on the side of the road in the rain, we still love her even if we don't have much love for the seller. This video gives you a great look into what it was like making the journey from Indiana to Georgia and all the fun we had meeting fans and battling a dead battery, rusty fuel tanks and sketchy tires.

In this video we make last-minute suspension upgrades to the rear of Blasphemi, hoping to finally fix its unpredictable starting line behavior. Customs By Bigun replaced our old anti-roll bar with a beefier one from PAC Racing and we hope this is what makes this car finally go straight every single pass so that we can start putting real power to the rear tires at the starting line. We'll have more updates as the event gets closer but to say I'm psyched to run Blasphemi down this fabled California racetrack is an understatement. For the NHRA to allow Jon and I do race during their event is even cooler!

The time has come for Jon Chase and I to line up our Chevys at a drag strip and find out who built the baddass Gasser. Nearly a year in the making, the race is going down February 8th and 9th 2019 at the NHRA Winternationals in Pomona, California. There's a lot on the line. We are racing in front of thousands of people and the winner gets an incredible trophy; the loser must shave their beard right there in front of everyone. A cold chin or worse yet a fresh double chin will be the consolation prize for the runner-up in this battle of old skool cool street car. As usual, my car is not ready and neither is my tow vehicle and my friends and I must drive 2,000 miles just to get to the starting line. This is the first in a series of videos about our adventure. We'll upload Part 2 just soon as I finish ending it in between wrenching sessions. As I type this we are almost to California, having thrashed on both the Ramp Truck and Blasphemi while having the time of our lives.

In Part 1 we prep the ramp truck for it's journey from Georgia to California. My '55 Chevy Bel Air, called Blasphemi because it has a 528ci Chrysler Hemi between its frame rails, wasn't exactly in one piece when we hit the road.In fact, in this video it's still not in one piece either. In this video, we make our way to Texas and along the way we stop at John Andrade's shop in Yukon, Oklahoma. John is famous for owning and driving a really fast G-body Olds Cutlass called The Cutty and for appearing on the television show, Street Outlaws. Although we'd never met before, he was cool enough to open the doors of his shop and host an impromptu meet in his parking lot. While visiting his awesome shop was cool, the best part was upgrading the ramp truck with a polished stainless steel wing on the roof and meeting fans who brought us cassette tapes for the cassette deck in the ramp truck. We scored so much cool music and no, the wing didn't help our fuel economy, but it still looks cool!. Tune into Episode 64 as we keep on truckin' toward California to chassis dyno the Hemi in Blasphemi (Yes, we'll tell show you the power numbers!) and you'll see Mike Cotten attempt to eat a 72oz steak dinner!

Here it is, Part 3 of a ridiculous road trip from Georgia to California in a super-unreliable 1989 GMC Sierra Ramp Truck. The goal is to get to The Fairplex in Pomona for the NHRA Winternationals, where I'll race Blasphemi, my 1955 Chevy Bel Air against Jon Chase and his Tri-Five. The winner gets a sweet trophy and the loser gets their beard shaved off right in front of everyone. In this video we blow into Amarillo, Texas, home of The Big Texan restaurant and its 72oz Steak Challenge. Witness my buddy Mike try to devour over FOUR POUNDS OF BEEF before we drive clear to Arizona to dyno test my car. Let's just say he did not enjoy the next 24 hours of his life in the ramp ruck and we then we had nothing but problems with my car on the dyno. However, we don't quit and had nothing but fun before we mobbed onto Cali. I need to thank Brian Macy and Kelvy Limon at Horsepower Connection and The EFI store for helping get the car ready and to Steve Darnell and Merlon Johnson from Welderup Las Vegas for jumping in to help.

This is it, the fourth installment of an incredible cross-country road trip to race Jon Chase at the NHRA Winternationals in Pomona, California. Yeah, you probably already know the outcome of this race because it happened weeks ago and there's plenty of videos from the Hoonigans, Motor Trend, TheCraig909, FourSpeedFilms etc, but this is the tale from my point of view. I'm picking up the road trip to the race as we prepare to leave The Horsepower Connection in Lake Havasu City, Arizona. We finished dyno-testing Blasphemi and although it would not stop leaking water from the cylinder heads into the crankcase, it did put 1,070hp to the tires. To prevent making a motor milkshake during the event we decided to drain the water out of the engine and only run it long enough to race down the track. The new ramp truck, Square Force 1, was running great but only getting about 5.5 mpg and we wanted to know why. Sure, it's loaded down with Blasphemi, my tools, boxes of t-shirts and is pretty much a 14,000 lb brick pushing through the wind, but we still wanted to know how the 454 V8 engine was running. So David Newbern, Mike Cotten and I, along with Steve Darnell and Merlon Johnson from Welderup, decided to install a Holley Wideband O2 sensor and custom gauge to see the air/fuel ratio of the engine in real-time.

My '73 Chevy C30 Ramp Truck has led a hard life. It was converted to Ramp Truck status early on and has been hauling cars ever since. Last year we ditched the 454ci V8 gas engine and TH400 three-speed trans in favor of a compound-turbocharged Cummins 5.9L 12Valve diesel and 47RH four-speed with lockup converter transmission. Both the engine and transmission were modified by Powerdriven Diesel for towing duty and hot rod fun. It didn't take long to destroy the stock Dana 70 rear axle. A couple of burnouts was really all that was required to send the spider gears in the differential crying to their mama. Determined the make lemonade out of this lemon, we contacted the folks at Quick Performance for an upgrade. http://www.quickperformance.com/ The team suggest using the axle out of a late-model Chevy truck, which originally was supplied to GM by American Axle & Manufacturing. The axle not only comes with disc brakes but also a larger 11.5-inch diameter ring gear, which dwarfs the Dana 70's 10.5 inch gear. Right out of the gate this is a better axle for the kind of abuse the Ramp Truck endures, but Quick Performance further improved it by swapping out the 3.73:1 ring and pinion gears for an ever higher 3.42:1 gear ratio. Our Cummins certainly would appreciate the lower rpm and higher wheel speed that this ratio would force it to operate in. The stock open differential was also replaced with a Detroit Trutrac limited-slip differential for two wheel peels! Here's where things get even more exciting; the new axle came out of a single rear wheel truck. This meant that our stock 16-inch dually wheels wouldn't fit. Also, 17s wouldn't go on either. After many hours of trial and error fitment we stumbled upon a combination of 19.5 wheels and 1/4-inch spacers, which fit the truck and provided a more modern look. Check out the video to see how we made dually wheels fit a single wheel axle as well as tips for setting your pinion angle correctly.

I'm gonna drive my 1967 Chevy C10 this summer. That's my goal. Before I can proceed with the remaining fabrication projects on this truck, though, I need to nail the wheel and tire fitment. In this episode I work with 2 U Tires to find find the perfect wheel and tire combination for my truck and show you how to fit the widest wheels and tires possible on your lowered car or truck. The key is a tool called the Gryp-R. It's a fixture that bolts onto the hub of your ride and holds nearly any tire in place so that you can check the fitment before you spend your hard-earned cash on the wrong set of wheels and tires. It's easy to use and as you'll see in this video you can get all the critical measurements done in a matter of minutes. I ended up stuffing the widest tires I've ever seen on the front of a lowered Chevy C10; I ordered a set of 295/30ZR20 Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tires from Summit Racing and then had Forgeline build a set of GA3R wheels in 20x10.5 size with 4-inches of backspacing. The wheels have Forgeline's optional "open lug" design and are extremely light.

Since this is the summer of driving unfinished projects, I'm briefly switching gears from wrenching on my '67 Chevy C10 and working on Game Over, my Placecraft twin-turbo jet boat. My goal is to drive both the truck and the boat in 2019 but I'd really like to go boating with my family before summer is over so Game Over takes precedence over the truck for now. In this video we are going to build a throttle system to connect our B1 Racing billet gas pedal to the Accufab throttle body that's mounted atop the 711ci Sonny Leonard twin-turbo engine. It's a pretty simple task that gives me the opportunity to show you some fabrication tricks and tools while showing you just what makes this incredible fiberglass boat work.

I needed a good way to mount the fuel cells in my drag boat without drilling holes into the bottom of the boat hull. I decided to build some aluminum mounts and then bond them to the hull using fiberglass mat, fiberglass cloth, fiberglas resin, and an epoxy product. The end result was strong and durable and I'm one step closer to driving this twin-turbo Hemi on the lake. It's gonna be an awesome summer!

On this episode of Finnegan's Garage we take a short break from working on cars to finally begin assembling that 582ci Big Block Chevy that I showed you way back in Ep. 24 This video will show you my methods for cleaning the block and measuring bearing clearances. I'll go over how to read a micrometer, a dial bore gauge, and what size clearance I look for in a connecting rod and main bearing in this particular application. Got more questions?

Square Force 1 is my 1989 GMC Sierra R30 cab and chassis square body truck that was converted for enclosed car hauling duty over 30 years ago. It's powered by a 454ci V8, which is backed by a Gearstar Performance Transmissions Level Four 4L80E tranny and a Yank billet converter. Prior to swapping the original TH400 three-speed transmission with the new four-speed, the truck averaged 5.5 mpg during a 5,300 mile coast-to-coast road trip. During this episode we'll address some tuning issues with the 454 and then road trip the truck with the new trans. After the mods the truck nearly doubled it's fuel economy; We achieved a best of 9 MPG and a worst of 6.5 MPG. This video will show you how to find Top Dead Center on a four-stroke engine, how to diagnose a malfunctioning vacuum advance distributor, and how to read the timing mark on spark plugs. Hopefully you learn something or just laugh. Thanks for watching!

David Newbern filmed and edited this quick tech tip for setting up a hydraulic throwout bearing in a manual transmission. In the video I'm using an American Powertrain Hydramax bearing inside of my G Force G5R five-speed manual gearbox. These are the parts that I use in Blasphemi, my 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air. The procedure is pretty simple but I think it helps to see someone else do the job in addition to reading an instruction manual so here's a step-by-step video about the measuring portion of the job. Hope you like it!

Way back in September 2018, David Newbern and I competed in Hot Rod Drag Week, a five-day road trip to four different drag strips. Each day we made a pass at the track and then hit the backroads of the southeast, journeying from Georgia to South Carolina, onto North Carolina, across to Tennessee and then back to Commerce, Georgia. We drove over 1,000 miles in my 1955 Chevy Bel Air and David's 1971 Chevy Nova. I ended up scoring Second Place in the A Gas class before destroying my Hemi on the last pass. David managed to finish the event after nuking his Small-Block Chevy engine on Day 4. After a parking lot engine swap he limped the car to the last track and made an epically slow 24 second pass but still completing the event. Shortly after Drag Week we made a new friend, Hunter White, who gave Newbern his 540ci Big-Block Chevy and Tremec TKO five-speed gearbox so that Newbern could get his car back in one piece. Newbern has been collecting parts ever since in preparation for hearing the car roar to life once again. His new goal is to return to Drag Week in September 2019, do a wheelie, run a 10 second pass, and finish the event. This is the first in a series of videos about getting the Nova ready for racing.The new drivetrain is already in the car and now it's time to revamp the fuel system with a Quick Fuel Brawler 1,050 cfm carburetor and Holley fuel pressure regulator.

This is the biggest deal to ever go down on this channel! YouTube Superheroes Cleetus McFarland Cooper made the haul from Florida to Georgia to race his Ford Galaxie against the OG Roadkill Ramp Truck. Both have turbocharged Cummins 6BT 5.9L Diesel engines. Both have speed parts from Powerdriven Diesel and they both roll coal. The Galaxy has the edge in the weight department because the Ramp Truck is a 9,500 lb Chevy R30 Crew Cab with a ramp bed on the back. But the Ramp Truck has twin turbskies, larger fuel delivery valves, better valve springs and a few other tricks that may even the playing field. Who will win this battle Royale of homebuilt hot rods? Meanwhile, Mike Cotten and David Newbern have been thrashing to get Newbern's Attempted Murder Nova back together with it's new 550ci Big-Block Chevy. In Episode 73 we nearly got it running before a messed up flywheel stopped the starter motor from cranking the big block. This time the engine is rumbling thanks to a new billet flywheel and twin-disc racing clutch from Mantic and Newbern finally gets a chance to run the car down the dragstrip.

This is the first episode in a series we are doing about trading cars. This 1986 Chevrolet R30 cab and chassis truck was converted for car hauling duty in the late '80s and is in need of some repair. It runs and drives and stops just fine. The cooling system could use some attention. There is not rear door on the cargo box. But it's a super cool transporter with a ton of character and good bones.

This video offers an update on the "Trade My Truck" debacle and my 1969 Dodge Charger, which Kibbe alerted me was for sale last year. The charger is a legit barn find, stashed away in Indiana for 50-plus years before it was drug outside and put on eBay. I bought it, Tony Angelo and I filmed a Roadill episode about reviving it, and then the motor died one summer night last year. The drivetrain consists of a 383ci Dodge big-block, which is backed by a Silversport Transmissions six-speed conversion kit. The kit bolts a Tremec Magnum manual gearbox into the B-body with ease. The car is called Death Metal because it doesn't drive straight, the four-wheel truck drum brakes don't work that well, and the rollcage might actually be more dangerous than not having one at all. Nevertheless, I love the car and in this episode we'll show you what broke and how we fixed it. I think you'll be surprised!

This is the story of The Death Metal Charger and how I bought it and lowered it. In 1968 this Charger was purchased new from a dealer in Indiana and promptly crashed. As the story goes, the car was totaled and sat in a dealer lot until a local farmer named Joe Barry, who had aspirations of going Stock Car racing, bought the wreck and drug it home that same year. He stashed it in his barn and began searching the local wrecking yard for a front clip, doors and new quarter panels. From 1969 to 1970 he wrenched on his project. He fixed the sheetmetal while gutting all of the inner structure of each body panel. He built a roll cage and his own seat. He lowered the car and fixed the the damaged suspension by replacing everything with Chrysler C-body parts, including the front control arms and torsion bars. The USAC racing association sent Joe a letter stating he would be invited to attend qualifying at a NASCAR event if his car passed tech inspection. The pass, his Charger needed full floating hubs for the wheels so Joe went back to the scrapyard and grabbed the first parts that fit the bill-a Timken rear axle from a '49-'53 Willys truck and floating hubs and drum brakes a 3/4 Ton Ford truck. the drum brakes were adapted to the stock C-body front spindles and Timken axle. By 1970 Joe had been through many life changes and the financial toll of building the car had been significant. He decided to attend the last race of the season but after spending his last few dollars purchasing an open car trailer he discovered that the C-body suspension parts made his Charger so wide that it wouldn't fit ton the trailer. He missed the race and his car was deemed illegal for competition. Dejected, the Charger sat in his barn for nearly a decade and never turned a lap and rarely saw street driving. It traded hands several times between 1970 and 2016 but always remained inside barns in Indiana until it was drug out from the last barn and sold to a gentlemen who flipped it to Jason Hil

Awhile back I offered up my 1984 Chevrolet R30 Crew Cab Ramp Truck for trade and the offers that came my way were incredible. Everything from tools to girlfriends were proposed as suitable replacements for my Big Red hauler. Well, one of the offers really peaked my interest and so Newbern and I travelled to Delmar, Maryland to Lucky's Garage and made a deal. I gave up Big Red plus some cash and car parts and Newbern drove home in this modified 1969 Chevrolet C50 ramp truck. The road trip went as it should in an unfinished project truck. There were plenty of breakdowns and near-misses. I know, I know, I don't need another ramp truck but this thing is so cool and so unreliable that it's impossible to ignore the adventure of owning, modifying and road tripping it.

This beast of a big-block Chevy is a two-year project that finally is finished and Dyno-tested and we couldn't be happier with it. In fact, after a bit of tuning it produced over 800 ft-lbs of torque and 1,010 horsepower without a power adder. This single carb monster would be sick in your next project car, truck or boat. Want more info? Watch the video as we show you how to install a new MSD slip collar distributor before we rev this 582ci V8 over 7,000 rpm on Westech Performance' Superflow engine Dyno.

This is the story of how my friends and I rebuilt my 1955 Chevy Bel Air Gasser in my home garage and then showed up to Hot Rod Drag Week 2019 and won our class. We overcame extreme sleep deprivation, tons of broken parts, and a grueling 760 mile drive to win the A/Gas class. We couldn't have done it without a lot of help and the best part is the in addition to this video about the trip there will also be a special extended episode of Roadkill airing on the Motor Trend App. Drag Week is a five day road trip with drag racing every day. The rules state that you must follow a specific route each day to four different tracks. At each track you can make as many 1/4 mile passes as you like but you can only turn in a single time slip. At the end of five days the five time slips you submit are added together and then averaged and the lowest average in each class is determined to be the winner. In 2018 I came in Second Place in the A/Gas class, which is for nostalgic '60s-era Gasser style cars. Since that time, Blasphemi, my Bel Air, has been broken and rebuilt several times. It spent most of 2019 inside my garage instead of on the street. I finally changed engine builders and a few other key components on the car and found the reliability that has eluded me the past two years. Blasphemi ran a record-setting 8.52 second pass at 161 mph at Drag Week and finished the event in one piece. It's still running and is back home in my garage, which means I can finally turn my attention to other projects like the turbo boat and my '67 Chevy C10.

This episode is going live the same weekend that I'll be racing Blasphemi in Las Vegas at the Dodge-Pennzoil Nats NHRA race. So if you see this cmon out November 1-2nd to see if we can make some 8 second 1/4 mile passes in this radical stick-shift Gasser street car. Can't make it out? Well then check out this update on my wife's 1969 Chevrolet El Camino, a car that we've recently restored and then failed to travel very far in. The last time we went on a date in the Elco we actually ran over a massive piece of concrete that was lying in the road and it popped the Falken Azenis tire and smashed the Forgeline 18 inch wheel. This video has the backstory on that adventure and it also features a question and answer session with myself, 12-Volt Dave, and Cotten from inside my garage. It's pretty enlightening and funny. The three of will be in Vegas the first week of November 2019 for the annual SEMA Show at the convention center and we'll upload vids about our trip so watch for those

This is the story of how myself, 12-Volt Dave, Cotten, Merlin Johnson, Kelvy Limon and Brian Macy took Blasphemi to Las Vegas November 1-2, 2019 for the NHRA Dodge Pennsoil Nats, won a grudge match against another Gasser, and then went out cruisin. Blasphemi has been on a tear lately while winning Hot Rod Drag Week's A/GAS class and then winning a best two of three grudge match in Vegas. In Vegas it ran 8.63, 8.66, 8.68 and 8.69 passes at over 155 mph. The darn thing is reliable and consistent enough to be a bracket race car even with the stick shift and straight axle suspension. Now that the racing and cruising is over we've driven the car into the convention center for the annual SEMA Show and we'll have videos of this awesome event coming throughout the week. Stay tuned!

Cotten, Newbern and I have spent the week in Vegas racing Blasphemi and now it's time to move Blasphemi into the Motor Trend booth. Thanks to Merlon and Steve from Welderup, we got our car cleaned up and followed those guys and their awesome creations on a sick shortcut right into Central Hall of the show. Here's a quick vid on some of the Welderup cars those dudes brought out,. Hope you enjoy it!

The turbo boat is back and one step closer to action on the water. In this video we finally connect the steering system from the front to the rear of the boat. Along the way we give you great tips for TIG welding aluminum parts using a Miller Welders Dynasty 280DX inverter machine. Everything from selecting a proper tungsten, cup, and gas lens is covered and we show you how we prepare tungsten for AC welding aluminum plate. There's not a whole lot left fabricate on the jet boat before we fire up the 711ci Sonny Leonard Hemi turbo engine. In upcoming videos we'll cover the turbo and electrical systems of the boat as well as wiring up the Holley Dominator EFI system.

This episode revisits the truck you've been asking me to work on all year long- my 1967 Chevy C10. This is the truck my friends and I built 10 years ago, that I sold right after it was running, and that I bought back a couple of years ago. My goal is to be driving it by spring time. Today I took a big step toward making that happen by finishing the steering system.

Today we take a brief break from our regularly scheduled programming (Yeah, right, nothing is regular or scheduled on this channel.) to detour from my garage to Indianapolis, Indiana for the Performance Racing Industry show, a trade show for speed parts and race cars. We drove Square Force 1, my 38-foot long 1989 GMC R3500 crew cab ramp truck, while hauling Blasphemi, my 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air Gasser. Of course, we didn't bother to check the weather and ended up driving through the snow to get from Georgia to Indy. Still, we had fun and saw all kinds of cool stuff like a 16 cylinder LS marine engine, several billet Diesel engines, a few internet and television celebrities and managed to only get into one food fight at a restaurant. But now we are back home working on new videos about the turbo boat and my C10 so stay tuned for those. In the meantime, enjoy this road trip diary!