The Ultimate Off-Road Machine: Meet Our Supercharged Coyote Swapped 1972 Bronco

[Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] hey guys this is Jason with fat pter garage and I've got two good friends of mine Mike Manet and this is his really awesome Bronco he's got here and I got Roman Roman works here practically single-handedly well of course a lot of people he at the shop work right but he kind of was the superintendent if you will I'm making sure that we got everything done often times Mike would be communicating with Roman and they'd be scheming about some freaking stupid idea then we do it there's a process that goes into a build and it basically comes with an idea someone has and then they call us up and we kind of interview each other this is what happened here Mike would be like hey I've looked at your Yelp reviews they suck really bad and I'll be like oh yeah we had years ago we had a couple misunderstanding unfortunate things but we you know we talked through it he decided to bring his Bronco here and have us build something and it's like no Bronco I have ever seen built to this level this magnitude so stay with us we're going to go through and talk about all the aspects of it but Mike tell us what was your vision when you thought hey I want to take this Bronco cuz you've built it twice already right this is your third time yeah this is my third time so bought the Bronco a little over 30 years ago interestingly my dad I was talking to him I said I need a project and we'd always worked on vehicles together and built a couple old trucks and we're really into four-wheel drives we've never built the two wheel drive but my dad said what about an old Bronco and at that time I didn't even know what an old Bronco was he but he liked him he said come on up you know there's one for sale and this was the Bronco of course it was in a different state it was totally stock floor pan rusted out and just you know it was in terrible shape we had the top off it the very next day and we started cutting into it and we did we built it the first time dad did all the paint work and a lot of the Mechanics Work you know we drove it for quite a while and then maybe 15 years ago we decided let's do it again and at that point we' started doing more four-wheeling so we thought well let's let's tear it down and kind of beef it up a little bit and we went from 35 in tires to 37s and and so you know that was really cool we painted it the boxwood green and then after a while about 4 years ago I had sold my company and I thought you know let's let's give it one last aw you know my dad's he's going to be 80 next year let's just really go big and so my thought was let's do a coyote Swap and uh some new interior and I I remember when you showed up and you brought it here and we thought new interior coyote Swap and he's like hey you think uh 80 grand will get us there and I was like yeah we're just putting a coyote in it just a normal coyote freshing up the interior like that feels close give or take 10 grand maybe but yeah that feels probably doable the bronos shows up we didn't do that n no we got well I got a little sidetracked I got the bug we started doing things and and just to back up a second because you'd mentioned Yelp and I and I was looking around and calling different shops to think like who am I going to trust kind of my baby to right and my dad's you know mix kind of mix reviews with other shops and when I talked to you on the phone you took my call and and we had this nice long conversation and I I asked you about some Yelp stuff and it just seemed really genuine and it felt really good and I knew immediately this is where I wanted to go and so that was all cool for you guys I mean to kind of walk with me through this process as I kept wanting to change things and I kept wanting to let's go bigger let's do this what if we did that and you warned me said hey okay it's going you know we warn everybody just so you know but not everyone listens yeah yeah I obviously didn't listen very well but it's amazing and what I've learned is in spite of the money that gets spent and it gets painful right I'm not going to lie it's painful but you're going to take this home tomorrow this is leaving we're done with it we got 900 mil on this thing it's and 900 mil in this thing feels like 3,000 mi in all the other vehicles cuz it's a lot more work but we're ready to ship it off to you and Roman you you worked a lot with Mike and and we kind of let you spend some time communicating with them we don't we don't always do that we want to try to keep some control in the build we felt like you were pretty understanding and we were willing to do exactly what you wanted even if it was a little bit wild we thought hey he knows what he wants and he does want to do it right so that makes a little bit easier on us but Roman tell us a little bit about like as you're working with Mike and all the changes that are coming in and they're coming in hot right what what was that like for you trying to you know build this massive Bronco I feel like it was fun like Mike's Super personable got my phone number I believe from Charlie and then we just kind of communicated back and forth just like his ideas and all right we got to get the axles in he's coming I think believe for Thanksgiving time he wants to see it in there we got to flex it out you know and then I was like all right like transfer cases ordered we got Dino track Dana 6 xd60 for the front an 80 for the rear like it's definitely impressive I remember when it came I feel like I'm a pretty strong guy I mean I couldn't even lift the accident I had to grab a fork Clift to get it out of the pallet just like the whole process communicating with Mike whatever he wanted I feel like that was I feel like honestly like I had new friends right I mean well we're old friends now cuz it's been 4 years but it was pretty amazing to me just the friendships I mean lots of guys in the shop especially Roman Jason I mean you guys have been so incredible to work with and and I love the hey what we did this and and Roman is you know tell me hey we're working on this problem we got to figure this out I'm like what about this you know and sometimes they'd be like no that's you know that's not going to work yeah I think we definitely had to slow you down a c i mean like the ideas and just the brainstorming and you know all your all your pictures that you would send us of ideas that you had and you know modifying the spare tire carrier swing gate the Hero 3 transfer case working with drive shafts the anti-wrap bar got a lot of power for sure this box with green we repainted it the exact same color and it was actually pretty dog gone good I mean they did a really good job but I think Mike's like hey I've gone this far let's just freshen it up make sure it feels fresh you know I I thought about different colors but but my dad painted it this color you know and he he did a lot of work on the bodyw work I mean he had just retired when we decided to do the second build MH and so he did a lot of work and it just I felt like we got to keep that color you know so the mirrors I had mirrors mounted to the front of the windshield but they were weren't matching the rest of the Bronco by the time we got to those and so you guys came up with a design I I didn't even see it until it was finished and it was incredible and in fact most of stuff that you know I had an idea and you guys just made it better or sometimes you change it entirely but it came out better than what I had anticipated we had these all 3D printed then we made it out of Billet and then all of a sudden these doors show up one day they were pretty rough I feel Mike was like how do the welds look we got to clean them up so yeah you know it kind of went through and he's like oh I want to make the Body Lines match so we made some relief cuts and then pulled the metal out filled it in made some plates and then tried to line up with the body as you know as clean as possible made some extensions but cleaned up all the welds and then obviously the armrest pad no one wanted hot metal during the day so and then there was this teeny tiny little flipper handle and and Mike is basically saying hey can we put a bigger handle right which was all which is fair and so then we 3D printed this out of stainless steel yeah and so then we were able to have these you know these really cool they're heavy so they keep a little weight on it but you pop up on it so he's got these really cool rock slider that you had built a long time ago they were pressed by Wayne Hansen a long time ago and I just loved them I cut the ends and I added and tied them into the roll cage so I want to keep those but then you were worried about your dad getting in yeah I wanted to uh frankly all of us getting in yeah yeah cuz you show up with these massive 4S and so everything got a little taller we didn't think it was going have doors so we didn't have any pin switches obviously used to have the am steps come down until after we came up with this design so your switches are right here this is for the driver's side and then actually another toggle switch for the passenger side Roman had the great idea of adding a second switch here because I was worried that maybe my dad would leave his step down so I'm like okay I got you pop and you lowered the seats that was an idea that you had because I was concerned about it being oh yeah that's right I forgot well that feels like a long time ago yeah so we put these really cool Mustang seats in here but they sit you a little tall and so we had to take about 2 in roughly 2 2 and 1/2 in it gets into some of the cab mounts or the body mounts on the Bronco I say cab because we do a lot of trucks but there was some of those adjustments we got this really cool icon center console that we've used we've got your radio but we also got you know this thing here that he can lock and and kind of uh protect it we built a nice armrest tied it all in with this uh kind of Volkswagen plaid it's really cool and it looks nice with this relicate leather we also moved the gauges so the gauges would technically be over here and it's actually a little harder to see so it's nicer everybody can see it here we've done this once before but there was a lot of extra space so we had um some lines we put here because we were putting the AC controls here so we made a little bit bigger put looks like a little vent right there then we got the AC here again more controls there's a lot there's an onboard air compressor there's a ton of stuff we did fabricate this top this is a new top he had a a smaller narrower one we put some roll bar lights in here we put this really nice sun visors in here and designed a bracket to help hold it we also have this mirror here which has a backup camera built into it so when he goes in reverse front and rear cameras he's got front and rear cameras so when he's actually rock crawling and he needs to see what's in front of him he can actually see what's in front or behind them uh pretty easily U we also have some focal component speakers here we've also got four wet sound speakers here and then in the back even further you've got his you know his his gas cans another 40-in spare tire cuz everybody needs a 40-in spare tire we've got a jack here if he's on the trail or if he's going to Starbucks to get coffee and he needs to jacket up and change a tire you never know right can't be too careful we've also got another drive shaft in case he uh loses one the other cool thing is we got two JL sub facing down here and we got of course he's like hey could we put a yeti in here so I'm out on the trail and then we've got this comes down here so we've also got we made a little space here for him and we so we built some uh tool bags here have you seen these no I hav seen them the first time that's incredible we got some tool bags so he's out on the trail he's got some tools in here things that he can access he can pull these out and then there's an air compressor back in here he's got a secondary spare battery they're vented here also so he can access and get it if he needs to look at it for some reason or this actually articulates out of the way if he really needs to get to it so we made it to where it's on a pivot where it'll move so we had to custom build some brackets here everything's custom built Mike like none of this is like off the shelf stuff this new seat in the back and a lot of the stereo components are underneath it but like I said there's an air compressor and why do you need an air compressor out on the trail so there's two air compressors right so we have the the small one the ARB I forgot we got yeah the ARB is for the front rear lockers lockers and then we have an oasis and I bought it like 16 years ago and it and it sat in my garage in a box and I always had plans for it and so I thought I really you know I'd like to use this and put it in the Bronco to air up and air down tires right so check this out so we put right here is a connector for him to put the air hose I guess that's an air hose in the back to box in the tool box there's a tiny little curly q air hose I'm guessing he can go right here and he can can air up each side air down air up whatever you need I and Roman put one on the other side one on the other side well we have them set at what 25 psi yeah on these yeah so these are set at 25 psi obviously they're can't tell you can't really tell but amazing it makes it a little bit easier to drive you wouldn't want to drive these at like 60 PSI we did a a trimic 4050 and then it's a a Hero 3 3-speed transfer case just you know gives you more different ranges real low you never know when you're going to do king of the hammer you never know I mean you could get hung up in a curb at Starbucks I mean things happen heavy duty Drive Lines you guys actually did that here steering and then um redone redone correct had a few things redone these were things that I picked the vendor miss you know begrudgingly and then had to redo them so I learned a few lessons one of the things that's cool that Roman did was the entire frame plug welded everything smoothed it I wanted to keep the stock frame that it came with and the body and so some things that cuz everything else has been changed really so yeah and and and it flexes pretty good Flex on 40s you've got a hitch up front I can't imagine you ever using this but okay yeah I've to I've towed it a couple times behind my truck not long distances built a jumper harness it's sitting in the tool bag right right if you need it it's there that's right yeah I used to have to did we really put connectors for yeah to plug in to my truck because I used to have the little the little lights that I'd put on the back so when you plug that in the lights are going to work on this yeah are you kidding me trying to keep it from you no wonder so we had this all done and we literally were ready to set the body on here we're we're moving and then you had a really great idea I was worried that with 40s it might not have enough juice right so I and I remember talking to you and and you said I think it'll be fine you know but if you're going to do it Now's the Time like you need to pull the trigger and so I'm like ah I I don't want to have to redo it let's just do it and then I came to pick some parts up and you and you took me for a ride in a just a regular gen 3 coyote and I was like I I didn't need the supercharger but I think now that it's in it we've driven it I think it's fine but it's cool it's cool turns out adding a supercharger at that point in time took several different front runner kits a combination of several of them so that we could actually make it work and fit the depth that we needed it was a little challenging yeah I mean the hood we had to change the hood up and build some braces and make a few little things cuz you know the first Hood kit theu yeah start buckling start buckling that sucks with a painted Hood right you got to redo that but that's the way it goes sometimes that's the struggle like you mentioned you use certain vendors you try different things they show photos it does work and that's the struggle we run into here that's why we end up designing a lot of stuff here is cuz we've just learned that um we need some help and and we've and we've made a lot of little changes here and there I know you were concerned about running the 132 mimet oval and I just kept saying Mike there's there's no room yeah right there really there really is no room room and so a lot of this comes down to you make decisions based off you know space and as much as we would love to give him another 25 horsepower out of this thing I think we'll be all right we'll be all right we couldn't we couldn't come up with it but there's a lot in here we got RPM steering under here had these guys come over they did all the geometry on the steering so that we we knew that this was going to steer well and and Roman tell you've been you've driven it the most now we worked through all the bugs between everything from brakes to whatever it is tell me now how how do we it solid I mean I take it out on a trail I mean I got a truck as well and I feel more than comfortable taking this out you know I mean you still run into problems here and there but for the most part you think it's is now I mean I would drive it every day every test drive we took in it I mean we've done 100 mile Loops in it no questions as four-wheel drive front rear you can disconnect the rear just run the front I mean it's solid it's got plenty of power too there's a parking brake on here we put an EOP on it don't forget to turn that off before you take off there's enough juice in the motor to go past it ask me how you know yeah you've been there done that I did that I was like why don't this this thing sucks away it's I was like oh ebre this supercharger is not doing it supercharger can overcome the ebre I learned uh luckily I didn't get too far where's your dad let's get pops out here yep and uh let's let's introduce him because he's kind of he's a guy that started it all the the guys have done a phenomenal job I am so proud of fat fender garage I'm so proud of Roman and the team and everyone that's worked on this from The Body Shop guys that have gapped and lined things up and made at work to the fabrication guys just pulling their hair out there's inner tubs in here and there's vents there's heat shields there's all this stuff that's just in here that we can't even show it to you all because there's just so much that went into this thing but at the end of the day we're really excited to send it home with Mike this is my dad Mike Senior pops and uh he started all this 30 years ago we since I was little really I mean I he would be working on Old Willy's Jeep and I think what was I six or seven and he gave me a project he said hey take these headers off the he's like there's no way he's going to get those off and sure enough an hour later I had them off so we've always worked in his garage up in Quincy together on cars and this was kind of our final harah well until the 59 so final final wasn't done with the punishment but now that it's done and you've been watching all this time I'm going to hand this microphone to you but tell us what you're excited about moving on well I'm totally thrilled with what I see and the workmanship of your people and yourself and uh it's everything we ever wanted and it's way more than we could ever even accomplish on our own and again I just like to say thank you Roman hell of a mechanic one of the best I've ever seen and we you thrilled about the whole thing well I just want to say thanks guys absolutely it has been a pleasure for us to one build this amazing amazing Bronco like I said there's some beautiful Broncos out there but there there's nothing like this out there this thing has been well thought out well planned well executed everyone's done a great job but I'd say just like with every build that we do here the friendships that we create with our clients means more to me than anything and I consider you guys just really good friends hope that if I ever get to Quincy I get to stop by and see it but I'm lucky to think we get to keep working with you a little longer yeah we got a really cool 1959 first year of the four-wheel drive that Ford ever made it's super awesome it's toned way way down we promised his wife that we wouldn't make any real changes he promised his wife that we're going to keep it real simple and it's uh in the Paint Shop we're getting ready to paint it and it should go to together pretty quickly cuz it's just much simpler than this it'll kind of tow this every now and then and be something and that that's it that's it and uh there they're going to have two awesome vehicles and it's always sad when we're done you're like well I don't have any reason to talk to Mike anymore oh no I'm still going to be calling you just checking in like let's check in so I hope o change I mean exactly exactly we're super excited to load this up so we're going to load this up in the morning and uh they're Dead Heading all the way to Quincy it's about a 13 hour Drive they don't want to leave this parked outside anywhere they're going to have a heck of a time this weekend with their family so I don't think your wife's seen this completed she hasn't no and she hasn't ridden in it he's got the best best wife oh she's amazing I remember when it came to the supercharger you're like let me check it in with my wife and she's like will you just work another year you know yeah so well she actually she's like just do it right the first time get what you want get it done and yeah she's amazing Mike thank you thank you appreciate you thanks Roman stay tuned uh there's going to be a lot more coming from him on his 59 and we'll see you next time [Applause] [Music]