Adding 200+ HP to a 5,000 LB Truck | Whipple Supercharged 1979 F250

We've got the three-liter Whipple in there, and we are with Howard Kendrick, retired professional baseball player, World Series winner. He's done it all. I think one of the biggest things for me was I wanted a cool truck that I could drive every day. Brand new chassis underneath it. You know, a 5,000-pound truck needed a little more power, so. Let's show you what's under the hood. All right, Howard, we're really excited. Okay, you've had it for a while. You brought it back for some upgrades. We've done the upgrades. You're ready to get it back today. Obviously, you're excited about that, but the whole truck in general, we didn't fix a lot. Not a whole lot. Why? Why did you choose to do it that way? You know, I've owned the truck for a few years. I bought it from a good buddy of mine, Roman. You guys probably know Roman. He has the Mercury Crew Cab, and you know, I had big plans for the truck. I was going to do a Godzilla swap, then I changed my mind to a Coyote because of daily driving it, and you know, once I found out Jason and Fat Fender were going to do chassis, I called them. I was like, hey, man, I want to be one of your first chassis. So we were able to make that happen, and I think one of the biggest things for me was I wanted a cool truck that I could drive every day with, you know, AC, heat, you know. Once I got the truck back, I was driving it a lot. I drove it pretty much every day, and you know, one thing I started to notice was that the truck was really heavy, and with that, you know, that Coyote, even though it's a really good motor once it's up and rolling, you know, a 5,000-pound truck need a little more power. So I called Jason, decided to come back to the shop, and you know, we added a little Whipple underneath the hood, and you know, from what I hear so far, it's pretty exciting to drive. It's pretty exciting, and I think we knew going into it, just putting an Illuminator motor in it, the talk was, you know, probably, you know, in air quotes, which usually means yes with Howie, probably going to put in a supercharger, but I think it was just kind of like he, I think he promised his wife he's just keeping it low-key. He got it, proved it, and had a great time with it, honestly. Oh, yeah, I loved it. I definitely enjoyed the truck. It was sad to take it away from you and bring it back here, and so we put a steering stabilizer on it. Runs pretty good, but that was kind of one of the things, like, well, we could put a steering stabilizer. When you put 37s on it, you know, just with any truck, it's kind of a lot of tire, and it can kind of move a little bit, so we threw a steering stabilizer on it up front, connected to the RPM steering, and a pretty sweet little product right there. You check that out. You've got the Icon steering stabilizer, pretty sweet, and then what else did we do? Shoot, what did we... Besides the Whipple. We know we put a Whipple on it. We had the Whipple stabilizer, the chassis itself, I mean, it was unbelievable. Even without the stabilizer, driving it on the freeway, around the city streets, I mean, I had no issue. There was really no wander in the steering wheel, so I'm interested to see how it feels with that stabilizer, because I'm used to driving sports cars, and, you know, that stiffness, I kind of like that. So, you know, I was very, very impressed with the ride quality and, you know, the steering of this truck beforehand, and then I'm excited to see it now, and then, you know, probably one of my favorite things about the truck, though, besides the chassis and the engine upgrades and stuff, is probably the paint. You know, I left the patina because I like vintage things, and I like the way the truck looks, and it tells a story about the car, you know, having that character on the truck. A lot of people ask me all the time, oh, how come you didn't have them painted? Well, I didn't want it painted. Yeah. I wanted to drive it every day. I get slaughtered over that on social media. People are like, oh, they put all that chassis, and they didn't even paint that. What a horrible shop, you know? I'm just like, listen, we're not a horrible shop. We really try hard to do a really good job, but a good job also is striving to meet what Howie wants done, and not necessarily what we would do, and honestly, I think he chose wisely, and he has really, like, the stance, the look, the feel, everything about this truck is checking so many boxes for so many people, yes, we could have painted it, yes, we could have done all that stuff, but then that's a different truck. Yeah, it would have been a different truck. And you already got one of those. Yeah. I've got one that I drive it, but I cringe every time I drive it because I don't want something to happen to it, so with this, you know, leaving the patina, leaving it original, I use it like a truck. I still throw stuff in the back, take my kids to school in it. We have a good time. My family has a good time in it, and that's what it's all about. Well, let's pop the hood. I know that's what we came for. All right. So, check that out. We've got the three-liter Whipple in there, and Whipple makes a three-liter and a 3.8, and the 3.8 is massive, and we don't ever do that on, like, if you're quarter mile runs down the racetrack, and you're just squeezing every ounce out of everything, maybe that makes sense. It's just, you know, when I talked to Dustin Whipple, who is the owner of Whipple, he said, Jason, don't ever put a 3.8 on anything. He said, just the three-liter is perfect, and there's still room. We could add another, shrink that pulley down if you want to add another, you know, pound of boost, you know, give a little bit more, but it's a big truck. Like you said, it's over 5,000 pounds, so when you're moving this thing down the road, it's big. It's heavy, and to move something this big, this heavy is pretty impressive, and at some point, you have to decide, like, hey, this is not what this truck is designed for. Yeah, I'm not going to race it. Yeah, I mean, you know, you might have some fun with it, but there's other vehicles that make more sense to get that kind of performance out of it, but this is just, you know, really just giving it just enough, right? And I think this turned out awesome. Yeah, I think one of the biggest issues I was having, I was telling you, was when I was on the freeway, it just didn't seem like it wanted to be in the right gear. If I was going uphill, the truck was so heavy, I'd have to get it down to a lower gear, and now, hopefully with this Whipple, which I don't think I'm going to have a problem getting it up to speed and being able to cruise and not search for gears, you know, I got plenty of get up and go, and, you know, if I want to do any type of passing, I think I'll be able to make that happen. You'll be able to do it. So the Whipple supercharger was installed. We've got this overflow tank here, and then underneath the truck, we got the cooling system and electric fans to help cool it, and so essentially, we had to change this out. We put a different one here. We've got a five-inch here that kind of tapers down there, and so we can get as much air as we possibly can in here so that we can push as much fuel in it as we can. So the more air that can come in, the better it's going to be. Otherwise, very little was done after that. When we were putting this... Oh, it's hot. Okay. When we were putting this on here, a couple of little parts that were missing out of kit that they had to send us, and then we had to wait for those, but at the end of the day, we got the truck cleaned up for you. We're ready to go for a drive and see what you think. I'm curious what you think. Oh, yeah. I'm ready to drive this thing. All right. You want to get that side? Yeah. Got you. I've tried to shut it with this bug deflector, and it's a little tricky. Yeah. I usually just grab it and just... So if it breaks, I guess I have to find another one, but I don't really want to. I like this thing. Roman had that on there when I got it. It's cool. And a lot of people go, man, I really like the deflector on the front. Don't take that off. Yeah. Back in the day, that was a thing. Oh, it was. Big time. Yeah. Nobody uses them anymore, but it's cool that it's on there. All right. We're going to go for a drive. You driving? All right. Oh, yeah. I got the keys, man. Let's do it. All right. Let's go. Oh, yeah. That is night and day. Night and day, right? Yeah. Night and day. I mean, before, it would take me a little while to get up there. So, yeah. That makes a big, big difference. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It wants to eat now. Yeah. It's ready to go. This is actually, I mean... I don't do the job. You see my face right now? This is... Yeah, but you always have a smile on your face. I don't think that's fair. That's true. It's even bigger right now, though. One thing, you know, you've always just... And I'm going to guess, like, in the clubhouse back in the day, like, you were just the happy guy. Like, not too down, not too... You know, just the smile on your face. Just have that, like, presence of you. You know what? Life is too good to be mad all the time. That's what I like to tell people, and you know what, like, there's so much negative in the game of baseball. Like, you fail a lot. So much that could go wrong, but I feel like when you get out on the field or, like, when you're driving a truck like this or just in cars in general, I'm happy about cars. I love cars. My wife will tell you that I probably talk about them too much. There's not a lot that you don't smile about, and that's the thing I love about vintage and, you know, that it really brings a smile and puts joy in my heart, and the fact that my kids love being in them and being around cars, it says a lot, and it means a lot to me. And to be able to come and have you guys build something like this for me or make it drastically better, I would say it's a huge improvement above where it was before. It means a lot because now I get to enjoy it even more, and I can drive it every day. For sure. Well, when I drove it, I was like, well, that's going to work. Much better truck. I felt the steering was tighter, too. Oh, yeah. Much tighter. It's just, I mean, I felt it right away. But I just can't say enough because, you know, you guys obviously built Ruth for me, and then when I found out you were doing chassis, I mean, the reason I come to you, I think I told you this a long time ago, because you stand behind your product and you build a great product, and I think, for me, that's what it's about is knowing that I'm going to get something that works. And if there is something that happens, because, you know, this is life. I mean, things do happen, but you guys have always stepped up, managed to come up with a good solution, and then you have it right back to me as soon as possible, and I think, you know, whether it's an upgrade or, you know, something that just malfunctions for something from the factory, I mean, I feel like you guys have done a great job of making me happy, and I know other guys that build with you that you've made happy as well. I feel passionate about this hobby. I feel passionate about the old trucks. I feel passionate about what our customers are getting from us and what they experience, and I just put myself in their shoes. Like, you know, when I jump in and I'm looking for things that I would hate, I see this. This bothers me, and I want this to be, you know, good for the customer, and so we'll constantly just like, hey, hate to tell you guys, but I think there's too much of this or this, and it's real small. Like, they're small things. In the early days, I'd come back with like 30 things on the list, you know, and I'm like, do you guys drive this truck, you know? But now they know that our quality control, our QC through the inspection process is getting better and better to where I'm going out, and I'm finding, you know, dumb stuff. You know, like, hey, I noticed the dome light, I had to play with the switch, and it's just ticky tacky. It's just a switch made overseas, right, and it's just malfunctioning, right? Yeah. It's not the quality of work. It's not anything. It's just we're trying to catch those little nuances, and so at the end, it takes more effort and work to get it that way. I'm hoping that our customers appreciate that and are happy. You drove it, and, you know, you called, hey, is this noise common, or is this, like, yeah, that's... Oh, yeah. I definitely ask questions, because sometimes some of the things are things you can fix on your own without having to come all the way back, and, you know, part of me loves that part, too, where these old trucks, you can kind of get under them and still do things, and, you know, that's not too far out of reach for me to be mechanically inclined to fix something, so I think the biggest thing for me is just the nostalgia of the truck, you know, and I think with the interior, you know, the feel of the truck, definitely, and the chassis, I mean, it's made a huge difference to this. And speaking of the interior, you know, you come to the shop, and you'll have your boots on, you know, like, you know, one thing about Hal is, you know, he's not all Porsche's and fancy watches all the time, right? But he's kind of like this working guy, right? You put a lot of time and effort into your family, into different baseball clubs, and, you know, you're in the community working, and the boots tell the story, right? And so when we talked about this old truck, and I was, like, looking at this, all this stuff, and I thought, let's kind of do, like, a feel that's a nod to a King Ranch. Oh, yeah. And when you showed me the pictures, I go, oh, man, he killed that right there. Yeah. And so we did that, and we put it in here, and we showed this off. You know, we've done three of those interiors? So I saw your, I saw a video the other day that you guys did, and there was another one coming. Yeah, and people really fell in love with your interior. That's pretty cool. They just loved it, and it's, people have asked for it, and so we've, you know, it's a little bit more of a premium than just our standard, because it takes a little more effort for us to put that color in there, and make it like that. But you know what? It's not King Ranch, right? We don't take that name and use it as our own, but we just say it's a nod to it, and gives it that feel of that ranch-style truck. Well, it definitely turned out like a, you know, it made an old truck look like a new one on the interior, for sure, so, you know, I love it. The seats are comfortable. I love the cupholders. I think that's something, too, that a lot of the, I feel like they forgot about cupholders back in the day. They did. And I'm like, man, I have coffee with me in the mornings, I always have a little Yeti, and then my wife's always like, hey, I need a cupholder. And it's really not that loud, even with the supercharger in it. Yeah, no, it's not. But we planned for it. We put the three-inch exhaust on it, so we didn't have to redo any of that stuff, because we basically, we said, Howie's going to put a supercharger, so do everything for it, so nothing has to be delayed. You did, you did plan ahead. You told me, hey, let's just do everything to where we can just make it easier, so that when we do get there. But even when, it's not obnoxiously loud. No, it's not. I think with the sound deadening underneath the carpet, I mean, it kind of, you can still have a conversation. Like all classics, if it was quiet as a new car, it wouldn't feel right, it wouldn't be normal. Yeah. You just, you want to- I like the nuances of like the, like the, just a little tiggy-tack stuff, you can hear the road noise. Yeah. I mean, that's just part of it, driving an old car. So I think that's what makes it so enjoyable too. It's not perfect. No, it's not, by no means, but it's, it's about as perfect as you can get for an old truck. We hope that this is a lot more fun for you. We hope that the, you know, performance is everything you want it to be. And then also, what I love most hearing you talk about this, is that you were saying how you pick your kids up and you take them to school. Oh yeah. Right. And you jump in this, right? And that this is what your kids and you guys find cool, those memories that are built, right? I suspect you'll have this truck for a long time and your kids will drive it and you guys will have a good time with it. Yeah. It's not going anywhere. It's going to stay with me for a long time. Yeah. So, and I got to think that my kids, they want to keep it too, because they like old cars too. Yeah. So like my youngest son, he's the one, he goes, dad, I want one of those for my first truck. And my wife's like, ah, we need some sensors and safety features. Yeah. Although if you hit somebody in this thing, it's going to be a, it's going to hurt. It's going to hurt somebody. Yeah. I'm definitely very, very happy, man. I'm glad we decided to come back and do the Whipple and, uh, you know, I'm going to enjoy this thing for a really long time, man. It's always a pleasure to, you know, work with you on your projects and I know you got a Dodge you're working on, so hopefully we'll get some Dodge interiors for you. Yeah. I'm looking forward to that because I'm going to tell you, your interior shop, man, you guys kill it. So that's definitely one that I'm going to do. I would like to do something outside the box on that one. Easy peasy. Oh yeah. Just like that, dude. Yeah. I definitely appreciate it, man. Thank you, man. I appreciate it. And, uh, have a good time in it, man. Oh, you know, I will. No tickets. All right. We're super excited and stay tuned for more projects. We got a pretty cool Mercules that's heading out next week and a video coming out with that and we'll see you next time. Thanks.