He Turned a Classic Pickup into a Show Car! | Full Custom Garage | 4K

Now on Full Custom Garage, Mastered Metal Man Ian Roussel continues the transformation of Jack's wild ride. At this stage, we've modified everything. I saw some guy do this on TV, he had a dog dish. You want to revert to the stainless steel model? But this time, Ian's got even more tricks up his sleeve. When something's this radical, you can't put anything back in its original place, that's the bottom line. I thought it was going to be good, but it's spectacular. Wow. The downside is, it's quite a bit of work. As the project gets rolling, things get a little crazy. The wild card here is the paint job. You put a little flake on it, the flake doesn't fit on a truck as far as I'm concerned. With his wheels spinning, Ian goes to see custom car legend, Gene Winfield. I'm dealing with the guy who's got the baddest Econoline pickup on the planet. If it takes me three hours, or three days, or three weeks, it doesn't matter, I paint until I like it. I just started, I'm going to keep going until I'm happy with it. We're making some pretty good progress on the front of the truck, and then Jack shows me these giant taillights he wants to use. This is kind of dicey. Wanting to use these taillights requires cutting through the structure of the bedsides we just spent so much time to strengthen and make straight. My initial conversation with Jack, we talked about having the taillights flush with the rear of the panel. I made all the cuts, put them in place, and I just wasn't sure. I'm just having a tough time envisioning how these things are going to fit in here. As soon as I mock up these taillights, I can see they're physically wider than the rear of the truck, so it's a problem. I have an idea. It's different than what Jack had mentioned, but I think it could be way better. I think that will work. In simplest terms, it's a French taillight. It's a five foot wide French taillight. Why not? I don't know where the term came from, but when you talk about custom cars, a French headlight or taillight means it's sunken in, it's recessed in the body panel. The cool factor with setting up the taillight like this is it already mimics the front headlights. The downside is it's quite a bit of work. Jack's not here, so I'm just going to go for it. I dig it. I am on the right path. I just hope Jack responds. Hey. What do you think? Is that going to work? Wow. I take it off for a day or two, and look what happens. This is beautiful. Wow. There's only one thing wrong. What's that? It's upside down. No. No, I'm just kidding. Okay. I put it in the other way, and it was like, wait a second. It looks like a smiley mouth. No. This is perfect. Man. That's better than I ever thought it would look. Good answer. Because we weren't going to do it different. Huh? Nothing? No. When I walked in and looked at them, I was shocked. I thought it was going to be good, but it's spectacular. I'm elated. I can't believe that in three weeks, we've gotten this far. Beautiful. Jesus. The camera doesn't come out until Jack's happy with it. Once that digital camera's on the scene, you know we're on the right path. We are both on the same page with all the fabrication elements of this project, but the critical thing is the paint detail. We're doing something really far out, and we both have a difference of opinions on what color it should be. This color here, that's sunset orange. I've got this idea for this color. Looks like a sunset. I went and bought a gallon of that, and that's the color we're going to use. This has got a lot of metallic in there, a lot of fine metallic. I think you're going to have to add something. It's like almost a production car color. You need something to make it pop. I'm not really digging this color. You see, every day on modern cars, I'm going to try to push Jack to do something a little different. What's the whole deal with this? It's just one color? Yeah. That's what I was thinking. Well, what about airbrushing like a cartoon character on the back with like a little statement, you know, like Tweety Bird or Betty Boop? You could paint it right next to your third brake light. Well, I was thinking airbrushing the third brake light. Yeah, that's a good idea. That would be better. I think the paint will make or break the truck. It's my truck, so we'll come to a happy medium there somewhere. Jack and I are putting the paint on hold for now. I'm going to finish up this taillight, but I got some even cooler ideas for the doors. I walked by the back of the truck and I saw the taillights. Boy, they looked great. And then as I walked around the corner, I seen he was working on the doors, and I thought, what the hell is he doing now? Sorry, I was in the zone. What are you building here? What's going on? We had, you know, the two doors had nothing holding them in place. So I was going to start body working and doing the door gaps, and I realized there's no hinges or latches anymore. When we sectioned the body, we cut them out. So I got to thinking about it, and I think suicide doors, suicide hinges are the best way to go. That's an awful lot of work, though. Jesus. Well, they're already done. I already built them. They're right in here. Did you get the other side finished? Yeah. Both sides are in. I'm just working on the last latch right here. Don't you ever sleep? Sometimes. I call Ian a robot because every time I show up here, he's done more than I thought he was going to do. How the hell did he do all that in this amount of time? I just took the stock striker, and I set it in. I got a little pilot hole just for now so he can open the thing, but all the stock parts go right back in. Suicide doors are very simple to explain. They open backwards. But what I did was I took these two super heavy-duty gate hinges, and I mounted them in parallel. There's one on top of the other, very close together, super compact, and super strong. Watch your fingers. This is unbelievable, man. I never expected this. When something's this radical, you can't put anything back in its original place. That's the bottom line. If you change everything, you gotta follow through with everything, and it needed these doors to fit that bill. I just can't figure out what to do with this body line. I love how you replicated this in here with the bead roller. But this line doesn't go anywhere. You could see that there was a body line left over from the original vehicle, and it didn't go anywhere. It just looked like it was lost in space. What if we put a plate right down the door? Boy, that's a lot of extra work. I want to just get rid of the line completely, but Jack had other ideas. Just bring it up and let it fade in. That'd be fine. Okay, so that this line just kind of appears right here. Yeah, it starts curving this way, so it would start there. So then back here, what, this would come in through here and turn up like that? Up the hill. Jack wanted to leave some element of the original body line in place. He wanted to fade in the two sides. I'm not so sure, but in the end, it's his truck. So we'll come right to here. Door curves, yeah. So your line will start here, and this will just get filled. It can't just stop, so it's just going to just blend it into that. It's fine. Okay. I started working on Jack's body line design, and I really just want to get rid of it completely. We've been friends for a long time. If there's one favor I could ask you, please don't go through with this. If you look at the line from here to there, it's asking for a straight shot. It's going to look like somebody caved the door in, man. Yeah, that's- That's what you're going to end up with. It's going to look like somebody pounded the side of the van. Somebody banged into it. So. It's going to be the same amount of work to put in one long piece, and I think you're going to end up with a dented looking door if we don't do this. I'm really just kind of pushing him. You know, I'm willing to settle on what he wants to do, but then I give him the pep talk. We just put a sheet like this right through here. So if you're cool with that, I really think this is the right move, man. I agree with you. I agree that you're right again. Well, I didn't say I was right. It's just a different opinion. No, no, no. That happens to be correct. It's going to be much better. It happens to be correct. I put on my lawyer suit. I sold my case. We're going to do it my way. The remedy for this body line thing is pretty simple. It's just a piece of 20-gauge sheet, tack welded very delicately so we don't warp the door, grind, body fill, repeat. That's it. The build's moving along, and Jack's ideas just keep on coming. I wanted to find out what his deal was with this steering column. What's going on with that steering, man? That's kind of starting to get a little mad scientist under the dashboard. Yeah. I was looking at that. I had to move the steering over a foot because of the hump here. You can't sit out here, obviously. So I decided it has to go over a foot. So I'm making this contraption. So what you're saying is this chain, this is your stock steering box over here. That's the steering box. We don't have to move that so it doesn't change the steering geometry. That's going to wrap around like that. Two sprockets and a motorcycle chain. Works for me. What he's done is the chain drive steering setup. I've seen it a lot in hot rods just to lower the steering angle. Why not put it sideways? Jack and I are bouncing back and forth ideas just to try to make this the coolest truck it can be. Talking about the dashboard, I got a couple ideas. He comes up with this old headlight. What the heck's that about? That's for a much earlier vehicle. This is what I want to do. I want to set this in the middle of the dash on the top. We'll put the instrument cluster in here. So yeah, it's like a little pod up there. This is a headlight bucket from an old Dodge, I believe, in the 30s somewhere. All right. So I'll cut this thing out. So you've got something that fits this trim ring, I guess. You want to leave this on? Yeah. I had this idea for the speedometer. I think this is a 51 Chevy pickup truck. But I said, you know, I got to put this in something to make it look different. I dig it, man. We're all full of surprises later. Sure. Well, head on. First the chain steering, and now this. This headlight shell seems to fit the gauge cluster that Jack wants to use. So the idea is in this simple circular gauge, you have oil pressure, charging, fuel gauge. Pretty trick. Compact unit. I love it. I was trying to figure out what kind of design I wanted. It's got such a big dashboard, I thought, well, how about if we put a pod, put the instrument cluster right in the middle? This is really going to set off the whole design of the dash. So the whole thing is about getting it set in the dashboard properly. You know, the angle for the driver to look at it, how it looks through the windshield. You know, there's a few factors to consider. So is that what you're thinking, like this angle? That's maybe a little more even towards me. Yeah. That's really neat. I like that. That's really good. What are you thinking on each side of this? Are you going to try to filler this and then cover these vents or something? Well, you know what I was thinking, come around with it. Since I had this new gauge, I didn't need the old dash the way it was. This is a very flat, utilitarian looking dashboard. Jack's got a great idea to finish off each side of the center pod. I'm going to curve some sheet metal in the slip roller and set it in place. So something like this. Oh, yeah. That looks good. But you know something? I'm looking at this thing, and I don't know how you're going to take this, but... You want to redo the whole dash? No. No, no, no, no, no. The hump, it's too high. At first, when we set this thing in place on the dashboard, Jack's like, I don't like it. I was thinking he wanted to go in a whole different direction, but he just wanted to tailor it a little more. Just drop this down about two inches. So you mean just bring it down right to the peak of that dome right there? Okay. I think we can just cut a hole right through the dashboard. Yeah. The high spot there, and set that down in there. I think it'll look a lot better. That works for me. Live with that? Oh, that's it. That's beautiful. That's much better. Really, I have to come clean. How I got inspired, I saw some guy do this on TV, he had a dog dish. Yeah. You want to revert to the stainless steel model? But the poor dog, you keep traumatizing the dog, you keep taking his dog dish away. But he gets a fresh one each time. Jack's going to finish up these dash pieces, and I'm going to finish up on these door body lines and get it in primer. Really pushed Jack into this design of deleting the body lines in the door, and I'm really excited to see what he thinks about it. Boy, that looks pretty good. Looks great. Everything is simple. You got this line goes into here, this goes around the back, same height as the back glass. This goes into the windshield in the front. The critics will love it. Ian saved the day by putting that piece of metal in the door. I think it was a very good call. The whole thing is, you don't want the vehicle to look like it's in a bunch of different pieces. But if we can pull it together, it's going to be convincing. That's what makes a cool car. There's still one problem, man. We got a big hole in the back of this thing. What do you want to do about the bed? I know you're talking about a tonneau cover or something. We'll make it tubing, rectangular tubing. Okay. And then she'll lift up and I'll skin it with some aluminum and cover it with vinyl, black vinyl. Okay. It'll be fine. Just like a hood on a car, you ride around without a hood, it looks terrible. So I'm going to make a tonneau cover. The only problem we're going to have is letting out the heat. From the start, we knew that this engine was going to have to get air into the carburetor and then heat out of the engine. So this tonneau cover is going to block off any airflow. That's a problem. I've got a couple of big pieces of pipe. Maybe I'll mess around with that if you want to lay out some stuff here and just start cutting. Sure. There's a million ways to skin a cat. We're going to use some kind of a vent in this tonneau cover. I'm not sure how it'll work out, but it definitely needs holes to breathe. Before we get started on the ventilation, I need to build out the frame. This is a simple design, but making any round shape out of square material is a challenge. So we're going to make these two rounded corners out of some half-by-half stock and just kind of mock up like a truss shape for each corner to keep it strong. These lifts we're going to use put a lot of stress on it, so I'm trying to do the simplest, most lightweight design, but as strong as possible. We're going to put aluminum over the top of this thing, so that adds a bit of weight. And the idea is, just like with the door skins, you don't want it to look like it's concave, like it's falling apart. Right. So at least that, with weight on it, I mean, that's, I don't know how much weight, but that's perfectly flat. It's pretty hard to press. Jack's unsure as how he may finish this off upholstery-wise. We're going to sheet it with aluminum so that it's lightweight. We're just going to put in a series of panels, and however he finishes it is up to him. I got this hinge from industrial metal, steel, heavy duty. That's going to run the length of the front of this cover to allow it to hinge up and down. Jack left to the store to get the final pieces for this cover. I got this frame fabbed out, so we should be good to go. Hey, and I got the gas shocks. Hey, hey, perfect timing. I got this hinge in. Beautiful. This will lift up just like that. And then... Two gas struts? Yeah. Two gas shocks. We can put them here somewhere. Perfect. If you've seen any tonneau cover on a pickup truck, you see they have these pressurized rams, these little lifts that hold it up. We're going to use the same detail. I went to the auto parts store to get a couple of gas shocks, and the guy behind the counter says, well, what kind of a truck is it? Well, there isn't exactly part numbers for this vehicle, so he gave me what he had. Follow general instructions on back of pouch. They're the instructions to tell you to use the instructions. Special remove installation instructions. You speak Spanglish? Spanglish. French? Russian? No. Swahili? You don't need no stinking directions. I got this. Watch me go. First, you got to get your weight. So, look at that. I'm heavy. These are too strong, Jack. Are they? I'm 250. Easy. Oh, wow. Right away, we're trying to test these things out, and they're just way too strong. I'll just take this back. I'll be back. I'll be here. I'm just going to finish this cover up, and Jack's going to try to find the right struts. Hey, Ian. Yep. I took these off my car. Maybe they'll work. You took them off your hatchback? Yeah. That's supposed to take apart the good cars. You push on it this time and see if it works. These are pretty new. That's perfect. That'll work okay? I think these will work fine. I'll pull the other one off. Jack's a better man than I. I was kind of cracking up. It's like, dude, we're here to take apart the junky cars. He's taking his daily driver apart for this thing. Took them off my car, and hopefully, they'll work on this. Here, I got the other one for you. This one here is off the right side. Look at it. No wonder my door never stayed up. Who got this Lexic? This is 6301, and that's 6303. They're different lengths, so they're not going to work either. How is it that we can build an entire freaking spaceship and not have one hitch, and then we're stuck on these two freaking hydraulic struts? So now, we got to go to plan B, or C by now. I think it's plan C. We may end up on plan Z by the time this thing's finished. Once again, Jack's going to try to find the right gas struts, and I'm going to finish the tonneau cover. Jack comes back with try number three. He's got a few different options. It's quite an assortment. Where'd you get all these things? Well, they had a parking lot sale last night at midnight over at Macy's parking lot. You figured out how easy it was to take them off of your car, so you took them off somebody else's. Perfect. Sometimes, you have to have a little larceny up your sleeve there. You got to rob from Peter to pay Paul once in a while to get this thing right. I'm really not sure where Jack acquired these, but we found a matching pair, and it seems like they're going to work. The thing lifts smoothly, it stops in a good position, and it doesn't slam shut. It falls down nice and even, and that's how we need it, the proper piece for the job. It was a couple of tries, and we finally got the right ones. I'm looking forward to see what the whole tonneau cover looks like when it's finished. It sure really makes it look clean, doesn't it? Yeah. That's the whole look, yeah. Yeah, so this last trim, I'll just cut out these holes so the air will vent out, and we'll just get ready for upholstery, man. Putting holes in the body panel is a pretty big style choice. Jack came up with these three slots that he feels will be enough airflow. I'm not so sure, but either way, we're going to go ahead and just blank out a few holes for the air to move through. So we set up the bracing and cut the holes, and they just look like three rectangular slots, three big holes in the truck. I'm thinking it's going to need some kind of a finishing detail. This looks kind of like a toaster. Looks like just three slices of bread are going to pop out of there. That's nice. I like that. I think I got this perforated metal would be perfect for it. I got a bunch of perforated steel sheet. Just going to try to convince Jack to use one of those. So I got this stuff I used in the grill of another car. That's a pretty clean look. Oh, that's neat. Yeah. And then the standard round hole punch stuff. He brought out some expanded metal that he has, and we looked at that, and it's nice, but it wasn't it. What about louvers? Set it right. Three panels like this. Panels about that size, but a bunch of louvers on the middle, and set it on there. Yeah, I think louvered metal panels would be way cooler than just some grill or screen or something. Yeah, for sure. In hashing out the final idea on what's going to cover these holes, Jack loves the idea of louvers. The whole thing is, where do you get them? Well, I know a guy. He's got a louver press. I'm not exactly sure of the dimensions, but I've seen them all over the place. We could maybe just bring three pieces of metal. I kind of like the louver idea best. All right. Well, he's kind of a hard dude to get, but if he's willing to do it, I think that would be our best choice. This body is 99% block sanded. We got to come up with a paint scheme, because that's the last bit of fab on the whole rig. Let's just spray out a bunch of panels with the different color choices we have and see we can come up with, because the paint is obviously the last critical decision. Oh, yeah. Jack's really convinced he wants to use this red color. I'm not so sure. I'm going to try to bring some other element into it, make it a little different. So these are our three starting choices. I got this chopped top silver I painted a few cars with. Look at that. It's hot. Beautiful. So I was thinking, obviously, with a gray or a white or a silver base coat, each color is going to look different. You have your definite base coat color. You can't really tint that, but I can tint this other Eastwood product with the silver. So I'm going to lay out yours with a silver and white base coat sample. Then I'm going to lay out that straight over silver and white, and then I'm going to just progressively silverize this and see what that does. We'll have, like, four or five, six different shades. That'll work. All of this is really prep work for where I want to go with the paint job. I just got to convince Jack. Now the secret weapon. You know, I love this stuff, man. I know it's a little bit not in your time frame, but I'm a glutton for this stuff. You put a little flake on it. It just doesn't fit. This is a truck, though. You see the way I'm working here? This is like one of the top chefs. I wanted to go metal flake, a bunch of crazy details. Jack's a little more mature than me. Yeah, thanks. Tractor beam. Look at it go. Yeah, look at this. The god rays are coming. Look at it. He wants to see the flake, man. Oh, yeah. He's pointing towards the flake. Divine intervention. Oh, no. I knew it as soon as I put that pinch on there. Oh, man. The sun came through the roof, got a cool little spotlight on it, and I'm digging the flake. I'm just not sure about the red. Liking the darkest brown. Well, I think those are our final two, man. Yeah, but this is it here. Forget that stuff. Come on. I know Ian doesn't like it, but I still like the red paint by itself. The gold flake was just a little too much for me. Oh, man. That flake is awesome. You're killing me. Gold is exactly what it needs. You're killing me. On a truck? You don't do that on a truck. That's bitching. We're going with Jack's red color, but I'm not giving up on spicing up this paintwork just yet. I can't wait to see that flake on the whole truck, man. It's going to be bitching. You're killing me. It's going to be hot. Go-to guy for me is the old-timer. Gene Winfield is one of the legendary car builders, been around Southern California hot rod custom car scene forever. June of 53 was the second issue, and I'm on the cover right there. The only word to use is time capsule and cool, so that's three words, but either way, it's a pretty rad spot. He's got a lot of history, a lot of nostalgic toys, clothes, furniture, everything. He's even got a Star Trek room. This is Captain Kirk's chair, yes. It was in the Enterprise. And this is my car that I built in 1965, was on Star Trek and also on Bewitched. It's all aluminum on a Citroen chassis, a French Citroen chassis. This is the original artwork here, so I built the whole car from that picture right there. The whole thing with walking through this place is that it is a freaking mother load of information. This guy's done a lot of work, he's been in the scene forever, and this is really an homage to that. I came up here to get a set of louvers stamped. Pretty simple. I could have came with a piece of sheet metal. Instead, I brought the whole truck. Hey, Gene. Hey, Ian. How's it going? How are you? I'm doing good. How are you doing? Long time, no see. Yeah, it's been a little while. What in the world do you have here? I got this Econo line. I figured I'd take it up to the… That's an Econo line? Take it up to the guy who's got the baddest Econo line around and show it off. Oh, thank you. You know, of course, it reminds me of the Diora. That was the inspiration for it, exactly. The Alexander Brothers. That's beautiful. Yeah. Yeah, I love it. I like the way you brought it out and you sectioned it. We sectioned the bed five inches. We sectioned the cab eight inches. Wow. You know, the basic shape of it and the slant on the B and C pillar is just beautiful. You know, it's different. Got a little bit of a sail panel going. Yeah. It's kind of like the El Camino a bit, but its own thing. No, it looks great. As much as I wanted Gene to check out this truck, I'm dealing with the guy who's got the baddest Econo line pickup on the planet. My idea was to pull a quickie and get a little inspiration for the paint work. Jack and I are having trouble deciding. This guy's got an awesome history of painting, wonderful, amazing paint jobs. Did you chop yours or not? No. No, it's not chopped. It's just sectioned in the front, too. Yeah, it's sectioned only four inches. Okay. See, I pulled four inches out of here, only back to this portion. You see, my Pacifica, I built for Ford back in 62 and 3, and it was in the Ford custom car caravan. It went all over the U.S. I was trying to get some inspiration from Gene for the paint, talking about paint schemes and whatever. What color is he going to paint it? That's what we've been debating. I wanted to do some kind of heavy metal flake, and he says, you do not flake a pickup truck. He said, ask Gene. You don't put metal flake on a pickup truck. If I was painting it naturally, I'd put a Winfield blend on it. When I painted a car, I paint until I like it. If it takes me three hours or three days or three weeks, it doesn't matter. I paint until I like it. Sometimes I'll paint the whole side of a car, and I don't like it. I'll repaint it, and repaint it as I go. And I create a piece of art with each and every paint job. Gene gave me some cool tips on the paint work, and he also had some ideas for the louvers. Make these two outer rows longer, and the way it's made underneath, it'll be easy to re-brace it and leave the center row the way it is. I'm interested in giving it a little more airflow, so definitely I think it needs to get more heat out of there. Yeah, I agree. All right, well get your louver out, and let's get over and start getting ready to do some louvering. Sounds good. I've been up here to Winfield's a few times, mostly for his car show in the fall, and each time he's got an amazing array of custom projects. There's always something new. It's just cool to look around. I started very early. I started my first shop in late 46, and I've been going ever since, and I just keep going because I love it. I like to create things. I like to make things different. Every vehicle is a challenge, a little bit of a challenge, and I like to jump in there and make it happen. First louver is very critical. I have to pull it down very slow with my hand to get it so it doesn't punch accidentally, and then I line up the center line, punch that first one right now. Original louvers were done in an oak block. They were done on all the midget race cars years ago, the small midget race cars. They had louvers all through the hood. My louver is the only louver that I know of in the world that has a peak in the center. It has a slight peak. I know. That's what I thought was so cool about it. It looks not like you see on your typical stuff. I'm surprised nobody's ever copied that. All other louvers in the world, they're flat on top. I put a slight peak in my louver to design it, and when I put it on a curved hood, the rows of louvers look better because of the peak in there. Okay, there we go, 19 of them. Perfect. Beautiful. Yes, sir. That's exactly what we needed. Right. I hope that I was able to teach Ian a few things today while he was here, and every time he comes here, I want to teach him some new things. That's what I like to do. I like to carry it on. Perfect, man. Totally better than their simple screen or whatever we were talking about. Yeah. Louvers did it. Yeah, that's going to work great. I appreciate it. Gene's the man. He handled this louver job perfectly. He gave me a ton of inspiration for the paint job. I thanked him again and again, and I'm on the road. I'm going to get this thing painted. All the way back from Gene's, just thinking about the paint scheme, you know, I was looking at his truck. That thing is dynamite. It really got me inspired. I told Jack I was just going to put a sealer coat on the truck, but I went for it. I painted the whole thing. Aha! I thought you were just going to seal it yesterday. I walk in today, and it's already painted. I'm thinking, what the hell's going on here? Did I miss a day or something? I got inspired after seeing Gene's truck, and I just had to go into the color. I just had to see this thing painted. I think we picked the right color, don't you? I don't know, man. I'm having trouble with it. When I saw it in the can, I was a little like, and then when I sprayed it on the truck, I was a little more like. When I first saw it, I was very happy with it, but Ian wasn't. He said, we can do more with this thing. What do you think it needs, Ian? I got plenty of gold metal flake. No, no, no. You can just spray it. No, no, no. It's a gold metal flake line. No. Why do you shudder? God, that stuff. Here he goes again. Just adding a little more to what's already good. My whole issue, even though I'm not a big fan of the color overall, it kind of made the truck just look bland. Well, this is what I was thinking. The way that Gene's truck looked so cool, he had that fade, you know, like the silver pearl fade in the paint. Yeah, yeah. Something about the sides are so bland, it needs something in the side panels. This monotone is just too mono. It needs more. It needs something to break it up. That's what the old body line did, and now that we deleted that, it just, you know, slab side is nice, but I think it needs something to complement it. I think I'm going to have to take a lot from my talk with Gene on this, because he says he keeps going with a paint job until he's happy with it. So I just started. I'm going to keep going until I'm happy with it. All I have to do is convince Jack we need more, we need better. It's bottom line. And I think if I just do some kind of cool paint effect on the lower third of it. I pitched Jack some of my ideas. Whatever you want to do is fine with me. Cool. He agreed it needed some other element, and he even had ideas for the cab. I get you. Right. So the door here and about three or four inches across the bottom. Your openings would match again. Exactly. A really awesome black detail. Just like the fabrication part of this, you know, Jack has his vision. When he just said he wanted to do it, I was all for it. Here, take it and go with it. I think Gene lit the fire. This is what happened. He started thinking about it. That's what makes a great customizer and an average customizer. That one extra step. I was unsure as to what to do to break up this body line. Seems like a perfect choice with this detail around the windows. But you never know until you spray it, unfortunately. We're really in a good place with this. You know, I knew I could nail this fabrication. I know Jack's got the upholstery. The wild card here is the paint job. I really hope that Jack likes this. You know, we've worked through every other challenge so far. This paint color has been our biggest debate yet, so hopefully this is the right choice. I don't have the experience with paint that I do with metal. You know, I know I could pull some stuff off fabrication-wise, but still, the color and the way the pigments blend, I'm still in the infancy of this whole painter's thing. You know, it could go wrong. It could go real wrong. It's been a long haul, but I got this truck painted. Gene Winfield really inspired the paint job on this. I'm not saying it rivals any of his fades, but it's pretty mellow. It's just the red gradually fades to black right into the rocker panels. And Jack actually wanted to have the window surrounds blacked out, as well as the sail panels. By just pushing it this next little bit, it really added to the whole overall look. I really just want to see this thing out of the shop and driving, and then surprise Jack with it. Ian wanted to surprise me with that fade away, and let me tell you, he sure did. It really looks good. Jack was digging it right out of his pocket. First thing is his camera. So I know I'm on a good run here. It's been the story through the whole build, is that if he starts taking pictures, you know you hit the mark. For years, I've been thinking about this truck. After he painted it, I couldn't believe it. All those little extra things that Ian pushed for have turned out to be perfect. It's hard to describe what the inspiration for this rear roof would be. It's kind of like El Camino meets spaceship or something, but it fits in with the overall look of the truck perfectly. The taillights, I love the way they came out. My vision was to have it even. And then when he moved them in and frenched them in, they looked twice as good. For me, the best part about this is that crazy transformation. I thought it was good looking as it was. This thing is low, it's sleek, it's high fashion. It's a total show car. Sometimes you see a show car on a rotisserie. It spins around in all directions so you can see it from every angle. So I was doing the same thing in the park because this thing's a runner. I was spinning around, driving in circles. And I was shooting a video with my camera and I decided, wait a minute, I want to drive this thing too. So enough is enough. You know, he's the car owner. Unfortunately, it's time for me to hand over the wheel. When he got out and we switched, I drove it around a couple times to have a little fun. I was surprised how nice it rode. I guess having the engine in the back kind of changes the dynamic of the front suspension. It drives great. It's like a freaking mutant Cadillac. It's been fun. It's been inspiring. It was great working with Ian. The fun of doing this is you have to figure all these things out. How to make this work, how to make that fit. And that's the challenge. Once you stand back and look at it and say, that works, you feel great. It's a ton of work. But each time you see the end result, you kind of forget all that and just look forward to the next.