Stop Refurbishing Old F100 Frames - Do This Instead (4x4 Chassis)

If you have an old classic four-wheel drive pickup truck and you're thinking to yourself, what could I do to make this thing cool? You've got to have this. Hey everybody, Jason with F in the garage and we have a super cool chassis here. And we get a lot of phone calls. We get a lot of people are saying, "Hey, I've got this old pickup truck. It's my grandpa's. I' I've thought about doing something with it. Where do I start?" And the reality is is that is such a load of question. Where do you start? Right? cuz that depends on how much money you have, how much time you have, what do you want to do to it. You just need to get it started. Like there's there's a lot that has to go into that. But there's a lot of people that are just saying, "Hey, I'm going to rebuild this thing. I want to get a new foundation." And if you kind of take like, "Hey, I'm going to build a house." You don't usually start with like a dirt floor, right? There's this plans are put into place. You have an architect. You kind of design it out. You come up with an idea. You think of, you know, all the different finishes and materials in the house that you're going to use. And then the you go to the architect and the designer and they help put this together for you. But the very first thing when you show up at a job site and they start to build it is they start digging a hole and they want to create a very solid foundation for you to build on. And essentially is what this is right here. So this is the foundation. If you're going to do a nice build, this is the foundation of a build that you want to start with. And that is a new chassis and new drivetrain, new everything. Now, it's going to be something that you can go do whatever it is you want to do with it and enjoy it and have long long life into your project, right? That you're going to be able to just enjoy for just decades, right? So, let's go talk about this project and that you might be wanting to do and why this is a good idea. Okay? Now, so let's take a look at this. Now, first and foremost, I want to rule out all the haters. I get kind of beat down a little bit about these tires and wheels. And the reality is is these are ours. They don't belong to this chassis, but it's a little bit easier for me to push it around if I actually put wheels and tires on it. And so these are just like some shop wheels. You've probably seen them on other projects. We push it around. A lot of these chassis go out on the Gooni wheels, the little orange rollers, and the customer has, you know, their own wheel and tire package they're going to put on it. This is strictly an affordable wheel and tire combination for us to actually get this off the ground. They're 37s. They're KMC's. If you like them, you can go buy them off their website, but but the reality is these are just rollers for us. So, let's get that out of the way because, you know, everybody's like, I hate those wheels and tires on that thing. Well, that's okay. They're not actually going to go with this. So, anyway, so we got this a really, really cool 7379 chassis here, four-wheel drive, right? And this customer has got a Gen 3 Coyote motor with a Whipple supercharger as a platform with an Atlas transfer case. And so basically they've decided not only do I want to go, but I want to go well and I want to go fast. I want to have plenty of power with my four-wheel drive. Now you don't have to have that, right? It's you can do a regular Coyote. Heck, you can do, you know, an old Ford small block 302 if you wanted to, right? Like that's an option for you. But if you're going to go this far, generally most people are saying, "Hey, I want some of the modern technology, fuel injection. I want to just go out and turn the key. I want to have a start every day." Right? So, this is what allows that. And then you get a Whipple supercharger that allows you to have just a really, really good solid foundation with the 3 L Whipple supercharger and the 3.875 pulley. It's a great little combo. It's perfect. You're going to have about 7 750 horsepower all day long. Pretty easy to tune and very reliable, right? and super super super solid platform. So now with all that drivetrain, you're going to have a redhead steering box. You can use uh it's set up for uh hydroboost. So if you want to add hydroboost, it's very easy to mock that up. Um you also have, you know, your you know, locked off-road coilovers, shocks, that's all mocked up, ready to go. And then you've got the Curry front and rear uh housings. You got 9in housings front and rear. They're the fabricated. They look super cool, very aggressive looking, very robust, and very durable for a guy that's most likely just driving this on the highway. Let's be honest. Like, I'd love to see somebody go off-roading on one of these, right? That'd be awesome. But that doesn't happen. You know, people just want to look good and look cool and have it drive real nice. And so, a lot of this uh how it drives has a lot to do with the suspension and the coil springs and the ratings and how much is uh charged in the canister and how much pressure is there. So, there's a little bit of a process to kind of dialing that in. We try to get it really close for you. You know, if you need to call and change springs out, just let us know. Happy to, you know, lighten the load if we need to a little bit. So, with all that said, you're going to get nearly 30 gallons of fuel. You got a GT500 fuel pump, and of course, the sending units built into the fuel pump. So, you just have a little connector here, and it connects connects that. Um, of course, you got the side fill, and then you've got, you know, a vent. uh really good spot to put a vapor trapper, right, to get rid of the fume. So, you got a full stainless steel exhaust. You got dual exhaust all the way through with a little mini Xpipe in there. And then, of course, the Magnaflow mufflers which are going to make it sound really great. And of course, you got some resonators built in uh to it as well, so that you can actually have it not destroy your ears while you're trying to drive it, right? Like, uh a lot of this comes down to just having a pleasant sound, not an obnoxious sound, right? That that becomes difficult. Everything here is ready to go. It's got the fuel plumbed. It's got the brake lines plumbed. It's literally ready for you to set a body on. It's been completely powder coated. Everything's ready to go. It's a complete roller. It makes it simple. This like this is 316 steel. It's very rigid. It's very robust. You're not going to have any flexing, no broken welds, nothing. Like it's it's made really made to four-wheel drive. Of course, if you want to pull up on a trailer, you've got uh places on uh the front and rear where you can actually put a strap and you can actually tow that uh on a trailer if you wanted. And you got a place to strap it all down. So now, this is what we start with here, right? Every truck that we build at Fat Finner Garage that's four-wheel drive is going to start with this. And one person might ask, well, why why not just like change some parts out on it and just leave a factory chassis? That is one way to do it. And there's other shops that that's what they do. They do that, but you spend that much time, that much effort, that much money to kind of, you know, refurbish the original chassis and then at the very end of the day, it's it's still just the old factory chassis. Often times doesn't look as nice. It maybe is a little bit rusty. And this actually kind of, you know, gets past all that. You've got sway bars built into it front and rear. It's going to be very robust and uh you're not going to get a lot of body roll and it's going to it's going to handle that much better just having you know that on your chassis. So anyway, so with that said, we start with this and for us we're always looking at how how do we avoid a lot of just you know extra you know effort and for someone who's a little bit older you're buying time with this, right? You're buying time. You're you're build time. So, if you're like, "Hey, I want to take it to a shop and I want them to build I want them to build me a truck." This is going to buy you time. It's going to get it done faster. You're going to save about 6 months with your builder and getting it done a little bit quicker. And so, you're really buying time and you're going to speed up the build uh schedule and you're going to get your truck sooner. Especially if you're not painting it and you got a really cool patina truck or you love the paint that's on it, you just want to swap it over and get it going. This is going to save you a tremendous amount of time. And time off often times results in money, right? And so, you're going to save time. That's going to save you money. Your builder's going to get it done quicker. It's a controlled fixed cost. So all of this stuff up front is controlled. It's a fixed cost. And so out of the gate, it might seem, "Oh man, that's a lot of money." But in the end, if a builder has to go do all this work himself, and he's got to figure it all out, brand new, decide what tank, and do all the figuring and designing, that time usually amounts into quite a bit. And so you end up spending almost as much going that factory way as you've had you just bought a brand new frame is what we've learned. And so it makes a lot of sense for us. So therefore in our shop uh we want to save the customer time. We want to save them money and we want to get them to driving as quickly as we can. Right? That's that's the bonus with buying a brand new chassis. So all the other little things about geometry engineering, making sure that everything's going to have enough caster built into it so it rides and it breaks good. You don't have a lot of bump steer. All those are things we're very concerned about. And so, which also helps us, you know, sell a full-blown chassis as well to someone is just that uh when we drive it, it's going to be great, right? It's we're going to enjoy it. We're going to have a good time. We're going to take it on the road. You know, an F250 I drive. So, I drive one of those boring things I talked about earlier in the video. But when I drive that or I jump in this, it doesn't feel any different. It feels like I'm just driving a really nice truck. The steering feels really good. You can also upgrade it if you want a steering stabilizer. And those are some little upgrades you can purchase if you want it. Right. The foundation. This is the foundation. It's hard. Like if you decide later you did all this work and you got a Coyote motor in it and you decide, you know what, I should have put a new chassis on it. And we've had customers that have actually had us do what I just described to not do, right? Is they started with a regular chassis and we did all this work for them because they they were being practical, right? They were being frugal. They were trying to be, you know, like, "Hey, I told my wife I wasn't going to spend this much money. I'm trying to be frugal." And they get it all done. They spend all this money and to just say to themselves and to me sometimes, "I probably should have just got a new chassis." Focus hard up front. If you're thinking of building a truck, consider a new chassis. It makes it so much easier. The value of your project, if you ever decide to sell it, is skyrockets way more than just the original chassis. And so there is there is you're going to get that value back out of it. So, anyways, I'm Jason. I'm with Fat Fender Garage, and we build the best four-wheel drive chassis out on the market. Hands down, you're going to enjoy it. You're going to have a good time. And if you want to buy one, hit us up. Give us a phone call. Reach out to us on, you know, info@ FatFender Garage. We'll be happy to help you out. We got a great sales team that will help explain all this to you. Hopefully, this has given you some information to help you make that phone call. And until then, happy hot rodding. Get your classic out. Go driving. The weather's great in Arizona. It might not be so great where you live in Michigan or Minnesota where it's snowing. But hey, come out here. It's a great time to start a project. And we'll see you next time. [Music]