Less Than 10 Ever Built | MERCULES Goes Home

66 Slick, Mercury. It's supercharged with the V8 engine. I tell you what, this is the first Slickside crew cab to be put on a custom chassis from Fat Fender Garage. To me, I'm like, these seats are great, the foam's nice. Smells so fresh. Fresh, exactly. They only made 10 of them in the world. So we spent some extra money painting the engine, resealing that. It's like I'm riding on air. May as well throw it in my casket because I promise you I'll get buried in this thing. These are the memories I'm creating, man, and that's what I want. Hey everybody, Jason with Fat Fender Garage and we are here in Gilbert, Arizona with Keepin' It Classic. Keepin' It Classic. I'm Roman and this is Nash. We call him Bubba and this is none other than the King Mercules. King Mercules. So we got to spend the last, well, a long time, believe it or not, getting a chassis made, designed, developed for a crew cab. 66 Slick, Mercury, and it went through a little bit of a metamorphosis internally, underneath, but not externally. It's the same truck you've seen and you've been witnessing and looking and seeing all the cool photos, but we did a bunch of stuff to it and Roman's here to pick it up and Nash is here with him. He got a skip out of school today, right? Yes. So that's awesome. His sister's jealous because she didn't get, I think she's jealous she didn't get to skip school. She's probably not so jealous about not having to drive. But here we are and these guys, this is like a part of their family. These guys are like family. We've known them for a few years and been able to work with them and Nash does like little renderings of his own. This is an important part of their family and so we're really excited to give it back. Nash has been wanting it back for a long time, haven't you? Yes. Yes. So tell us, Nash, why don't you tell us what you know about this truck? Um, it was pulled out of the mud and uh it's a beat-up truck. It's a beat-up truck, yeah. And um. But do you like, do you like that it's beat up? Yeah. Okay, cool. And uh it's supercharged with the V8 engine. It has 35 size tires with 12 inch wheels and it has amp steps and it's a Mercury. They only made 10 of them in the world. And it's a 4x4 or 250 and it's keeping it classic. And who's keeping classic? Him. You. Us, buddy. What else do you want to tell the folks? Uh, they put a new chassis underneath. This is all Jay. Jay and his team, Roger, the whole, the whole posse collaborated on this one. And I tell you what, this is the first slick side crew cab to be put on a custom chassis from Fat Fender Garage and I feel borderline, well I do, I feel privileged and I definitely feel honored. The whole process, the whole everything. This is like a family, for me this is a family iconic truck for me. There isn't a price you can put on this particular truck and when Jason approached me I was like, if I'm ever gonna throw any sort of investment and money into one of my rigs, may as well throw it in my casket because I promise you I'll get buried in this thing. That's gonna be a big hole. So other than that, I mean we can go through the truck. I feel like folks know the, they definitely know the history of the truck. You know, this was an original truck that came from Washington. I bought it from Kyle. So you, you picked some really weird things here. No powder coat on the frame. So like, we're calling it weird because not, no one does. Not weird, just out of the ordinary. No one does that. It screams me, you know. It screams my style. Why did you want to do that? Well one, I obviously, this isn't a truck that you see like, I'm that guy when you see cruising around in a four-door crew cab and an orange truck. They just, it screams it's Roman and I bet like, I'm just different than everyone else and I'm not saying that's a good thing or a bad thing but I would rather be unique in my own sense. Like be yourself, you know. Like, like that whole saying you be you, I'll be me and everybody should be happy that way. When you pitched it, Roger came to me and he said, hey, Roman wants to look about doing clear and I said, just tell him no. Like it's not a good idea. I think that was our only real hiccup, I think. Other than that, it was pretty easy. He's like, well he wants to talk to you about it. I was like, oh gosh. Like it's, and so, and we did, we talked about it and you, you were just like, Jason, it's just, it's so cool looking and so like organic and raw and, and the truck vibe you, and honestly, we said, okay, we're going to clear coat it. We'll run it through the paint booth. We'll put a clear coat on it and you promised to get under there and wipe it down with a baby towel every night and, and so. You saw earlier when I was driving this thing, I wouldn't, I mean, it's a truck. It's just, it's fresh. So I saw that puddle of water and I'm like, I'd rather go around just for now, you know. But, but it works. Actually, when you stand back and you look at the whole picture, it only has to work for one person. It works. It has to work for me. And it works. And I get it. Like for you, you have to work with so many people and it's screaming your business, but this thing only needed to scream to one person and it screamed to me. So there's certain things, like a lady, when she walks in and she sees a wedding dress, she knows it. When my wife sees a house, she goes, that's the house. That's the house. When I saw that, I go, that's the look. And I'm like, you're not going to cover that up. That's the, that's the face I want to see. And to me, like every little nick, every piece of damage, it tells the story. And this in itself is a, it's a living legacy, a story in itself. So there's so many chapters to this story too, you know, and it's like, it doesn't get boring to me. It doesn't, it doesn't. It's really cool. And, and, and the, and so, you know, we painted, we actually did paint some stuff on this. Believe it or not, we painted under the hood. That had to be cleaned. And that cleaned that up. So when you pop the hood, it looks good. Let's take a look. Yeah, that, that, that, that had to happen though. Yeah. You know, cause we were looking at some of the roughness of it. And like I said, we had, it's my truck, but there are definitely some small design battles, but I'm glad I lost a lot of those battles. Yeah. Well, what happened was, is, you know, you've been driving it, been in there, been a used, you know, GT 500 motor and we pulled it all out. The chassis looked really good. Everything else. So we're like, ah, so we spent some extra money painting the engine, resealing that, painting the firewall, painting this. So, but when you pop it now, now it looks like it's fresh. It's more, it's, it's deserving of what it needed. It's still rough, but when you open it, it's like something pleasant to look at. And we maintained the blue and we kept all that. Cause it really, we just kind of leaned it. I know you're like, should we do blue? What should we do? I was like, yeah, lean into it. Let's like, keep all that original and let's just leave this orange on the outside and let it be what it is. And then as that snowballed, then it was like, well, we haven't designed an interior kit for a crew cab slick. Do you want to help us do a little R and D on it? And so you paid the materials. We did all the labor on it and we were kind of able to work that out and it came out great. I tell you what, after just putting some simple small miles in it, I can't tell you what my was more deserving for. Was this, was it the suspension or was it the upholstery? I don't know the seats comfortable. You know, I used to have side bolstered Mustang bucket seats in here. That was all TMI interior. Not to say that those buckets weren't good, but I have a bigger booty than some people. And I'm like, this is much more appealing to me with a wider, you know, white, more girth to me. I'm like, these seats are great. The foam's nice. I'm like, I can seriously put some hard miles in this. And I kind of stretched myself a little bit on the materials with the leather. I did that for my wife, my wife only. We could have gone vinyl and saved some money, but at the end of the day, it smells good. The smell, when you pop that door and you smell it, you're like, damn, what did you say when we were eating barbecues? It smells so fresh. Fresh. Exactly. Like when you look at this truck, it looks stale, but then you open the door and it smells fresh. You're like, cool. Like who says that, man? That's a good smelling diaper. That's what this is. So I'm kind of like cool with it. But like things that were very unique to me, I'll be honest, this is much more appealing to me in person. When I saw it, I'm like, it's not really Roman. Like I would just have liked the steel door panel. But even from a functional perspective with isolating the noise, and then it pulls you in. When you open the door and you see here and it draws you in, you're like, it's all put together. It wasn't like you had a nice outfit and then shitty, dirty shoes. You know what I mean? Like it just pulled it all together. So I'm cool. It was more of an accessory when I didn't look at it that way, because I'm a simpleton. But this was very nicely done. And then the other thing I liked, I liked the valance. You don't want to cut into your dash and put stuff. You want to keep it a classic. You want to keep that classic. But even from this little thing, I knew that this was more R&D for you because this was the first time y'all were developing it, which I thought was really cool. And then I'd walk up and they're billet. I'm like, that's badass, dude. It's not that cheap plastic stuff because I have that in some of my other trucks. And there's a place for it. And there are. Somebody had mentioned the steering wheel. This has always been there. There's a 68 Ford Mustang Cobra steering wheel. Very nice steering wheel. But somebody, when I looked at everything, they're like, you should find a blue wheel. It's fine. You know, I always feel like the keyboard warriors out there that just everyone has an opinion. And the reality is I'm always like, hey, when would you like to build your own truck the way you want to do it? And they disappear real quick. Yeah. I'll say their keyboard's not working. Yeah. I'll just say, oh, you know, and that's the reality is we didn't build this for everybody else. We built it for Roman and his family. And I tell you what, it's perfect. So it turned out pretty good. You didn't have a radio in it before. You didn't have no radio, no AC. And we needed that, though, if we're going to go this far with this truck and everything was blown apart. It's easier to do now. I'm like, let's just do it now. I didn't want to do it, but I'm glad we did it. It's hard, you know, when we were just cruising around and actually finally having music and not a Bluetooth speaker sitting on the dash. And we were always OK with it. Like my family's simple and we're cool with it. And sometimes I'd rather just hear the kids talk than listen to music. But Mr. Hip Hop's into his hip hop right now. And I'm telling you, like with his arm out the window and Bob in his head, little AC DC to like this. This is cool. These are the memories I'm creating, man. And that's what I want, you know, at the end of the day. And I grew up driving these old trucks, working on them. And I hated it. And I always like I always tell everybody, I'm like, I thought it was my dad's broken down trucks, but it was a way of him hanging out with me, teaching me something that would go on forever. And I had no idea like that little legacy is like just something I'm so honored. I had to I got to spend that time with my pops, you know, like changing transmissions and swapping clutches. And I'm like, well, these things are piles of junk. Yeah, I had no idea. It was just maintenance. And now I know what maintenance is. And I'm just like, OK, I understand. You know, and these are the memories I'm trying to build with him. And I am so thankful that we got to be a part of it because there's a lot of great shops and you can do a lot of good stuff yourself, too. And I'm the first one to say we're one of the most expensive shops out there. When you show up here, there's also a level of quality we're trying to maintain for people and for us. And it is expensive, but we want to make sure that when a guy shows up and he jumps in and it's little things they pick out, well, could we change a seat belt here? We make, you know, easy. That's easy stuff, you know, but if a guy shows up and he's like, boy, it drives like crap and nothing works and it's just broken down all the time like that, that's where I start to feel like I don't want to do this job anymore. I don't want to do it because I don't people. You've heard the business analogy. You can get Wal-Mart or you can get Nordstrom's. What do you want at the end of the day? If you're going to take your pride of your fleet somewhere, I want Nordstrom's. Everything else can be Wal-Mart. Sometimes we try to offer Nordstrom rack every now and then. And I'm cool with that, too, man. We try hard to not be the most expensive shop. And so we try to come up with some value engineered products that help. And so, you know, but it feels very custom inside, though, even though it's going to be kind of like standard interior kits you can purchase eventually. And even though we deviated slightly from this design for the final one, because I thought it was a little bit maybe going to be too much work for our guys and keeping price down. But and I, we were kind of, as we're templating things, we're kind of trying to design something that we thought would be a little bit different for this truck and not for everybody else. Yeah, also something, yeah, there's something that you could engineer for the masses, too. I get that. Yeah, so it's pretty cool. So I love it. Seatbelts. These are these are if you ever have to take your door panels off. OK, these come off here. They go on. This is all magnetized on. Oh, nice. Check that out. Cup holders, which you didn't have before. Air conditioning. Just a simple drive. Simple center console. I like the break. Try it. I did. Yeah. I love the break. So I said, oh, let me introduce power in the event my wife ever decides she wants to drive this thing, which will never happen. But I go, let's see if that thing just comes off on its own automatically once you fire it up. And then it stayed on. And then I try to go against it. And I'm like, oh, damn, this thing is locked up. It's like welded, which is good. So we put some new suspension on it. And this stuff's trick. And it's going to take some technology, because like I said, I'm a simple being. And yeah, I mean, I'll figure it out. It's almost like an air ride system. You're adjusting on the fly. So that was it's pretty cool. And for us, as we're designing these new four wheel drive chassis and trying to come up with things that people are familiar with in today's trucks, right? Hey, they got a new F 250. They upgraded the suspension, they put icon on it. That's that's called they're used to seeing that name and brand in new stuff. And so when we partnered up with icon, they wanted to get into the classics. They want to expand their base, expand their customer base. And so we teamed up with them and he helped us come up with some, you know, the right products here. And they let us test this out. Yeah. And luckily, we had one that was about that was done. And so we had driven it with normal like regular coil overs with a reservoir. And it drove great. It was I was like, well, it almost feels weird to swap it out at this point. But but we did. And we got even a little bit softer ride out of it. And also a little bit firmer ride. So we were you know, you're trying to find this like perfect balance that balances based on how I how it feels for me. And you're my girl. Well, I want it to be soft all the time or whatever it is. Right. And so you can now go on here. It's like I'm riding on air right now, though. Like I said, I didn't know if it was a seat or it was a suspension, but you're talking older seats and leaf springs. Yeah. Jumping into this is nine day difference. It's more comfortable than my. Yeah. I'm driving. It's extremely comfortable. So other than that, subtle little upgrades, condenser and all the AC stuff and, you know, getting the amp steps put back in for you. And essentially that it's like the same truck, but it's so far like when I roll up and I get home, my wife's going to be like it was gone for how long? And she just doesn't understand the mechanical side. It's a couple inches higher than it was before. Right. That's about it. I can't believe that the overflow and overwhelming responses I've received from people going, why aren't you painting it? Oh, man. It's like I get that a lot, but I've got it even more because they've seen the amount of value I threw at it in detail. Howie's got the same problem. People sit there like what a shop. It would be a shame. I can't believe Fat Fender didn't paint that truck. I'm like, wasn't our decision. And honestly, Pepper, you sold Pepper to Howie. Yeah, but we're the same. We're of the same. We're from that same cut. We like originality. Yeah. That's what drew him to it. He loves it and he's driving the crap out of it and he's having a good time. It's great, man. Well, we got to get you guys loaded up. Yeah. I wish you could have just driven it home for us. It would have been easier. You're still good right now? Yeah. How old are you, bud? 10. 10. Okay. That was a good guess. We guessed 10 earlier. This is the one truck we can never let go of. Right, buddy? Yeah. I told him you can sell everything else, but not this one. Ever. I've seen the little, the old pictures of when you guys first got it. Little tiny kids. It's great, man. It's awesome. Yeah. It's a story. Thanks for being a part of the family, man. Seriously, or me being a part of the family. It's great. Thank you. It's been a great experience and anybody looking to revive their classic, I got no one else to point you to, but Jason and his team at Fat Fender Garage. You guys are going to get unparalleled customer service. And to me, it's like, yeah, maybe somebody else can make a chassis of similar quality. Yeah. You can throw icon shocks on. The one thing you're not going to get is the communication. And that to me is worth its weight in gold. So you get what you deserve. Thanks guys. All right. Thank you. Thanks. Appreciate it. Nash. Thanks, bud. Thanks for trusting us with it. We've had a great time and we are super excited that we get to send this home. And I hope you've enjoyed watching this video. I hope you've enjoyed meeting Roman. If you haven't met him, definitely go follow his Instagram page. Keeping it classic K E E P N classic and go follow along and you'll see a lot more of a lot of cool projects. He's got a lot of stuff that he's buys and sells. And if you're looking for a crew cab, you may not get one like this, but he might be able to find you something different. Of course, we can always sell you a chassis for it. We hope you enjoyed this like subscribe. We'll see you next time. Jason, come back spring break. I want a hook on the right and a hook on the left. You spoiled me back here, dude. Spoiled. Too easy.