We Started a Chassis Company. You Had Questions.

Hey everybody, we started Fat Fender Chassis Company, and you had a few questions, we're gonna answer them. Hey everybody, Jason with Fat Fender Garage, and we are here in the chassis department, and a lot of you have had some questions you wanted to get answered. There was quite a few, and so they've given me this little cheat sheet. We're gonna answer them the very best we can. So right out of the gate, people hit us hard. What happened to Porterbilt, right? Nothing, Porterbilt's still there. He's still making chassis. He's still doing all the amazing things that he's always been doing. Just still killing it on a good quality product, okay? So matter of fact, he's still making a few remaining chassis for us, and we have a great partnership. We'll still be supporting each other in many various ways, but they have gone nowhere. They're still building all your Chevy chassis that you guys are looking for. Please hit them up, go see them. Front member, drop member, kits, Porterbilt's your place to go get it, right? But with all that, as we've created a chassis company, we've been taking some things over, kind of taking over our own schedule, maybe a few changes we'd like to implement, and having some of that control is kind of what propelled us to start this. So everybody wants to know what happened to Porterbilt. Absolutely nothing, they're still friends of ours. Nate's a great guy, and we're super happy to still be doing some things with them. All right, another big question is, if we're building them in-house, are they gonna be cheaper? I'll tell you, we spent a lot of money, and we've only made one chassis. So that first chassis has cost us a lot of money, but obviously, you're not gonna pay that. We're basically getting set up, making chassis, and we've got the second one underway. But yes, they will be a little bit cheaper. We're gonna save you some money, be more competitive on that front, and so you can count on it being a little bit less. I don't know how much yet. Hopefully, we'll be more competitive for you. And the timetables will be coming down. So that was one of the big things that, when you're outsourcing things to another shop, and you're not the only source of revenue for that shop, right? You're kind of at the mercy of all their customers, right? We were just one. And so what we wanted to do is be able to only be at the mercy of ourselves and kind of take some ownership of that. So as we are looking to do that, we're hoping to bring lead times down. I would imagine in a couple months, we'd be down to that six to eight-week lead time. One guy asked, is it possible to buy an F100 with a Coyote engine for around 30,000? I don't know if they mean just buy a chassis or if that's just buy a truck, but I'm gonna say no. That feels like the safe answer there. You might find something out there, but not a truck, not a chassis, a new chassis and a new engine. No, that's not gonna happen. Here's a great question. Why should I buy your chassis over Roadster Shop chassis? Two different chassis companies, a couple of different ways of doing things. We are experts at Ford chassis and Ford builds, and a lot of things Ford. And so we take a little bit more pride in making sure that what we're doing is gonna work perfectly. Now, you might have some things you like about Roadster Shop and that might make more sense for you. But if you're interested in the things that we're doing, then it makes more sense to buy from us. And so we're building Ford trucks, we're building Ford chassis, we're wiring them up. We have a vast amount of knowledge when it comes to the Ford trucks. And so a lot of people like that we can provide the whole ecosystem for your build. And so you can call us up and say, hey, I don't understand how to connect this engine and wiring up for this, right? Well, your chassis company with Roadster Shop, they're not gonna answer that question for you because you probably only bought a chassis from them. So a little bit different. Again, if you're looking for a Camaro chassis, go there. They got it. That's gonna be the place to get it. We specialize in what we specialize in and we're not looking to build Camaro chassis today. Maybe someday, but not today. Will they be made for a 79 short bed? Yes, they already are. We are already selling those. So if you're interested in that, you can just go purchase that right now. And let's see, what do the frames come with or can you pick and choose what you want? So you can pick a color, you can pick a drive train. Oftentimes we're pretty committed to what we're going to sell you. It's gonna be a new crate motor. If you'd like to supply a used motor that you have or something that you've got and you wanna ship it here and you want us to get it installed and make sure it fits and get the drive train and exhaust all done, 100%. We're happy to help you with that. Will individual pieces be available such as cross members, brake booster bracket, body mounts? There could be some along the way. For instance, we have a 1996 OBS that we're building and we have designed a part weld, part bolt in front and rear kit. So that you can, if you've got a buddy that can weld a little bit, you can put this kit in, get rid of the twin I-beams and you don't have to buy a new chassis. So yes, there are some components that we have designed and are making for that. Are there any four wheel drive chassis? Yes, we've already got that. We'll show you some of those. You can take a look but we already have all the four wheel drive chassis for Fords, super cabs, crew cabs, long wheel base, short wheel base. You can get any of those. You can get all kinds of suspension form, even active suspension. You can purchase that. Plans for four by four or all wheel drive? We just answered the four by four. All wheel drive. Yes, we do have an all wheel drive chassis we're currently designing right now for a customer. And so we will be putting that together. Yes. Eight lug models. Yes, we do already have eight lug. We got five lug and eight lug. Those are available. You can get those right now. Somebody wants to know about ABS unit. We've got two we're looking at and two we're gonna test. And so as we get them tested in here, we're gonna decide which one we feel is the best. We are working on those and then a separate traction control. They're separate modules. You can add them at any time, not a factory OEM body modules that we're getting involved in. These are just reputable companies that are using these. Guys are using them in racing, could be a Bosch or something like that as well. Somebody wants to know what kind of car chassis we'll be building. Okay, so that's a loaded question. We're gonna kind of hammer out for the next couple months, make sure we feel really confident in all the truck chassis. We'll be implementing the Chevy truck chassis here shortly. I will be bringing those in house over time. We are going to move into chassis. They will be the Fox body chassis and then also the gen one Mustang chassis. Those will be the first car chassis we come out with. Anything for right-hand drive options? Yes, we have our power steering rack that Flaming River has for right-hand drive. And so it's very easy for us to adapt that over for you. Nothing currently for Chevy OBS. That's probably gonna be probably a next year thing if we get into that. Dodge trucks, we do have some stuff coming out for Dodges. We've got a nice front and rear kit. We'll be tackling that probably. We've got the prototype kind of all done and tested and it gets you into coil overs front and rear. But that Dodge kit is coming out and probably in about 90 days for that. No Impala frames. Sorry, Bobby, Anthony, no Impala frames, no international KB1 chassis right now. You know, the thing is, is this, when you're designing some of these one-off chassis, it takes a lot of manpower and brainpower to do something you might sell three of. And so right now we need to be profitable. We need to be successful. And as we're continuing to grow the business, we wanna make sure we're doing things that will allow us to continue to scale and grow and not just doing a bunch of one-off chassis. Now, if you got a lot of money and you don't really care about how much it costs, give us a call. Somebody asked if we're doing 6772 Ford F350 crew cab chassis. We're doing eight lug. They're heavy duty. They'll be the F250, F350. You'll be able to use it for that. If you're gonna be doing heavy off-roading and you wanna be like rock crawling, then you might wanna call us as we talk through. We might wanna change a couple of components on that for you. All right, so pretty much most of the questions in general, I think we've got most of those answered. Obviously, we won't be at full capacity for about another 30 to 45 days. The end of April, we'll be at full capacity. All of our retail parts will be running through our chassis department. It's kind of tough. We love working with great vendors. Portable is a great vendor. A lot of great vendors we've been working with. But again, as we're developing and designing products and we kind of become, we get on that struggle bus and at the mercy of where we're just one customer of all the vendors, it kind of puts our lead times out. It kind of makes it challenging for updates and revisions that we wanna make better. And as that started to take a long time and production's going, taking longer and volume is going up, it didn't feel fair to force other companies to change their business model to match ours. It felt important for us to just own our own business model and tackle some things on our own and just have good relationships with the vendors that we're currently working with, still remain friends and support each other continually, continue to work together with them. And so continuing to work with PortaBuilt and a lot of these other vendors, but we wanted to be more in control in-house. And so hopefully that answers everything for you. We're having a great time. We're super excited about things are going extremely well. The very first chassis we made, we pulled it off the table, pulled measurements, got it all done. It was only 1 32nd of an inch out of square. That was the very first one. And so we're going to get that down tighter and better so that when we hand you a chassis over, we know it fits. We're testing it. We're not just saying, send it to you and you test it for us. We'll make sure everything fits here, QC checkpoints everywhere along the way so that when you get it, it's a great chassis, the product's gonna fit, and we have the ability to make any changes very easily for you. But we're gonna feel confident that we've done all the R&D in-house and not in yours. And that is something we're excited to be able to offer. Welcome to Fat Fender Garage and welcome to Fat Fender Chassis Company. And if you need a chassis, get us up. We're there for you. See you later.