Why Twin-Turboing A Coyote Is Harder Than It Looks

So the customer wanted twin turbos and I thought it'd be a little easier to do than it was. Now this is a truck that we actually built nine years ago. I should not have touched that. Customer drove for a few years and one day he said, I think I want to upgrade. Then came the caveat. Hey, could we make it a twin turbo? Everything sounds like a good idea in the very beginning. The initial design that we put together was not quite running as well as we'd hoped. Let's go take it for a cruise here in Nashville. So you guys game? I'm game. Let's go do it. Hear that whistle? I hear that whistle. That's like a diesel engine. So we just finished this up. One thing about it is we didn't actually repaint it. It's all the original paint from nine years ago. So we're going to take it back and do a little bit of paint touch up here in the next couple weeks and then hand in the keys and we're done. So we're excited about it. But I think before we can't get this out of here, the thought was let's go take it for a cruise here in Nashville. And let's see if we can get it on the road and just kind of go show you what Nashville looks like and take this for a quick little drive. Let's go do it. One thing I like about turbos is there's a lot of horsepower, but they're not super loud. It actually sounds pretty good. There's no like real drone that seems to be noisy. It's just outside noise. That was half throttle, Gavin. Half throttle. It's the first time I've driven this with the twin turbo. Really? Yeah, they've got about three, four hundred miles on it. Here's the deal. So having the idea of putting more horsepower on it, he decided it would be cooler with turbos. And obviously it's cool. Turbos are cool. They're a little harder to do though. I don't know how fast we're going, but I'm going to guess the speedometer has GPS and it hasn't caught up. We're going faster than the GPS. Felt pretty fast. Did it feel fast to you? It felt pretty fast. Yeah. That was pretty quick. And there's just this big old engine. The Coyote's big. It's wide and there's just not a lot of room. And so you end up with how to get all the headers designed. And it was just a lot. We'll pull over and show it to you because it's pretty cool underneath. Matter of fact, I would say the handling of this truck and the engine is pretty spectacular. Like I totally dig it. But we're running Dakota digital gauges. We have a real vintage air AC, which honestly, can I just say how nice air conditioning is right at this moment? Yes. Because we're in Nashville and it is freaking, it's been raining this morning and it's freaking hot. And humid. And it is so humid. Being in the air conditioning right now feels so wonderful. I'm drying out a little bit and the AC, the vintage air AC is working so freaking good right now. I mean, it feels frigid. Oh yeah, it's cool. I'm going to have to turn it down. It is that cold. Of course, we got the AccuAir E level four. So we've been running that on air ride. And so it feels really, it feels really good. Like it feels really nice. And check out this view. I mean, we're on the back roads here in Nashville. I mean, this is just stunning. It's gorgeous. This truck will never get to be out here. I mean, the fact that it's in Nashville is pretty cool. It's the triple crown, but just cruising around. And ride is pretty comfortable. Like it's really comfortable. We're not sitting too low. We could actually go down probably another inch or two, which would take a little bit of pressure out of the bags, which makes the ride even more comfortable. We just kind of found this really cool spot. We wanted to just kind of aired it out, got out and just took some photos. We thought this was really awesome. Let's stop here. So let's talk about the truck. So the 1956 Ford F100 built about nine years ago for a friend of ours at Dallas Steel. And very cool. So right now, a lot of people have asked us about these wheels. So we've got these wheels here. And so very cool. I just love, we actually picked the wheels out before we picked anything out on this. We just fell in love with these wheels. And so it kind of was a little bit of the guiding, you know, light for the rest of the build is kind of working around these wheels. So the color of the chassis and everything we did. Of course, we did kind of a dirty yellow caliper. We could have gone with red. We could have done anything, but we just wanted to add a little different color. A lot of people ask if this is carbon fiber. Yes, it is real carbon fiber, but it is a carbon fiber wrap that goes with the aluminum. And so it's glued on there and doesn't add hardly any weight, maybe a quarter of a pound. Looks like carbon, but you're not paying for carbons. We got 20 by, I think they're eight and a half step front. And then we got a 20 by 12s in the back. And we've got some pretty good meat in the back, which you need if you're gonna have this much horsepower. So, all right, so let's take a look at the wood bed. So this wood in the back is pretty cool because we wanted to have a nice wood grain look back here. And so you can see a lot of this darker texture or darker grain in here. And so the wood we picked was called Black Limba, which actually has some of this stuff in it, but also is lighter in color as well. And then what we did is we played around with some different stains and glazes to kind of create a little bit of a uniform color, but not so uniform that we lose the character of the wood. And we wanted it to have kind of a yellowish red color to tie in with the wheels and also tie in with the interior color. And so the process for us when we're doing these wood beds is that we'll sand them to 220, stain it, sanding sealer. Anytime you apply moisture to wood, it kind of raises the grain, which is what we wanted to do. And then what we did is we had a custom glaze that we mixed in house. And then from there, we clear coat that. So that's how this turns out. So very cool. But let's check out under the hood, because honestly, the customer really wanted something different, unique. And so what we did is we listened to him and he said, how about a twin turbo? That was a lot of work. And I think more than he and I had anticipated, but you know, what are you gonna do? Again, we're not detailed out. Look, we still got some yellow tape right there. Do some detailing and cleaning some stuff up and get it ready. Like I said, it's a nine-year-old building. So we're not trying to make this a show truck and redo everything, but we are trying to make it badass, which I think we accomplished that. So we got these Garrett twin turbos. They're mirrored. I don't recall the size that we ended up choosing, but we didn't go with very big ones. And when we spoke to Garrett, they kind of helped us size it correctly. We knew that we were probably only gonna be, you know, closer to six to seven pounds of boost max. We're shooting for about, you know, 800 horsepower, but we wanted the whistle, which it has. Sounds awesome. Like, I don't know that I would want more power than this because it picks up pretty quickly. And that when those turbos get going, this thing gets down the road fast. And so this is a Gen 2 motor. So we actually use the valve covers off the GT, I think 350, 500, maybe it's 350, and they're aluminum. And so we put those on and exchange them for the plastic ones that normally would come on here just to handle the heat a little bit more. So it's pretty cool. So twin turbos, the AC right here, the heater going in there. And like I said, it runs nice and cool. This is a pretty cool radiator that we designed for this, 56s, and it allows us to have the overflow and the intercooler tanks and have the heat exchanger put up front. And it looks really good. So this piece here, we purchased from Holley, this tick manifold. And we actually had to have it machined down a little bit so we could clear, because you can see right here, they're gonna be a little tight. And so we were actually able to machine that down, take a little bit off it and have it fit. The guys did a lot more to this that I wasn't there for all of it. We've had to merge some stuff in here. And then you can see, we tucked the mass sensor in there. Actually, I had to redo this. So we actually had to move some components around to balance it out. And so I find that, talk about it, you plan it, and it all sounds good. And then when you get it up and running, and then you start mapping everything and you start talking to the tuner, and then all of a sudden you start realizing that maybe there's some turbulence somewhere, the mass sensor was struggling. And so we had to kind of like reposition a few of the sensors and how the shape and design of all this stayed the same, but where we put the blow off valves and we had the sensors and all that, so we had to move that around. So we had to kind of redo that, which sucked. But it's pretty awesome and it handles really well. So very cool. Hey, I need you to go pull that front. Yeah, I need you to pull it back. I was about to make a joke about not helping you. I was like, wait, I should get over there. All right, we got it. All right, that's good. Okay, so this is what we would call one of the signature kits, slightly modified. We did do a little different stitch, but essentially this is one of our interior kits that you could actually order up. You could tell them, I said, you could request this stitch, even though they'll be like, God, Jason, we don't offer that stitch. Well, you can. So this is pretty cool. So you've got this kind of a nod to the Diamond, but obviously a little bit kind of a Diamond hex. Very, very nice, comfortable leather in here and the seat, the door panels. And then of course, it's got a headliner that we already had in it from the first build since we left that. He really likes the idea of a nod to the old school and keep it original. So we tried real hard to kind of do that. So, and so it's pretty cool. We got new carpet in here and it turned out really nice. It's comfortable to drive. He's gonna be super stoked and it'll be nice to kind of finally clean it all up. We're excited to finish it, but hey, while we're out here, we thought we'd just kind of talk about it and the things that we have going on at Fat Fender Garage. The idea is to just make it as simple as we can for you guys to build your truck in your garage. You know, build the best truck that you possibly can. And I feel like the community is really important that we're supporting each other, helping each other. And I really want to make sure that we're desirous to help builders be better builders. And that is our goal.