(vehicle engine)
(rock music)
- This week on Dirt Everyday we're out here in the desert
with a government surplus Humvee.
- [Dave] I'm a stuntman. Woohoo!
(vehicle engines)
(rock music)
- We are out here in the hot desert sun
east of Barstow, California
at the GovPlanet desert facility.
What we're doing here is we're picking out
our next vehicle for Dirt Everyday.
GovPlanet is an online web-based auction house
where they sell a lot of military surplus vehicles.
Things like old two and a half ton trucks,
all the way up to giant tank haulers.
But, today, I'm taking home a Humvee.
A Humvee is the vehicle
that started the entire Hummer brand.
You know the H1, which this is a representative of,
H2, H3, and then they kind of went into funk,
but the military Humvees have been around
for like 20 to 30 years now.
And they're starting to show their age
and a lot of them are coming up for auction.
And if you would want to buy one, you can bid on these.
They range in price from eight to 10 grand
depending on how good the truck is,
how many people bid on it.
The one we picked out, it's a little rough around the edges,
but I think it's going to be perfect for what we want to do.
So, I'm going to load this up, we're going to haul it home,
because they're not street legal,
Dave's going to come up to the shop,
we're going to see what type of upgrades we can fit on it.
And then we're going to go out to the desert
and see just how much abuse can a Humvee really take?
(upbeat music)
- You got a Humvee.
- Yes, I got us a Humvee.
- This thing's rad.
- GovPlanet sells a lot of different Humvees.
Some are super nice
and some are a little rough around the edges.
- This is a rough one.
- Yeah, it's a little rough,
but I think they know that we're going to go beat it up.
Fiberglass front, aluminum back,
37's, which I think we need to go bigger.
I don't think it has locking diffs,
but it does have portals,
so it has lots of ground clearance,
and it's independent front and rear.
Much like you and I, Dave, we're independent guys,
we just kind of do what we want.
- I do what my wife says.
- All right I'm an independent guy
and you do what your wife says.
It looks a lot heavier than it really is.
- This thing's cool.
- [Fred] Yeah.
- I'll bet ya it jumps good.
- [Fred] I bet it jumps good,
but I don't know that it lands good.
- [Dave] Starting it up.
(engine ignites)
- Up the hill, Dave.
- I've never driven one of these before.
Oh boy.
(upbeat music)
- [Fred] It's nice and wide,
so it's pretty stable on side hills.
It has lots of 6.2 diesel power.
- [Dave] That's wide open right there.
- [Fred] Yeah.
It's going to be even better when we put bigger tires on it.
- (laughs) Yeah.
It drives pretty good, it's like a big go-kart.
- [Fred] Yeah.
We'll probably have to put
about 15 cup holders in to fill it up.
- [Dave] It steers kind of good.
- [Fred] Yeah, it steers really good.
- [Dave] It seems pretty normal.
- [Fred] I think there's a squirrel
stuck in the rear brakes,
but I think it's pretty--
- [Dave] It's going to work good.
- [Fred] It rides good.
- [Dave] Can I go left?
- Go straight.
Get it! The bad guys are after us, Dave.
- Do you think your landlord gets mad when we do this?
- [Fred] As long as you don't hit the grapes,
no turn left, turn left.
- I'm excited to work on this thing.
I've always wondered if they were cool or not.
- It's really wide, I hope it fits in the door.
Clear on this side.
Straight back.
That'll do.
(upbeat music)
- Awesome.
- What do we do first?
- [Dave] What? What do you want to do?
- I want to just take a bunch of stuff off of it.
- I want to do a roll bar.
- [Fred] You want the roll bar?
- Yeah.
- Let's see if we can just remove all of that.
Put some coolers in there.
How big a tire?
- 54's.
- [Fred] That's it?
- [Dave] Yeah.
- I think we should be moderate
because we don't really want to regear it right now,
but I think some 40's.
- I wonder if max speed means it'll do everything
at that speed or if that just means going down the highway.
- I've passed convoys of these on the highways
and they're barely doing 55.
- Yeah, well they were hauling all sorts of important stuff,
we're not hauling anything but a good time.
(upbeat music)
- Oh look.
- [Dave] You flip it over and it's your seat?
- [Fred] Mine's full of rat poop.
Not a single Commando knife or nothing.
- [Dave] Oh yeah, there's a whole rat's nest on this side.
(drilling)
These things they've got
like this beefy aluminum roll bar from the factory,
it's got a pretty heavy duty one for the windshield
and the b-pillar.
We're going to be bombing this thing pretty hard in the desert
and, to be a little safer, we're going to do a roll cage.
We'll do a basic, kind of like a Jeep-style roll cage,
but I'm going to shoot the tube through the existing bar here,
so we go through and then it'll come down
and it'll tie into the wheel well opening.
We're going to keep it looking original,
but then add to it to make it look awesome.
We picked up some inch and 3/4 120 DOM at the metal yard
that ended up on the JD Squared bender.
You use an angle finder like this
to figure out the degree you want it.
You bend your tubing and you try
and match it as close as possible.
- Where the roll cage comes down into the floor,
this is aluminum floor
and there's a seam in the aluminum right here,
so what we're going to do is we're going to make a sandwich plate.
We got these two, these are about 3/16th plates
and we'll put one on top of the floor like this
and I'll run some grade eight bolts down through there
and then below the tub
we'll put another plate and another washer and lock that.
Then when Dave has this tube set exactly where he wants it,
he can weld the tube right to this plate and,
in the worst case scenario that we go upside down,
the tube won't punch right through and then crush us.
So, day one of our Humvee build went pretty well.
I think we're almost out of tubing,
so might need to get some more tubing.
But, we did get some better safety seat belts,
so we're going to put some new seat belts in tonight,
Dave's going to work on the cage some more,
but that's pretty much it for the day.
Tomorrow I think our big tires and wheels show up
and we should be ready to head to the desert.
(upbeat music)
Morning Dave.
- [Dave] Let's get this thing done.
- I got us a big tire.
- I got camouflage seat covers.
- [Fred] This thing's going to be rad.
- [Dave] Let's get it done and go in the desert.
- [Fred] Time to decorate.
We got these because the seats were blown out
and rather than go to the junkyard
and buy new seats and build a bunch of brackets,
we went to the hardware store
and we got these beautiful jungle camo seat cushions.
- They're going to look good.
- [Fred] It's going to look awesome.
We're going to need our Hawaiian shirts for this episode.
- We forgot to get those.
- [Fred] The cage is done.
We got a tarp 'cause the roof that was on it,
the soft top,
ripped to shreds when we towed it home.
We're going to ratchet strap that on
so we don't get sunburned when we're out rock crawling.
- [Dave] We got seat belts.
- [Fred] We got some seat belts.
We got to finish bolting the seat belts.
We got some 40 inch tires,
so we're going to trim the fenders so that those fit perfect.
(drilling)
(upbeat music)
Underneath this big tire is the portal box,
the portal gear box,
and a portal is a system where the axle shaft comes in,
goes through two sets of gears,
so as this gear turns this way,
the bottom gear turns this way
and the bottom gear is attached to the tire.
It keeps the axle shaft angle pretty flat
and you get more ground clearance.
If you figure this is probably the center of the top gear,
you're looking at about four inches of drop
and this also reduces the stress on everything upstream
so you can run smaller components.
(rock music)
Time to finally put the big 40 inch tires on the Humvee.
Dave is going to every lug nut
and putting some anti seize on it.
The wheel studs have been kind of rusty.
These are 40 inch Yokohamas
and these are 17 inch wheels from KMC.
These tires are directional,
there's actually a passenger side tire
and this would be the driver's side.
When they came from Tire Rack they were already
mounted, balanced, ready to go and they were marked.
We are going to bolt these on and, finally,
get out of the shop and go play in the desert.
(rock music)
The first thing we'll probably break
if we're going to break anything
is going to be the ball joints.
- It looks good, it looks like there's tons of clearance.
- Or maybe the axle shafts.
Or maybe the driveshafts, U-joints.
But, maybe it's not hard to break all three
at the same time.
- Let's pull it off the lift and get it out of here.
- Dave.
- [Dave] Yep.
- Have you ever built a Humvee before?
- [Dave] Nope. First one.
- Ladies and gentlemen here it is,
the first and greatest Humvee Dave and I have ever built.
(rock music)
- [Dave] Where's the trailer?
- [Fred] To the trailer.
- [Dave] Buckle up for safety, Fred.
- Buckling up for safety.
(rock music)
Welcome to Johnson Valley, Dave.
- Good job. It's hot.
- What do you want to do with this thing?
- I say we see how it does
compared to the old, blue Monster Ford.
- So, run it up the sand dunes over there
and Turkey Claw?
- [Dave] Yeah, and hit the Whoops,
we never made it to the Whoops in that thing.
- [Fred] This thing will do awesome in the Whoops
'cause it's basically a race car.
And if it doesn't get destroyed in those four obstacles--
- We're going to run it up the back door.
(laughter)
- I'm loaded, I'm going to grab my boots,
it's going to be a long day.
(rock music)
(engine revving)
All right,
so there's that sand dune we couldn't climb
in the big, dumb Ford.
I would like to assume
that AM General spent millions of dollars
engineering the Humvee to climb sand dunes
'cause they probably figured
if there's a war near sand dunes--
- We need to be the best at it.
- Right.
- [Dave] Are we going big right off the bat?
- Go! Go!
Get it!
Climb! Climb Humvee, climb!
Climb.
Keep driving.
Climb.
- Let's try that again.
- I think I meant that one over there.
Do it again, Dave.
- [Dave] It seems really stable.
- All right, go.
(engine revving)
Climb!
(rock music)
- [Dave] We'll just work our way over to the--
- [Fred] Go, go, go! Go, go, go!
- [Dave] Oh, come on.
(rock music)
- [Fred] One more time.
Hit it harder, Dave.
Go like you mean it.
Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go!
We should camp right here.
- [Dave] (laughs) All right.
- [Fred] Back up.
- [Dave] It did really good.
(laughter)
Let's go drive up to the top
and look at what we didn't get up.
I give it an A+ for a good time.
- Basically you just need to lay out
the perfect course for the Humvee.
- Yeah. I got a lot of sand in my teeth.
- We've determined that the Humvee is at the top of its game
and it works better going downhill.
- Yes.
- It's not really a low-lying machine,
this is like the pinnacle.
- Well, they typically got dropped out of airplanes,
so that's what it's used to doing.
- [Fred] Drive right over this edge, we'll be fine.
- You know what race cars are good at?
- Goin' fast in the Whoops.
- Yeah. We didn't do so hot in the dunes.
- [Fred] Going through this kind of rough stuff
is where this thing's really going to shine.
- So, that's where you spend your big dollars though,
like race cars spend all sorts of money
going fast in the Whoops.
- Because they have really nice shocks
and really big engines.
- The guy said that these shocks work good
for 20 minutes once and that was probably 20 years ago.
- So far it's been riding good,
so I think we'll just see if it rides better going faster.
- [Dave] All right. Jump in.
- [Fred] All right.
- [Dave] Here we go.
(rock music)
- [Fred] Oh boy.
- [Dave] Oh yeah.
It's so beat up.
There's a big one.
- [Fred] Oh yeah.
- [Dave] There's another hop.
- [Fred] Another hop, good.
(vehicle engine)
- [Dave] I'm going to go ahead and slow down. No, I'm not.
Woohoo!
When the back end gets right off the ground it's fun.
- [Fred] It really soaks 'em up.
(Dave laughs)
(rock music)
I think we're there. I think this is the finish line.
(rock music)
- I think that was about all I wanted out of it.
(laughter)
That was terrible.
- I don't know.
We didn't roll the thing,
but I also feel like my spine kind of
punched myself in the brain.
- I think we might have won the Whoop section,
out of all the tests,
the Hummer shines in the Whoops.
- Okay.
We need some sort of obstacle course
that shows how tight it turns.
- I don't like driving over bushes in the desert,
so let's go and weave through all this stuff
and see if we can get through it quick
without killing anything.
- All right, so a bush is a landmine.
- Bushes are landmines.
- I'll buy that.
- And there's a bogie on our tail.
(engine ignites)
- Go, Dave, there's a bogie on our tail.
(rock music)
Go straight. Turn left.
Hard right.
Go straight.
Turn right. You got it.
Luckily we got a lot of ground clearance.
Go left.
- [Dave] Left?
- [Fred] You got it.
Go that way.
Go this way.
(laughter)
- [Dave] I'm going to Turkey Claw.
I might have missed a couple of your directions.
- [Fred] I'm pretty sure we didn't hit any landmines.
- [Dave] That was kind of an easy one though.
- Yeah, it was kind of lame.
But, I mean, we didn't die.
- We didn't kill any critters.
- We didn't blow up any landmines.
- Let's go rock crawling, it's gettin' late.
- I think we need to get on some rocks
because we might be here all night.
(engine ignites)
- [Dave] It's a lot of work driving this thing (laughs).
- [Fred] Dave, have you changed your mind about Humvees?
- I didn't like 'em when they were $70,000 luxury vehicles.
I like the military versions,
but they looked like they were so overweight
they probably wouldn't work at all.
- [Fred] But, they're really not that heavy.
- [Dave] No, I found that out.
- And they're also really not that expensive now,
in fact you could buy this one when we're done with it,
they're going to auction it back off.
- No, I think it's doin' awesome.
For what looks like a big, heavy vehicle,
it's like kickin' butt.
I think it'd be really fun to do an LS swap in one of these
and make it have some actual horsepower
that throws down right when you want it to.
- Yeah. I'm interested to see how it rock crawls.
I mean, we have big tires, we have lots of ground clearance,
it's got like a torsion lockers,
but who knows if it's worn out after all the years of abuse.
I'd say we have at least three hours on this trail.
- Let's do it.
- And then we'll probably be sleeping there until dawn.
- Less talk, more four by four.
I'm going to apologize now for my poor driving.
- [Fred] You got this, Dave.
- [Dave] You can't take the race line everywhere.
- [Fred] The only thing we really need to remember
is like right here is the transmission pan
with zero body armor.
Passenger front's going to climb big.
I'd say bring it tight on the passenger side.
There you go.
You got this, David.
- [Dave] I'm more of a jumping car kind of guy.
- [Fred] Bring it down to Hummer town.
- [Dave] Come on big tires, do your thing.
I'm driving it. Come on little buddy.
- [Fred] Let me look underneath and see what we got.
- [Dave] Okay.
- [Fred] Climb little Humvee.
Climb!
Climb!
I can't believe how well this is rock crawling.
- [Dave] It's doing way better than I expected.
- Dude, this is cool.
(rock music)
So, if you're rock crawlin', you'd be amazed,
even as slow as you're going,
how hot an engine and transmission can get to.
- It's at 220, I think we're good.
- All right, so just keep an eye on your gauges,
but also keep an eye on your spotter
and keep an eye on your cooler,
make sure it's full of really icy cold--
- Water.
And try and figure out the breaking point
on some of these parts.
- Well, this thing, it's amazing,
but we're not really sure how much tire spin it'll take
before it blows apart a half shaft.
- [Dave] Yeah.
- One of the boots is already leakin' grease everywhere.
- [Dave] All right. Let's roll out.
We got almost half way there.
Over half way there.
- We'll get to the trail here any second now.
- [Dave] That gate keeper was tough.
(Fred laughs)
- So, we're coming up to a spot here.
You see this giant boulder here,
there's these big two,
there's actually two options,
there's the right line and the left line.
But, with a truck this wide,
neither line is looking really good.
We're going to try the right line
and see if we can keep the tires on the rocks
and the transmission pan off the rocks,
'cause there's almost no skid plate under there.
- [Dave] Come on.
- [Fred] There you go. Keep it comin'.
Perfect.
Perfect.
Run it right over here
and see if you can climb up this pinnacle.
- [Dave] Come on little buddy.
- [Fred] Uh oh.
- [Dave] I'm going this way I guess.
- [Fred] Uh oh.
Uh oh.
Try to go back.
Come on you big, heavy truck.
Let me get a rock behind this tire.
Get in there, rock.
What happens if you turn passenger and back?
- I'm just worried I'm going to break a shaft if I do that.
The whole thing was going really good
and then it was like one or two of the rocks shifted
and the thing just like kind of pivoted on this boulder
and now I'm wedged in from all four corners.
(engine revving)
- [Fred] There she goes.
Nice and easy.
Be a ballerina.
(rock music)
- [Dave] Feels much better.
- [Fred] Dial dog, you're dialed.
Yeah, you got it.
Keep it this way.
Come on big tire, get up on top of all that junk.
Nothing should hold you up if you keep moving.
Keep goin', keep goin'. - [Dave] This is the easiest
part of the trail,
I better not screw it up.
Is that aggressive enough?
- [Fred] That's going to be it.
Come a little further.
(rock music)
Rev it. You're good.
Wide open, full power.
- [Dave] Like that?
- [Fred] Yeah.
Go Dave, go.
Go, go, go, go.
- [Dave] This thing just soaks it up.
- [Fred] Go Dave, go.
- [Dave] That was a good one.
- This thing doesn't suck.
- It did awesome.
- I mean it's like,
I was really expecting it to be
the biggest turd we've ever had.
- Me too.
- It could use more horsepower.
- Yeah, but we didn't break it
because of the lack of horsepower.
- The 40's fit not problem.
- Yeah.
- I was fully expecting axle shafts to blow apart
and they didn't.
- Nope.
- It rides through the Whoops like a wild bronco.
- Yeah, (laughs) but it didn't break.
You try doin' that in anything else
and the rear housing is going to be bent and broken.
- I'm pretty impressed.
- And we rock crawled it, like, come on.
- I was wondering how we were going to tell people
to buy a Humvee at the start of this episode.
And now I think they're pretty cool.
- Yeah, way better than expected.
- [Fred] Yeah.
- Good job.
- That's it for Dirt Everyday.
We'll see you next time.
- You can drive.
- Finally.
- Take me to camp.
- [Fred] How do you work all these buttons and switches?
- [Dave] You'll get the hang of it.
- ♫ Humvees don't work so great in the dunes.
♫ But I bet, they'll work real great goin' fast.
- ♫ In the whoops, the whoop di dos.
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