The Joy of Driving a Vintage English Garden Tractor

As I stepped out onto the trail and took control of this vintage English garden tractor, I couldn't help but feel a sense of excitement and wonder. The twin emergency brake lines caught my eye, and I quickly realized that these were not your average brakes. Locking both wheels in place was a clever solution for navigating off-road terrain, providing an added layer of safety in precarious situations.

With the engine roaring to life, I began our test drive, eager to experience the unique characteristics of this compression ignition vehicle. The steering wheel, though unfamiliar, felt surprisingly smooth and natural, thanks to its simple design. As we eased into first gear, I noticed that the fuel gauge resembled aircraft gauges, a testament to the tractor's heritage.

As I shifted through the synchronized transmission, I was impressed by the ample power on offer. This was no hot rod, but rather a practical working vehicle designed for real-world tasks. The 30 horsepower engine proved more than capable of handling a variety of terrain, from smooth roads to rugged off-road trails.

The tires, though relatively narrow, were surprisingly effective in various conditions. Inflated to 60 psi, they performed admirably on paved roads, yet could be softened further for use in sandy or rocky terrain. However, it was clear that these tires would not inflate on the fly, requiring a brief pit stop to adjust air pressure.

As I continued our journey, I marveled at the tractor's fuel economy. Running ahead of a group of friends at 40 psi, we logged impressive mileage, even in urban environments. The ability to adjust tire pressure for specific driving conditions was a welcome feature, allowing us to tailor the ride to suit various terrain and road types.

The turbocharger added an extra layer of excitement to our drive, providing an exhilarating boost of power that left me grinning from ear to ear. And when we encountered rougher ground, the tractor's ability to handle rock crawling at low speeds was truly impressive.

One of the most striking aspects of this vintage tractor was its air conditioning system. Though designed for wartime use, it still proved effective in temperate climates, providing a welcome respite from the elements. The windshield wipers, too, were surprisingly effective, despite being simple in design.

As we took a break to chat with our host, I couldn't help but be struck by the truck's age and heritage. Built during World War II, this English Garden tractor had seen its fair share of action, and yet it still ran like a dream today. The lack of modern electronics was almost refreshing, allowing us to connect with the vehicle on a more primal level.

Our conversation turned to the topic of power plugs, which proved to be an unexpected surprise. Equipped with multiple outlets, this tractor seemed designed for modern living, even if that meant sacrificing some of its rugged charm. As I explored the various settings and features, I was impressed by the tractor's adaptability and versatility.

Eventually, it was time to think about shipping this vintage beauty to Morocco, where our host would put it to good use. Though the truck had been designed for harsh desert conditions, I couldn't help but feel a pang of worry about its long-term prospects in such an unforgiving environment. Nonetheless, I had no doubt that this English Garden tractor would prove itself more than capable of handling whatever challenges lay ahead.

As our test drive drew to a close, I was struck by the sheer uniqueness of this vintage tractor. Built over 75 years ago, it had been lovingly restored and updated for modern times, yet still retained much of its original character. With a price tag of around $25,000, it was certainly an investment, but one that offered a wealth of benefits, from practicality to sheer driving joy.

For those looking to experience the thrill of vintage motoring, this English Garden tractor is definitely worth considering. Its combination of simplicity, power, and adaptability make it an ideal choice for enthusiasts of all stripes. And with its rich history and unique character, it's sure to leave a lasting impression on anyone fortunate enough to take the reins.

As I prepared to bid farewell to our host and this incredible machine, I couldn't help but feel a sense of gratitude for the experience. The English Garden tractor had been a true delight, offering a refreshing respite from the hustle and bustle of modern life. And though it may not be for everyone, I knew that those who took the chance on this vintage beauty would be rewarded with a lifetime of memories and driving joy.

The website listed as a resource is definitely worth checking out, offering a wealth of information about these unique tractors. From their history to their features, there's something for everyone in this community of vintage enthusiasts. Whether you're a seasoned collector or simply looking for a new adventure, the English Garden tractor is sure to capture your heart and imagination.

So what are you waiting for? Join us next week as we explore more incredible machines and adventures on the road. Until then, keep on driving – and remember to appreciate the little things in life, like a well-crafted vintage tractor or two.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enit's always innocence yeah yeah you know it's really funny we read the manual on some of the Old English gods of 30 and 3 miles an hour switch to second yes five hours in a 12 hour welcome to episode of Jalen's garage your very special episode you know why because I got a new shirt and we had these made up of CSG metals garage if you want with these go to Leno's Garage comm and you can get one okay enough about that really cool vehicle today this is a 1942 Dodge carry all this was in World War two its restomod it's done by legacy trucks up there in Jackson Hole Wyoming yeah they were here oh maybe your and a half ago something like that they had that fantastic dodge power wagon we went for a ride in hugely popular well over a million hits on it let's meet the man behind it the president the founder the Builder whatever you want to call them wins a little bent Winslow come on in my friend it's a perfect name too they win slow bender how are you I was like a funny name it sounds like your real name is like you know Harvey or some other you know but with a little bent I like and that is your actual name and it is yes so yeah I just drove down from Jackson Hole I actually drove this all the way 1942 dodge carry all you know they say slow and steady wins the race yeah what but this is actually quite fast in it yeah I was going 70 71 miles an hour the whole way and got about 19 miles to the gallon and drove through a snowstorm and then smoke and fires and yeah all kinds of stuff so let's explain what it is you do you enjoy making retro versions of heavy duty vehicles from the 30s 40s exactly yeah that's that's right so we take a lot of defunct brands things that people haven't seen before and I go around the western US and I find these old abandoned trucks figure out what they were used for bring them back to life yeah I think it's fantastic because it is recycling in a sense rather this thing rotting in a field somewhere you take it back and you and you refinish it and you make it a practical vehicle and this one was actually in World War two wasn't it that's correct so I got the vehicle and we started disassembling it and we identified paint on the firewall as being a specific paint that was used in the African theater of world war ii and when we started sanding down the hood we got the military lettering off the hood and this was in Tunisia in World War two and let's explain what it was originally originally it was what a flathead six-cylinder flathead six-cylinder and the idea with the truck sort of arguably the world's first SUV okay so it predates the Power Wagon yes yeah so this is 1942 and they didn't come up with the name Power Wagon until they were civilian vehicles don't pickup trucks and that was 1946 okay so the idea was that you could put a bunch of VIPs in this thing and drive him around in war it turned out that every sniper with a little bit of sense would take a shot at the guy in this thing so they fell out of popularity for shuttling people around right right let me get into Jeep or something that's a little more incognito and back in the day when it was new did it sit this high on the chassis basically was it basically a truck it was four-wheel drive it was a four-wheel drive very robust you know designed for going through mud and crud and sand so this is just a touch higher than it was originally but they always had this incredible stance and the giant big flat fenders I mean they just look okay they they mean business so back in the day top speed would have been what 45 or 50 yeah you're you're you're screaming yeah that's me the flathead is really speed or forth feedback I just had four gears I didn't have for you but yeah but I imagine first was the granny gears versus a granny gear and then so you'd normally just start off in second gear second third fourth and they were very reliable very very tough and so when I restomod something I want to go okay well what was this used for what's kind of it's it's calling cards and how can we not lose that part of the story right so what was the calling card of this vehicle how can we emphasize that and make it more drivable without losing character yeah I think it's fantastic because it's really just you know when I think a restomod I think just making something a bit of a hot rod but this is just a better version of its intended purpose right this is what's pretty cool this is a purpose-built vehicle so our client is going to be using this he does vintage Road rallies and he does these all over the world and this is going to be his chase vehicle so his two mechanics in all of their parts yeah go in this thing so I needed to build a vehicle that cannot break down right and so this build was all about simplicity even down to rather than using fuses we use resettable circuit breakers okay the diesel engine only has one wire that goes to it which is to shut it off really yeah okay so very very simple we turn the power down so it never overheats we set a governor at 2200 rpm so you can't you know short shift it and right caused problems it's just designed to go 24 hours a day well that's true because if you had a brand new vehicle it would probably have electronic computers and a write of that nature so it could be disabled by the enemy or something with some sort of right electronic blast or something this one will keep going can you open the hood less yeah absolutely this is a Cummins 4 BT which is a four cylinder industrial version of the the engine that was so popular in the 1980s 1990s and dodge trucks not only ask you something a turbo is obviously more complex than a non turbo diesel right but the turbo itself is not a complex unit is it it's not a complex unit and diesel guys like to monitor their exhaust gas temperatures and if you leave the power turned down mmm-hmm the turbo itself never gets that hot you know less forever right but a non turbocharged diesel I don't know if you ever had one of those Mercedes diesels back in the day what but you know what they're saying I thought was my first new car an 83 I bought a Mercedes turbo diesel and I couldn't pull up I had to put it reverse to go up the hill because the turbo wasn't spinning fast enough and that was the turbo model before that they had one that wasn't even turbocharged oh yeah but everyone knows those things will go a million miles I'm just not gonna get there very fast right so we have a turbo it's just lightly breathing on the engine but nothing too extreme so what kind of walks by you putting out about 160 some 130 130 you got 130 horsepower but the torque torque 380 foot-pounds of torque at 1500 rpm okay and imagine it runs on any kind of diesel you know yeah it'll run on off-road diesel biofuels jet a I mean whatever you have around and you have some sort of special fuel trap when you go through places that have crappy fuel did you have to yeah there's a water separator okay so the most common thing that gets introduced to diesel fuel is water right and so you can drain the water out and then the fuel filter is just a spin on unit like an oil filter so you can change it in 30 seconds dump it out and put it back in again yeah wow this is all designed for let's keep going okay and in some sort of I remember in the day they used to sell something called the tropical package it's actually the standard size of this vehicle when it was new so dodge had these really big radiators in the original vehicles we remake them out of aluminum and we've also incorporated an intercooler in front of it as well as an air conditioning system okay but the intercooler the turbo the air conditioning none of those are required to make it run if something goes out you're still going to get to where you're going and so when my clients driving this across South America or driving it across Morocco you want to make sure you can get from point A to point B right sure could you lose your air conditioning yeah but you're gonna get there now is this the original chassis here or if you put a modern I always use the original chassis I don't like it when you see these guys swapping different chassis under different bodies I can spot it from a mile away and it never looks right right so we take the original chassis and then we box it to make it stronger okay and that's a really nice upgrade and tell me about these Springs the way they're hanging there on our trucks we typically use leaf spring suspensions we like them because it's it's trucky it's a rookie run and it's incredibly reliable this suspension is all of our own design and we run something called shackle reversal so the spring shackle is in the back rather than in the front that you typically see on cars right and we find that that performs a lot better off-road and then once we had the suspension setup I just thought a really cool set of shocks would be awesome so we use these huge King shocks on the front and I think it just lends itself to the character of the vehicle you look at that and you go oh man that's cool it says to me that your spring is almost straight across and you don't seem to have much of an art to it correct and so when you start putting a whole bunch of arc in your springs like when you see guys that are trying to jack their trucks right right here they start riding like garbage yeah I like this Springs nice and flat so they're just kind of going in and out the whole time and that's a lost art you know I've got some old cars and you bring your leaf springs there's nobody contempor spring set right and right the goal we know how to do that really you know do it even spring shops they don't anymore they give you modern spray and after about a couple thousand miles they've just lost all the other trick is that when guys sell you leaf springs then you might be able just to buy from a catalog or something they're inclined to use as few individual Leafs as possible right keep the cost down right you don't want that no you want lots of Leafs that are paper thin yeah and then you shot pea numb you do what's called a military wrap so it's just it's great well in the old days you used to put it together with grease in between I still do that yeah and then you put a leather Gator around it to keep the grease that's such a cool look I mean I'm surprised you don't have it here because it seems like that would keep it from sort of rusting out or something it would it would hold the grease and suspension and within the spring no that was the the concept and it looks very very cool yeah so after we do the show maybe I'll talk to my customer and see if you want some okay so now what size wheel of that it's a small it's just an illusion there's a bigger wheel but it's it is so big it's a 17 inch wheel it is so funny with this tire it looks like a 13 inch wheel right yeah right I like the idea of the tire itself being part of the suspension right that's and that's the whole suspension and when this truck was original they had these combat wheels on them that you could run at incredibly low tire pressure right gives you more traction just tons of benefits to that program so we actually kept that the wheel that you see on there is a trail ready bead locked wheel the tire is bolted to that ring so when I run really low tire pressure you don't have to worry about the tire coming off the wheel oh I think okay so we run that and then we run the Toyo tires these are the new RT Toyo tires and I've been really happy with that program because you don't have to balance them they make the most rounds you start going down the road with these huge tires and the thing feels like it's driving itself these are so round right out of the package that it's just a slam dunk it's funny you mention that because when you have some of the older cars there's a lot of these companies that make tires for older cars mm-hmm and you go down the road and you got all this shimmy and I met a guy who an old guy he had a tire shop and he had a tire shaver right and I took my old 32 Packard to him he took a pound of rubber off yeah because there was literally like a fist of rubber yeah so it was like the thump that's just yeah lost art I mean again that's an example of something that people would have known to do let's come around to the front was this original no it's debated but most people will agree originally these all came as non winch trucks right and then there was an add-on that could be done in the field to put a winch on the front okay and so a lot of these you'll see up fitted as winch trucks we created our own bumper something very simple nothing fancy just a quarter inch steel super strong and then we are not running the old power take-off winch anymore no this is a modern electric war that looks pretty substantial sixteen thousand five hundred pounds really yeah really now what do you run a 24 volt system or just this is on 12 volt but I've got to baby gotta have to but because this would probably drain the battery no yeah you're right so right so you've got to have the engine running and revving while your room yeah and I put a hand throttle in this vehicle so you can bring the RPMs up okay to a working rpm and that allows you to run the winch and we can get into it later but I also have an on-board welder in this vehicle oh is that right and what's his name no this is the idea again hey everything you might need is right here and where do you run like an Optima battery you don't want to let a Cydia I actually like the lead acid batteries it's I know it's kind of old-school well I mean I was thinking in a vehicle like this you're in Tunisia you're in some places battery cracks and you lose acid you're screwed with it with a gel cell you've got a seal that's true and it's it's much debated I think what's the best way to go on an expedition type vehicle these you can run them dry and recharge them and they're not finicky about charging which is kind of nice yeah but you run the chances of the fluid running out so there's a lot about controlling the heat of the desert you would get evaporation wouldn't it right yeah right with the lead acid that's correct yet with the gel cell right yeah okay so a lot of back and forth on that yeah but at the end of the day you don't need any electricity for this car so there's nothing there's no ignition system so as long as the engine is running it will stay running right if your battery was dead then you just bump started yeah and it'll keep running cool oh you can jump this easy enough absolutely in fact you can see over here I was pushing it to jump this yeah some big strong person what does it weigh 70 100 pounds how it is that heavy yeah what do you may think okay see the posts over here change these are for jump starting the vehicle okay so you don't have to crawl underneath it and find the batteries okay very cool yeah big log chain in the front 16,000 pound winch and this is obviously your eye filter here yeah that's a Donaldson air intake right and this was clear when I left Jackson Hole and it starts to fill up with debris yeah then you just take it out you cleaned it out what is the washable filters that would this is a pre filters that there's no filter in there this just takes in the particulate and captures it and you just knock it out like you would a vacuum cleaner okay and then the actual filter itself is here okay and the other thing that we did that was really cool was so your axles have vent tubes your transmission your transfer case we took all of the vent tubes and ran them into a manifold and then one little tube up to the air intake so everything on the engine and powertrain is sealed right so you can drive this baby under water right there okay and when you're driving it you can look down and see your air filter so you can see if you're in water that's too deep or see if you've sucked in a bunch of dirt and so you can always tell what's going on let's go around to this side again let's take a look the rear of the car by the truck well here we are at the rear of the truck you got your shovels your axe you got your pick out now I'm tell me about this you got tie wraps here it seems like that seems that yeah it's you gotta cut it to get it off it's a little embarrassing those will be leather strap okay I was in a hurry to get down here and you know how it is eleventh hour and you're gonna go take a car to a car show or something like that and it's like oh man we got to get this done so I didn't have the time and no bumper no bumper in these vehicles right it seems like it would be like you say if they needed to be pushed to jumpstart or something right you'd think there'd be some sort of push bar in the back you would see them with little bumperettes yeah sometimes and I figure the days of this thing needing to be pushed or probably over I think it's more the pusher right pushy trailer hitch back here as well yep that's a pintle hook for your off-road type trailers JW speaker did all the lighting on this vehicle so it's all LEDs super-bright just offers really really nice look so what are we gonna open up here right here just pop this off this okay and then up she goes okay that's that's original to the view this is original yeah this was missing and so we hand-built it so let me show you this you just pull this up like that okay and then very heavy that's a heavy tailgating yeah it's about a hundred and fifty pounds Wow we built this out of eighth inch wall steel Dino matted on the inside it's got modern door latches on it but I wanted this to be a work surface remember this is a chase field right right so I wanted to be able to put your tools out here and bang away what do we got here that is the fuel door oh that's the way you fill it yup so pop that open well that seems convenient twist it and there is a 32 gallon fuel tank it's got the big diameter on it so you can fill the fuel really fast it originally fell from the side it originally filled from the side and I didn't want that on this type of international build I don't want anyone to siphon the fuel right I got you I'll put garbage in your tank right so this now is all in the vehicle and locking so it's much less likely that someone's going to come in and mess around with your vehicle what about the air compressor that's an air compressor so you can run all your shop tools okay change tires anything you might need to do we replace the wood floor with steel on this vehicle right let's put this back oh man that's the tailgate yeah but you know you can sit on there and bang away with a hammer yeah this close these yeah laughs these yeah and then the padlocks go right through that let's go through that okay so you padlocked that lock the doors you can't get to the fuel everything's tucked away and you've got a ladder on this side yes to get to the spare time not original but very functional so we built the roof rack and then the roof rack is tied into the roll cage right and then the roll cage is tied into the frame so that weight that you might have on the roof of the car goes all the way through down down through the vehicle so you don't have any structural issues any communications in the vehicle like emergency satellite thing like you know you're stuck somewhere in the middle of the desert it's not yet but this is the the basics of what's going to be this chase vehicle yeah it hasn't been up fitted specifically for the race yet so we need toolboxes we need larger air tanks we need dual spare tires comms both to other vehicles as well as some kind of Sat radio would be great but that up fitting the customer will ultimately do at the end because different people like different stuff well before we go for a ride let's take it over and put it up on our sterile Kony lifts and show people what it looks like underneath show that kind of workmanship you do it's really impressive come on okay we got our dodge calorie all up on our sterile Kony lifts to give you an idea what it's like underneath here obviously not all shiny because this is a off-road vehicle but still pretty clean on the way down here so it's it's designed to be driven and everything under here is three times the size it needs to be not designed to be particularly pretty just strong now what we're into this this is a corporate 14 bolt it's got 456 gears in it Wow a full time locking differential in the back okay got a Detroit Locker so it always is turning the rear tires at the same speed oh ok so when you go around a corner it's like you're braking chicken legs crate right the you know the old she'll be 350 Mustang had there you go in a car deal very cool so the safe to say there's no 1942 heavy-duty Dodge parts on under here is there the frame is original other than the frame all the running gear has been updated so the axles are a five quarter ton military application from the 1980s we use Atlas transfer cases and most of our builds which are extremely robust we've got a Dana 60 in the front here so again very very robust very simple very easy to service and you can start to see earlier we were talking about how all of the axles transmission transfer case all have vent tubes right but all meet here and go up to the front of the vehicle to the intake you don't take any water no water comes in no dirt comes in now your wrists your rear springs are obviously much more substantial than the front the rear springs are designed for your load carry and on a rear spring the weight of what you're carrying in the back of the truck changes all the time right so it's much harder to design a good rear suspension on a truck than it is the front the front static I can weigh it you can tell me today what it weighs okay and I can design the whole suspension around that so it works beautifully the rear I'm assuming that this client will probably be carrying a bunch of stuff around so today if you drive it with nothing in it you know well that's kind of stiff right put a thousand pounds of gear in the back right it's like a caddy gotcha and tell what we have here this clear plastic line the theme is vulnerable a bit well this is - it's it's a sight glass okay and this tells you hey this is how much fluid you've got in there and you can also see the color of it so the trade-off is well it's this little plastic piece and if that failed you would lose all of your fluid but on the other hand you can instantly see if it's got fluid in it and what the condition of that fluid is and if your fill wine here yes okay so you fill it up this will tell you where you need to be I like to put it right in the middle everything's clear good to go very easy to go underneath this vehicle and just hit all your grease points just lubricate go check everything really fast go go go so you're not all the time four-wheel drive you you can go into it part-time four-wheel drive so you disconnect the hubs in the front so none of these are turning see how that's free gotcha so to get it into four-wheel drive you lock the hubs and then you pull the lever and all the old school old school got to get out lock the hub but lock the hubs pull the lever I like the writing here that looks like only UWA boys here yeah that's right that's right yeah yeah you know again J it's a it's an incredibly cool looking vehicle to me the aesthetics are amazing but when you really start looking at the parts pieces on this vehicle most everything you see here you can run to your local parts store right and grab right right and I like that level of serviceability oh well minimal downtime you hear the two batteries we talked about yep I like everything tucked up out of the way right but it's still easy to get to and both batteries work off the altar and then independent right correct they both work off the alternator and that's actually incorporated into that welder that I was talking about so you can bump this up to a hundred and ten volts and get up to twenty three hundred watts of power okay you can arc weld you can run all your power tools off of that and then if you have air tools you can run the air tools off the air compressor Wow so this thing's ready to go how many pounds of pressure you go with the air compressor the air compressor keeps about 110 psi okay which is good for your air tools yeah and then you can run any size tank you want depending on how much you're using it we got it well master a Flowmaster mufflers yeah can just simple straight through three-inch you put anything that's hot you know like your exhaust you put over on this side of the vehicle anything like your fuel lines Airlines wires run it all on the opposite side of the vehicle keep the heat away less the to never meet right yeah yeah very good yeah so it's just about putting some thought into it and spending a lot of years out on the trail and figuring out what works and what doesn't yeah and you got twin emergency brake lines here yes so you lock both wheels lock both rear wheels which is really nice when you're off-road in some kind of a precarious situation yeah yeah sure sure so well let's take them a ride and see how it goes sounds like a plan okay ready to start the what do we need to do before we start I like the grant it's not a grant steering wheel yes it okay not a lot you need to know it's compression ignition so right push it in the clutch right is your starter here okay boom away we go that's right up let's go we've got a fuel gauge here these look these look aircraft yeah they're designed to look like the World War 2 aircraft those are from Steve mole I think you'll find this very easy to drive that's already easy to drive right now synchronized transmission yeah powers more than adequate it's good it's not a silly hot rod it's a real practical working vehicle with plenty of power the old English garden 30 in three miles an hour switch to second yes five miles hours switch to third in a 12-hour put it but these tires are like 20% of your suspension aren't there oh yeah inflate with the air Prince here present just we have fracture on the highway right by random at 60 psi oh you run on that hi great great fuel economy right now today a guy being around la I running ahead of a 40 psi right now is nice and soft at street setting dry and we go off-road softer sand I like 120 psi and rock crawling I take them all the way down to six but you can't fill them on the fly you've got to pull over and plant pull over old school we do have on the air we need on board right we Wow all that yeah I love the sound of the turbo yeah you can just yeah and you know it feels like a six or even a small B hey we have to guess it before yeah a nice thing about his foot windchill is when you get a crack you don't have to place one side for cheap guys like myself yeah and original trucks your air conditioning system was the windshield was pulled open right right what would actually is quite effective it really works great and it's it's super fun but when we do our modernizing on these all these electronics behind yeah well it must be tough dealing with customers who don't understand old vehicle you know they expected some form like a modern car it can break sit too hard well there's no power boost what does that mean it's a it's an interesting thing 8,000 of these trucks right - that was for the war effort huh yeah wait thousands quite a bit I they built 8000 of them but yeah sale what smile yeah does it say God anywhere on it would not know so they never had to said what it was Oh anything that's pointed a truck like this is your eyes sort of level with all the semis yeah yeah and they love seeing something like this I contact yes but do you know how to respect me just look at all kinds of room here oh yeah what are these seats Adam Chevy Tahoe oh okay everything's just rugged and simple and power plugs power plugs all right yeah fight for my devices yeah yeah and call them power plug they're both kick in there yeah right now everything's turned down into its most piled setting right only making from 20 pounds of turbo boost and you can't get the exhaust gas temperatures over 1000 degrees so when does this get shipped to what's going to Morocco while driving across Morocco and I got to thinking about it this truck hasn't been in North Africa Wow I'm worried about anybody knew it would still be alive really yeah this is a second time he's been here and it's just wonderful I mean they're practical they're very clever there's nothing hot rowdy about it it's all just real sensible solid engineering yeah that's really cool and I know twenty fifty thousand dollars a lot of money but by the time you get a original equipment truck you get pretty close to that yeah and not have anything this unique so it's pretty neat so get bent that should be your slogan yeah but very cool how many of you down he's down over a hundred right yeah I believe this is either number 101 or number 102 okay so he knows how to do it so I must admit I I'm very impressed these are really really cool because they you've really just taken the original concept and made it 2017 or 2018 right you know it's basically the same track it was in 1942 just just a lot better so thanks again thanks James great to see oh it's fine go to its website and check it out it's pretty cool we'll see you guys next weekit's always innocence yeah yeah you know it's really funny we read the manual on some of the Old English gods of 30 and 3 miles an hour switch to second yes five hours in a 12 hour welcome to episode of Jalen's garage your very special episode you know why because I got a new shirt and we had these made up of CSG metals garage if you want with these go to Leno's Garage comm and you can get one okay enough about that really cool vehicle today this is a 1942 Dodge carry all this was in World War two its restomod it's done by legacy trucks up there in Jackson Hole Wyoming yeah they were here oh maybe your and a half ago something like that they had that fantastic dodge power wagon we went for a ride in hugely popular well over a million hits on it let's meet the man behind it the president the founder the Builder whatever you want to call them wins a little bent Winslow come on in my friend it's a perfect name too they win slow bender how are you I was like a funny name it sounds like your real name is like you know Harvey or some other you know but with a little bent I like and that is your actual name and it is yes so yeah I just drove down from Jackson Hole I actually drove this all the way 1942 dodge carry all you know they say slow and steady wins the race yeah what but this is actually quite fast in it yeah I was going 70 71 miles an hour the whole way and got about 19 miles to the gallon and drove through a snowstorm and then smoke and fires and yeah all kinds of stuff so let's explain what it is you do you enjoy making retro versions of heavy duty vehicles from the 30s 40s exactly yeah that's that's right so we take a lot of defunct brands things that people haven't seen before and I go around the western US and I find these old abandoned trucks figure out what they were used for bring them back to life yeah I think it's fantastic because it is recycling in a sense rather this thing rotting in a field somewhere you take it back and you and you refinish it and you make it a practical vehicle and this one was actually in World War two wasn't it that's correct so I got the vehicle and we started disassembling it and we identified paint on the firewall as being a specific paint that was used in the African theater of world war ii and when we started sanding down the hood we got the military lettering off the hood and this was in Tunisia in World War two and let's explain what it was originally originally it was what a flathead six-cylinder flathead six-cylinder and the idea with the truck sort of arguably the world's first SUV okay so it predates the Power Wagon yes yeah so this is 1942 and they didn't come up with the name Power Wagon until they were civilian vehicles don't pickup trucks and that was 1946 okay so the idea was that you could put a bunch of VIPs in this thing and drive him around in war it turned out that every sniper with a little bit of sense would take a shot at the guy in this thing so they fell out of popularity for shuttling people around right right let me get into Jeep or something that's a little more incognito and back in the day when it was new did it sit this high on the chassis basically was it basically a truck it was four-wheel drive it was a four-wheel drive very robust you know designed for going through mud and crud and sand so this is just a touch higher than it was originally but they always had this incredible stance and the giant big flat fenders I mean they just look okay they they mean business so back in the day top speed would have been what 45 or 50 yeah you're you're you're screaming yeah that's me the flathead is really speed or forth feedback I just had four gears I didn't have for you but yeah but I imagine first was the granny gears versus a granny gear and then so you'd normally just start off in second gear second third fourth and they were very reliable very very tough and so when I restomod something I want to go okay well what was this used for what's kind of it's it's calling cards and how can we not lose that part of the story right so what was the calling card of this vehicle how can we emphasize that and make it more drivable without losing character yeah I think it's fantastic because it's really just you know when I think a restomod I think just making something a bit of a hot rod but this is just a better version of its intended purpose right this is what's pretty cool this is a purpose-built vehicle so our client is going to be using this he does vintage Road rallies and he does these all over the world and this is going to be his chase vehicle so his two mechanics in all of their parts yeah go in this thing so I needed to build a vehicle that cannot break down right and so this build was all about simplicity even down to rather than using fuses we use resettable circuit breakers okay the diesel engine only has one wire that goes to it which is to shut it off really yeah okay so very very simple we turn the power down so it never overheats we set a governor at 2200 rpm so you can't you know short shift it and right caused problems it's just designed to go 24 hours a day well that's true because if you had a brand new vehicle it would probably have electronic computers and a write of that nature so it could be disabled by the enemy or something with some sort of right electronic blast or something this one will keep going can you open the hood less yeah absolutely this is a Cummins 4 BT which is a four cylinder industrial version of the the engine that was so popular in the 1980s 1990s and dodge trucks not only ask you something a turbo is obviously more complex than a non turbo diesel right but the turbo itself is not a complex unit is it it's not a complex unit and diesel guys like to monitor their exhaust gas temperatures and if you leave the power turned down mmm-hmm the turbo itself never gets that hot you know less forever right but a non turbocharged diesel I don't know if you ever had one of those Mercedes diesels back in the day what but you know what they're saying I thought was my first new car an 83 I bought a Mercedes turbo diesel and I couldn't pull up I had to put it reverse to go up the hill because the turbo wasn't spinning fast enough and that was the turbo model before that they had one that wasn't even turbocharged oh yeah but everyone knows those things will go a million miles I'm just not gonna get there very fast right so we have a turbo it's just lightly breathing on the engine but nothing too extreme so what kind of walks by you putting out about 160 some 130 130 you got 130 horsepower but the torque torque 380 foot-pounds of torque at 1500 rpm okay and imagine it runs on any kind of diesel you know yeah it'll run on off-road diesel biofuels jet a I mean whatever you have around and you have some sort of special fuel trap when you go through places that have crappy fuel did you have to yeah there's a water separator okay so the most common thing that gets introduced to diesel fuel is water right and so you can drain the water out and then the fuel filter is just a spin on unit like an oil filter so you can change it in 30 seconds dump it out and put it back in again yeah wow this is all designed for let's keep going okay and in some sort of I remember in the day they used to sell something called the tropical package it's actually the standard size of this vehicle when it was new so dodge had these really big radiators in the original vehicles we remake them out of aluminum and we've also incorporated an intercooler in front of it as well as an air conditioning system okay but the intercooler the turbo the air conditioning none of those are required to make it run if something goes out you're still going to get to where you're going and so when my clients driving this across South America or driving it across Morocco you want to make sure you can get from point A to point B right sure could you lose your air conditioning yeah but you're gonna get there now is this the original chassis here or if you put a modern I always use the original chassis I don't like it when you see these guys swapping different chassis under different bodies I can spot it from a mile away and it never looks right right so we take the original chassis and then we box it to make it stronger okay and that's a really nice upgrade and tell me about these Springs the way they're hanging there on our trucks we typically use leaf spring suspensions we like them because it's it's trucky it's a rookie run and it's incredibly reliable this suspension is all of our own design and we run something called shackle reversal so the spring shackle is in the back rather than in the front that you typically see on cars right and we find that that performs a lot better off-road and then once we had the suspension setup I just thought a really cool set of shocks would be awesome so we use these huge King shocks on the front and I think it just lends itself to the character of the vehicle you look at that and you go oh man that's cool it says to me that your spring is almost straight across and you don't seem to have much of an art to it correct and so when you start putting a whole bunch of arc in your springs like when you see guys that are trying to jack their trucks right right here they start riding like garbage yeah I like this Springs nice and flat so they're just kind of going in and out the whole time and that's a lost art you know I've got some old cars and you bring your leaf springs there's nobody contempor spring set right and right the goal we know how to do that really you know do it even spring shops they don't anymore they give you modern spray and after about a couple thousand miles they've just lost all the other trick is that when guys sell you leaf springs then you might be able just to buy from a catalog or something they're inclined to use as few individual Leafs as possible right keep the cost down right you don't want that no you want lots of Leafs that are paper thin yeah and then you shot pea numb you do what's called a military wrap so it's just it's great well in the old days you used to put it together with grease in between I still do that yeah and then you put a leather Gator around it to keep the grease that's such a cool look I mean I'm surprised you don't have it here because it seems like that would keep it from sort of rusting out or something it would it would hold the grease and suspension and within the spring no that was the the concept and it looks very very cool yeah so after we do the show maybe I'll talk to my customer and see if you want some okay so now what size wheel of that it's a small it's just an illusion there's a bigger wheel but it's it is so big it's a 17 inch wheel it is so funny with this tire it looks like a 13 inch wheel right yeah right I like the idea of the tire itself being part of the suspension right that's and that's the whole suspension and when this truck was original they had these combat wheels on them that you could run at incredibly low tire pressure right gives you more traction just tons of benefits to that program so we actually kept that the wheel that you see on there is a trail ready bead locked wheel the tire is bolted to that ring so when I run really low tire pressure you don't have to worry about the tire coming off the wheel oh I think okay so we run that and then we run the Toyo tires these are the new RT Toyo tires and I've been really happy with that program because you don't have to balance them they make the most rounds you start going down the road with these huge tires and the thing feels like it's driving itself these are so round right out of the package that it's just a slam dunk it's funny you mention that because when you have some of the older cars there's a lot of these companies that make tires for older cars mm-hmm and you go down the road and you got all this shimmy and I met a guy who an old guy he had a tire shop and he had a tire shaver right and I took my old 32 Packard to him he took a pound of rubber off yeah because there was literally like a fist of rubber yeah so it was like the thump that's just yeah lost art I mean again that's an example of something that people would have known to do let's come around to the front was this original no it's debated but most people will agree originally these all came as non winch trucks right and then there was an add-on that could be done in the field to put a winch on the front okay and so a lot of these you'll see up fitted as winch trucks we created our own bumper something very simple nothing fancy just a quarter inch steel super strong and then we are not running the old power take-off winch anymore no this is a modern electric war that looks pretty substantial sixteen thousand five hundred pounds really yeah really now what do you run a 24 volt system or just this is on 12 volt but I've got to baby gotta have to but because this would probably drain the battery no yeah you're right so right so you've got to have the engine running and revving while your room yeah and I put a hand throttle in this vehicle so you can bring the RPMs up okay to a working rpm and that allows you to run the winch and we can get into it later but I also have an on-board welder in this vehicle oh is that right and what's his name no this is the idea again hey everything you might need is right here and where do you run like an Optima battery you don't want to let a Cydia I actually like the lead acid batteries it's I know it's kind of old-school well I mean I was thinking in a vehicle like this you're in Tunisia you're in some places battery cracks and you lose acid you're screwed with it with a gel cell you've got a seal that's true and it's it's much debated I think what's the best way to go on an expedition type vehicle these you can run them dry and recharge them and they're not finicky about charging which is kind of nice yeah but you run the chances of the fluid running out so there's a lot about controlling the heat of the desert you would get evaporation wouldn't it right yeah right with the lead acid that's correct yet with the gel cell right yeah okay so a lot of back and forth on that yeah but at the end of the day you don't need any electricity for this car so there's nothing there's no ignition system so as long as the engine is running it will stay running right if your battery was dead then you just bump started yeah and it'll keep running cool oh you can jump this easy enough absolutely in fact you can see over here I was pushing it to jump this yeah some big strong person what does it weigh 70 100 pounds how it is that heavy yeah what do you may think okay see the posts over here change these are for jump starting the vehicle okay so you don't have to crawl underneath it and find the batteries okay very cool yeah big log chain in the front 16,000 pound winch and this is obviously your eye filter here yeah that's a Donaldson air intake right and this was clear when I left Jackson Hole and it starts to fill up with debris yeah then you just take it out you cleaned it out what is the washable filters that would this is a pre filters that there's no filter in there this just takes in the particulate and captures it and you just knock it out like you would a vacuum cleaner okay and then the actual filter itself is here okay and the other thing that we did that was really cool was so your axles have vent tubes your transmission your transfer case we took all of the vent tubes and ran them into a manifold and then one little tube up to the air intake so everything on the engine and powertrain is sealed right so you can drive this baby under water right there okay and when you're driving it you can look down and see your air filter so you can see if you're in water that's too deep or see if you've sucked in a bunch of dirt and so you can always tell what's going on let's go around to this side again let's take a look the rear of the car by the truck well here we are at the rear of the truck you got your shovels your axe you got your pick out now I'm tell me about this you got tie wraps here it seems like that seems that yeah it's you gotta cut it to get it off it's a little embarrassing those will be leather strap okay I was in a hurry to get down here and you know how it is eleventh hour and you're gonna go take a car to a car show or something like that and it's like oh man we got to get this done so I didn't have the time and no bumper no bumper in these vehicles right it seems like it would be like you say if they needed to be pushed to jumpstart or something right you'd think there'd be some sort of push bar in the back you would see them with little bumperettes yeah sometimes and I figure the days of this thing needing to be pushed or probably over I think it's more the pusher right pushy trailer hitch back here as well yep that's a pintle hook for your off-road type trailers JW speaker did all the lighting on this vehicle so it's all LEDs super-bright just offers really really nice look so what are we gonna open up here right here just pop this off this okay and then up she goes okay that's that's original to the view this is original yeah this was missing and so we hand-built it so let me show you this you just pull this up like that okay and then very heavy that's a heavy tailgating yeah it's about a hundred and fifty pounds Wow we built this out of eighth inch wall steel Dino matted on the inside it's got modern door latches on it but I wanted this to be a work surface remember this is a chase field right right so I wanted to be able to put your tools out here and bang away what do we got here that is the fuel door oh that's the way you fill it yup so pop that open well that seems convenient twist it and there is a 32 gallon fuel tank it's got the big diameter on it so you can fill the fuel really fast it originally fell from the side it originally filled from the side and I didn't want that on this type of international build I don't want anyone to siphon the fuel right I got you I'll put garbage in your tank right so this now is all in the vehicle and locking so it's much less likely that someone's going to come in and mess around with your vehicle what about the air compressor that's an air compressor so you can run all your shop tools okay change tires anything you might need to do we replace the wood floor with steel on this vehicle right let's put this back oh man that's the tailgate yeah but you know you can sit on there and bang away with a hammer yeah this close these yeah laughs these yeah and then the padlocks go right through that let's go through that okay so you padlocked that lock the doors you can't get to the fuel everything's tucked away and you've got a ladder on this side yes to get to the spare time not original but very functional so we built the roof rack and then the roof rack is tied into the roll cage right and then the roll cage is tied into the frame so that weight that you might have on the roof of the car goes all the way through down down through the vehicle so you don't have any structural issues any communications in the vehicle like emergency satellite thing like you know you're stuck somewhere in the middle of the desert it's not yet but this is the the basics of what's going to be this chase vehicle yeah it hasn't been up fitted specifically for the race yet so we need toolboxes we need larger air tanks we need dual spare tires comms both to other vehicles as well as some kind of Sat radio would be great but that up fitting the customer will ultimately do at the end because different people like different stuff well before we go for a ride let's take it over and put it up on our sterile Kony lifts and show people what it looks like underneath show that kind of workmanship you do it's really impressive come on okay we got our dodge calorie all up on our sterile Kony lifts to give you an idea what it's like underneath here obviously not all shiny because this is a off-road vehicle but still pretty clean on the way down here so it's it's designed to be driven and everything under here is three times the size it needs to be not designed to be particularly pretty just strong now what we're into this this is a corporate 14 bolt it's got 456 gears in it Wow a full time locking differential in the back okay got a Detroit Locker so it always is turning the rear tires at the same speed oh ok so when you go around a corner it's like you're braking chicken legs crate right the you know the old she'll be 350 Mustang had there you go in a car deal very cool so the safe to say there's no 1942 heavy-duty Dodge parts on under here is there the frame is original other than the frame all the running gear has been updated so the axles are a five quarter ton military application from the 1980s we use Atlas transfer cases and most of our builds which are extremely robust we've got a Dana 60 in the front here so again very very robust very simple very easy to service and you can start to see earlier we were talking about how all of the axles transmission transfer case all have vent tubes right but all meet here and go up to the front of the vehicle to the intake you don't take any water no water comes in no dirt comes in now your wrists your rear springs are obviously much more substantial than the front the rear springs are designed for your load carry and on a rear spring the weight of what you're carrying in the back of the truck changes all the time right so it's much harder to design a good rear suspension on a truck than it is the front the front static I can weigh it you can tell me today what it weighs okay and I can design the whole suspension around that so it works beautifully the rear I'm assuming that this client will probably be carrying a bunch of stuff around so today if you drive it with nothing in it you know well that's kind of stiff right put a thousand pounds of gear in the back right it's like a caddy gotcha and tell what we have here this clear plastic line the theme is vulnerable a bit well this is - it's it's a sight glass okay and this tells you hey this is how much fluid you've got in there and you can also see the color of it so the trade-off is well it's this little plastic piece and if that failed you would lose all of your fluid but on the other hand you can instantly see if it's got fluid in it and what the condition of that fluid is and if your fill wine here yes okay so you fill it up this will tell you where you need to be I like to put it right in the middle everything's clear good to go very easy to go underneath this vehicle and just hit all your grease points just lubricate go check everything really fast go go go so you're not all the time four-wheel drive you you can go into it part-time four-wheel drive so you disconnect the hubs in the front so none of these are turning see how that's free gotcha so to get it into four-wheel drive you lock the hubs and then you pull the lever and all the old school old school got to get out lock the hub but lock the hubs pull the lever I like the writing here that looks like only UWA boys here yeah that's right that's right yeah yeah you know again J it's a it's an incredibly cool looking vehicle to me the aesthetics are amazing but when you really start looking at the parts pieces on this vehicle most everything you see here you can run to your local parts store right and grab right right and I like that level of serviceability oh well minimal downtime you hear the two batteries we talked about yep I like everything tucked up out of the way right but it's still easy to get to and both batteries work off the altar and then independent right correct they both work off the alternator and that's actually incorporated into that welder that I was talking about so you can bump this up to a hundred and ten volts and get up to twenty three hundred watts of power okay you can arc weld you can run all your power tools off of that and then if you have air tools you can run the air tools off the air compressor Wow so this thing's ready to go how many pounds of pressure you go with the air compressor the air compressor keeps about 110 psi okay which is good for your air tools yeah and then you can run any size tank you want depending on how much you're using it we got it well master a Flowmaster mufflers yeah can just simple straight through three-inch you put anything that's hot you know like your exhaust you put over on this side of the vehicle anything like your fuel lines Airlines wires run it all on the opposite side of the vehicle keep the heat away less the to never meet right yeah yeah very good yeah so it's just about putting some thought into it and spending a lot of years out on the trail and figuring out what works and what doesn't yeah and you got twin emergency brake lines here yes so you lock both wheels lock both rear wheels which is really nice when you're off-road in some kind of a precarious situation yeah yeah sure sure so well let's take them a ride and see how it goes sounds like a plan okay ready to start the what do we need to do before we start I like the grant it's not a grant steering wheel yes it okay not a lot you need to know it's compression ignition so right push it in the clutch right is your starter here okay boom away we go that's right up let's go we've got a fuel gauge here these look these look aircraft yeah they're designed to look like the World War 2 aircraft those are from Steve mole I think you'll find this very easy to drive that's already easy to drive right now synchronized transmission yeah powers more than adequate it's good it's not a silly hot rod it's a real practical working vehicle with plenty of power the old English garden 30 in three miles an hour switch to second yes five miles hours switch to third in a 12-hour put it but these tires are like 20% of your suspension aren't there oh yeah inflate with the air Prince here present just we have fracture on the highway right by random at 60 psi oh you run on that hi great great fuel economy right now today a guy being around la I running ahead of a 40 psi right now is nice and soft at street setting dry and we go off-road softer sand I like 120 psi and rock crawling I take them all the way down to six but you can't fill them on the fly you've got to pull over and plant pull over old school we do have on the air we need on board right we Wow all that yeah I love the sound of the turbo yeah you can just yeah and you know it feels like a six or even a small B hey we have to guess it before yeah a nice thing about his foot windchill is when you get a crack you don't have to place one side for cheap guys like myself yeah and original trucks your air conditioning system was the windshield was pulled open right right what would actually is quite effective it really works great and it's it's super fun but when we do our modernizing on these all these electronics behind yeah well it must be tough dealing with customers who don't understand old vehicle you know they expected some form like a modern car it can break sit too hard well there's no power boost what does that mean it's a it's an interesting thing 8,000 of these trucks right - that was for the war effort huh yeah wait thousands quite a bit I they built 8000 of them but yeah sale what smile yeah does it say God anywhere on it would not know so they never had to said what it was Oh anything that's pointed a truck like this is your eyes sort of level with all the semis yeah yeah and they love seeing something like this I contact yes but do you know how to respect me just look at all kinds of room here oh yeah what are these seats Adam Chevy Tahoe oh okay everything's just rugged and simple and power plugs power plugs all right yeah fight for my devices yeah yeah and call them power plug they're both kick in there yeah right now everything's turned down into its most piled setting right only making from 20 pounds of turbo boost and you can't get the exhaust gas temperatures over 1000 degrees so when does this get shipped to what's going to Morocco while driving across Morocco and I got to thinking about it this truck hasn't been in North Africa Wow I'm worried about anybody knew it would still be alive really yeah this is a second time he's been here and it's just wonderful I mean they're practical they're very clever there's nothing hot rowdy about it it's all just real sensible solid engineering yeah that's really cool and I know twenty fifty thousand dollars a lot of money but by the time you get a original equipment truck you get pretty close to that yeah and not have anything this unique so it's pretty neat so get bent that should be your slogan yeah but very cool how many of you down he's down over a hundred right yeah I believe this is either number 101 or number 102 okay so he knows how to do it so I must admit I I'm very impressed these are really really cool because they you've really just taken the original concept and made it 2017 or 2018 right you know it's basically the same track it was in 1942 just just a lot better so thanks again thanks James great to see oh it's fine go to its website and check it out it's pretty cool we'll see you guys next week\n"