INSANE CUSTOM SEMI TRUCK! Built By Welder Up.

Guys, I thought today would be a great day to do a bio on my Peterbilt, probably one of the coolest vehicles Welderup owns. People love it wherever they go. People like this. You know, when I first

built

this

truck

, I never dreamed it would become. what it has today, I mean, it's been in every Peterbilt magazine, it's been everywhere, it's been shared so much through social media that I never thought I'd go so crazy the first time I drove this

truck

, nor It didn't even have a sleeper on it and I drove it from Montana and back and it went crazy, everyone saw it, they shared it, the truck stops were closed, I'd stop there to get gas and I couldn't even leave, people wanted to talk about it , but Anyway, today I'm going to walk you through this truck and I'm going to show you a lot of details, a lot of things that you can't see and I'm going to tell you everything, so one of the things I wanted to do with this.

The truck was, you know, obviously, give it a paint job that would stand out from everyone and completely distract traffic and it does, but the headlights on this thing are like an old Buick, probably from the '30s to late from the 1920s, I think they are about 11 inches, they are big headlights, they give it a nostalgic look. The headlights that actually came on here were more of a square style with dual headlights, they looked pretty good. the truck, but I thought these old ones would look much better. the grill on this thing. just a design I thought would be cool.

It turned out pretty good. I mean, there are a lot of different designs that we came up with. But with this kind of jam, I had Jeff at Kustoms 12 gauge go ahead and cut this for me so we could put it in here and it looks really cool, it gives it a nasty look, so the 379 Peterbilt. notoriously it was probably the best known truck owner/operator between that and probably the Kenworth w900. Both were very popular. This body style was an 87 207. One of my favorites. I mean, I love that the 359 was actually probably my favorite. This 379 is probably my. second favorite, but this is a 94, these trucks have a 3406 cat, these things have good power, so they are such an honest motor, they get decent mileage, this truck does because I don't have another axle.

I'm never pulling like a huge load with it, so the truck actually gets pretty good mileage, but you'll open the hood and check it out okay, so the Caterpillar model 3406, which means this is a mechanical engine, It's not really electronic like many of the new ones. They have an injection pump and everything is mechanical. Probably one of the best engines on the planet. If you ask me, I think this 3406 is such an honest engine. I mean, there are a lot of them out there. Get me wrong, I love the Cummins, the Detroit 60 series is a great engine too, but I really love this cat.

Its low revolutions generate a lot of torque. This engine here probably makes between 475 horsepower and 550 horsepower, depending on RPM. it rolls down the road great as I would say it maybe at 2100 rpm it's making maximum power and it's running well you're running about 80 miles per hour down the highway and it's running very well so I really love the curve of torque in this truck and the way this cat engine ran well so since we got this old engine this engine actually came out of a different truck and we put it here and then I made some upgrades to it so I put a pump in it industrial injection pump, so this big, I mean, you can't believe how heavy this pump is, it's probably 100 pounds and I'm putting it in, it's kind of a pain in the ass, but this is an industrial injection pump.

I put industrial injectors on it and we also have a turbo that I'll show you in a minute, but this engine is a fourteen point six liter. If you have a 5.9 Cummins at home in your truck, let's say it's double and then some of what your engine. Torque wise, there's a low rev motor, but they make so much bottom end torque on the low end side that they make a ton of torque and that's the cool thing about this thing that cruises down the road and you know, the thing. they call. a cat for a reason because it just purrs like a kitten when you go down the road it just turns and it has such a great sound it's so honest it's so honest all day long it runs I've driven this truck many, many miles, many miles and it just takes me to where I want to go and it's great, it's almost like I can turn off the radio and just listen to the engine saying it sounds great, let's go to the other side at a glance. on the turbo, good dialogue, okay, the good thing about this old engine is that you know it was in a different truck running at one point.

I don't know if the truck crashed, but we got the engine, we put the engine in this truck, okay? I don't know how many miles it has on it, you know, it could have a million miles on it, it could have five hundred thousand, it could have two hundred thousand, it's hard to say, but it runs good, it's got good compression, it feels good, the best thing is We put this big old one on it industrial injection turbo and let me tell you man it just makes this truck come alive it feels good you want it how you want it so I didn't want to put twins on it.

I don't want to. to make this truck where it's no longer reliable, I don't want you to know 800 horsepower with this truck and ruin the reliability in the fuel economy because I use it literally every day and as I'm sitting here I'm looking at the hood the hood this is real the hood is ready to fall off this thing right now I just noticed the bolt is falling off my hood this truck does as you can see it gets used to I use this truck seriously almost daily there is a reason why I need this truck.

I used it all day, for example yesterday, removing scrap metal from my workshop. I put sideboards on it, loaded it full of junk, and used it all day yesterday, so you get used to it, but you know what? move I want to show you a couple more things I want to show you the inside I'll show you how the bed works and a couple more things so let's talk about these twelve inch stacks. This changes the rules of the game. It's where everyone literally stops when they stop and say, what the hell is this thing? Well, batteries are incredibly cool.

I mean, if you take a good look at this truck from a great angle, it just makes a statement. I don't think I've ever seen batteries in a truck that big before. These are 12-inch octagonal piles and everyone wants to know how they are

built

. Where can I get them? Can I buy them? They're like a one-time deal. I built them in my workshop and what I did was, before it was folded, everything was laid out, all these holes were burned in a plow barn, these pieces are separated, so there are two eight-sided pieces here and then what What you do is before you weld them, you go through and weld all the rivets on the inside, well, when you're done, you put the pieces together and you literally have to weld, you know, ten feet on both sides, clean it up and do it. look well, you can, well, you could MIG weld, TIG weld, either way works.

I've done it both ways. MIG welding is a little faster, but I put a cap down here, ran the exhaust up here to that point and then the rest is a real exhaust, it gives it such a nice sound. I mean, when you hit Jake's brake and you're going down a hill, it's such a cool sound, it's a really lazy cat sound, like he just rumbles, it's really cool. it feels good in the truck and the people passing by when you put on jake's brake just look around like where the hell does it come from because it's a cool Rumble, but the stacks are super cool, I love them.

When I was building them I thought you don't want the biggest stacks out there. You know, when I started building these stacks, these octagon stacks and I know a lot of people probably don't know this, but I think the first set. of these octagon stacks were probably in 2001. I had an election truck that I used to pull a sled and I wanted something different so I built a double set of octagon stacks years ago since then, you know, a lot of people have copied them and and The I did and it's okay, I don't even care, it's just kind of a compliment in my world, but when I built the Peterbilt I thought it was okay, now I need to go a little further and get into the big time. truck world so now there are a lot of guys with their big trucks that want to put them on their trucks and I think it's cool I mean I would love to see more of them on the road let's move on to the bedroom now let me. tell you about the truck when I bought it I wish I could just visually I wish I had a photo to show you how this truck was sitting so this truck was in my friend Carmen IV's nose yard he has top notch services This was an old truck that I had , which was a rock truck, it basically had a dump hook on the end, it had a wet kid, it was a day cab, it just didn't have a sleeper, which means the day cab all you get is this.

In part there was no bed to sleep in. I stopped in his garden with high hopes. The tires were flat. The batteries were dead. I mean, I didn't even know if the truck worked anyway. I stopped there and I mean I was so excited I thought. okay, this will be my car transporter. I'm going to transport cars with this. Everyone thought I was crazy. This thing is a lot. He will never live. It's a piece of garbage. I remember turning it on to get it going. Driving it to the shop, all the tires were square, meaning it went so long that the tires had flat spots and it was just - I mean, all the way to the shop, but I was excited.

I arrived at the store. and I really started to take a step back and have my vision for this truck. The first thing I needed was a truck with a bed. I thought, man, I have to have a truck with a bed because I plan to stay. You know, when I go to Pomona, California, for the swap meet. sleep in the back of this thing, you know, if I'm in the middle of nowhere looking for cars, we'll sleep in this thing, okay, and we've all slept in this van, I mean, there's, you know, everyone pile up in there and sleep in the back while you drive and we will change drivers as we go down the road, you know, if we drive 2000 miles, we will change drivers, it will be my son driving one of my children.

Merlin will drive I'll drive It doesn't matter, it's one of us who drives, but the important thing was to put this bunk on this truck. Well, I didn't know it, but there are booths that are prepared. prepared for a sleeper truck and then there are the cabins that are not prepared at all and with a sleeper car. Well, my luck, this was not a sleeper truck and I didn't have the provisions to put a sleeper car on it, that is, structurally on the other side. of the truck there are more supports and reinforcements and you can actually put a sleeper on it easily, well this one wasn't like that.

I had to cut the back part. I had to hook a piece in there that would actually support the sleeper so there's a ring in there that you have to put on your rubber boot to put the bed on and I had to put that whole thing on it was a pain in the butt so my suggestion to you if you are going to make a car transporter. from a Peterbilt but I went with the cab with a date in the cabin just don't even waste your time it just saves you a lot of time this was a lot of work ex I tried to go to a junkyard I had to find that sleeper car I had to bring it to the store and you know, try to put it on there and not only that, but come back here if you can see these bags underneath.

I had to put all this on because this is your air travel for your bed, so all this. It had to be made and positioned and holes drilled in the frame so that that way it would actually move because from here there's a hinge up there and this thing just floats when you go down the road to take it for a ride, but all that had to be put in was a lot of work, so if it were me and I had to do it again, I would buy a truck with a sleeper, but period, don't do what I did anyway, um, now once.

We got the bunk on the truck and stayed behind. I started looking at it. I called my friend Jeff at 12 gauge

custom

s and said, "Hey, what kind of visors do you have for the front windows?" You know what I mean because I wanted to put a visor on this thing that actually looked really cool. I made him a drawing of what I wanted and he cut it out and sent it to me and it looks great. I love it, it just looks like Frankenstein's hair saw. Blade, I mean, I don't know what you mean, it looks, but it's pretty good and the visor works, so if I'm going down the road and the sun is coming through the windows, I put some air in the seat. the seat up and that visor, it doesn't keep the sun out of my eyes, so it really works, it works and it looks good on the truck, but that's just one of the little details of what we had with the visor and now the hood .

Right here the hood was like it was one of those days at the store where they go, okay, Steve Darnell, what the hell are you doing now? At that point I had opened the hood and you see me in there, so you have to think I opened the hood, I got in here and I was standing on the inside grill on the right and I wasI have a CB. It has some cowhide on the roof, as you can see. a little mark here, it's actually cool, you can see the mark, oh, the cow in the past, moving the back here so I can show you the back, okay, so this is the bed that's back here, pretty comfortable.

I really wanted to give it to you. that Las Vegas vibe, you know, I'm a native. I was born here in Las Vegas, so I pulled out an old cloth from an old roulette table and wanted to do the interior with a unit that turned out great here. You can see they have all the numbers here where you can put your money and you can put it all in red or all in black and see if you double your money or not, but the inside actually turned out great. I like it. It kind of gives it a Vegas vibe under these seats here, which I'm embarrassed to even open this up right now because it looks like, but speaking of which, as you can see, this is fine here, so this is how it works. put a bag of compost under this, okay, now I have airlines sitting there, but you can move this out of the way, you know, sit here on your toilet, you know, and you know, whoever is driving should be going down the road, you could be sitting here, taking a bath if you want, yeah, but the The deal is you have to have an RV in your truck if you want to have an RV.

This is one of them. This is one of the things you must have. Technically, I still have an RV. Okay, so you can do it. Seriously, it might happen if I had ever gotten into it, no, I got it, you know, I probably never would, but anyway, that's okay, down here, you can see there are three 12-inch soaps, no, in There are actually four there, holy shit. I forgot what I had there, there are four subwoofers for a lot of bass, so when you go down the road you can play them, which right now I don't know what happened to my amp, but I think we unplugged the cable.

It's because my toolbox is better off carrying all my straps right where the amp is and we may have messed them up, but it's cool anyway. I have this piece of wood right here that actually slides out and slides into a bed, so if you need to lie down and sleep, you can turn the cushions this way and sleep on this thing if you need to, so it's pretty comfortable. I mean, you know, we used it a lot in the future, in fact, my friend Zach holds the camera. right now, fill me in on this thing that you spent a lot of hours on, that was about two weeks ago, driving around here.

I have a picture of Merlin here. I just passed out, this little belly hanging out, it's funny. I should post that I think I still have it on. my Instagram so we could put some cool little bugs on there actually this is me a fun little video anyway here's our inverter so you have to have an inverter here to be able to run 110 this is a big thing that you must have. so your RV becomes an RV, so anyway, that's what's great about this whole truck inside, easy, only its front axles move with air, unlike a lot of the old trucks, they just leave the spring in the front and they just have to leave the spring. on it, but it has an air pocket on top of the spring and is attached to the frame.

You've got your bag right here that's tied to the frame and then your crossbow here in the bag moves, it makes this thing move a lot smoother. Like a traditional truck, a lot of these trucks that are here are all on gravel and you know they carry a lot of heavy weight, they're going to have a lot of leaf springs on the front, but you know this truck doesn't really haul. a weight, there's not a lot of weight where I'm at, so the air travels well even if you're carrying a lot of weight, these airbags are designed to work, you know, you can put a lot of weight on the front axle, but that's the good thing , you know, this old cat, you know, when you drive it, you rev ​​it to about 16 1700 rpm and shift it, it just puts it in gear, you know, the hull is pretty good too, I've got a big little turbo.

You'll generate almost 30 pounds of boost and that's pretty good for this truck. You know you want to keep it where you know you start to build too much momentum, you'll create too much heat. The important thing is if you don't want to get these engines are hot, you know you want to keep your fire gauge below 900 degrees, you know anything, you can start boosting around 12 1500 rpm or 12 or 1500 degrees on your eg, you're going to start melting pistons, you don't want that problem. There are a lot of people who fire up these trucks where they make a lot of horsepower, they hitch 48,000 pounds behind them, they start pulling down a grade and the fragments of their pistons start to separate because the aluminum starts to melt, you start pulling down a grade. upon waking up. time, yes, it shifts through the gears well, it has pretty decent air conditioning for a 94, so you know I'm very happy with the truck you have.