Last night at about 9:45 I showed up at a garage in Plymouth, Michigan to see two old friends: legendary 4×4 builder/TV host Fred Williams and Jeep Wrangler JL Product Planner Tony Carvallo. These two go way back, having put together some of the most impressive Jeep builds of all time. Right now, they’re battling time, as Tony is getting married, and Fred promised to build his best buddy the most badass wedding-beer-truck ever, using a Jeep CJ-10 and a modern Wrangler as a basis. Here’s how that’s going.
Last night I felt something click in my mind. I had been away from wrenching for so long, focusing on content creation and relationship things and work travel, so when I walked into Steer Smarts’ headquarters in Plymouth, Michigan and saw Fred Williams (of Dirt Everyday fame, and more importantly, of Dirt Daily fame (his YouTube Channel)) and my old Chrysler engineering pal Tony doing their thing, I felt legitimately inspired.
Both men are an inspiration in their own right, but I want to focus on Fred, who somehow manages to be the kindest, most pleasant human being on this green and blue earth while also being extremely sharp, especially with a wrench/welder/tube bender/literally anything involving building cars. To see him in his element last night got me excited to wrench again. This is someone who has been building custom Jeeps for decades, so to watch him orchestrate this rather complex build — it was like watching Picasso paint or Pavarotti sing or Michael Jordan dunk. Fred Williams is undaunted by what others view as impossible challenges; he has vision like nobody I’ve ever known, and his ability to create a roadmap and to then execute is astonishing. Yes, Fred is a great TV host and writer, but there are lots of those out there, and very few who can back up their presenting skills by being a true world expert building vehicles.
Again, I was inspired. Over the years, I’ve become a decent wrench; I feel that I can fix pretty much any car. But to build something for which there is no blueprint requires a special brain, and Fred has one of the relatively few on this earth. But he doesn’t flaunt it; he’s simply your everyday Fred Williams who just happens to be a custom-car-building powerhouse.
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Anyway, let’s get to the project. Fred had mentioned to me a few months back that he’d bought a special machine and that I should join him to pick it up. Sadly, Fred had to go alone, but what he picked up was indeed special: A Jeep CJ-10, arguably the ugliest Jeep of all time (though I love it):
If you don’t know the CJ-10: It’s basically a Jeep CJ body grafted onto a Jeep J10 (SJ) frame. It’s heavy duty and wide, but it features a folding CJ windshield, CJ-like doors, and a CJ-esque hood. But instead of the headlights being under that hood as part of a single grille stamping, the CJ-10 saves that whole center area for just a grille-opening to maximize airflow to the radiator. The headlights, square, as would have been popular during the era (these were built in the mid-80s), sit outboard.
This particular CJ-10 is a CJ-10A, with the “A” designating that it was an aircraft tug for the U.S. military. In fact, CJ-10s were only available in the U.S. as aircraft tugs, featuring a Nissan diesel engine and a two-wheel drive transfer case locked in low, feeding a beefy, short-geared Dana 70 rear axle.
The body of the vehicle is just bizarre looking. The doors, of course, come off. The windshield, of course, flips down. But what surprised me was that the roof bolts off, and so does the back of the cab! Out back, there’s a ridiculously heavy custom bed with a giant steel ballast underneath bolted to the frame.
Speaking of the bed, check out Fred’s video above of him fabricating the new bed, which will house beer barrels for his bestie’s wedding. And here’s where the build was before I showed up yesterday:
I honestly didn’t do much; I flared and bent a brake line. I really just slowed Fred down, but it was awesome to see how he sets up his builds. He always sets out a roadmap that includes not just the order of operations, but also a parts list:
Sometimes he draws diagrams of parts he has to fabricate, and shares those with Tony so they can brainstorm on whether there’s a better way of doing it. For example, they both concluded that this bracket on the CJ-10 body is the best way to make the CJ-10’s front body mounts line up with the body-mounts on the frame (which also had to be moved):
They also decided to reuse the stock CJ-10 fuel tank; they welded a new crossmember to the frame to mount it:
Here’s Fred making a few chops to the frame; he had to modify a front crossmember to fit the diesel engine, which he and Tony had to install with custom motor mounts:
I won’t pretend to know everything Tony and Fred have done to the Jeep, as I was only at the shop briefly, but between those giant tires, the Atlas Transfer Case, the beefy Dana axles, and that stock diesel engine, you can bet this thing is going to be a beer-haulin’, rock crawlin’, ballin’ machine.
It’s what Fred and Tony do. They’ve been at it for decades, and they won’t be stopping anytime soon. Support Fred by following his YouTube channel, and support Tony by buying Steer Smarts products.
Fred is a national treasure. Well at least a California one. I hope you get to collaborate with him some more.
Rad, I’ve always found CJ-10s fascinating. IIRC CJ-10 was the answer to one of the last trivia sessions you did (and we want more!)
Just last night I was lamenting about how much I miss Dirt Every Day, and how annoyed I am that MT cancelled it when there are plenty of other shows they produce that deserved to go the way of the dodo before DED. I’m just glad that both Fred and Dave have YouTube channels so I can still follow their builds and adventures.
I’m so excited for David to (briefly) get back to wrenching.
With any luck, he’ll be there long enough to get trench foot!
jk
I always liked Fred in DED. Too bad they (MT) canceled the show. It was one of the better ones to watch
It was one of four shows on MT that I watched frequently. Roadkill was always a must watch as well as engine masters. Occasionally I’d watch hot rod garage.
Post up some pictures of this when its done. A local4x4 shop had one sitting there a while back.
Notice how Fred is throwing out buttloads of sparks at Tony, and Tony doesn’t care. True dude friendship if I’ve ever seen it.
I got to drive one of these around the flight line a handful of times at Tyndall AFB in Florida. It was the loaner for when our dodge bobtail was in maintenance. Thing was wild!
I’m so hyped to see this collaboration with Fred. Absolute legend. Hard to pick my favorite build of his, but I was quite fond of the Bronco Pickup truck that they threw together as one of the final Dirt Everyday episodes. It was perfection.
I don’t know jack from shit when it comes to custom car building, but I know some things about beer, transport and the dispensing therein.
You say “barrels” but the only place I’ve ever had beer dispensed from what could be truly called a barrel, ie made of wood is on the continent and even then its rare specialist game.
So I would go ahead and emplore you to put way, way, WAY more consideration for how to keep the beer cold and as relatively undisrubed as possible than you think you’ll need. The last thing anyone wants to be dealing with is undispensable beer during wedding celebratory happenings, which is why we always default as a rule to steer weedings towards a canoe full of ice, becasue you’ll never run into dispense problems that way.
I have to assume this is intended to be some kind of draught dispense system, as opposed to a gravity system or a series of english style casks with taps. If it’s a battery of casks with taps, that’s so specialized I’ll asume there is an expert close at hand who will be thinking hard about all dispense of the beer and you’ll want to listen and hard to whatever they have to say about requirements to ensure a smooth service.
If this is a draugh system remeber to put in some proper mounting for the gas cylinder and maybe make sure every keg had a sub-reg, and I cannot stress this enough make sure that you’ve left allowances to keep every part of the draugh system cold. All of it, all the lines, the tap shanks, anywhere that there is beer in a dispnesing system it should never be warmer than 4ºC, ideally you want that closer to 2ºC.
The absolue worst is being the person at a wedding who wasn’t involved in the planning or excecution who needs to figure out how to get a good pour to come out of draught system while thirsty people are lining up and the dancefloor is waiting for some social lubricant.
Trust me when I say feelings about how cool the truck is at the wedding are going to be wholly coloured by its capabilities to get a cold beer into the hands of thirsty revellers.
I think on Fred’s YT channel he mentioned the truck bed would be the bar. So it will be interesting to see what they come up with.
Why so cold? I get it for piss light beers, but so many crafts benefit from cool instead of cold temps.
To cut a long story short, it relates to the solubility of CO2 inreases with lower temperatures, or to put it another way, the partial pressure decreases as temperature decrases.
A standard short draw draught beer system works on regulated gas pressure to dispense the beer and make sure it remains adequtely carbonated without becoming over-carbonated while operating with a minimum of turbulent flow. At temperatures above 4ºC you run into the problem that even if you’re running a gas blend permitting higher system pressures (Nitrogen is used because it had a much lower solublilty) AND you have adequte line restricitons to allow a resonable flow rate at the tap, with what I’ll call ‘normally’ carbonated beer to North American standards (2.3-2.7 vol, with 2.6-2.7 being pretty normal for “domestic” beer) you’ll still only end up pouring foam at the tap.
So for optimal dispensing of beer via a draught system you really want everything to be as cold as possible, or at least below that 4ºC mark. Its absolutely possible to dispense beer at below freezing, I belive Coors Light had some promotinal draught towers at one point that actually frost on the outside – its not a schtick, its actually the chilled propylene glycol thats used to chill the draught lines piped to the outside of the tower rather than being fully insulated to create the effect, but it is representative of the line temp of the beer.
What a given beer’s optimal serving temp for enjoyment is somewhat irrelevevant to the succesful operation of a gas dispense system, the beer will always pour better the colder it is. Additionally most beer that is served warmer (or is consquently aged prior to ejoyment) in the NA market is typically bottled/canned, and thus can be carbonated adequatly to pour at the desired serving temperature. Alternatively many Belgian beers are never sereved via draugh because the carbonation achived via bottle referemntation is simply not compatible with draugh dispense. Traditional English cask ale gets around the issue by being (comparatively) flat.
Please tell me how you know/care about this so much. Regardless, I appreciate it!
I have been a beer professional on the production side of the industry for a while now.
In addition to my degree being mostly field applicable, I am one of the owner/operators of a small brewery that has been in business for 10 years where I filed the origial incoproation paperwork personally.
Additionally, I would like to say that I was already in the indursty and was fully aware that brewing industry is a terrible investment, it is activly a terrible way to turn 1 dollar into 2, so I could say I have a strong personal investemt in beer
Thanks for all that info! Chemistry is wild!
Sounds like building a fridge w/in which the kegs + the CO2 or N bottles + lines live and of course the taps drilled/mounted to the side w/in the back half would be a great solution; so essentially a beer fridge on wheels w/front 1/2 for locomotion and able to carry people (and as a power source for the fridge) and the back 1/2 for proper beer storage and dispensing
Freds got a good sounding dinner planned there. No drinks, but then thats a good test of the beer truck. No finish, no beer.
His uncle’s Putting Challenge video game is meh at best.
But I really like the build here and look forward to watching the video when time permits. The order of operations is hugely important, and I think a lot of people don’t give it the consideration it’s due; getting it right can prevent a lot of headaches and also help you realize that you forgot a step.
This is gold.
The Simpsons reference or the reinforcement of the order of ops? 🙂
Either way, Danke!
You can play this glorious game here – Lee Carvallo’s Putting Challenge
When he said he wanted the Naturally aspirated diesel for California I think it has to do with the fact that in CA pre 96 diesels are SMOG exempt.
Exactly.