by golden corral buffet & grill restaurants, offering an array of food choices on our buffet at any of the over 490 locations throughout america. more information about locations near you is available at goldencorral.com. help yourself to happiness. bb&t insurance services, offering a wide range of personal and business insurance solutions for over 85 years. more information available at insurance.bbt.com. waste industries-- for nearly four decades, our business has been serving others, customers, coworkers, and communities. from collection, disposal, recycling and waste reduction, we're part of everyday life. wasteindustries.com. and barrett-jackson auction company, specializing in providing products and services to classic and collector car owners, collectors, and automotive enthusiasts around the world.

the company produces collector car auctions in las vegas, scottsdale, and palm beach. barrett-jackson.com. ( electrical fritzing ) ( rock music playing ) i'm alan goldstein... owner of fender mender auto body in new smyrna beach, florida. i've been building cars since i was a kid, building muscle cars, hot rods. got involved with production work for a little while and had to make a living, but always stayed with muscle cars. now i'm back doing muscle cars full time, what i always wanted to do. we have several projects going on in the shop right now. we have a '67 chevelle,

we have a '69 gto, we have a '50 plymouth convertible, and we have several cars in the dock as you come in. with all the projects in the shop, of course i have help doing it-- darren, who's been with me for 20 plus years, doing the prep work and taking care of all the detail work. we also have shane, who just happens to pick up all the cars and do the running around for me. i have three master car builders that work with me: robert, who specializes in body work; glen, who's a master mechanic; and skip, who does mechanics, body work, plus he does paint work. and then, of course, we've got megan in our office, who keeps edging her way into the shop somehow or another. i guess she just wants to be one of the car builders. ♪

i'm currently an electrical engineering student at ucf, and i was in need of a job, so i signed up with muscle car workout, and it just works out great because i'm a people person. i communicate well with people, i love being with people, so dealing with customers on an everyday basis is really great. i think with the engineering background i have a very analytical mind, so i can understand why things happen and what's the cause and effect of doing this versus doing that. i still have a lot to learn, but i think it definitely helps. you just gotta double-check everything. ( laughs ) quit giggling. sorry. when you compete in a pageant, every pageant system is different, but for florida, usa, and the whole usa system, you have to go through an interview portion, swimsuit, onstage question, and eveningwear phase of the competition. it was an overall very, very fun experience,

and making the top five my first time around made me feel great. i was building a three-window speedster for myself, and just seeing the amount of muscle cars i do, everybody keeps hounding me and hounding me now 'cause i always do a lot of street rods every year. but i'm supposed to be building a muscle car for myself. why aren't i building that? so i wound up with a good friend of mine who said, "hey, i've got a nova, and i want to build a speedster," so we wound up working out a deal and i wound up with a nova. and from there one thing led to another and now i'm building this nova. originally, i just bought the car for myself. it's the same year i was born, so there's attachment there. i was gonna hot-rod it, no question about it. i was gonna put a big block in it, you know, put a five-speed it in, was gonna chop it, channel it,

lower it, pro-street it, and one thing led to another. i'm doing a '68 chevy in the shop for a group of investors, and they kept saying, "we'd like to have that truck." and i already had the truck apart. it's kind of a hard thing to sell when you've got things in boxes. even though they might be worth all the money in the world, it becomes a difficult thing to sell. well, these guys, 'cause i did their work, they were fine with it being in a box, only they didn't want to customize it at all. dick has this habit of buying cars at auctions and just not having a lot of luck with the motors. ah, it was another car, thought it needed a tune-up. he bought it at some auction someplace. sent it up here and said, "this'll be an easy one, alan. quick tune-up and send it back to me." well, he said it had two dead holes in it, so as soon as we did the compression check... and we found two of the cylinders were gone. he needed a motor, and then, as per dick, if you're gonna take the motor out you might as well do the trannie,

and if you're gonna do that, couple years from now we're gonna paint this, so paint the right color underneath the engine compartment. i did nothing on the roadrunner. roadrunner's just a future project. the gto was another car that he thought, "well, it doesn't look like the bodies i like, "but i could wash it and drive it for now. doesn't run great, but let me check it out," and that's another one the motor was absolutely hard on that. the train was wiped out completely on it, so what we're doing is-- on that one, we did a few things different. we redid the motor, redid the trannie, and what we also did while we had it apart, he wanted to update the front suspension on that, 'cause he doesn't like how the '69-'70 chevelles, gtos feel, so we upgraded all the suspension on the front of that. and we put a quarter ratio box in it and so forth, so we changed the front suspension on that. that's another car we'll paint down the road for him. right now, we just did the firewall-- everything that we don't have to redo later on. and if that's not enough, there's still more projects rolling up out front.

alan: the '71 cuda, that came out of oklahoma. it's another dick car. uh, and that car was gone over completely, 110%. that car we're going all the way-- complete disassembly, do every nut and bolt in the car. dick: the guy was saying that it was a restorable car, and a lot of the cars that you were gonna see had six cylinders in 'em and on the-- column, this was on the console, the 440s, so things that you'd want to start to work with. took a chance based on the fact that he sent 100 pictures of it, pictures of the fenders, no rust. when it got here, it wound up to all be true. this was gonna be a complete frame off. this was gonna go, um... especially when we started seeing the shape it was in, it because a no-brainer to bring it all the way up. it was a car to completely restore. alan: we're gonna redo the 440 we've got in there. obviously change cams, do head work. we're not going back to stock.

we're not trying to make a stock motor out of it. we're painting that one a lime green with a black billboard on the side. that's what he wants. he doesn't change the appearance of the car. dick is a little different. he's not big into restoration. dick is more our type of customer, which we take these cars and we try to make them into current day. in other words, if back in the day their braking was weak, we'll put four-wheel disc brakes. we'll put big brakes on the car. we'll, if they make a kit, we'll change the suspension so it handles much better than it did back in the '60s or early '70s or '50s, for that matter. so that's one of the things we do here, and dick is perfect for that type of customer, because that's what he wants out of all-- he's not worried if it's mismatching. he wants it-- if they got a better way to make air conditioning blow cold, he was cold air conditioning. if they got a better way to stop the car, he wants better stopping. he's not worried that if it says "l," which means lacquer-- he doesn't need to have lacquer on the car

like you would on a restoration. if urethane's a better paint and lasts longer, he wants urethane on the car. this is hopefully what you're looking for. oh, yeah. very cool. everything's good? you like the bumpers how they are? nah, i want them to keep the bumpers green. okay. the gills okay? perfect. well, if that's all good-- and everything else is good with you? yep, like the billboard. everything looks good. you ready? start it at 35. we need it to be in second gear, but we also want a lile bit of temperature. we don't want to commit suicide right away. let's see if we can go up to 5500.

go. well, it's pretty sick, actually. the first one we blew the cobwebs out, so we can't use that number. the second and third one are close enough that we've got a good baseline now-- 154 and 156, with 195 and 210 on the torque. she's definitely light for this customer. we're gonna have to improve this old girl. ( indistinct ) ...440, and you would expect that, you know... most people's idea of big horsepower for that car was actually quite disappointing at the rear wheels. people get that confused with the back of the flywheel and the rear tires, as far as horsepower, and the car is actually, from a customer's standpoint,

if i understand what mr. french wants, the car is very down on horsepower, so we're gonna have to work to get that up to where he wants it. because... if i recall, that's, like, 147 at the real wheels, and compared to, like, late-model cars of today, it was a slug. with the dyno work completed on the '71 barracuda, it's time to get back to work here in the shop. alan: so far i got the chassis done. i got it done with a six-cylinder, rebuilt the trannie, rebuilt the original rear end. didn't get crazy with the chassis, but we did strip it all and paint it. we did all the brakes, powder-coated the original wheels, put nice big wide whitewalls like they like

with the original center cap. so, the chassis's all done, waiting for the body. uh, we got 95% of the body work done. we're in the process of painting the cab right now. soon as the cab's done, we'll mount the cab, we'll be able to hook up the brakes and so forth and then we'll start painting the body parts and putting the car together. and with this we're simply gonna mix it 1:1. we're not gonna have enough in here, but we're gonna mix it 1:1 anyway. you know, we might. i might let it just slide. it's a good thing. so now this we're going 1:1, so we're gonna bring that up to 24 ounces, and we're ready to go. actually, we're not. we gotta check the air pressure. so now i know i got 29 pounds at the gun, so we're perfect. today-- you got isocyanates today, and with isocyanates,

you don't want to breathe this stuff in. alan: uh, red's good. you know, "resale red." there's nothing wrong with red. red looks good on that year. it's gonna look very sharp. truck's gonna look sharp. not my kind of truck, but it's gonna look sharp. i don't believe there is a perfect paint job. i don't believe in the best paint. probably the best painter is in some farm in ohio painting tractors right now, and he doesn't know he's the best painter. and perfect paint job? you could give me what you call the perfect paint job, and you give me enough time, i'll find an imperfection so i don't really, you know. now, you can get an excellent paint job, and that just takes patience and a lot of prep, and when you see a mistake then you're willing to stop the whole process and fix the mistake. a) very few customers are willing to pay for that and b) less painters are willing to do that, but that's what it would take to get a really excellent paint job.

( indistinct ) life may be easy in the spray booth, but it's about to get a lot more interesting in theront office. alan! hey, someone's here to see you. i've heard a lot about you, son. what's that? i've heard that you're one of the best in the business in frame-off restoration. alan: when i first saw the '68 pull up, i'm going, "this is nothing what we do here. "why am i doing a '68 cutlass "350 low-horsepower car with standard wheels and tires on it?" it's so not alan or muscle car workout. it's just so not us. but it is a convertible. it is a '68. uh... so we're doing a frame-off on it. i don't want to say we're doing a restoration, 'cause we're not. so sometimes you have to, uh,

do cars that aren't exactly what you want to do. it would be much better if this was a 442. that is the muscle car version of a cutlass. more horsepower, uh, you know, lot of them made four-speeds. they all have four barrels. jim's car happens to be two barrels. it's not even a four-barrel car. it's an automatic. it's air conditioned. it's kind of a neat car, certainly convertible making it neat. the '68 oldsmobile cutlass has been one of the favorite cars that general motors built, and one of the most sought-after cars they built. i have a next-door neighbor. she's, like, 4'10" and would drive this peeking up over the windshield. everybody had tried to buy it from her, but nobody succeeded. the car was in excellent mechanical condition. she'd had it repainted two or three times. of course, there had been some rust due to being in florida and some of the places, but the car was in very good condition for its age. i'm gonna keep the car original as far as appearance and everything.

i will do some minor modifications to the drive train and engine to spiff up the power a little bit. some of the '68 cutlasses were muscle cars. this particular one did not have the big engine in it, but i'm going to spiff it up a little bit and make it a little peppier. that's one more car in for a frame off, so we need to take apart that '71 barracuda to make room in the center bay. you take the driver's side. i'll take the passenger side. megan: okay. don't forget you gotta unplug the marker light. megan: well, the first thing i ever did was working on the cuda, and we actually disassembled basically the whole outside of the car. although you would believe that a huge piece of machinery like that would have a lot of nuts and bolts, you have no idea the complexity of it until you actually disassemble it yourself. so that's always gonna stand out in my mind as one of my most fun moments,

because i was able to do so much in one day and learn so much in one day. this'll take it off. ( whirring ) got it there, meg? yep. look on the bright side-- at least there's no bees home. all right. want to get the one on the other side? got it. perfect. yeah, right there. got it? let's get some guys in here, and we'll start getting the hoods and fenders off.

alan: well, we started, we always take off all the chrome, bumpers, headlights, grille, stuff like that first, then we, after we get all that removed, then the tail lights and the side markers and wheel opening moldings, drip rail moldings, all that stuff. i think i got most of them off before. there might be one i'm missing somewhere. can you see it? yep, it's a good fit. did they get them all? yep, we got 'em. they sure did. you got it? mm-hmm. not no more. you got it? here we go. straight forward. go up against the bench for now. you got it? yep. how's that working? there was no key.

couldn't open the trunk. so you gotta go into the back seat and disassemble the lock assembly so the deck lid could come loose. so, somewhere in its travels of its life-- it's an old car-- it lost the key. perfect. did you find gold? i wonder how they got that in there without a trunk key. i guess there was a trunk key at one time. perfect. at one point in its life somebody wanted to turn that into a floor-shift car. with a chrysler if you want to do original, you actually need a piece of floor pan. you can't just bolt a shifter to the floor. floor pans are the difference between automatic and the column and automatic on the floor. ( chattering ) are we go? we are go. we're gonna need the heating unit.

perfect! we're calling it the desert car just because there's sand everywhere inside of that car, and that is by far the most difficult thing. all the bolts were just, like, superglued shut with all the dirt dried on there over the years. look at this-- now i'm your helper. figure that out. yep, everything goes right in the same bag. everything from this side. think we're gonna have to soak this down with some wd-40. so you actually did it right. i didn't have to put all those bolts back.

perfect! now there's still more parts to take off that car, but it's been a really busy week here at muscle car workout, and we think it's time to have a little fun. so where do car people go to have fun? how about the monthly car show on canal street in new smyrna beach? that's a slick car. that's a lead sled. oh, even got the '50s music playing. that's perfect! and that is a nice one, too, by the way, that lead sled there. that-- well, that's actually between you and me. general lee. dukes of hazards. nice! and i gotta tell you, that is a nice one. and you know what? this, i'm sure, we're gonna find somebody

asks us to make one at our shop. and there's your 440. exactly. yeah. and here's what we're building at the shop right now, a nova. a nova. exactly. and you're involved in building this one. yeah! we're starting up on it real soon, aren't we? we're heads up on it already. it's the yellow one. we're gonna be putting a blower motor in it. cool. and no hood, but it's the same car. there is hemi. we call him hemi; he owns a hemi. you have a '69 hemi? yes, it is. say hello to megan. hi, i'm megan. it's nice to meet you. the owner's happy. so tell me about the car. 1969 plymouth barracuda hemi. the hemi was the first motor this car ever saw. back in the '60s, the factories were building small cars with the biggest motors that they could have. and they ran them in super stock. this car ran for a few years,

and then was... put away and was discovered about 14 years, sitting in a garage. an owner had it, sold it, and then i got my hands on it, and with the help of glen from fender mender he helped me with the motor, along with john oruzo in north carolina, and, uh, i took it back to connecticut, painted it all up, moved back down here to florida, and here we are. wow, i'm impressed. you made it look good. thank you. and here's the one everybody wants. roadrunner? roadrunner. but this is a superbird. there's only a few of these made. they made enough of these to get it onto the daytona track. and this is a nice one. see the wingn the back? that's how they all came. they designed it for daytona. whoa! you said it's a wing? they call that a wing, yeah, to keep it down, supposedly for aerodynamics. and we have one of these in the shop...

which you'll get to build on this in the next two months, too. 340. 340, correct you are. 340 four-speed. i'm learning. you're getting there. you're there already. gto, that's what started the whole craze. beauty. i'm sure you would like that. all girls love... that's so hard to work on, though. no, all girls love corvettes. well, yeah. yeah. but working on them? doesn't it make it harder, having the hood pop the other way? it's perfect. you know what, though? we gotta get back to the shop now. okay? let's go. all right, no problem. next week, we hope to find out a little more about that '68 cutlass with a trip to the dyno and a design meeting with the owner, jim cook. we also have to take apart the rest of the '71 barracuda and get started on the 1970 model. for more information on this program, visit our website at:

this muscle car workout series has been made possible in part by support from the following companies.

golden corral buffet & grill restaurants, offering an array of food choices on our buffet at any of the over 490 locations throughout america. help yourself to happiness. bb&t insurance services, offering a wide range of personal and business insurance solutions for over 85 years. waste industries-- for nearly four decades, our business has been serving others, customers, coworkers, and communities. from collection, disposal, recycling and waste reduction, we're part of everyday life. and barrett-jackson, specializing in providing products and services to classic and collector car owners, collectors, and automotive enthusiasts around the world. the company produces collector car auctions in las vegas, scottsdale, and palm beach. you can order a dvd copy of this program or others in the series by calling...

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