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 ) last week on muscle car workout, we did a complete disassembly on the 1971 barracuda and took the '68 cutlass for a heated workout on the dyno. this week, we're gonna take apart that convertible, but first, i'm gonna go to the head shop to check out the motor for the nova. a couple of weeks ago, alan sent out the nova head to have some work done, and kris, who's the cylinder head porter here, has been working on it diligently. so can you tell us like what goes into the work? well, what we do is we choose a cylinderead casting to start with

that goes with the cubic inch and the rpm of the engine to get a good base on it. then what we do is we get all the specifics-- weight of the car, usage of the car, whether it's gonna be drag or street, and then we try to incorporate porting into the head to get the best possible product for the car. now for alan's nova, he's converting it into a street car. so what type of rpms is he looking to get out of it? a street car has to be able to have manners. operating range of 25-2,800 rpm on up to 7,000 would be adequate, and you always want a street car with nice flat power curve, and, you know, try to make it work as best as possible in that operating range. that way, acceleration from a dead stop and part throttle passing and everything works good. a lot of race cars have high-speed cell converters in them. when they leave the line at the drag strip, they leave at 5,500 rpm, and the engine never sees anything below that 5,500. so below that, the engine is pretty useless. you know, it's just for high rpms.

street car-- that wouldn't work very well. what i try to do is custom tailor it to each application to get the best performance i can per dollar. is there something you can show us today? yeah, i'm actually pulling out a big block head for your nova, and i'm trying to get the square inches per cubic inch right for the rpm you guys are gonna turn on the street with this vehicle. to optimize air flow through the head, which air flow is what you're going after. air flow equals horsepower. ♪ what i'm doing is rough cutting, and i put--i do all eight intake ports or eight exhaust ports into a general shape that i feel comfortable with, and then what i do is, after i get them all to that roughed-in shape, then i'll take one port and finish shape it as best as i can, then polish it with cartridge rolls and sanding rolls

to get a nice, smooth finish on it, make sure the walls are straight, there's no wave in the wall, no problems for turbulence or things that cause fuel to dissipate. if you do enough of them, you kinda get a general feel for it. you guestimate? uh, to an extent. that's when i do the final port on one of them, and i take it out to the flow bench and i flow it. this is a flow bench. it can measure the amount of air that flows through a cylinder head at each given lift. like using flow charts-- 200 lift, 300 lift, 400 lift, all the way up to a desired cam lift, and that lets you know how much air actually flows. this measures how much air flows through the head. if the cylinder head's adequate and i'm happy with it, then i go back in the room and i finish it and i finish polish it, which i can show you a four-valve head that i finish polished that's here. when i'm done with it, it leaves my hands and goes to valve job machine, where i can put you with john who runs that machine, and he can actually probably run it for you. there's still more work to do there,

but alan needs my help at the shop taking apart the cutlass. you know what? i think we're gonna need three people. hey, jen. wanna give us a hand for a second? jen: sure, no problem. you go on that side. you'll take the bolts off on this side. i got one off. just get the one in the back. got it. you're gonna get the bumper? i will hold the bumper. okay. i am an employee at fender bender, and i help take apart and work on the cars. whenever you guys are ready. we're ready. okay. really just as a shop employee-- help taking things apart, putting things back together, getting things where they need to be. okay, it's off. ready? did the bolt slide out?

you tell me-- do you want me to push it through? yep, it's out. megan: for the cutlass, we-- pretty much for every car i think we start the same, when we start with the front and we remove the grill and the bumper and eventually the front clip and the hood. what? no. uh, got leaves on fire. we got a bonfire! perfect! i gotta go see what that customer wants up front. okay, is there anything you need me to do? you can start taking the bolts out of the seat. okay. megan: this was the first time i ever got to work on the interior 'cause i wasn't there for the 'cuda.

okay. thanks. so it's pretty cool to see how the seats actually come out-- the front seat, back seat. you just pull it out? yeah. snaps in these clips right here. is this just old cars or all cars? uh, mostly old. the new cars don't do that no more. center console, glove compartment--all of that. well, you got the right theory. you just gotta find out how this clip comes out, right? it's very hard 'cause i can't see. it's a little tougher. a lifetime after.

i thought this would be more substantial. well, it's substantial enough that we gotta get another one. look at this. something ate through it or rot. as we got into that car-- here's an original owner, bought it from the original owner, everything else, and that car actually needs more work than anticipated. now, it's not bad, but it needed much more work. we're thinking-- original owner, bought it from a neighbor. instead, we found more patchwork on that car than we expected. floors were solid. found a couple little holes. we'll metal patch them. a couple of the wheel wells have holes in it. i'll have to patch them. both doors, both front fenders had rot on the low part, which is standard for that car to have rust there. we just thought it might have been a little bit better, concerning where the car came from, knowing the car wasn't even listed since '68. it was the same owners since '68, and we were wrong. megan: now we're ready for tim the glass man to remove the windshield.

we got some messy weather-strip over here. yeah, she's all a-crumblin'. yep, this one has a little bit style of removal because the convertible has a different chrome. but is it just the ooey-gooeyness? uh, yeah, it does have the softer seal on it. yep, it's got the gooey stuff. that one's gonna be a nightmare. i know you told me there was the quarter glass to be taken out too, but i think that one actually rolls down. does it? i didn't know. alan: how's that working, tim? ooh, this is all rotten. megan: it's what? that one's got a little rust. oh. alan: oh, yeah. megan: that doesn't look very good. that is not very good. not only is that not very good, that is so not fun to fix.

megan: it's corroded. i'm just a southern gentleman. southern gentleman's gonna be left of a southern gentleman when i tell him about the car. farah will be happy she already sold it. ( both laugh ) you know, meg's got a good point. you know how jim was all winky and all happy about getting the deal. i think that lady's walking home, 90 years old, going, "yeah!" 'cause, remember, part of the deal ( indistinct ) megan: farah's a very smart lady. there's an ironic twist. ( indistinct ) am i in your way? no, you're fine. let me grab my tools over there. megan: i did not forget about the nova heads. kris is done with the porting, and john hildebran will show us the next step.

so now that the head has been polished and it's ready to move on, john, who is a machinist here, is gonna be showing us how to get the perfect angle for the valve. the valve job, right, right. each head gets a different kind of shape to the valve job itself. now this one i've already started. this is where they start at. this is bare. there's no valve job at all. i'll show you what happens. right now, this is a perfect circle. you're talking about the angle right here, right, right. how it gets sculpted out. see, this will eventually go down in here, but it has no place to sit, so this machine cuts this. so it fits perfectly. fits the valve, right, and it makes a perfect seal all the way around. we pretty much know that the intakes are four angles and the exhaust works better with a radius. what i'm gonna do is go down first and just touch this one. i roughed it in, so i had to get the right valve depth. i'll show you what happens here. the deeper in the green sector it goes, the better the valve job is.

so we put that up there. so it's way down in the-- that's almost like perfect. that's the first thing you do-- get the rough depth, and then i'll come back with another cutter. there's a little edge right here. i don't know if you can-- let me get the flashlight in here. you'll see there's a little edge right here. yeah. i can come back with a cutter and cut in here. it's a lower radius cutter that gets rid of that edge, and i'll do the same thing over here. so the whole thing's just smooth? it's smooth, yeah. it makes the air flow in and out better, and then after that's done, completely done, then they take the thing over to the mill, and it will go all the way over there and then turn the thing around, and it'll come back and take another... i'm not gonna go all the way across 'cause i need to keep this depth here, but you can see what it does. it's crazy busy at the shop, and we're working really hard to get the cutlass disassembled. our next step-- getting the motor off the chassis.

on the '68 cutlass, it was easy 'cause we had the body off. it's usually not that easy. it don't get no easier when there's no body on the car. you're just taking a motor out of a frame. so we got that, that, that. motor mount, motor mount. should probably take the starter out. on a non-unibody car, even if you left the body on the frame, you could take the fenders off, very easy accessibility. ♪ perfect. so there's really no big surprises on that car yesterday whatsoever. that should have been an hour-and-a-half job that turned into a four-hour job. so that ain't gonna work very well.

actually, it's not gonna work at all. the wiring harnesses left on it. the exhaust was still on it. everything was still on it. they just literally lifted the body off around it and threw the wiring harness on top of the motor. well, i needed a cut, didn't i? perfect! i don't know which hand hurts more, but i think this index finger's really hurting me a lot. i may have to stop and clean that out 'cause it's actually irritating me a little. i think that's gonna work fine. that'll be perfect. people will come from all over to see that. when i was a kid, we never went to the hospital. we just got butterflies, that's all. well, that's a 22 butterfly.

( all laugh ) megan: our friend joe is stopping by this afternoon with his crew to do a little soda blasting. actually, a lot of soda blasting. joe's first job for us requires him to take the '71 'cuda from brown paint to bare metal.

alan liked the results from the soda blasting so much, he picked up a smaller unit to use. let's see how it works on the cutlass motor. alan: on this case, we're not rebuilding the motor. jim does not want the motor rebuilt, so we're not sending it out. we're doing it in house. we're just resealing it, maybe putting a cam in. that we do all in house.

megan: because using air-powered tools makes so many jobs easier and smoother, alan recently upgraded the system here at fender bender. let's take a look at the new green machine that powers our shop. we've got a 25-horsepower rotary screw air compressor with enclosure, so it's very quiet, very efficient. air compressor has an after cooler moisture separator built in, removing about 85% of the water that's in the air that we breathe. after the air compressor, we come to our prefilter and the refrigerator dryer.

what we're doing with these two, and in particular the refrigerator dryer, is we cool the air down. as the air cools, we drop out water. we then run it through a heat exchanger that's built in to the package to warm it back up. we've knocked out better than 99% of the water. nice, now what about oil? we'll remove the oil in our next component. okay. what we're doing with our coalescing filter is we're removing any of the remaining liquid oil that's in the system. we then come to our final filter, which is a charcoal filter. removes any of the vapors that are in the air. so removing the water, oil, and vapors does what for our shop? we now have ultra-clean, ultra-dry air, so all of the air that we use for our tools, for our d.a.s, and for our painting will be very, very clean. oil, when you're painting, will cause fish eyes. water in the system will cause issues with the paint mixture itself.

won't probably get quite as good quality with the color match. water in the system will effect any of the soda blasting, the media blasting that we do. after the receiver tank, we've got our flow controller. what that does is it discharges pressure to the shop at a very, very consistent level. we're actually very close to breathing air quality air back there. that's about the quality level that we'll do in a hospital. what it does do for body shop is-- all of our pneumatic tools, all of our sanders-- they will run more efficiently and last five, six, ten times the lifespan. ( machine starts ) and she's on. it's on. we're building up pressure.

we took the front half, the whole front half-- front part of the frame's been sandblasted. we took the 400 that was in it, sent it out. it got 480-490 horse stage 2. transmission 400. we've done the whole front end, redid the whole dash. interior was fine. back half of the quarter panels were fine. so once the front end gets done, it will be more than a driver. so it'll be a real tight, nice-running car. i guess i'm gonna go make a bracket for the orange 'cuda so don can put the accelerator cable on it. don started to work on the '70 'cuda. we just need to get that back to the customer. when he looked underneath the hood, somebody, we don't know who, but somebody wound up putting in a kick-down spring all the way from the linkage way down to the ground bolt in front of the motor, never mind the angle and never mind that it's 27 feet long. so he needed me to make a bracket.

so what we did was real simple. we made a 6.5-inch long piece of steel, rounded out the edges, and then we painted it gunmetal. so now at least when you look underneath the hood, it looks like it came from the factory, and we don't have a problem with it. the last thing we wanna do is lose a kick-down spring on a car like that. he would have no return, so the throttle would do exactly what it wanted to. what we did on the car was put the motor and the tranny on the other side of the hood. we didn't restore the car or nothing. so that should have been-- somebody did it. either that one tune-up shop we sent out or one of my ex-employees, but somebody did it, so i'm really glad we caught it. that would have been awful. between all the fabricating and painting lately, my shoulder's killing me. so i went and hired a trainer. hopefully i won't have to get the operation like they said on my shoulder, and the trainer claims he can do something for me to get rid of this pain in my shoulder so i can start painting. ♪

i tore a ligament in my rotator cuff. it hurt. i couldn't even paint the car. i don't believe in operations. met ryan through a recommendation. hence, i can paint cars again. ( breathing heavily ) good. breathe. i am. remember, i still gotta paint cars for a living. ( breathing heavily ) ( indistinct ) well, there was a time we never thought we could even do chest with the shoulders. not without an operation. since they wanna do it, so, i mean... so it's getting in the right direction. one... i'm figuring i can count. i'll count for you if you can't. thanks. five... good. it's not creaking anymore. just keep doing that. the change is his shoulders have been from when we didn't even possibly think that we could ever do

a chest workout and shoulder workouts. we've been able to add those, and he's actually excelling and doing those workouts now, and it actually works the shoulders. two. good job. is it hurting right now? no. okay. let's try it again. my range of motion is probably 100%. my pain is when ryan gives me weight, but it's no longer with the spray gun. ryan probably doesn't notice and he doesn't want me to weigh myself, but i had to lose a good 20 some odd pounds. you get in and out of cars all day long, you weld in trunks, you put dashboards in, and you get rid of 20 pounds, and most of my 20 pounds was in my stomach area. so when you're laying underneath the dashboard getting in and out of cars or welding underneath the car or welding inside a trunk and you get in and out all day, it takes its toll. alan's gotten so strong, just a lot of endurance.

motivated, willing to do anything. just amazed how strong he is. i've seen a change in alan-- just feeling more confident. he still has his moments where he gets down on himself, but there's no way that he could deny the changes that he's made. four, three, two, one. come up. you know what would be better? huh? yeah, you doing it. ( all laugh ) perfect. it's great that alan has more mobility in his shoulder 'cause next week he's gonna need it when he starts patching the metal on the '71 'cuda, and it looks like we're gonna have to get the frame from the cutlass stripped, and supposedly there's another road trip. we're just gonna have to see what happens. for more information on this program, visit our website at... ♪

man: 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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