golden corral buffet and 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 solutionsfor 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. barret-jackson.com. ( electricity crackles ) ( hard-driving rock music playing ) ( doors creaking ) ( bolt clangs ) ( electricity crackles ) working on the two barracudas, the cutlass, and the g.t.o., we've been putting in some long hours here at muscle car workout. then last week, alan showed up with a '61 gmc carryall. now we've got it apart, and the guys are getting started on the bodywork this week.

to the average person, probably looked pretty nice, but somebody that's been in the business and actually looked down the side of it knew what kind of work it would take to make it right. it's been a big, drawn-out process. every square inch of the vehicle, we had to pay attention to, and it was a lot more than met the eye. but once you get into something like that, then you discover how bad something is. so, yeah, we're working hard and trying to get it together. it was a lot rougher than i thought it was. especially, well, like, when victor was working on it, he dug up a lot of stuff that we shouldn't have dug up. we were pretty much just kind of sanding it and then fixing what we found, and he started using a grinder and found a lot of more stuff that we didn't want to find. ( chuckles )

skip rizzo: the blocking-- use something real rigid, flat, long as possible. use sort of course paper to sand, and... they call it blocking because it's flat and it's a block, and it's rigid to where you knock off the tops of the highs. even-- even every coat that you put on, you can't put on perfect. okay, you put it on as even as possible, but you would still knock down the tops until you get it totally flat, and then you do that a couple times, and then you put your main coat for paint. megan clementi: did you see all that dust? it looks like a snow day in florida. i'm looking into some new products to help keep the shop a little bit cleaner. with d.a.'s, one of the key things was dust control. we're getting into a lot of shops now that are going water-based around the nation, and dust is a key issue when you get into water-based.

you want a cleaner environment, a cleaner shop. you know, some of even your hobbyists out here will start using water-based, mainly because in a booth for water-based, you have a wind speed, a turbulence traveling, and so we want these cars and the shop as clean as possible for less dirt into, basically, the paint department. if you're doing the same process, how are you cleaning up as you go along? basically with a self-generated vac. we put the air in here. okay, it's basically running off air and the motor speed. so, as you're actually sanding, it's sucking... sucking the dirt. ...back in, and through here, and then you can just throw this out whenever you're done with it. right. usually these bags, in a normal body shop, they run about 60 hours. however, it's a collecting bag, sort of like your a/c unit at home, your furnace filter. it does collect, and as time goes on, it'll just basically get bigger and bigger till it falls apart. besides the clean aspect of keeping your shop cleaned up, it's also a health... it's a health issue as well for these guys. a lot of guys--

you know, we've put these in some health studies around, and basically they can't believe how they feel because, even though we're supposed to wear proper safety masks, you go in, and 90%, they don't, and then you get the hobbyist, he won't. they just wanted a cleaner environment, bottom line. megan clementi: the nova isn't getting too much attention these days, but that's what happens when it's the shop owner's personal vehicle. they're always the last to get done, so i'm going to push ahead with it and shoot over to the engine shop. i'm here with john from express engines, and we're just kind of checking up to see how alan's motor's doing for the nova. why don't you tell me a bit about that? obviously, this isn't alan's motor, this is a 440 six-pack engine, but this is what we build-- high-performance street engines-- and we are gonna go through with you today some of the machining operations on how to properly build your first engine. we've now torqued our main bearing caps back in place. now we're going to take the dial-bore gauge which we have set to the housing bore size that we're looking for.

and i'm gonna come through here and see that we've got the same amount off of all five caps. and what i'm seeing so far is we have roughly three-thousandths. they're reading the same for all of 'em? for all of 'em. we want to have the same amount to hone out for all five main bearing caps. if one was more than the others by a significant amount, we would go and recut the caps, or if some were a little too small, we would cut that more to bring them to where we have roughly the same amount to hone out of all five main bearings. this is the honing mandrel. these have the stones on it. this is an abrasive stone that will hone these housing bores back to finished size. it's a very accurate process. we'll put the oil bar down, and we now start the honing process.

so basically you're lubricating it and almost sandpapering it smooth? i mean, it's not sandpaper, but the idea of metal. yes, in simple terms, you could call it that. and now you can see we are zero... zero... zero... zero. i'm checking it in two directions to ensure that the housing bore is round. oh! okay. okay? we now have the housing bores back to blueprint size, and our next operation would be to put the main bearings in the block and check the main bearing clearances and make sure that they're where we want them. megan clementi: that motor isn't quite finished, but it's time to prep the carryall for paint. first of all, there's several kinds of primer. one, there's what we use, which is a d.p., which is an epoxy primer, and that's a self-edging primer,

and it's strictly for adhesion factor. we are just about done tacking off the last final pieces that are gonna be painted for the carryall, and once this is done, we're going to be able to bolt it all together and start with the flames. usually when you're painting a part, you really want to paint them all at the same time. there's so many things that can change the tone of a color, which is why people don't realize-- they watch somebody paint, and they don't realize there's so many variables in matching color. it's not just picking up a spray gun and throwing the paint on a car. first off, you want to make sure you have all the paint mixed the same day. everything that's gonna be the final topcoat, you want it mixed the same day. you want to make sure you use the same spray gun, the same reducers, the same air pressure. you want to write all that down. you need to know all that.

( muffled speech ) ( muffled speech continuing ) perfect!

alan goldstein: we painted the roof first because the spray booths we've got here were here when i already bought the building, so they're not exactly the highest spray booths in the world, so what we did was, we gave the car four flats so i could do the roof, and knowing it was going to be a little bit of an issue, and it's so big, that roof, we painted the roof what we call "stand alone," by itself. we just painted the roof and then back-taped it, so we didn't have to deal with the roof. and then we did the entire body in blue, and then we did around, but we had to hang the doors and do around the window frames so the lines would match up with the doors around all the window frames and put the boy scout color on, then took the doors back off, and we started clearing everything. we really lucked out 'cause we really painted the other parts way apart,

way different time, different weather, different everything. so, all that considered, the color actually matched really good. the assembly line never stops around here. don has a couple of jobs left to do this week, including puzzling the parts for the cutlass frame. while he waits for an order to arrive, let's take a look at the g.t.o. ( indistinct comments ) i think it needs to be turned around. we could try it. take this side. ( indistinct comments ) i think you might be on to something. i think i am. yeah, i think that's a little bit-- now you've got-- there, see? here's for the holes. yeah.

you want some of this for the bottom of that? no. i don't think that's gonna... you don't think it's gonna help it any? i don't think so. not this stuff. ( indistinct comments ) the other stuff is... hold the console in.

it's got that... crazy thing. ( indistinct comments and chuckles ) ( indistinct comment ) the old console's in there. that's good. grade "a." megan clementi: john kaeserman still has some finish work to do on the nova motor, so let's check back in with him. now that we've line-honed our block, we've now put it on the storm vulcan blockmaster. it has a bar that is parallel to the cutter head. we're gonna surface the top of this block to make it parallel to the main bearing bores. so this machine's gonna make sure that if i'm the block, i'm gonna be like this and not... some kind of unevenness. that's exactly what we're doing.

and what we just did is going to attach onto this? that is correct. okay. and here's how it works. ( machinery whirrs ) how long does this whole process take? well, it takes roughly about seven or eight minutes for the cutter to traverse the length of the block, and then determine-- depending on how much we need to take off the block, we may take several passes, but this particular block, we're gonna make two five-thousandths cuts off of it, and we'll be done. the cutter's finished making its pass across the block, and now we're gonna take this dial bore gauge here and we are going to ensure that we've cut the same amount off of each side. just making sure that it's completely flat. it's flat, and it's the same height as the other side of the block. check the front... ...and check the rear.

what's the next step? next step, we're gonna bore the block. and that means? we're gonna bore the cylinders to a predetermined size and prepare them for honing. megan clementi: the nova short block will eventually be finished off with the blower, but john has finished his part of the machine work. alan's other pet project, the '23 t-bucket, will also have a blower motor. well, when i got the frame, alan had started the bodywork on it, but he got pulled away from it, actually, you know, running the shop, so he got pulled away from it, and i ended up finishing the bodywork. i frenched in all the... the spot welds and the corners, edges, everything, making it nice and straight, and, you know, she looked good. it was in fair condition. i mean, it wasn't-- it wasn't beat up. it just needed to be straightened out and smoothed. i basically blocked out the material that was there. you block it with a flat block,

and it's not that bad to block something that is flat, but when you start getting into body lines and corners and edges and, you know, round areas, that's when it gets a little more difficult. then strip it down to fiberglass. there was a couple of areas in the back that needed work because of whoever put the back panel on the actual body, they didn't do it right, so i had to go in there and i had to grind out a lot of the stuff that wasn't sticking together. i fixed that. i basically just blocked out the paint and the primer that was there, and then we put 2k primer on top of it and blocked it. i wet-sanded it. took me probably close to 80 hours to block it and prime it and block it. i foresee the paint job is gonna turn out really well.

the body's nice and straight. we're supposed to get really good graphics or some type of artwork put on it, you know, and alan'll make it look good. megan clementi: as we take one car apart, we like to make sure we're putting something else back together. today, don is taking the first steps on the cutlass by getting started on the brakes and the wiring. ...redid the whole front end. control arm bushings, lower ball joints, new springs, complete brakes...

...wheel cylinders, new brake drums, and it went together pretty good considering i didn't take it apart. megan clementi: don had a little help preparing the cutlass frame. alan's friend mark went through the driveshaft and got it working great. i'm here with mark at the driveline shop. now, mark's been doing work with alan for, what, 20-plus years now? and you do a lot of the rear-end work for the muscle cars and his other cars, right? so what do you guys really specialize in here at the driveline shop? differentials and drive shafts, anything from the transmission back. what exactly do you do to the rear end? change gear ratios, rebuild,

add positraction units. a little bit of everything? yeah, basically everything with them. once someone has brought their vehicle here and you've worked on their rear end and the drive shaft, what is the difference in drivability? it depends on what the customer wants. you have to either-- you gear for performance, or you gear for economy. and there's different posi units, so it just depends on what the customer wants as far as what the gearing is done. and if you have a truck that's, say, lifted with bigger tires on it, you gear for the bigger tires to put it back normal. so is every car custom-made, in a way? yeah. it's custom to however the customer has wanted to do it. tire height makes a lot of difference in 'em. if they go bigger, you go more gear; if they go smaller, you go less gear. the boy scout project looks great in blue. in the end, the paint job is gonna be much more complicated than that, but first we need to put everything back together to make sure everything fits,

and then we can move on to the next step-- smokin' hot flames. we only had the fitting for the bodywork. that was one time it was put together. that was before the flames. we had to-- several times had to put things on and off, needless to say, to do thbodywork, make sure all the lines were good. and that car happens to have a tailgate, two-piece tailgate. luckily, it relatively went together easy. so we had several times putting it back and forth together for the fitting of the body parts. we had to put it together to fit the flames, and then we took it apart so we could clear it, but we had to put it together since the flames went through the corner panels, the fenders, the doors, and the hood, so that whole thing had to be bolted, and really bolted-- not just mocked up. it had to be on there like a lion's arse. when we put it together for the final, all the flames matched up. that would be embarrassing if that didn't go that way.

megan clementi: looking good. while that dries, the crew is still mudding and sanding on the '71 'cuda panels. first i started off having it epoxied-- epoxy-primed, and then i'll, if needed, i'll dolly out, raise the metal to be level with the rest of the metal, and then i'll use a type of material that's a non-shrinking material to fill in the dents, the real low spots, heavy build, and then i'll... i'll use a hardener for that, and it makes it kick in in, like, five minutes. and then we'll grind that, sand it, clean it...

...and then we'll put that, uh, put body filler on top of that, and we'll get the whole panel finished, and then we'll put one skim-coat over the whole panel, and that's because, uh... it's because of the different hardener, degrees of hardener, and each batch sands differently. that's sort of like a trade secret. i shouldn't be saying that, but that's what we do. and, uh, then it'll be ready for the first prime.

e sure everything's done right here at muscle car workout. sometimes i think that means we never get anything done very quickly, but we do have a new vehicle in the shop, and i think we can knock this one out in a day. what are you doing? your budget. we've painted so many different things over the years, and the segway was just... everybody in the shop was a little surprised but me. since i've painted everything from light poles to fire trucks and everything in between, i wasn't that surprised. what i want you to do is, you see this stuff? i want you to go over it like that. yeah, it's gonna leak, but don't worry about it. and i want you to clean it good, each piece. rob burns: it hit 2,000 miles, and it was kind of worn out pretty good, you know, paintjob-wise, and alan's reputation is well-known here in new smyrna beach, and i decided, well, if i'm gonna get a custom paintjob, this would be the place to bring it. you're done now in there. we are ready to paint, okay?

we use the same process we use for plastic bumpers, since it's all plastic. it has to be flexible and not peal off. probably 10 years ago we couldn't have painted a segway and let the paint stay on it, so that worked out good. it was fantastic. it was more than i thought it would be. he's a custom painter, you know, so it really came out, like, way beyond my expectations, and he actually did a little bit of customizing with some marbelization on the console, the hubcap covers-- something that just exceeded just a regular paintjob. alan goldstein: they already got us two more to paint, so i think i'll be in a new business soon-- i'll be painting segways. take a lot less room. i could get used to painting more of those, but we have too many 4-wheel vehicles to get sidetracked. next week we have a special guest stopping by the shop to take a look at the boy scout carryall, and then we need to finish the interior work on the g.t.o. then we're heading down south to visit dick french's muscle car garage. megan clementi: for more information on this program,

visit our website at www.musclecarworkout.com. ( hard-driving rock music playing )

man: this muscle car workout series has been made possible in part by support from the following companies-- golden corral buffet and 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 solutionsfor 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. man: you can order a dvd copy of this program or others in the series by calling 1-888-444-8411, or by visiting us on the web at www.musclecarworkout.com.