Customized Medium Duty Truck Tour: Upgraded Features, Professional Paint, and Electrical System Details

During my searches I came across this chassis. Now this is a medium duty truck. It’s rated for 13 tons. It’s 25 5 which means you don’t need a CDL cause it’s just below that threshold. Which is ideal cause anybody can drive this thing. Assuming, you know, stick, cause it is a manual. So let me give you a tour of the cab on the inside. Originally it was this dark dingy gray on the inside. Reupholstered everything with black marine vinyl. Everything was painted black. We put it in a uh, touchscreen unit with a backup camera and brand new speakers as well. Cause when you’re on the road, you gotta have fun. You’re gonna be bumping tunes. Moving on to the paint. Originally I painted this myself and it came out absolutely horrendous. So when I decided to put up for sale, I knew I had to get it professionally painted. This is Imron paint. This is the stuff they paint trains, planes and cranes with. This is industrial strength paint. There’s about four thick layers on here. I mean there’s nothing that will scratch this paint. I’ve been off roading, I’ve had tree branches dragging along the side of the truck. And I’ve never had an issue with any kind of scratches on this. And we actually add a few more layers. So this thing is not only looks gorgeous, but it’s absolutely rock solid. You gotta have the air horn. If you have a medium Duty truck. I mean, this thing blares super loud. I also upgraded the headlights, LED lights, and I got some, some fog lights as well. And of course these hooks came standard. I never had to use them, but if you got to pull anyone out of, out of a sticky situation, you definitely can with this truck. Now originally the bumper was gray. I painted this with truck bed liner to give it a little bit extra durability. Now, the engine in here is a T4 4 E, but it’s not the normal T4 4 E that you normally see with school buses. Those are rated for 190 horsepower, 550 foot pounds of torque. This is a beefed up version. This one has a top horsepower of 215, uh, and it’s got a much higher torque rating as well. So this is one of the things that sold me on the truck was the engine itself. I wanted something where I wasn’t driving at 55 miles an hour on the highway. I’m cruising in this thing at 75 miles an hour on the interstates. One of my favorite features, uh, is of course the cruise control. Cause when I’m on the highway, it’s cruising. You don’t have to be shifting through gears. And uh, makes it a lot easier when you’re driving across state. Now I had a ton, a ton of work put into this. I mean, when I first bought it, believe it or not, I was Actually looking for school buses, I was on all the government auction sites, and I come across this YouTube video. Funny just with one just like this. This guy’s talking about his crew carrier that he converted. And immediately I type into Google crew carrier, eBay listing shows up. 3 hours, the auction is ending. I did all the research I could. I put in a bid for $8,000. Was my max bid. I thought it was gonna go for 15 20 k. Believe it or not, I stole this thing at $6,000. I was like, this is too good to be true to get all this truck for $6,000, and it was too good to be true. Now, the tanks tend to rust out on these things. I think it’s common with any of the international chassis. They’re steel tanks. So all that rust end up in my fuel injectors. I need a new tank. I need a new fuel injectors. Not only that, but I had a bunch of leaks. I need a new alternator, starter, all gaskets. The high pressure oil pump needed to be rebuilt, so I had it totally wouldn’t technically be a full rebuild, um, but pretty much borderline rebuilt. So at 100,000 miles, it’s pretty standard with these engines. If you’re buying one out there at 100,000 miles, you’re gonna have a ton of work. There’s a reason why they’re retiring these trucks. It’s because they don’t want to put in the $20,000 To get them up to speed. Um, fortunately, I did. So that brings us up to a total cost about $26,000, um, without any kind of renovation. So if you’re buying something like this, that’s A pretty good price point. I bought it at 96,000 miles, which is nothing for these trucks. Again, you’re gonna have to put in some work. Um, but once you do, it’s good for another hundred thousand miles. And I have no qualms, no worries, about breaking down. So one of the thing. One of the biggest selling points is this thing is from California, so if you look at it, there’s absolutely no rust. I mean, this truck is 22 years old, and there are no weird rust patterns on the suspension. So there’s no worrying. This thing is gonna last for another 20 years. Without a doubt. Especially if you’re chasing the sun and you’re trying to get out of the snow. Now, one of the cool things I kind of turned into a feature is originally, this was an emergency truck. So there’s A ton of emergency lights around the sides. But there is built big and chunky, and they’re honestly pretty ugly. I pulled them out. There’s all these bolt holes here. I drilled them out and actually put these marker lights out. So when you are in the mountains of California, Colorado, Kentucky, and you’re driving real slow up the highway, I just throw those lights on, and that way, People know that they have to go around me. Um, rarely happens, but if you’re on a steep grade 8, you know, it is a. It is a 13 ton truck. You know, it’s gonna. It’s gonna struggle a little bit about those mountain highways. Now let me walk you through all these compartments. This was another huge selling point. Um, before we get into it, these chrome accents all the way, these are rain gutters, believe it or not. So this keeps all the water from the storage compartment. So when it rains, um, it really doesn’t come down the sides. It kind of just hits the rain gutters and then it gets uh, put away towards the corners and then just drips down to the ground. So you don’t have to worry about rain getting into the um, cabinets. And honestly it just looks super clean and it just makes it that much more nicer. So this is the first cabinet. Um, huge selling point. You got tons of storage. You know, when you’re doing these conversions, where do you put the battery, electrical, the propane tanks? See how you’re kind of figuring out compartments? You’re putting everything inside? These compartments are really nice cause you got tons of storage. I keep a lot of electrical equipment here in case anything breaks. I haven’t had any issues on the road. Um, I put in the best components possible. I did everything with Victron um energy. I have a DCDC charger. So when I’m driving on the highway, I’m getting 30 amps an hour from my main battery. Um, I also have a smart solar charge controller. So I’m getting 50 amps from my solar array. Um, I have a 630 watt solar array. 300 amp hour. I’ve spent weeks off grid with this thing. I’ve never had an issue with power. I’ve went through days and days of cloudy weather. This is more than enough. One of the thing about the electrical. We also have a 12 watt pure sine wave inverter. That’s plenty of power. Um, I mean I even power the AC with this thing. Um, so this is more than enough. 2000, 3,000 Watts. I think that’s overkill. I think it’s 12 watt for build like this is perfect. Um, we also got the kill switch. Um, and then this electrical system. It looks a little crazy. I’m pretty proud of it though. But this is marine grade 12 volt electrical system. I mean this is what you would see on