Budget Turbo Yukon XL 4L80 Conversion: The Transmission Crossmember Mod! (100k Play Button Unboxing)

pretty cool day actually it the other day was a pretty cool day i've had this thing for about three days and honestly i just forgot to open it uh because 100 000 subscribers is a long time ago it was cool we got there when it happened but i'm not thinking about it anymore and i wanted to open this when it first showed up but i had a bunch of stuff to do for the rest of the day and i thought i'm not gonna prioritize the past i'm going to wait and open this when i get all my stuff done for the day well once i did i had completely forgotten about this and then the next day went by i forgot about it the next day one guy forgot about it now i'm like you know what finally let's just freaking open it i wanted to film it for you guys because whether or not what i think about it is irrelevant the fact that i have one of these is because of you and because you care and because you resonate with the way i feel about things and express myself for things that are important to me and the fact that you support that you guys for the most part are good people because when i look at the restricted comments section how youtube automatically filters stuff there is only maybe one comment in there every three or four weeks i think that's impressive that you guys are just some stand-up people and i'm glad you're here so let's open this thing up keep in mind i didn't start pushing youtube hard i didn't start taking it really seriously and uploading multiple times a week until about july june and june last year and i wasn't even getting a thousand views of video until mid-august i was getting more views from rv stuff than racing stuff and i had just about given up on making videos about the escalade because no one freaking watched them i could make a video about a newell and it would get you know a thousand views if i did the escalade to get like 200. i'm like what am i doing i'll just make videos about rv screw this and then everything changed now we're here so i don't know what's gonna be in here i'll show you guys first hmm i'm just reading this thing now not even a real autograph damn it susan but it's like nice you know card stock paper i spelled my name right cool it's funny the place that makes these is in grove oklahoma which is in the vicinity of the newell factory because you know a handful of newell employees live in grove oklahoma that's why this thing showed up in the mail before i even got the email that it shipped like it's i got an email it's like your creator rewards on the way and i'm like oh guys like i already got it but yeah here let's open this bad boy up this is different than some of the um other ones i've seen this must be the new style it's a mirror that's funny so i have to stare at my stupid self when i look at this i like it so this thing the mirror on here is kind of funny because when you look at it you're like wow it's me ever seeing these things on other people's walls like i've seen the 1321 on kyle office wall in his office i've seen garrett's on his wall yeah they look different there's like a frame with like a play button inside of it not this like metal type one is pretty cool check it out nice helmet yeah safety birth today part five of the 4080 conversion i think it's five i know i say i think it's something every time i can't remember pretty sure it's number five though and today is a really really common question along with you know other parts of the conversion this one is probably one of the bigger deals to sort out that's a cross member nobody knows what to do about the cross member they think got to buy one they don't know how to modify theirs to work because it's got to be changed it requires some fabrication and not everybody has the ability to do that um so i am going to outline for you guys the simplest way i believe to get a cross member under there that works we're just going to modify the stock one in the most simple basic do it yourself with a freaking flux core mig welder kind of way anybody with access to a welder and a vehicle that can take themselves to home depot or lowe's should be able to do this i gotta find the cross member first though i don't know where it went uh mike the electrician was here earlier hooking up some plugs for the lift we got four plugs over here four plugs over there four right there and four right there so now there's no more shortage of places to plug things in and i have found the crossmember this rusty crusty pile of stuff is going to get cut into three pieces the process is very very simple here uh first we are just gonna hold it up just eyeball it here so this side goes on the driver's side because it has the dent in it for the drive shaft we're gonna put it up here well i don't need to shove that side in the whole way to know where this has to go uh pretty much we're just gonna make a cut like right here and right here and go from there um so i'm gonna get a marker mark this out and uh get to cutting so we just got a regular old uh hobo freight abrasive chop saw i've used this thing for like a bazillion things uh i use this thing the only other time i've ever done this on my buddy justin sables pro charge denali uh probably three years ago and i found that the last time i did it i used metal in here that was thicker than the blade and it kind of pushed the bolt holes out a little bit so i had less wiggle room so this time i made sure i didn't get metal that was thicker than the blade because the blade it's not cutting so much that's grinding away a slice so it's going to take material out which will make it shorter but when you add the material back in for the plate that we're going to use to extend it it's gonna absorb the space destroyed by the blade so i don't know it'll make more sense once i do what i'm about to do but for right now we're just gonna cut and it's gonna be real loud fun fact i really don't like using the abrasive chop saw it makes a big mess it's really loud and it's pretty inaccurate compared to like a real uh band saw but i just don't have one of those yet it's on the agenda so right now this is what we got we're gonna use it okay so that entire clip is up to four minutes and 15 seconds it took a long time to cut through that um it's just going to take a long time you have to let the blade cut you can't force it or you will break the blade the stall will stop you have to just apply enough pressure to let it do its cutting keep a constant pressure so it just you know it just goes through it you can't force it it's not gonna cut faster if you jam it in there you're gonna even if you do have a nicer chop saw that does have a stronger motor that won't bog out you'll kill the blade you gotta let it cut and i kind of back up a little bit let it cool off for a second you know then go back in so it's not just building heat the whole time and i don't know if you noticed i kind of was turned like that uh that is just for the fulfillment of my irrational fear that if the blade explodes i don't want it to explode into my balls there you go yeah i probably should wear a face shield but you know if my thighs in the way then at least i can't get my balls they can stitch my face back together other side here that's going to take another few minutes i mean this is like a serious serious piece of steel like you're just it's just it's going to be a process regardless if i wasn't demonstrating what to do here as to do it like the easiest the diy average guy way i'd probably build a jupiter crossmember for this just like i did with the escalade you pretty much just get a straight piece of steel it could be round or square and then you just drill four holes in it that correspond with those four holes and then you make a pad that lines up where the transmission needs to be it's pretty simple honestly probably only requires a little bit amount more of effort than this way but it requires more skill so we're doing it this way uh we gotta get this all ready to go um i gotta bolt this little cross member uh trans mount pad back to here so we have the stub location for this uh we got everything chopped up here ready to go as good as it can be i gotta find where that pad went right here oh yeah nice and crusty just the way i like it it's not very good nut discipline but we didn't lose them so i guess it counts so here's what we're working with here you can kind of tell what's going on we basically just cut the middle out and we're going to move it back and weld pieces in there so that it just you know moves the hole back uh it's pretty simple he's got it mocked up it's roughly where it needs to be we can get more precise with it in a minute but uh right now we're just kind of figuring out how long the filler plates have to be that we're going to cut out and weld in here of what you can see because of the space left by the chop saw blade there's room for metal to fit in here and still have the bolt holes be where they need to be it's not pretty but it's literally the simplest way the quickest way i think probably the most cost-effective way to do this because you go to the store and get a couple pieces of metal cut a couple things and send that home that's all we're doing here all it has to do is hold that transmission it doesn't have to look cool so we had to go get some steel um from an actual metal place so we found this metal supermarkets here and i got my handy dandy dimensions written on my hand so i don't lose the piece of paper that i would put them on um even though logan thinks i'm stupid for writing things on my hand i got your post-it notes you don't use them i use them for some things but for something where i could potentially lose a piece of paper that i need i'll put it on my hand and i can't lose it but yeah my scratch what i said about home depot unless home depot or lowe's near you has a seven by three and a half inch by eighth inch thick plate steel because that's what we're going in there to get let's go check it out that was freaking great went in and paid told them what i wanted pulled around back here and the guy brought it right up to the window i got three just in case i messed one up but you see these plates are what will slide right into there on the crossmember and that's freaking sweet this is steel it's clean it's not rusty doesn't have all kinds of mill scale on it that i'm gonna have to grind off to weld it man this i've been to a lot of different metal places in different cities mostly pittsburgh uh because i used to get all my stuff from the same place in my little town but this is the easiest best experience i've had getting metal from anything anywhere so yeah even metal supermarkets in your era i would recommend checking it out because uh it's pretty freaking sweet and i'm not getting paid to say this i'm just a fan makes my life easy i like stuff that makes my life easy okay so we're back under here with the crossmember with the steel that we got and i'm just gonna put a couple lines on here just to give me a reference point to line up we'll just tack it and then go from there it's easier than trying to finagle and fit it around in here but those pieces up there those two holes are slotted so even if it's just a little bit off it should be fine because i i put it in the middle now let's get this pulled off and fire up the olfronius magic wave 230 get this thing stuck together gotta clean this off here so i can weld to it so it'll be nice at least kind of this big hog here i don't know i've never used this one before but it makes the lights dim when you turn it on so it must be intense you have to do that to all of them yeah fun stuff yeah i know so excited looks like new only in the part that you did that too though mom i thought about just welding this anyway just going through the crud because it's not the right thing to do so that's not what we're gonna do [Music] don't you have to do both sides on that one yeah yes i do holy what a hog it's not we're gonna get the welder fired up it's all dirty because it's you know right next to the workbench but this thing's freaking sweet you could switch between ac dc on here you know get your amps over here we're going to put it around 90 just because i think that's a good place to be all your settings are in there electrode diameter all kinds of things now let's see as well there's way more um capable than uh i am understanding of what it does make sure i'm on the right shade level as i bumped into it i have the bluetooth helmet too i haven't actually tried it yet because um i haven't haven't had any big welding projects come up to where i thought i needed to fire it up it's always some random thing i'm not really prepared for so i just keep using old reliable here but you just got a torch switch on it you can change things from here too you can mess with the amps on there it's pretty neat i have it set to be a momentary start stop where you can also have it to like pull it down and then you touch it again to shut it off where i like to control it in the moment and it's also got a little dingle right there pretty cool so i'm just going to tack these plates to the ends and then we'll go back up there again to verify how it fits and then make marks and tack from there make sure it fits still and then we'll send it all home so that's the process here i'm just gonna tack it a couple places and go from there i didn't even use rod on this one because i had a corner there i just melted the corner and kind of guided it up into there just to have a nice fusion tack a little trick you can use at home three places should be good it's got to be strong enough that you can pick it up and move it around and bump it on things and not break them but not so intense that uh if you need to move it that you can't get it off at all that's something i'm guilty of before and i've also been guilty of making them too light and screwing myself that way so you just gotta find the happy medium now we'll take the greasy one here i don't even know i can't even see the lines i made but theoretically this can't go one way so gotta line it up here can you hear the grease in there boiling out i'm not really i'm not paying oh i'm watching like the numbers on the screen not paying attention to that oh what are you going on with the numbers what are you doing i'm watching like the whole thingy the little thingy dams yeah what are you seeing it just like fluctuates while you're doing stuff it's interesting every one of these days we'll see how good you can weld cool not enthused i'm not just about anything right now just straight up not having a good time man you know we all have those days but we're just here doing it anyway doing the damn thing exactly good for tax now we'll take them over there and verify fitment again okay so now we're gonna put this thingy back up in here too to finalize the lineup of where these are gonna go so it should fit in there nice and snug now because of how these are um how the thickness of this plate occupies the same or roughly the same thickness as the abrasive chop saw blade that made the cut so if you cut it with an eighth inch blade it's going to be anything shorter so we fill that back up with the eighth inch of metal right here so it's the same length again um had these pieces cut long on purpose just so i'd have extra room to work with because check this out what i'll do is when i attack this i'll just weld it up and then chop the ends off and then weld there i could have made it perfect but you know i always like to leave a little bit of extra material when i can just in case because this does move this is still a little loose it was kind of hard to tell now we know for sure that it's going to work so i'm going to break up the old handy handy sharpie and i'm just going to trace this so that i know trace it here and make a marker line on here now we know sharpies are your friend when food arcading anything i don't like measuring i like putting marks on things and then putting it back on the marks i would if someone had me build a house it would be freaking crooked as hell but for tiny things it works okay some of the times i'm gonna pull these out cool uh i should have cleaned all those first but you know then my hands wouldn't be all dirty you guys wouldn't think i actually do work around here really it's gross it's fine rub it on my leg i don't care i already did it with my hand all right well logan's wearing like my hat and my son my safety glasses and all kinds of stuff and she looks totally ridiculous but she's not gonna let you see that so we'll just continue here i'll have a laugh to myself ha ha all right back to work got everything lined up here i'm just gonna tack it as it is and see how it goes this is not a precision we have a couple more on the top side good to go now you could have like i said made this a lot cleaner more precise all of the things that you could do we didn't really do here welding up a crusty oily cross member like you know how perfect does it need to be it doesn't and if i'm being honest it really kind of hurts me to do stuff like this because i like to take my time do things super nice and all that stuff i love dirting out on details but the reason i don't is because no matter what i do no matter how hard i try it is still crusty and old under there like there's just only so many places where effort is worth it okay i gotta pick your battles it hurts it hurts me inside and i really i'm really excited to do some builds that are of like you know top quality like escalade stuff where i can really nerd out on the tiny things but there's a time and place for that and it's not right here so let's go back and see if this bolts up now check it out it fits everything fits we have the studs are in the hole these are in the hole everything's in the hole that's in the hole we did it we got ourselves a cross member now we can finish weld this thing and grind the little end of the dongle thingies off time to weld i don't know where my other glove went i always seem to lose my welding gloves around here because people use them for uh i haven't touched something hot gloves these ones instead they're a little bigger provide more coverage probably a better thing because i don't want to get sunburned on my forearms i mean it looks pretty good for not clean mild steel yeah i think it looks good i can't wait to just sit here and just lay dimes on some aluminum i guess i'm going to do that at some point because the escalade on the exhaust is all cracked to pieces i didn't weld that though okay so crossmember is all finished welded ready to go uh the next video in the series will be the drive shafts i just got a call from the drive shaft place they just finished those so we got those done now um i still got to bolt the converter up and shim that so that'll be a thing put the dipstick in we're getting pretty close we're almost there but also you may have noticed uh the shirt i'm wearing is the one that's right there the flag one you can get that on stapleton autoworks.com same with this one the good wrench style these ones uh we're actually not ordering any more of these because we got a new style coming out after that so if you like the plain black off to the left just like this one is um well it's kind of folded over but it's got the whole the whole thing on there you have to go in there and hop on that before they're gone yeah the link is in the description and i'll pin it in the comments too if you find this video series useful refer to a friend because it's hard to imagine that informative nitty-gritty detailed videos just do not do well on the algorithm because most people have a surface level attention span they don't care to learn things so it just doesn't push that content because it doesn't pass through the levels of simple people to get to the point where you might actually see it so if you know someone that could benefit from this send it to them that's…