What Happened to LSXcalade?? "State Of The Union" (Bonus: ALL Project Car Updates & Spoiler Alerts!)

Today's video, I'm going to address a question that I've gotten a lot recently, and increasingly recently with all of the yellow belly videos, and that is what happened to the Escalade? Why is it not fixed? Why am I not putting it back together? And it's a conscious decision not to put it back together. I have left it taken apart on purpose for what, almost 4 months now? Some backstory for you guys who may be new here, because this is weird to think about the last time this thing ran, I had 30,000 subscribers. Hey Ruger. I have to um tie him to the desk so he doesn't go do stupid stuff while I'm trying to film. He's just going to sit there for a little bit. All right? He'll be fine. Yeah, this thing blew up in the beginning of November. And if you there's videos about me tearing it apart, if you watch it, it torched the head pretty much, but then it ended up cracking all of the uh parts of the valves in between the head. And I thought I could just get them fixed, throw it back together, and go. And I was going to take this thing to Cleetus and Cars in November, but that ended up not happening cuz the heads couldn't get fixed quick enough. And so we brought in Uncle Rob, and that was a disaster in itself, but we learned a lot. Current state of the Escalade is everything to put it back together is still packed inside of it, including the headers that Adrian polished. He's been getting work done in Memphis on his own stuff. Um it's just chilling. It's kind of sad, but at the same time, I really have no regrets. I just don't. And for the simple reason that you got to think, I started the turboing process of this thing in the beginning of 2017. And all of 2016 was wrapped up in this thing, too, when it had the blower on it. So, this Escalade has pretty much been the center focus consuming my entire life for four solid years. And kind of worn out. I'm not going to lie. It's tired of looking at the same bolts, same things, doing same stuff. It was just like, "Okay, now what?" Also, I didn't want to be known as Escalade guy. I was like, "Okay, I'm going to leave this thing taken apart. I'm not going to touch it. Mothballed. And I'm going to focus on other stuff. I'm going to get other cars going before I put this back together to I'm just trying to explain stuff and you're over there choking on your dick. Like, can you not? I had to go put him in the office. It was too distracting. Anyway, yeah, I wanted to build other stuff. To have more stuff going. And yeah, it was kind of taking like, you know, taking a step back to take four steps forward by leaving that thing apart. And I I I don't think that was the wrong move. The channel is more than double the size it was when that thing was my focus. And now, I'm finally able to work on other stuff, like the Monte Carlo, which in and of itself had been mothballed for 2 years because the Escalade absorbed my entire life. So, I just felt it was time to shed the light on other stuff. As far as technical mumbo jumbo, why haven't I just fixed the heads? Well, they could be fixed, but they're going to break. The castings are just not dense enough to handle the kind of horsepower that this thing is making now and it's definitely not equipped to handle the power that it's going to make because when it broke I was roll racing a ZR1 Corvette that made a thousand wheel horsepower and from a 60 roll and I went around him. I beat him. And he was out on me in the beginning. This thing was making some serious freaking power like over 2,000 at the crank. All day and twice on Sunday, over 2,000 at the crank. That's a lot. That's a lot to ask of a cylinder head casting. And the ones I had just couldn't hang. So, not going to run those again. Uh I'm going to get different ones. I just don't know exactly when. I think I have something in the works, but you know, with the weather last week, everything's delayed again. So, they could be a month out. I don't know. I'm trying. I am putting pieces in play to get this thing put back together. I'm just going to say it in all honesty with you guys. I could have bought heads for this thing months ago, but I didn't because I know if I apply myself and pick up the phone and sit down and type some emails and actually try I can find a cylinder head sponsor. So, why would I spend all that money on heads when I could, you know, use my brain and not have to spend that money on heads and then take that money and spend it elsewhere like hmm hmm and that engine there that is not in a vehicle yet. Which we'll get to that, too. That's the state of the union on the Escalade. That's why I have not fixed it. I just wanted to separate my my own identity from Escalade guy and honestly just take a break for a while. But it's coming back. I plan on doing race week with it. That's my main thing is you'll you know, putting pieces in play to get this thing put back together and I'm going to race it at Yellowbelly. I'm going to race it at Race Week. It's going to make an 8-second pass this year. You can freaking write that down. I'm doing it. Yeah, anyway. I'm going to fill you guys in on the state of the union as far as the other projects go. If you haven't seen it before, this is Uncle Rob. The 2003 Yukon XL. Single turbo build. I'm actually working on that right now. Um It's I'm just doing the finishing touches getting it ready for the dyno. Give you a little sneak peek here. Oh, it's got a downpipe now. You'll be able to see that in the next video. But yeah, that one's a single turbo build like daily driver type example for someone to follow who's like you know, doing it at home with their stock truck. And it's going to be fun. Nothing crazy, but fun. The Monte Carlo as you saw, if you didn't see, go watch the video the last video it was in in the Monte Carlo playlist. Every single vehicle I have has its own playlist, so you can search and find things very easily that way. Um we blew it up real good. Put a new transmission in it and we broke the tail shaft off after literally like 2 miles. So it's just sitting here broken. And you're probably wondering, well why haven't you gotten a new transmission or why haven't you gotten it fixed? As of right now, the tentative plan is you know, I love suspension as much as the next guy, but if you're watching this video, I know you care. And you know your reward for caring about what's going on here not just wanting to see things happen but you're here for actual information I'll let you in on some things. The Monte Carlo current plan right now is to put a manual transmission in it. But everything's back ordered right now. So I'm waiting. But that thing that's going to be a lot of fun. I really really really wish they would be on back order because I want to drive that car so bad. It just hurts to look at just sitting there all pretty like that and I can't do anything with it. But when it's ready it's going to be tons of fun. Now how about this thing here? The Blueprint 632. 10.35 liters of naturally aspirated big block awesomeness. What am I doing with it? You're probably wondering that too. I just come back here with this freaking 840 horsepower naturally aspirated motor ready to rip and it's just sitting here and I haven't said what I'm doing with it yet. Well I got a little tidbit for you diehards out there. I got a really nice 1993 Suburban that I'm going to pick up after I finish Uncle Rob. That's what it's for. Shh. We don't want those surface level viewers to know the secrets yet cuz they'll do like a video where you know all the suspense and whatever but I know if you're here you care and this information is important to you so you know you're in the inner sanctum now. Welcome to the club. Now I don't want you to get jealous here but I just noticed something pretty cool. All right keep your eye on this perimeter here I'm going to unlock the door. Wow. Dang. Let's see how fast we go. No we can't get that. Can't go 50. I tried. Oh. I'm going to take the old hog for a spinner on the block just to uh juice up the battery. Officer, I don't know how fast I was going cuz on the third honk it jumped up. That one's going to be a lot of fun. I'm just kind of accumulating parts for it. Uh but I got to finish Uncle Rob before I open another can of worms because then I would have four freaking vehicles that do not function. That doesn't work. Not going to fly. So, once Uncle Rob gets finished, I go um get the old '93, Uncle George is his name, and I'm probably going to road trip that back to Texas and get started on it hopefully within the next few weeks here. So, that's kind of the recap on my personal vehicles. Another one you're going to be seeing on here, this red black and red truck I mentioned before, is uh Ashton's. He's a tech here at Triple 7. It's a turbo truck. It's going to be doing some cool stuff, too. Uh it's got a 480 in it right now that um blew up. We sent it to the moon in the name of science. And he just got a 5.3 for it. I think he's going to open it up, you know, gap the rings, some stuff like that, and now it's got like a school bus 4L85 in it. Really, really basic. It's pretty much the same formula that Uncle Rob is. So, these two are going to be be some GMC companions there. Got to pull the motor, get the converter out, and take it to the converter place so they can like bend the fins or whatever and bump it up a little bit cuz like he doesn't even want to buy a converter. He wants to stall up the one that's already in there. So, this thing is like to the core a budget build, which is really, really fun. I've been documenting um tidbits of the process. Like I went and picked up a motor for him. I got footage of that. It's all just kind of going to be its own video when we actually get to work on this thing. Uh this is John Lawson's freaking end game car. The guy who owns Triple 7, his build in process is kind of on the back burner uh cuz we're working on a CTS-V right now, which he's actually daily driving, otherwise I'd go show it to you. But you've seen it in my videos before. This thing's got like a billet Accufab billet Coyote block. Uh new GT500 heads. He's like forced inductions, 88s. This is a serious freaking car. It's still IRS. I have no idea what the timetable is on this, but eventually it's going to run and it's going to make like freaking three or four thousand horsepower. I don't even know, something just insane. Now this thing here is not a employee car, it's not a project car, it's actually a Triple 7 customer car, but it's so freaking cool, I just want to show it to you. It just looks awesome. And wait till you see what's under the hood here. Yeah, it says 66 TA, that's not a lie. It's a stroker motor. But not only is it a stroker motor, it's a freaking LSA, dude. On some Forgestar F14s. Like this car is just so freaking money. I I would drive this car. I'd drive the crap out of this car. I don't know how much power it makes. We're going to find out soon, but it's freaking awesome. And you know, like I really like looking at it. So you know, if you're like in the DFW area or something in a several hour radius as long as you're willing to bring something out here. And you got a cool looking car, you should bring it to Triple 7 for your build so I can look at it cuz I like looking at cool looking cars like this one. This square body is also in process. That's a 6-liter with ported heads Holly Terminator system. It's super clean. The customer that owns this, this is actually his first truck. He got it when he was 16 and he somehow managed to find it again recently. Brought it here with the intent to get it LS swapped and race it on Rocky Mountain Race Week. That's pretty awesome. Let's take a look at the interior. Dude, it's so clean. So clean. Like this is a cherry example of a well-done square body. I mean not even well-done, it's freaking original but that's well-done. I also got a question for you guys and I'm legitimately curious. You know how I said earlier how I only had 30,000 subscribers last time the Escalade ran? Well, I want to know, leave in the comments were you a subscriber / viewer while I was still making videos about this thing when it was still running? And if you were, leave a comment. I want to know. If you are new to the channel and never saw this thing when it was running like in real time, let me know when you did start paying attention to what was going on here cuz I just just interesting. Like I want to know this stuff. I don't know if you guys notice but I interact with so many comments, almost all of them. And I will stand by this. You will not find another YouTuber that has the I guess following amount that I do that interacts with their people in the comments as much as I do themselves doesn't have somebody else do it. If you get a heart on your comment, if you get a a reply to your comment from this channel, it was me. Nobody else has access to it but me. Nobody works for me. If you get something from me on a social media platform, it was freaking me. I did that. Because I care. So many people, they get to a certain point and they don't think that they have to talk to anyone anymore. They think they're too cool and they're just going to like, you know, all these people are going to all these people are stupid. Like No. I I don't feel any different than I did when my videos got 400 views in a day. Like it wasn't until August of this past year that my videos got more than a thousand views ever. Like if I had a video that got a thousand views up until that point, I was like, "Dang, this is a banger." Like I posted stuff several times a week that nobody watched and I didn't care cuz I just knew that you know, if the same 10 people commented on my stuff every time I posted it, like I'm going to do it for those 10 people cuz I care. And you know, maybe it's it's a lot more than 10 people now, but if it's a hundred people or 200 people or 300 people I care about them just as much as I cared about those 10 people back then. I'm not going to lose sight of what that felt like or where that was. It's just not not going to happen. I've learned so much in the past year, past 6 months especially about just not getting caught up in you know, doing it for content. I'm done doing it for content. I've been done. I started to slip and go down that road where I was tailoring my actions just for the content cuz I thought it would do well or I thought people would like it. And it left me really unfulfilled because I was not doing what I set out to do. What I set out to do is provide information and lessons in an entertaining way by pursuing my own passions and things that I like. So, that's pretty much it. I don't fit a mold of a specific type of channel. And then I get people on there saying, "Oh, well, you got to have, you know, builds and rotate them and blah blah blah and you don't finish stuff fast enough." Well, if that's you and your butt, how do you can get the get out of here. You can leave. I don't care. I don't care. You know why? Because for every person who wants to me to be something that I'm not, there's two or three people that are going to resonate with exactly what I am. And I stand by that. Authenticity rules the day. I'm just me. I'm always going to be me. That's not going to change. That's why I build freaking heavy Suburbans and not, you know, stripped out cars that are trying to go fast like everybody else because people think you should. I do what lights me up inside and I think you guys kind of pick up on that. For us people who are full-time YouTubers like this is our main job. It's not all sunshine and rainbows like you think it is. Like it's hard. You have to treat stuff like a business because it is. You know, I'd like to just throw money at stuff, but like I can't. You just can't. Like you got to you got to pick and choose what you spend money on, what's going to produce the return, what's worth your time and what's not, you know, because it's not like a side project where if you have like a main job you can kind of fiddle with this whenever you want cuz like you're doing this but for us this is this this is all we got it has to work it has to work. So you know at the end of the day you do have to treat this stuff like a business but if the decisions and trajectory do not resonate with my core desire to do or not do that thing I'm not going to do it like it was my core desire that felt it was the best idea to leave the escalator alone just for my own sanity. I was just tired of it. I needed a break. And I thought that that made sense from you know the business end of things too cuz you know I'll leave it there just kind of whatever and by the time it comes back people are going to be ready for it because they missed it. Just like me. I'm missing it too and it's time to bring it back. That's just how it works. Everything's got to be in alignment for things to go smoothly and to continue making progress. There's just a lot to this. A lot that I don't really think you can understand unless you're doing it. But I think that's kind of how a lot of things are. There's a lot of I'm a lot of things I'm still learning. And I think it's always going to be that way always learning. I always want you guys to be learning when you're watching stuff too because the last thing I want is for somebody to spend 20 30 minutes watching one of my videos whether or not they were entertained or not is irrelevant. If they can't look back and say I gained something from that time. Either a new piece of information a new way to look at things something like that something productive. If you can't pull something like that from something I posted, I didn't do my job. I don't want to be the reason somebody wastes a part of their day. I want to be a productive part of your day. That's my goal. What I've rambled about a lot. If you watched this whole thing, I know you care. So, that's why I do it. I appreciate that you're here. And if you see me in person somewhere and you say something and you think I'm ignoring you or I'm being a [ __ ] I'm not. I'm just not used to being approached because, like I said before, I don't feel any different than I did when 400 people watched my video. So, when I get recognized places, it's still kind of weird for me and I don't know how to handle it, so I just am weird cuz um weird. Basically. With that being said, I did add three X hoodies to the pre-order list on my website, Stable Build Auto Works. Go check it out. Got some cool stuff on there now. I'm wearing the the flag shirt right now, which is this one. And we got the transmission destroyer um and the OG Escalade, which that shirt, when I'm out of those, I'm out of them. I'm never ordering another one of this style again. That's the first T-shirt I ever had made. It's been, you know, first time I got those was, you know, middle of 2019, running around with the Street Car Takeover stuff. It's an old design, but it's the OG and it always will be. Also, there's a random shirt option where if you purchase a random shirt in your size, you'll get a random shirt. Save some money. And and I got stickers. Freaking sweet. Look at these stickers. These sticker sheets, same guy did these who did the ones for Cooper, Project Prime. He's awesome dude. Really killed it on here. He got five stickers. It's the good quality kind. Not the kind of stickers that'll like, you know, turn into mush if you put them on the outside of your uh truck window or something like that. These are the nice thick ones that are meant to take a beating. Next time I post a video, it'll be an Uncle Rob video, and it'll be ready to drive. You can sit on that one.