The first season of eBay Motor’s audacious YouTube Series, Between 2 Rides, concluded this month. The two final episodes featured wild drivetrain swaps with a pair of YouTube’s most notorious automotive pranksters: Rich Benoit (of Rich Rebuilds) and Westen Champlin, the Kansas-based gearhead.
The swaps resulted in two beastly vehicles reborn from salvaged cars. It doesn’t get cooler than that.
Shop now for salvage carsFrunk Be Gone
Episode Four is entitled, “Has Rich Rebuilds’ ‘ICE-T’ Met its Match?” It starts with Benoit making a cross-country trek from his shop in Massachusetts to the legendary Irwindale Speedway, 20 miles east of Los Angeles. The motorsports facility dubbed “The House of Drift” is the venue for the episode’s extraordinary match race.
Benoit pits his infamous flood-salvaged and reborn ICE-T against a stock Tesla Model S in a five-lap sprint for glory. Admittedly, ICE-T looks like an average Model S. But everything changes when you spot the manual shifter between the bucket seats.
Open up the hood, and behold the glory. Benoit eliminated the frunk. In its place, viewers will discover a mischievous marvel of busted knuckle engineering: a red-blooded 6.2-liter Chevrolet LS3 V-8 found on eBay. ICE-T is the acronym for “Internal Combustion Engine Tesla.”
Wedging a fire-breathing internal combustion engine between the Tesla’s fenders was anything but a simple swap. Benoit shares some of the build’s gory details before Collete Davis, our host, calls dibs on ICE-T. Then, Benoit climbs behind the wheel of the stock Model S. They’re off to the races.
Who captures the checkered flag? You’ll have to watch to find out.
Boredom Spawns a Smoking ‘Stang
Episode Five digs even further into full-bore, fossil-fuel worship. As if a gasoline-powered Tesla wasn’t wicked enough, Westen Champlin’s “Smokestang” is even more scandalous. Who else would stuff a 1,400-pound 5.9-liter 12-valve Cummins diesel engine into a late-model Ford Mustang?
Jamming a big ol’ oil-burning Cummins engine into an engine bay that contained a four-banger isn’t for the timid.
Shop now for Cummins enginesChamplin says:
Technically, it doesn’t fit. But after a little bit of Sawzall work and a whole lot of hammer work, some welder, a grinder, and a little bit of ingenuity, it fits.
He made special accommodations. For example, the windshield wipers are gone. The space under the Mustang’s hood was so tight that no room was left for the gigantic turbocharger in the engine bay. So Champlin mounted the giant fume-spewing snail above the Cummins diesel like something straight out of Mad Max.
As with the wipers, the Mustang’s hood is just a memory. With a ride this spectacular, a simple race wouldn’t do. So the producers of Between 2 Rides came up with an exceptional test. Can the Smokestang tow a Cement Truck?
With these two crazy builds, it’s a wrap for the inaugural season of Between 2 Rides. But you can re-live all the drifting, drag racing, hoop-jumping, and mind-warping modifications on the eBay Motors YouTube Channel.
