Man, there is nothing quite like the smell of fresh concrete in the morning. If you’ve been following the channel lately, you know the Build Bay has been a total construction zone. But today? Today is a massive victory.
We finally poured the shop floor, and let me tell you, seeing that glassy, burnished finish wrap around the new footings for the car lift and the loft… it changes everything. We packed the dirt down tight, got the saw cuts done to keep the cracks in check, and now we officially have a hard spot to work on. No more rolling a creeper over gravel or fighting uneven dirt. It’s got so much room for activities! Next up is bringing in a scissor lift, beefing up the wall stiffeners with some extra 2x4s so we can hang OSB instead of fragile sheetrock, and finally building the big sliding shop doors.
But a bigger shop means we need even bigger projects to fill it. And that brings me to some huge news.
While the concrete was curing, I got a call from my buddy Liam over at Jeep Sheep TV. Liam and I go way back—we actually met through the YouTube community about six years ago, but we finally got to hang out in person at SEMA back in 2024. We’ve been trying to figure out a way to team up forever, and the stars finally aligned.
Liam has this absolute gem of a project: a 1972 Jeep Commando. He bought it years ago, filmed the entire process of building it, but like so many of us, life, daily chores, and other projects kept getting in the way of the editing desk. Every weekend he’d promise himself he’d sit down and edit the series, and every weekend something else popped up.
So, we struck a deal. This project has the “Pain and Victory” spirit written all over it. It’s pure AMC classic junk—factory adapters on top of adapters, a beautiful pile in every loving sense of the word. We’re stepping in to help him edit and bring this awesome revival story to life right here on the DPV channel! We’re going to drop one episode a month tracking the history of this Commando.
I know some of the die-hard AMC fans in our audience were a little choked when I pulled the AMC engine out of the 79 Cherokee (“Big Chief”) to swap in a Small Block Chevy. Well, consider this my peace offering. Behind Liam in his Northern Wisconsin barn sits the original AMC 304 V8 that belongs in this Commando, and it’s currently in pieces. We’re going to get to dive deep into a proper AMC V8 rebuild.
Liam gave us a quick virtual tour of his space, and honestly, he fits right in with the DPV crew. His barn motto is officially: “High ceilings and low standards.” Aside from the Commando, he’s running a supercharged 2.5L inline-four Wrangler YJ with a wild motorcycle Power Commander fuel setup hidden inside an Altoids tin on the dash. The guy is a MacGyver after our own hearts.
We’re aiming to drop the first couple of edited Commando episodes very soon, and the hope is to get together in person this fall for some real-world wheeling on the property. Imagine taking that Commando out to tackle the compressor trail!
The new shop floor is dry, the tools are moving back in, and the builds are getting wilder. Grab your wrenches, guys—it’s going to be a heck of a ride.
Wheel it, Wreck it, Wrench it, Repeat!
-Josh
Days of Pain and Victory 
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