COVER FEATURE - MARCH 2009
JUST THE BEGINNING
JEFF & JASON DAVIDSON START OFF WITH A BANG
By Daniel J. Linss - Editor
Most truckers would probably agree that their rig, no matter how cool or custom it might be, is never good enough. Such is the case for this month’s cover feature truck, which is owned by Mike Salinas of Gilroy, California. Mike is one tough customer. And even though he thinks that brothers Jeff & Jason Davidson of John’s Truck Repair in Cotati, California, did a fantastic job building his hot rod Peterbilt, Mike says the best is yet to come. Jeff & Jason have been painting and repairing trucks all of their life, but this was their first real, complete, custom build – and boy did they start off with a bang.
Mike (47) came from meager beginnings. Growing up in a very large family in San Jose, California, Mike learned the importance of hard work at an early age. Mike’s sister taught him how to drive a truck when he was a teenager, and then he bought his first truck, a beat up 1956 Kenworth, while he was still in high school. Back then, Mike would go to school in the day and haul junk cars to the scrap yards at night. A few years later he stepped up to a 1959 Peterbilt. Wanting to enter some local truck shows, he painted it, lowered it, and added a few custom pieces – and it did pretty well. This began his love of trucks and trucking, and was the beginning of a long and successful career hauling trash and scrap.
Twenty two years ago, Mike and his wife Monica started Valley Recycling. Back then, it was just Mike driving their one truck and Monica running the office. In the early days, they had roll-off trucks and hauled scrap metal. Over time, their business grew to include some 3,000 dumpsters and several trucks. When the price of scrap metal took a dive, the couple branched out into the trash business by opening a few transfer stations in town and beginning to haul garbage. Today, trash is still their main business, but the couple also has a lot of real estate and, more recently, formed a race team.
Not long after handing over the reigns of the day-to-day operations of the trash company to his right-hand man, Mike found himself getting a little bored. He began dabbling in hot rods and, eventually, became part owner of Kingpin Hot Rods, a small shop in San Jose, California. While buying an old dragster to hang on the wall as a conversation piece, the guy selling it to him asked Mike if he wanted it with or without the motor, so Mike opted to include the motor in the deal. Mike had never driven a race car and had no experience, but he decided to get his license and take it out for a spin. Mike became hooked on racing the moment he cracked the throttle for the first time. Today, he competes in several classes, including Top Eliminator West and Top Dragster, and his four daughters (ages 17, 16, 12 and 8) all race in the Junior Dragster classes. Their team is called Scrappers Racing.
Mike’s race car, which is painted to match his truck and trailer, is a nostalgic front-engine dragster. On today’s modern dragsters, the driver sits in front of the engine, but Mike sits behind the engine in his car (the cockpit hangs off the back of the dragster). The car has a 540 cubic-inch blown alcohol engine, which Mike straddles between his legs while racing, which pumps out about 2,500 horsepower. The fastest Mike has ever gone down the track is 233 mph. Mike regularly races at tracks in Sacramento, Bakersfield, Pomona, Fontana and Sonoma, and this year he will be traveling to races in Las Vegas and back east to Kentucky and Indiana.
Every cool race car needs an equally-flashy transporter to haul it around in, and when it came time to build a trailer first, and then a truck later, Mike called on Jeff & Jason Davidson at John’s Truck Repair to get the job done. Mike has been doing business with the Davidson family for over 20 years. Their shop, which was started by Jeff & Jason’s father (John Davidson) back in 1986, primarily focuses on truck collision repair and paint, and is located in the small town of Cotati, just north of San Francisco.
Jeff & Jason grew up around trucks and the shop, but were never truck drivers – in fact, neither of them have ever even had a CDL. After graduating from high school, Jeff (39) went to work for his dad, and then his younger brother Jason (36) did the same thing a few years later. John retired in 1998 and moved up to Oregon, leaving the shop in Jeff & Jason’s hands. Four years ago the brothers bought their dad out and became the official owners of the business, which still focuses on collision repair, but the boys are now beginning to do welding and fabrication, as well. Looking to make a name for themselves in the world of custom truck building, Jeff & Jason were excited to tackle Mike’s latest project.
The 48-foot long transporter, which is a 1997 Dynastar race trailer featuring two levels and a hydraulic rear elevator door, was actually purchased and painted four years prior to the building of the truck that now pulls it. Jeff & Jason painted the base colors (Black and Sunset Pearl Metallic) and then Mike hired painter Steve Martinez to airbrush the Oriental Blue and Cobalt Blue flames on the trailer. The Davidson brothers then finished the job by doing all of the sanding and the clearcoating. Then, for the next couple of years, the trailer was pulled around with one of Mike’s simple, plain trucks.
Two years ago, Mike finally decided that it was time to build a nice truck, painted to match, to pull the trailer. He took a plain 1997 Peterbilt to John’s Truck Repair to have a few things done to it and to have it painted. Wanting it to match the trailer exactly, he again hired Steve Martinez to airbrush the flames and let Jeff & Jason do all the rest of the work. Jeff & Jason, who actually specialize in doing flames now, could have done all of the paint, but Mike wanted to be consistent. Once the project got started, as usual, it began to snowball. And once Mike decided to tear down the engine and completely redo everything under the hood, it was decided that the entire truck should be stripped down to the frame rails and completely refurbished and customized. The entire project took almost two years to complete, but as you can see in the photos on our cover and centerfold (and on these pages), the finished product is pretty amazing.
Some of the most obvious changes done to the exterior of Mike’s truck include the chopped roof, the shaved cab lights and air cleaners (the truck utilizes a custom K & N air intake system), custom aluminum body drop panels and, of course, the paint. Upon further inspection, you notice the immaculate interior, the super-clean engine, and the fact that there is no way to put fuel in the tanks. Truth is, the fuel tanks are just “dummies” – the real fuel tanks (there are two of them which are plumbed together) are mounted underneath the deck plate, between the frame rails, and then there is a hidden “gas cap” compartment up on top of the one-piece steel deck plate. But that is only the beginning.
The daycab truck, which has a 255-inch wheelbase, also has many smaller, hard-to-see details such as handmade billet aluminum lug nut covers and hubs, a true boltless bumper that was made from scratch, custom step accents and fender trim on the bottom of the front fenders (which were extended), steel full fenders with custom brackets and a custom rear tail plate with handmade taillights. There are hardly any visible bolts on this truck – and the ones that you can see have been ground smooth and then either polished or painted. Along with the dummy fuel tanks, the air tanks are strapless, and there is no visible hardware on the battery step boxes. Everything underneath the truck has been polished or painted, including the driveshaft, and the 8-inch exhaust is chrome from the turbo to the top of the pipes. Up front, the truck has a billet grille with horizontal bars, round headlights, chopped and painted mirrors and a painted visor. The guys also shaved the Peterbilt logo from the grille surround and filled in the holes.
When you roll open the hood, you reveal an engine compartment that is just as clean and spectacular as the rest of the truck. The engine, which was the last Caterpillar 3406C to ever come off the production line, has been painted and many parts have been polished or chromed. Painting the motor was difficult because the Sunset Pearl Metallic (orange) is a three-stage paint that starts with a white base, then six coats of color are applied, and then the clear is added. The brothers worked hard to make sure that all of the paint, throughout the truck and trailer, matched perfectly (not an easy task). Before the engine was painted, every gasket and seal was replaced to ensure that they wouldn’t have any oil leaks. Chromed or polished pieces under the hood include the steering column, fuel lines, oil pan, intake manifold, air-to-air, radiator end caps and support rods, air intake tubes, rocker covers, alternator, hood springs and more. Jeff & Jason also made their own air bag brackets and mounted them behind the front axle for more strength and stability – this truck, unlike many others out there with air bags on the front, can actually handle some weight and is very safe.
The interior work, which was mostly done by Bill & Ron at Kingpin Hot Rods, was made to emulate a Ferrari interior. Keeping it simple and elegant, the cab features a painted dash, a painted (black) steering wheel, a chopped steering column, and a custom overhead console that features several monitors, hidden behind smoked glass, for cameras that are mounted on the outside of the truck. A custom-made center console, built between the black leather and ostrich skin seats, features an embedded touch screen monitor that operates the 4,000-watt stereo, the navigation system and a DVD player (the monitor for the DVD player is mounted on the glove box door). The door panels and headliner are also covered in leather and ostrich skin.
The truck was completed in June of 2008 and, although it was not built to show, it made itsdebut atthe Great West Truck Show in Las Vegas, Nevada later that month. Mike built this truckto be a work truck for his racing team, but Jeff & Jason wanted to show it off a bit, so he let them take it to the show. Having never competed in a show before, they had no idea what they were up against. Not cleaning enough underneath the trailer proved to be their weak point, and they walked away with only a 4th place in the Limited Mileage Combo class. But everybody at the show agreed – if their trailer had been spotless, it would have been hard for anybody to beat them. The brothers redeemed themselves a few months later at a show in Pomona, taking Best of Show in the Limited Mileage Bobtail class.
Jeff & Jason are both married and each of them has two kids. Mike and his wife Monica have been married for almost 30 years, and Monica has been beside her husband, helping to build all of their businesses, since the beginning. Jeff & Jason logged some 3,000 hours working on this truck, and that 
does not include the time that Mike put into it, the airbrush artist or the guys at the hot rod shop. Jeff & Jason also wanted to thank the guys in their shop – Alex, Rick and Nate – who worked tremendously hard to get this project completed.
Mike is very happy at how the truck turned out but thinks his next project will be even better. Commenting on Jeff & Jason’s work, Mike said, “If this is their first attempt at building a custom truck, just imagine how good the second, third and fourth ones will be.” Now that Mike really knows what these young men can do, he can’t wait to start building his next truck. For Mike & Monica Salinas, the best is yet to come – and for Jeff & Jason Davidson, this hot rod Peterbilt is only the beginning. Stay tuned!