YouTuber Gives Navy Officer’s F-150 a Total Refresh

Military officer will get to drive his F-150, which has new parts and a rejuvenated paint job and interior.

When people in the Armed Forces deploy, they leave behind a lot: their families, friends, pets, hobbies, the list goes on and on. Their vehicles are also on that list. A Navy officer named Nick got sent to Afghanistan and had to leave his 1996 Ford F-150 Eddie Bauer edition to gather dust. Luckily, Brian Eslick of the YouTube channel How To Automotive stepped in to give Nick’s truck a lot of much needed TLC to get it ready for him to drive when he returns home.

Eslick did more than just give it a wash and wax. He had to put the 4.9-liter straight-six engine back together so that Nick would get more than just a shiny paperweight once he got back to the states. According to Eslick, “Nick took it apart about four years ago and he was doing some work on it to get it to pass smog.” At the same time, he was going to school to become a nurse. Once Nick completed his education, he joined the Navy and was deployed to Afghanistan.

Eslick adds, “He had removed the intake manifold. He was changing out the … secondary air injection parts [that help the catalytic converter get up to an effective temperature] on it.” It was a challenging rebuild for many reasons, including the fact that Eslick wasn’t there when the I6 was originally dismantled and that he didn’t have a lot of experience working on Blue Oval power plants. But Eslick got the job done. He also put fresh fluids and filters in while he was at it. After all of that wrench turning, the engine still had a problem: It misfired. Eslick went back under the hood and changed the ignition wires, spark plugs, and distributor cap and rotor to get the big six running smoothly.

The F-150‘s interior was just as messy. One of the windows had been left open so every surface was covered in a thick layer of dust. The seats and carpets were stained with years of accumulated dirt.

Eslick attacked it with cleaning solutions, elbow grease, and even power tools and brought it back to its former glory.

There was plenty of dust on the outside, too. There were also a lot of stains and scratches on the single-stage paint. Instead of just giving Nick’s truck a good wash and calling it a day, he went through the trouble of wet-sanding the body, buffing it with a rough compound, polishing it, and washing it again.

Eslick went a step further and drove Nick’s F-150 until the “self-check monitors on the computer” ran and he was able to get it to pass its smog inspection – just what Nick was trying to get it to do in the first place. It’s nice to know that while Nick was serving in the Navy, someone was performing some service of their own on his behalf.

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Derek Shiekhi

Derek Shiekhi's father raised him on cars. As a boy, Derek accompanied his dad as he bought classics such as post-WWII GM trucks and early Ford Mustang convertibles.

After loving cars for years and getting a bachelor's degree in Business Management, Derek decided to get an associate degree in journalism. His networking put him in contact with the editor of the Austin-American Statesman newspaper, who hired him to write freelance about automotive culture and events in Austin, Texas in 2013. One particular story led to him getting a certificate for learning the foundations of road racing.

While watching TV with his parents one fateful evening, he saw a commercial that changed his life. In it, Jeep touted the Wrangler as the Texas Auto Writers Association's "SUV of Texas." Derek knew he had to join the organization if he was going to advance as an automotive writer. He joined the Texas Auto Writers Association (TAWA) in 2014 and was fortunate to meet several nice people who connected him to the representatives of several automakers and the people who could give him access to press vehicles (the first one he ever got the keys to was a Lexus LX 570). He's now a regular at TAWA's two main events: the Texas Auto Roundup in the spring and the Texas Truck Rodeo in the fall.

Over the past several years, Derek has learned how to drive off-road in various four-wheel-drive SUVs (he even camped out for two nights in a Land Rover), and driven around various tracks in hot hatches, muscle cars, and exotics. Several of his pieces, including his article about the 2015 Ford F-150 being crowned TAWA's 2014 "Truck of Texas" and his review of the Alfa Romeo 4C Spider, have won awards in TAWA's annual Excellence in Craft Competition. Last year, his JK Forum profile of Wagonmaster, a business that restores Jeep Wagoneers, won prizes in TAWA’s signature writing contest and its pickup- and SUV-focused Texas Truck Invitational.

In addition to writing for a variety of Internet Brands sites, including JK Forum and Ford Truck Enthusiasts, Derek also contributes to other outlets. He started There Will Be Cars on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube to get even more automotive content out to fellow enthusiasts.

He can be reached at autoeditors@internetbrands.com.

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