Once Johnny got into the act, the project began to take on a life of its own. "The owner brought the truck in and we started changing everything," Johnny noted. "We did the seats first. From there, I changed the exhaust from 4-inch to 5-inch stacks. Then I took off the 9-inch yellow visor and put on an 11-inch stainless steel visor." In addition, Rocky Mountain Cummins took out the old 5.9L 12-valve engine and put in a new 24-valve engine so the truck would pass Colorado emissions.
What happened next was totally unexpected. "By this time I was a good friend of the truck's owner and told him he should take the truck up to the Truck Fest show sponsored by Cummins," Johnny says. "He just said, 'No. But if you want to, you can.' I said, 'What?! Are you telling me I can take the truck by myself?' He said yes, gave me a key, and said, 'Have fun.' That Sunday, my wife and I took the truck up to the mountain and entered it as a big rig special interest. It won First Place!"
"We took the truck back to his house, and he asked how it went. I said, 'Good! It won First.' And he then said, 'Good-so people liked your truck.'
"I told him, 'No, they liked your truck.'
He asked, 'Why didn't you tell them that it is yours?' I told him that I know too many people, and I wasn't going to tell them it was mine."
OK, now this is the part that gets unreal. "He asked me for a dollar, so I gave him one," Johnny said. "Then he said, 'Now you own stock in the truck. Keep the key, and you can do anything you want with it.' I was blown away!"