Discovery's 'Diesel Brothers' star Heavy D talks Mormon past

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'Diesel Brothers' star Heavy D talks Mormon past

Fox411: Star of Discovery Channel's 'Diesel Brothers' Heavy D spoke to Fox News about his Mormon mission, his love for the military, as well as his tips for upgrading that piece of junk in your garage

Heavy D and Diesel Dave are back and they’ve got loads of surprises for fans wondering what’s going on with Discovery Channel’s dynamic duo.

The custom vehicle builders and stars of “Diesel Brothers” have released a new book that shares personal stories behind their successful business, as well as no-nonsense advice on how anyone can get in on the action.

Heavy D spoke to Fox News about his Mormon mission, his love for the military, as well as his tips for upgrading that piece of junk in your garage:

Fox News: What inspired your book?
Heavy D: The massive amount of questions that we get on social media. My inbox alone, I get [up to] 400 messages a day from people… And you just can’t respond to every message. Otherwise we wouldn't have any time [for our business]. My inspiration was to tell people our story and give them the advice we have without having to worry about responding to every single request we get because it’s just not humanly possible. And it just snowballed from there.

Fox News: Before the show, both you and Diesel Dave completed a two-year Mormon mission in South America and Portugal. 
Heavy D: This is true! We come from Utah and the religion is predominately [Latter-day Saints] or Mormon. The kids grow up to be missionaries when they turn 19. The church just lowered the age and now the men go out when they’re 18. You basically get dropped in the middle of nowhere, knowing very little about where you’re going.

Coming from Utah, they can send us down to Arizona or they can send us all the way halfway across the world to Portugal… You just get dropped there and are told ‘Go do your best.’ Then you start helping people by teaching the Gospel and finding opportunities to grow yourself mentally. It was very cool. I think a lot of people don’t realize that’s our background and where we come from.

Fox News: You both are huge supporters of the American military for many reasons. How has your relationship with the military changed since the show launched?
Heavy D: It’s only gotten stronger. I mean we get a huge amount of support from servicemen and women. And we always look for opportunities to bend over backwards and do everything that we can for the military… We come from heavy military families. Both of our dads, grandpas, everybody served in some capacity. It’s kind of bittersweet to see the legacy kind of end with us because we didn’t serve.

Fox News: What advice would you give to someone who has a piece of junk in their garage?
Heavy D: Just look at everything as a blank canvas. Look at everything as what potentially can be done... Forget the what ifs.

Forget the risks. There is no risk. Risk is only as real as you let it be real. Just start the project. You need to make it yours. Do something that is custom to you. Do not listen to the haters. Do your thing and how you want it to be. That’s how we started our trucks. We’ve gotten a lot of love and a lot of hate for a lot of our different vehicles. But at the end of the day, they’re for us. And we’re building them how we want them to be.

Fox News: How can we find the best bargain in a junkyard?
Heavy D: The junkyard is not what it used to be. You don’t go out and wander miles and miles of broken-down cars. Most of it is online these days. You go to any of these big salvage websites and you type in what you’re looking for… It’s so sophisticated these days, you can literally search from your phone, find exactly what you need and pay pennies on the dollar.

Fox News: Is there anything we should look out for or even avoid?
Heavy D: Water damage… Flood damage is very difficult to fix.

Fox News: You guys were given the opportunity to participate in the legendary Mint 400. What does it take to stand out?
Heavy D: Preparation. We were given a week to get this thing ready. And I’m not talking about a TV week, which is really like 6-7 weeks. I’m talking about a real-life week. I’m talking about working round the clock in the shop on a truck that had never been driven before… Our team, we probably had 15 guys... So when we got down there, we definitely stood out.

And honestly, we didn’t make it far in the race, but that doesn’t matter. The whole goal was to get down there and hit that starting line. We had a weird little mechanical issue... We got that fixed and got back on the track... And issues that you would expect from an untested truck eventually took us out of the race, but it was the coolest experience in the world. Mint 400 is such a prestigious race and it’s such a unique culture that I think a lot of people don’t even realize exists in the states.

Fox News: ‘Diesel Brothers’ also features plenty of pranks.
Heavy D: We’re currently in the process of still filming our new season. I don’t even know if [some of our pranks] are going to make it this season or not.

We love to play hide and go seek with other people’s vehicles. We’ll take some of the trucks and hide them on top of shipping containers. I think like 67 percent of the stuff we do doesn’t make it to air, but we do a lot of crazy stuff… Maybe the ‘do not try this at home’ disclaimer isn’t strong enough.’

Fox News: You guys managed to work with Chuck Norris. However, if you had the opportunity to work with any other celebrity, who would it be and why?
Heavy D: I’d love to do something with The Rock. Only because that guy is awesome. I think we can do something fun for him. Ultimately, we can build him anything.

A new season of "Diesel Brothers" premieres September 4 on Discovery.