Moonshine Returns: A Fully Built 2005 LLY Duramax

The Comeback Story Of A Lifetime

At first glance, you’d probably never know this 2005 Chevy 2500HD was once written off as too far gone. The paint is clean, the engine bay is properly done, custom powdercoat is everywhere, and the truck has the kind of presence that makes people stop and ask questions. But that’s the funny thing about a good rebuild. If it’s done right, you don’t see the late nights, the broken parts, the missed shows, or the moments where the owner almost talked himself into giving up. You just see the finished truck sitting there like it was always supposed to look this way.

That’s not how this one happened.

Martin’s 2005 LLY Duramax, better known online as Moonshine, has been through a little bit of everything. It started as a Midwest farm truck with the usual GMT800 rust, became a camper-pulling daily, turned into a UCC-inspired street build, got wrecked hard enough that most people told him to part it out, came back better than before, disappeared again after mechanical failures, and finally returned at UCC 2026 after nearly three years away from the public eye.

From the beginning, this one was destined to be a great story. In fact, you could say that the truck found Martin more than Martin found the truck. He was at his cousin’s graduation party when he spotted it sitting outside. As he was leaving, he walked back in and asked who owned it. At first, the owner didn’t want to sell. Two days later, he reached back out and asked if Martin was serious. He was.

That was June 10, 2020. At the time, the truck was in fair condition. It was a farm truck, which is a polite way of saying it had seen some life and had all the normal Midwest GMT800 rust trying to come along for the ride. Martin didn’t buy it with some massive plan in mind. He bought it to drive, enjoy, and pull his camper. And then, like many of us, he went to Ultimate Callout Challenge in 2021 and came back with a whole new plan.

As it has done to plenty of people, UCC immediately started making bad financial decisions look reasonable. After that trip, Martin wanted more than a daily driver. He wanted a fun, 700-horsepower street truck. What started with the usual new-truck stuff like tint, subs, headlights, and wheels quickly turned into something much deeper once the head gaskets decided they’d had enough.

In January of 2021, the truck was parked, and the parts buying began. Originally, the plan was simple: head gaskets and studs. That plan lasted about as long as most “simple” diesel projects do. Before long, it became a complete top-end build with a new turbo, new pump, injectors, and supporting parts. By April, the truck was at Phantom Diesel Performance for the motor work, and by July, it was back together with some bodywork, a new hood, cab lights, and 20x14s.

For a little while, things were moving in the right direction. Then in November of 2021, a deer ran into the side of the bed. Martin started looking for a clean replacement, pulled the plastic accents for paint work, and by December had found a rust-free bed that needed some attention but had the bones he needed. Heading into January 2022, the plan was to build the transmission, finish the bed, paint the accents, and keep pushing.

Then January 18 happened. On his way home from work around 8:30 p.m., Martin came up on a parked car in the road. The driver had run out of gas, turned off all of the lights, including the hazards, and walked to a gas station. A conservation officer was responding to the call and pulled into a driveway near the vehicle. As Martin approached, the officer began backing up. Martin checked to make sure the officer wasn’t backing into the road, and when he turned his attention forward again, he hit the parked car. The collision was violent, with the truck taking the majority of the hit. The impact was so strong the passenger wheel was ripped clean off the truck.

Martin walked away untouched, which is the important part. But the truck looked bad. Bad enough that when people started asking what he was going to do with it, a lot of them assumed the answer would be to part it out and move on. Martin wasn’t sure at first, either. He knew he was buying it back, even if it only meant parting it out himself. Then Cody Hamm said something that stuck with him: it’s the rebuilds and comeback stories that stand out from everyone else in the truck scene, and that was enough to decide the truck’s fate once and for all.

From there, Martin decided the truck was coming back. Not sort of back. Not just patched together. But back, better than it had been before. He found a rust-free bed in the same color for a steal, picked it up that night, and got to work. His friends Logan, Grant, and Kevin Blades opened their barn, lift, tools, and time to help tear the truck down and put it back together. Once everything was apart, the parts went to Austin Engel at A.E. Concepts for powdercoat. Control arms, tie rods, brake calipers, rotors, and just about everything else that could be coated got cleaned up and finished properly.

By March 20, 2022, two months after the accident, the truck was back on all four wheels and running for the first time since the wreck. From there, it went to the body shop, where the frame was checked, squared up, and cleaned. The rockers and cab corners were replaced, the frame was painted inside and out, and the body was brought back into shape with UCC circled on the calendar.

Martin got the truck back from the body shop on May 29. That left him four days to put it completely back together for UCC 2022. Four days is not a lot of time to reassemble a truck, especially one that had been through what this one had. But he did what every stubborn truck owner with a deadline does. He stayed up too late, slept too little, worked every spare minute, and somehow loaded the truck up Friday evening to head to the show.  He made it.

That first version after the rebuild would’ve been enough for most people. But Moonshine kept changing. One of the biggest visual gambles was painting the accents gloss black. Martin didn’t like the way this color looked fully paint-matched, and he wanted the truck to stand apart without going overboard. A few people thought he was nuts. Even he wasn’t completely sure how it would turn out. Once it came together, though, the gamble worked.

After that, the truck started leaning harder into performance. Martin went non-VGT and hunted down a discontinued HSP S400 kit, eventually finding one in Michigan. The old 66 mm turbo was sold, a Stainless Diesel five-blade S468 was ordered, and the 2023 season brought a full engine bay makeover with powdercoated fuel lines, fuel rails, brackets, and a custom fan shroud.

Of course, more air tends to find the next weak link. Three weeks after getting home from Blake Fitzgerald’s show, the S468 hurt the stock transmission. Moonshine limped around for a bit, even making it to the Useless Memorial Truck Meet to pay respect, but the transmission fully gave up on the way home. With UCC 2023 closing in, Martin had it rebuilt, worked with RevMax on billet parts, powdercoated the transmission to match the truck, and installed it the night before leaving for UCC. He finished around 4 a.m. because apparently this truck doesn’t believe in normal deadlines.

The rest of 2023 went well until Beans Diesel in October, when Martin leaned on it a little and hurt the transmission again. Going into 2024, the plan was just to fix the trans. As usual, the plan didn’t stay that small.

That’s when the build hit one of its hardest stretches. The truck fired up with a fuel knock, wiring issues showed themselves, and Martin decided it was finally time to do the full wire tuck. For months, shows came and went while the truck sat apart. The issue eventually came down to a bad number seven injector pigtail, but by then the truck was stripped, the clock was ticking, and UCC 2024 was right around the corner.

That’s when a friend, known online as Mr. Wild Goose Repair, came down to help get the truck back together. After a massive push, they got it loaded and headed toward the show. Fourteen miles into the trip, the cam pin failed. The truck was dead again.

After UCC had come and gone, Martin tore the engine down and confirmed the cam pin failure. Slowly, he started buying parts. In April of 2025, the bottom end went to the shop. On May 6, he picked up the short block and assembled the rest himself. The engine went into the truck on May 15 after late nights, parts runs across the state, and more than a few things being done twice.

When it fired, there was no oil pressure. Thankfully, it only ran for a few seconds and had plenty of assembly lube in it. After thinking through it, Martin realized he had missed an O-ring on the back of the oil pump. He tore back into it, fixed the issue, and got it back together, only to deal with an oil leak from the upper pan and girdle area. At that point, he made the call that the truck wasn’t going to make UCC 2025.

Motivation disappeared for a while. That’s the part people don’t always talk about with builds like this. It’s easy to look at the finished truck and talk about horsepower, powdercoat, and clean wiring. It’s harder to talk about the months when you don’t even want to look at it. Martin had those months. The truck had fought him over and over again, and there were times he thought it was a lost cause. He even posted it for sale at one point. Thankfully, friends kept pushing him. By November of 2025, he fixed the small issues, handled the oil leak, and got the truck back together again.

The current version is the biggest and cleanest yet. The LLY now runs a fully built motor with a Callies crank and rods, Mahle .020-over de-lipped pistons, a stage one cam, Wagler billet mains and dual-valve springs, a half-inch girdle, ARP main and head studs, SoCal chromoly pushrods, custom head work, and DHD high-rpm oil and water pumps. Air comes from a Stainless Diesel five-blade S480/93/1.0 through the HSP S400 kit, with fuel supplied by S&S 300% over injectors, an S&S high-speed 14 mm CP3, a FASS 290 pump, AN-8 feed and -6 return lines, a PPE race fuel valve, and ported fuel fittings.

Behind it is a billet five-speed transmission and a Randy’s transmission cooler. The truck also wears HSP 75-inch traction bars, HSP manifolds and up-pipes, an MBRP five-inch exhaust powdercoated gloss black, a Mishimoto intercooler, custom radiator and fan shrouds, HSP billet valve covers, a PPE firewall blanket, billet caps, custom covers, and enough powdercoat to make the undercarriage look as intentional as the paint.

The engine bay is Martin’s favorite part, and it’s easy to see why. Anyone can make a truck fast or clean on the outside, but getting the engine bay this tight takes a different level of patience. Martin is particular about it, too. He’ll move a wire over and over until it sits exactly the way he wants. That level of detail is what makes Moonshine feel finished instead of just assembled.

After nearly three years away from shows, the truck finally made it back to UCC 2026. For Martin, seeing people remember the truck after all that time was one of the best parts. People were impressed from the start, but when they saw photos of how bad it looked after the accident, the reaction changed. Suddenly, they weren’t just looking at a clean LLY. They were looking at everything it took to get it there.

That’s really the story of Moonshine. It’s not just a parts list, even though the parts list is serious. It’s a truck that taught its owner nearly everything he knows mechanically. When Martin bought it, he barely knew how to change oil and headlight bulbs. Through YouTube, research, friends, mistakes, and stubbornness, he learned diesel performance, wiring, fabrication, assembly, and patience. Maybe most importantly, though, he learned not to skip the small stuff.

Today, the truck is a fun-day driver, a show truck, and the kind of build that proves how far someone can go when they refuse to let the project win. Martin’s plan is to enjoy the truck for the rest of the year, then start working on the frame and interior this winter. Like any real project, it’ll probably never be done. He’ll say it is, then immediately find five things he wants to redo. After all, that’s how these things work.

Martin wants to thank everyone who helped bring the truck back, along with the companies that supported the build, including HSP Diesel, Stainless Diesel, FASS, RevMax, and Randy’s Transmission. You can follow the truck and what comes next on Instagram at @moonshine_martin.

If there’s a takeaway from this build, it’s a pretty simple one: dreams only die if you let them. This truck was wrecked, torn apart, sidelined, broken again, nearly sold, and still somehow made it back. Not because it was easy, and definitely not because it went according to plan. But it made it back because Martin kept going.

Photos by ARKHIVE Media