Pickups are, in principle, supposed to go off-road half their lives. Watch the average commercial and you’ll get the sense that pickups are owned by men, manly men with dusty work gloves – men who are definitely honest despite working in construction, a notoriously corrupt sector, and longtime Mafia cash cow. In truth, most pickups are only that big in order to keep pace with the crash safety arms race and will never see the business end of any dirt road an FWD Corolla couldn’t handle.
Thankfully, there is a variety of sports pickup – the “trophy truck” – that is intended to be an unstoppable off-road machine. The trophy truck class was invented in 1994 as an unlimited off-road class. Granted, a trophy truck’s ability to “pick up” anything at all is completely absent, but these are racers. Besides, they usually pack a spare tire and some gas cans back there.
Trophy trucks are built with the aim of being the ultimate off-roaders, and it shows.
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The Toughest Engines on Earth
There has historically been some debate about what determines the most difficult kind of engine to build. Engine Builder Magazine suggests that the previous champion was the mills fitted to offshore powerboats. These are engines that are constantly tilting along the X, Y, and Z axes, propellers lunging in and out of the water, all while viciously bouncing up and down like a kangaroo on PCP. Add that to the sheer power demands and you have a very difficult piece of machinery to keep running.
However, trophy truck engines might just beat them out. These days, they can displace over 9 liters and make anywhere from 700 to 1000+ hp – many of them naturally aspirated, no less! Trophy truck engines need to make a lot of torque, and they need to make it across a very broad power band because of the wide variety of speeds you might hit in a race: anything from rock crawling to doing 140mph down a wadi.
All that power makes them very thirsty for air, and many of the courses they run (most notably the infamous Baja races) are absolutely choked with dust, which demands high-quality filtering. Virtually every part of the engine ends up tuned even if there’s a mass-produced crate engine serving as the base. The engines also need to be able to run on full throttle for hours, which also necessitates massive 60-100-gallon fuel tanks to compensate for the 2-3 mpg they manage.
Shocks and Awe
Trophy truck suspension is the stuff of legends. It has to be when you’re in a race with ruts up to four feet deep. Generally, there are two shocks up to 5.25 inches thick on each wheel; many combine a coilover and a bypass shock. The springs can get at least two feet up to nearly a meter of travel, complemented by huge 37-40 inch tires that can weigh up to 100 lbs due to their reinforced sidewalls. Off-Road Xtreme explains in detail: “most utilize an A-arm suspension system on the front of the truck, and a three or four- link system with a solid axle in the rear. There are chassis available that employ various types of independent rear suspension systems, but the four-link systems seem to be the norm.”
The tech behind the suspension is always improving. In 2013, for example, one of the main issues was keeping the shock oil’s temperature low to avoid decreasing the viscosity. Four Wheeler elaborates how suspension companies Fox and King went about this in different ways. Fox’s had an additional heat sink and built it so that “as the shock works harder and goes through its stroke faster, the more fluid is pumped through the system”, claiming to reduce temperatures by up to 100 F. King’s involved some simple calculus; their shock oil reservoir is “heavily finned” (i.e., star-shaped) to increase the surface area exposed to cool outside air.
Nonsensical Sensibilities
As advanced as trophy trucks get, there are a number of ways in which the optimal build flies in the face of conventional wisdom. Generally, for a vehicle with this huge amount of horsepower on rough terrain you want all-wheel drive (AWD) for grip and acceleration, you want a state-of-the art transmission to handle the power, and you want to shed weight wherever you can. None of these things are a given for trophy trucks.
Interestingly, it’s because of the suspension that most trophy trucks are not in fact all-wheel drive. Even now, they tend to be rear-wheel drive despite the intense demands of the terrain. It was only as recently as 2016 that an AWD trophy truck (by Geiser Brothers) actually nabbed first place at Best In The Desert Parker 400. Generally AWD platforms can’t handle the suspension travel or the abuse that the terrain forks out.
The power isn’t being filtered through some eight-speed paddle-shifted doppelkupplungsgetriebe either. Quite the opposite. Trophy trucks have mostly used GM’s ancient TH400 automatic – a three-speed transmission that debuted in 1964 – or Ford’s slightly less aged E4OD four-speed automatic dating back to 1989, because they're the only boxes that are tough enough. It was only in 2013 that Robby Gordon won the Baja 500 race with a six-speed sequential Albins ST6-I transmission.
Trophy trucks are heavy. Jimco’s 2012 R&D Motorsports truck was just under 5400 lbs, and that’s considered very light. They can weigh up to 7000 lbs (with a 60/40 weight distribution) and it’s very intentional. A lighter truck would get zero grip on the bumpy surfaces, bounce merrily along and hurtle into a gulch the moment it got any momentum.
…And They Just Keep Going
Trophy truck tech is a juggling act in some ways. The fact that the individual parts are getting larger to enable higher speeds means more surface area for dust to accumulate – and more surface area that needs to be cooled. Still, there are some marked improvements. More advanced electrical modules have made them much less complex, and the advent of extremely tough, bright and compact LEDs is promising. We look forward to seeing what milestones the trophy truck will reach next.
Sources: Engine Builder, The Drive, DriveTribe, Off Road Xtreme, History Garage, FastR, Moto Networks, Four Wheeler, Industrial Metal Supply Company, Gotham Center For New York City History, World Economic Forum
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