Beast from the East

 

There’s an old rodders’ saying that has made its way onto t shirts and bumper stickers over the years: “Built, not bought”.

It’s true of Hawkes Bay racer Shayne Huxtable’s all-new scaled-down Trophy Truck, which had its first offroad racing run-outs just before Covid 19 made the world look funny. In fact with the championship cancelled after the opening round, Huxtable can lay claim to being northern class 8 champion, having won class 8 at the only northern round. He’s no trophy hunter though, so he would hardly be happy with that.

Huxtable – just ‘Hux’ to mates and rivals – has been around offroad racing for almost a quarter century. He is a very capable engineer who has build or rejigged top-class offroad race cars and trucks over the years, creating ever-faster race vehicles as he went.

This time the truck is based on the big Trophy Trucks that race desert events in the USA and is a joint venture with mate Tony Rickard, who owns East Coast Powdercoaters.

So what is a Trophy Truck? These are the behemoths that star in the big Baja endurance races, enormously fast and massively strong two-seaters that shrug off anything the desert can throw at them. They are based on a tube chassis or spaceframe, have enormous suspension travel and engines making 750 or more BHP (560 kW) – and more importantly, mountains and mountains of torque. V8s producing 1000Nm are commonplace.

Like most US offroad racing truck classes, full detailed plans are available on the internet. What Hux has done is take the plans for the chassis at the heart of the class and reduce them in girth to create a truck that fits into New Zealand racing, where the tracks are narrower and often lined with unforgiving pine trees or fences.

In a two year process that started with a lads’ weekend away to watch a race, Hux has created a tough and sophisticated race vehicle that turns heads wherever it races.

“We got back from our weekend away and were thinking ‘that was great fun, maybe we should build another race truck so we have an excuse to go away more often’. So we did.”

Both men are perfectionists and the truck build reflects this. The finished truck will likely never actually be finished – already the body panels are being changed out, brackets modified, small tweaks made.

“We have built a Trophy Truck scaled down for New Zealand racing conditions, 300 mm narrower than the American trucks and 300 mm lower so it handles better. Now I’m thinking about a stadium setup that is even lower so we can really push it on short courses. Then we’ll just crank it back up for rougher stuff,” said Hux.

The truck’s immensely strong spaceframe chassis was created by Hux in-house. It and components like the suspension arms are made of steel from Bissalloy in Australia.

‘Built, not bought’ also extends to the drivetrain. Hux says the engine, for example, is ‘just some [Chev] LS stuff that was laying around the workshop’. But with a camshaft from Franklin Cams designed to maximise low-midrange torque, the 5.7-litre ‘hybrid’ LS engine has enough bottom end to make the truck jump off the rolling road dyno as the cam opens up.

“We didn’t really get good output figures from the dyno sessions, in fact the guy running the thing had never seen a torque profile quite like ours, so I’ve gone told people who ask that the power and torque are ‘enough’ – but we’re working on more power right now.”

When the engine lost compression at a Nelson endurance race after lockdown Hux diagnosed a blown head gasket.

“So I’m building a new engine.”

Next step down the drivetrain is a full-race ‘manualised’ Turbo 400 auto set up to Hux’s specification. Where others opt for a high-stall race setup, the truck runs low-stall, pairing the shift points with the engine’s torque profile.

“That makes it easy to get off the line and the trans itself is designed to handle 1000 BHP (745 kW) so it’s okay for now!”

He has also gone for massive trans coolers, knowing the enemy of any auto is heat.

The custom-built rear end is full race spec and runs a 5.8:1 Strange 10-inch diff head with 40-spline axles. The diff casing is – of course – powder coated. A four wheel drive style n ARB airlocker is activated from the gearshifter to give the big truck better drive out of corners. It is fed from an onboard air compressor and has been set up by Hux to be engaged under hard acceleration. Having an open diff allows him to also run wheel brakes, hitting the ‘lock’ button when coming out of corners.

The Hux driving style is spectacularly aggressive, and he has set the big truck to reward that technique.

The suspension is based around Fox 2.5-inch coil-over main shock units with separate King five-bypass dampers. There are ‘Yodaracing’ limit straps from Bryan Chang in Christchurch to give a soft ‘ending’ to the truck’s 20-inch front and 24-inch rear wheel travel.

Brakes are a mix of Wilwood rear calipers and strong Toyota Land Cruiser four pot fronts, though another change coming is to switch to Land Cruiser four pots all round. Race pads for these are readily available, as are parts and rebuild kits when needed.

Raceline beadlock alloy wheels are sourced through Hux’s cousin Glenn at US Procurements and the truck uses Goodride or Kumho tyres, switching out to hand-cut ‘prickle’ tyres in muddy short-course events.

Capping off the spec are ‘pumper’ helmets for both occupants to keep dust out of their faces and a race radio setup. Minimal tools are carried: a screwdriver and a Crescent spanner.

“if anything happens that I can’t fix with these tools I’m happier doing it after the race. We’re there to have fun after all.”