The Legend of IV

For a monster truck connoisseur, trying to tell the tale of BIGFOOT #4 is not exactly the easiest of tasks; while at first it looks to be a simple job for even the most novice of storytellers, further examination reveals that it is not quite a walk in the park.  While a great bulk of the truck’s on-track history is easily accessible via home videos, YouTube and fan websites, the reality of the situation is that many details surrounding the truck’s construction, early life, and non-televised accomplishments have been a mystery for literally decades.

By the time BIGFOOT #4 arrived on the scene (not even a year after #3), the four wheel drive press had already begun to grow accustomed to the trend of  new BIGFOOT trucks being constructed, and for them it wasn’t something fit for a cover story anymore (at least not until years later).  To the layman, #4 looked too similar to #3 to merit such fawning attention, especially considering the fact that #3 had so recently dominated the cover of at least three magazines.  Consequently, the magazines all but omitted the ground-breaking technical changes that had been incorporated into the new truck, and subsequently missed out on the “See, we told you so!” factor when the truck proved itself an amazingly potent performer.  This history of the truck is the culmination of quite literally months of research, archive recovery, and interviews in hopes of establishing the most detailed, accurate portrait to date of this legendary machine.

For an individual truck, the list of adjectives that can be used to describe BIGFOOT #4 are almost innumerable.   BIGFOOT #4 was ground-breaking, innovative, savvy, aggressive, highly effective, seemingly indefatigable, immensely popular, overpoweringly cool, and wildly over-the-top on-track.  BIGFOOT #1 might be the grand-daddy of ‘em all, but in many ways BIGFOOT #4 by all rights truly earned the title “King of the Monster Trucks”.

Few (if any) other monster trucks can claim to have a cult of personality such as that attributed to BIGFOOT #4.  BIGFOOT #1 is certainly the most famous of the ‘Feet, but BIGFOOT #4 took the team’s torch and ran with it into areas previously uncharted, and in many cases simply never before dreamt of.  With a career spanning over two decades and a history of legendary toughness that has given the truck an almost mythical status among hard-core fans, BIGFOOT #4 is in many ways just as important to the BIGFOOT story as any other truck in the fleet.

Doing More with Four

The creation of BIGFOOT #4 was spurred on not only by the ever-increasing demand for BIGFOOT trucks to appear all over North America, but also by the team’s desire to built the toughest, most-capable truck yet.  Hill-climbing prowess and mud bog-blasting capability were less important to Chandler and Co. during the design and construction of #4; rather, the ability to withstand the increasingly more brutal world of car crushing exhibitions and sled pulls was put at the top of the list for the new machine.

It was obvious that a new approach would be required to make this vision a reality.  The first three BIGFOOT trucks were remarkably strong relatively speaking, but it had become painfully clear that this first generation of monster truck wasn’t going to be strong enough to keep up with the rapidly evolving forms of competitions that promoters were devising, and with the competition itself.  By this point many monster builders were no slouches; quite the opposite in fact.  Trucks like Taurus, Bearfoot, Excaliber, Virginia Giant, and Awesome Kong were upping the ante at ever turn of the tire, forcing the BIGFOOT team to reexamine just exactly what was needed to make a monster truck truly competitive.  But by the time BIGFOOT #4 debuted, the truck was not only competitive, but it was virtually dominant.

Although BIGFOOT #4 was drastically different from its three elder brethren in many ways, perhaps the most important of those differences was the approach the team took to creating the frame for the new beast.  While the first three BIGFOOT trucks utilized stock F-250 pickup truck frames as the basis for their construction, #4 would instead utilize a heavy duty straight-rail frame sourced from a heavy industrial/vocational truck.  Using a heavy frame design not only saved the team time by eliminating the need to modify and reinforce a relatively weak light truck frame, but it allowed them to mount various chassis components, cross members and other accessories wherever they pleased, as opposed to being at the mercy of factory frame restrictions.

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Some changes were definitely in order for BIGFOOT #4’s running gear as well, changes that would help lead to its drastically improved level of performance over prior BIGFOOT trucks, and over that of its competition as well.  While the truck would continue the tradition of using the tried and true 5-ton Rockwell military axle as its foundation, the factory steering knuckles and non-planetary outers would end up getting torched off and tossed in the scrap bin, in exchange for something right out of the Gold’s Gym Truck Parts catalog:  Rockwell planetary ends.   These Rockwell planetary outers and the heavier-duty steering knuckles that went with them would not only take a great deal of strain off the truck’s internal axle components (namely axle shafts), but it would also allow the truck to absorb a great deal more punishment without fear of breaking knuckles or spindles.  Stopping power was provided by enormous (and enormously heavy) Rockwell drum brakes mounted at each hub, which would eventually be replaced by disc-type pinion brakes towards the end of the 1980’s.

Moving on up the drive train ladder, #4 would begin its life using the same 2 ½-ton International Harvester 2-speed transfer case and built-up C6 transmission found in previous BIGFOOT models, along with virtually the same 460ci Ford V8 bored .030 over, supercharged on race gas fed by dual Predator carburetors.  With a solid 800hp, a near-bulletproof drive train, and an axle combination strong enough to make a heavy crane operator jealous, #4 was shaping up to be a beast mean enough to scare Godzilla and Tokyo at the same time.

Boing, Boing, Boing

A plush ride and indelible road manners were not to be found in the first three BIGFOOT trucks and….well….such would not be the case with #4 either.  Relatively speaking, however, the truck enjoyed one of the better working suspensions when compared to many of its contemporaries, especially at the time of its debut in 1985 (later suspension modifications will be addressed later.) 
Initially #4 was equipped with heavy-duty, custom-arched leaf spring packs at each corner.  Verbiage in the press at the time of the build refers to the springs as “researched leaf spring packs”, which one can only assume means the team did enough looking around at other monster trucks (and at their own existing ones) to realize that highly-arched, U-shaped leaf spring packs yielded vary little in the way of suspension travel.  To help dampen these mighty packs of leafs, #4 relied upon four gas charged shock absorbers per corner, for a grand total of 16.  That may sound like an excessive amount of shocks considering today’s monster trucks employ half that number or less, but at the time #4’s suspension design was, at least visually, quite minimalistic compared to some of the competition’s rides, which featured in some cases eight or more shocks per corner.

BIGFOOT #4, like its predecessors, relied upon a non-articulated link bar mounted on the bottom of each frame rail running down to the rear axle to help with stability.  This link bar allowed the rear leaf springs to move through their natural arc while still serving to keep the axle firmly located with regards to fore/aft and side-to-side movement.  Also like prior trucks in the family, #4 debuted with hydraulic “strut bars” connecting the front axle to the frame for additional support.  Consisting of nothing more than a rectangular tubing link bark with a constant-bypass hydraulic cylinder spliced into the middle, the strut bar allowed the front leafs to move through their natural arc, while still providing enough resistance to maintain proper axle location.

Tire and wheel selection for #4, at least initially, consisted of a standard set of full-cleat 66” tires mounted on white steel split-rims, with the split ring mounted to the inside for safety’s sake, although as time progressed the truck would be one of the first BIGFOOT machines to use one-piece wheels and hand-cut tires in the name of saving weight.

Available in any color, so long as it is blue.

As one would expect, BIGFOOT #4 made its debut wearing a traditional all-blue paint job, complete with Dan Patterson’s requisite hand-painted logo and cartoon truck artwork.  Like #3, #4’s sheet metal bodywork was that of a ’80-86 F-250, although #4 would show its hard-working “blue collar” roots right off the bat by eschewing any of the chrome bells and whistles that #3 is often remembered for. 

As legendary BIGFOOT driver (and the first driver of #4) Jim Kramer put it: “Let’s be honest, #3 was a show truck.  It was a show boat.  A sponsor truck.  We knew Ford wanted to use the truck in a lot of advertising, so we hung a bunch of chrome on it and detailed it so it looked really nice.  That wasn’t #4.  We built #4 to be tougher and to do more, so we skipped the chrome stuff.  At that point we were tired of knocking the fiberglass fender flares off of #1 and #2 crushing cars, and we’d gotten into the body some on #3 so on #4 we opened up the fender wells more.”

The limited chrome found on BIGFOOT #4 in its early years came in the form of chromed front and rear bumpers and a double-hoop light bar, topped with the requisite five KC lights.  Although this look would last less than two years before the 1987 body change, which saw the truck being re-bodied, it remains one of the most iconic looks in the history of the team.