(By Greg Rourke) – We see cool project cars on BangShift every day. What we don’t often see is the cool way some of these cars get hauled around.
Here we have a guy who looked at a truck most truckers, yours truly included, were happy to see fade into history. He decided it would suit his needs with a few minor mods. Oh, and a whole bunch of major mods. A chopped and channeled 1971 Mack R Model.
The early R Models weren’t known for interior room. The cabs were phone booth like (younger readers, a phone booth is where we used to make calls when we weren’t at home, where the phone was securely screwed to the wall in the kitchen) , but the later ones had the rear wall of the cab moved back about 6 inches. At 6’1, I couldn’t inflate the air seat without hitting my head on the roof. So chopping three inches and channeling five wasn’t my idea of a good time, but this guy makes it work, the results speak for themselves. He’s obviously a master fabricator, indicated by the fuel tanks he snagged from reefer trailers and cut steps into, plus the seamless chop job. He’s added a 60 inch sleeper and an air ride rear from a Freightliner. A low mileage Mack powerplant backed by an Allison automatic were pulled from a fire truck. Highway gears in the rear gives him some speed and fuel mileage the original Mack could never hope for. He built a custom bed to drag around his toy hauler trailer, and off he goes.
Sure, he could have taken out a second mortgage on the family homestead and bought a brand new crew cab dually pick-em-up truck, but this gets the job done with a little more style, yeah?
