Bigfoot Looks Extremely Goofy on Regular-Sized Tires
Transporting the famous monster truck means changing its shoe size.
The Bigfoot 5 monster truck has some of the largest wheels and tires ever fitted to a vehicle. In fact, the 10-foot tall wheels are taken from an off-road, overland train. As a result, there are some impracticalities when it comes to moving the truck anywhere not under its own power. It's so massive that it can't just be driven onto a trailer when it needs to be transported—the huge Firestone Tundra tires have to be removed. That means fitting something else in their place so the truck can still drive around.
Not only does this process require a small crane, but it leaves the truck looking a bit silly afterward. Being designed for some of the largest wheels ever fitted to a vehicle, it doesn't exactly look right once normal wheels and tires are fitted, as a video on the Holley Facebook page shows us.
Removing the big wheels—while it does make the truck look odd—gives us a look at the truck's interesting underbody. We can see the massive differentials necessary to drive the 10-foot wheels and the big leaf springs working together with four separate shock absorbers per corner in order to provide suspension.
Despite these heavy-duty components, Bigfoot 5 is not overbuilt. When it was created, it was the tallest, widest and heaviest pickup truck in the world, tipping the scales between 28,000 and 38,000 pounds, depending on if the truck was running four or eight wheels in a "dually" configuration. In fact, the wheels and tires weigh 2,400 pounds by themselves, hence the wrecker truck needed to change them.
Built in 1986, Bigfoot 5 has been updated several times and is obviously still rolling around events to this day. Although it no longer has the largest rubber tires ever, it's nonetheless still impressive to see it riding more than 10-feet off the ground. That look is a bit compromised once the truck has to get shipped, but alas, monster trucks are meant to be ridiculous.
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