Okay, here's the nutshell history...
When 40" tires first came out, Eric built a 3/4 ton Chevy 4x4 and lifted it and add the 40" Super Swampers. He was the first guy in our town to have 40" tires and our town was filled with 4x4 trucks along with motorheads from every walk of life. It wasn't soon after that everyone started lifting their trucks and adding 40" tall tires.
Eric's not one to be bested so instead of building a bigger truck and getting the next biggest tire to come onto the market, (44" I think), he went to this truck wrecking yard just outside of Eugene, Oregon and bought some
5-Ton, Korean War era military running gear and with my help doing the grunt work of disassembling and cleaning parts, he rebuilt everything and welded up the gears to make both the front and rear ends solid posi-track.
He welded up his own 4" square tube ladder bar frame, and added the military springs and spring mounts, all in a way to maximize ground clearance for optimized travel through mud. He also welded up his own stainless steel gas tank, roll bar, front and rear bumpers as well as fabricated his own shifters out of solid tube stainless steel. Added a 454 built by Tim Briggs who is a recognized high performance engine builder in Oregon. (Tim also built both Eric's drag boat engine and my drag boat engine as well as multiple big block Chevy engines for us over the years, he's still in business and very good at his craft).
That's the nutshell version... the longer version includes incidents with police from the neighbors as we ran arc welders late into the night while building it and other things that are best left forgotten.
After it was road ready, he bolted some bucket style headlights off some old car from the 1930's to the bottom of the custom front bumper to meet the 52" headlight law in Oregon. Most of the time he ran straight headers with cut-outs and when the environment demanded, bypassed to some hollow muffles to get by the law. Eric was a welder since high school and didn't have perfect hearing so he was never bothered by the noise and in fact liked it really loud.
This became our nightly cruiser which also led to all kinds of incidents that will also go untold in this venue....
Anyway, there are two reservoirs just above Sweethome, Oregon, about 40 miles towards Bend, Oregon from where we lived in Albany, Oregon and every year they drain the reservoirs in preparation for the snow/water run-off. These would be Foster Reservoir and Green Peter Reservoir. These are also the lakes Eric, Jim, Richard and I would take our V-Drive Drag Boats and ruin all the quiet fun for everyone else.
Once a year, the local 4x4 club would hold the
"Foster Mud Flat Races" where on a chunk of the lake bed they would set up an 1/8th mile section for guys to race their trucks or whatever they could get across the finish line. This was a blast to watch all by itself but it's also something we never did as we had more fun driving through the mud bogs and slinging mud on people and trucks. No one left this place clean, and most people left with something broken or missing.
There was no legal controlling authority involved and as you can guess adult beverages were the refreshment of choice amongst the hundreds of people that descended upon the empty lake once a year.
Eric of course being the metal head that he is welds like a mad man and nothing he makes ever breaks. It just doesn't happen. Such is the case for his bumpers and in the specific case of the rear bumper he fabricated up some kind of heavy duty clasp using components borrowed from the logging industry, (Sweethome and many of the surrounding areas are logging communities), and then attached the biggest, strongest chain that most of us mortal human beings can lug back and forth between trucks and as the nice guy that he is, he would drive around and offer to pull people out that had gotten their rigs stuck in the mud.
Here's what he would tell the owner of said stuck trucks...
"Attach the end of this chain to something that won't pull off. Because either your truck is coming out of the mud or whatever you attach the chain to is coming off the truck"Needless to say, he pulled a lot of bumpers other things like front core supports etc., off stuck trucks... and everyone around would have a good laugh as the owner would look stupid and then after picking up the pieces find a better place to attach the chain.
Never had so much fun in my life as riding around in the back of that truck, watching Eric lighting up all 4 tires and shooting rooster tails of mud 30 and 40 feet into the air, completely covering trucks in mud and then kindly going back to pull them out.
Yep... he's a swell guy...
I met Eric my senior year in high school in Metal Shop. He was Teacher's Aid and I was only taking the class to fill out some credits and kill some time, anyway, Eric introduced me to this thing called the "Big Block Chevy" in his 1966 Lemans and his 1970 Sanger Drag boat that I later bought and that's how I met Eric and got into big block Chevy's, drag boats and monster trucks. Way too many stories surrounding Eric that must never be shared, (well maybe
Rat Cannon someday).
Part of the deal Eric made with me was that if I helped him build his truck, he would help me build my truck and that's where "Big Blue" came from.
So in the pictures below you'll see Eric's truck in it's first incarnation where it's primer black and my 1971 3/4 Chevy with the hardtop still on it, (later I cut the top off as I'm kind of a convertible guy and had a half-cab soft top made for it). Later, I took a job where I was taking clients out to lunch in my big Chevy and driving it from Seaside, Oregon to Seattle, Washington at about 10 miles per gallon so I made one of the biggest mistakes of my life and sold Big Blue and bought an all original 1969 CST K5 Blazer. This worked out better for my job and in the picture you'll see the stock, white wheels with like H-78-15 Mud/Snow tires on it being towered over by Eric's and Little Joe's trucks.
Oh yeah...
"Little Joe"...After Eric built his truck, it inspired another local motorhead we all called "Little Joe", I don't know why we called him Little Joe because he was big and as strong as an Ox. He was also a great welder/fabricator. Anyway, after Eric built his truck it so inspired Little Joe that he decided to build his own. He asked Eric if he could copy his design and Eric being the swell guy that he is said,
"Sure, let me know if you need any help"For a few months, while at Eric's welding Shop,
"Albany Specialties", (Eric builds Poop Machines, well at least that's the slang term for them, they're actually manure separator's for dairy farmers, that' another funny story an ties in with Rat Cannon), we would watch Little Joe come over, walk out to Eric's truck with a tape measure and a tablet of paper, take some measurements, eye things up, say hello and goodbye and leave.
Before we knew it, he was driving around his version of Eric's truck with a 427 Big Block Chevy with the absolute nuts built out of it only he used a 1967 Ford Body and built a tilt front end for the thing.
Now when the Foster Mud Flat Races came around there would be to swell guys covering people with mud and then kindly pulling them out...
Without further ado... heres some more pics...
My truck with 36" tall tires and at the time a 350/350 engine/tranny/tcase and Eric's truck was still running some old tractor tires in black primer.
Eric sitting under his truck, to the left is my 1965 Ford Step-side Bat Truck... (Don't ask)
To get into the driver's side, you simply grab the steering wheel with one hand, grab the arm rest with your other hand and then climb up the cleats of the tires.
Eric asking a guy if he needs help getting to solid ground. Often times people might not be stuck but unable to get back to dry ground and out of the way of the chaos.
Me with my front axle buried in mud with 44" Swampers... think I broke a stubby here...
Eric to the rescue...
Eric's truck and Little Joe's truck
Eric backing out of a bog... there was a place where there was like a gully or deeper tract of mud about 75 yards long that most guys would try to get across it, that was the
big deal, to see if your truck could go through the gully of mud and get across to the other side without getting stuck.
Eric would drive through it forward and backward and then go down the middle of it with the engine floored, all 4 tires spinning and throwing mud into the air and digging two trenches sure to get anyone stuck that tried to go across his tracks because their tires would fall into the ruts he would carve out and then they're really stuck. (Funny guy)
The year I sold Big Blue and went in my very clean 1969 K5, note how close I actually pulled up to the small rock...
yep... living on the edge...
The first year with the new paint job, instead of driving the truck up to the races on the street Eric build a big heavy duty trailer to haul it on just for logistics reasons and to avoid tickets for excessive noise as law enforcement officers would be on alert and pull anything over that even hinted of being illegal.
This is Eric Mauser
Some random shots I scanned...
More later if you want...
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