VROOM: The Monster crusher

It drives to crush nearly every obstacle on its path. It’s gigantic, supercharged, extraordinary – with an extra oomph for entertainment. Nothing more than the Big Foot MONSTER truck.

The Monster truck is designed in form of a pickup truck with gigantic tyres and oversized suspensions, and is a popular sports entertainment vehicle used in the monster truck show. The trucks, which star as main attraction in the popular American show, showcase a scenario where small obstacles – such as spoilt cars, school buses, motor homes, and others – lined up are crushed under its huge tyres.

The monster truck game show features as a single elimination drag race, where a particular laid out race course littered with obstacles is used. The pattern or type of race course is normally selected by the driver, while sometimes the game features two drivers racing against each other on symmetrical tracks. Other side attractions like stunts and skills are displayed with the trucks to entertain the crowd. Popular stunts showcased are the Donut style, Wheel stands and normal jumps.

Features

The monster truck is more of a scaled up four-wheel truck. It is built with huge “Tera” tyres normally used by fertiliser spreaders on farm settlements. Mostly, the tyres are measured at 66”x43”x 25” (HxWxD).

The trucks are built with tubular chassis and a four-like suspension. The engine comes supercharged, running on alcohol and having a displacement of up to 575 cubic inches. It is normally mounted just behind the driver.

The trucks have mostly custom built automatic transmission, heavily modified with Trans brakes, manual valve bodies and duty gear sets. Examples are the turbo 400 power glide and ford C6 transmission, among others. The trucks come with large coil over shock absorbers for balance and a control suspension shock resistor which weigh about 9,000Ib.

It has an axle made from heavy duty military trucks or heavy road vehicles and a planetary gear reduction at the hub to enable turn of the wheels. They have hydraulic steering wheels and rear wheels controlled by a toggle switch.

Safety

“Motorised Professional Wrestling”, as the sport game is portrayed, exhibits lots of dangerous traits and stunts being showcased. As a result, safety is paramount in the design and production of the monster truck.

The vehicle is equipped with remote shut-off switches called the Remote Ignition Interrupter (RII), with its main function to shut off the car to prevent accidents in case the driver loses control/balance. The

safety switch is positioned all around the truck, with some in the truck at the driver’s reach and some at the truck’s rear end to shut off all electrical powers in case of roll over.

Most of the trucks are constructed with Lexan (Polycarbonate), for increased visibility of the driver. The drivers also put on a special dress costume and also wear fire suits, helmets, head and neck restraints. The highly pressured parts of the truck have restraining straps to prevent explosion.

The monster jam show is currently the largest premier monster truck game show, touring in the United States, Canada and other selected regions in Europe.