Getting Dirty with a Ford Lightening

This craftmanship in this amazing. I love it!

- In 1998, it was time for Andy to give wheel-to-wheel road racing a try. Racing on courses that many of us dream to drive one day, his Acura Integra Type R took the overall points championship in his rookie season. As you can imagine, this was upsetting to the many sponsored vehicles racing behind Andy and his independently owned and raced car. Before his second season was complete, the lack of sponsorship turned his glory on the road into the sale of yet another one of his creations. Encompassed in metalwork is a 351 Ford Lightning-powered motor with AFR aluminum heads, and Comp Cams shooting power through a C6 transmission. According to the dyno, the truck is pushing 380 hp and 400 lb-ft of torque. Now it was time to take his experience racing, knowledge of the desert terrain, and modification skills and build the ultimate weekend adventure vehicle. During many of those F.U.D. races there was always one truck that stood out in Andys mind: the ex-Robby Gordon/Frank Vessels Trophy Truck nicknamed Rosanne. The truck was bigger than life to him and seemed to spend more time in the air than on the ground. Taking examples from the TT, he picked up a black 1994 Ford Lightning in February of 2002 and the race was on.
Like most enthusiasts, Andy spent the next few months traveling to different shops around Southern California, gathering information and searching for the right person to take the visions in his head and put them into his truck. Rodd Fantelli of Fantelli Motorsports in Ramona, California, had all the right qualities Andy was searching for. Rodd has been building successful race cars for many years, including several for himself racing the likes of the Baja 1000. With a very trusting hand, Andy turned over his truck and keys to Rodd and waited nearly one year for his new toy to be completed. When the truck rolled out of the shop 11 months later, it was more than he could have imagined. BFGoodrich tires are among the most popular in the desert. Because of the size, weight, and speed that Andy will throw at his truck, he opted for a set of 37x12/5x17-inch Baja TA tires surrounding 17x8-inch Robby Gordon bead-lock wheels. Visit any local desert race and you will find that many vehicles from race trucks to prerunners resemble what we call jungle-gym fabrication. Not Andys Ford - every piece of tubing from front to rear bumper was fabricated with a purpose. If you follow the lines of the cage work, its amazing to see that the welding is consistent throughout the entire truck, almost as if it was built by a machine. The rear of this 1994 Lightning achieves 30 inches of travel through Rodd Fantellis four-link suspension system. Two-and-a-half-inch Bilstein coilovers are combined with 2 1/2-inch Bilstein three-tube bypass shocks and Bilstein Air Bumps to help absorb mile after mile of desert terrain. Here we can also see the installation of dual Fluidyne Transmission Coolers, Blue Top Optima battery, custom 65-gallon fuel cell (Rodd Fantelli), and Curt LeDuc antisway bars. "Vessels"-style fiberglass body panels by Autofab in Santee, California, surround this truck giving it a low-profile look while keeping aerodynamics to a maximum. If you are building a race car or prerunner, what better friend to have than someone who has been dubbed "The Shock God?" The truck was notched, bent, and welded in all the right places but wouldnt be a comfortable ride without having the shocks and coilovers set up correctly. Andy turned to Pete Albano of Precision Shockworks in Upland, California, to properly valve and tweak all four corners of this machine into a harmony of motion. A custom full-floating Ford 9-inch rearend from Camburg Engineering was installed with 35-spline axles and 4.86 ring-and-pinion gears combined with a spool, keeping both rear tires spinning at the same time, all the time. Knowing this prerunner was built with racing in mind, we opted to tackle the Barstow racecourse for our photo shoot. The rough and uncompromising terrain was just what we needed to put this Bad in Black Blue Oval to the test. After wiping the drool from the camera for long enough, Andy offered up his passenger seat. An in-car camera would have been nice to capture ear-to-ear grins, as the suspension made each whoop section feel like nothing more than your average parking lot speed bump. It was easy to see that the geometry and fabrication of his truck was topnotch. Andy's dream had come true.


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