Back before upgrading your pick-up truck into a heavy-toed behemoth was actually a thing, Bob Chandler, a construction worker and off-roading enthusiast from St. Louis, Missouri, wanted to modify his 1974 Ford F-250 with a few grunty accessories to get that much farther up the local trails.
Fast-forward a bit (and after a few rounds of modifications) and Chandler had inadvertently invented an entire movement; the monster truck. That F-250 he modified? Well, it became a legend: the original car-crushing “Bigfoot”.
Naturally, the truck relied on more than just its ridiculously oversized tyres to wow the crowds at state fairs across the Midwest (and eventually thanks to 1980s TV shows like That’s Incredible! wide-eyed kids in far flung places like New Zealand too).
No, it needed one heck of an engine as well.
The custom engine Chandler eventually settled on was state-of-the-art at the time; an all-aluminium big-block Ford displacing 640 cubic inches, tickled along with a supercharger and nitrous.
Not the sort of engine to be overhauled without much aforethought. After all, many of the components are now as rare as rocking horse excrement. We know this because, thanks to YouTube, you can watch a team of engine reconditioners on the PowerNation channel tear down and build up the heart of a legend.
If you have 18 minutes to spare, go seek out PowerNation “Original Bigfoot Engine Build” and watch the entire strip-down process for yourself.