RADICAL RIG

Craig Tomalin has been building a ’70 Challenger. It is nearing completion and is having its upholstery taken care of at the moment. As Craig says, though, “You gotta have two builds going on, so that when one stalls, you can go on to the next one.” His other build is definitely one that’s been keeping him busy — a ’48 Ford cab-over that is being built unlike any we’ve seen locally. Craig has fabricated a complete chassis of his own design, and has made loads of progress, with just a bit more thought to put into the front-end design before any welding is done there. The rear is finished, though, with a straightforward parallel four-bar suspension set-up. As low as the Ford looks at the moment, Craig isn’t planning on running airbag suspension, aiming to build the chassis to be drivable at that height and get the vehicle street legal. The certifier has had an initial look at it, and everything looks OK so far, but Craig is well aware that ensuring it’s all done by the book will be an intensive process. A friend donated the Speedway Engineering Quick Change diff to the project, as it was just lying around, and Craig has adapted Toyota Land Cruiser full-floater hubs to work with the axle tubes. Even with the dually rear end and those massive Alcoa alloys, the big truck should have no problem frying the tyres, with plans for a twin-turbo 460ci big block Ford running a blow-through EFI throttle body. “We looked at turbos, just because of how much we’d spend on alloy heads and parts for a tough naturally aspirated motor,” Craig explains, “and, with the shape of the bonnet on the truck, it should work quite well with packaging the turbos.” The C6 auto will be rebuilt to suit, once they know how much power the big block will be pumping out. Considering that Craig’s just over a year into the build, and he’s done all the work himself to date, he has made some awesome progress. However, the panel work — of which Craig says a lot is needed — will be outsourced. Craig has a few ideas about how he’d like the cab-over to look when finished, including thoughts of either a polycarbonate tray or none at all to showcase the engineering. We’re sure you’ll be seeing a lot more of this ’48.