Trucks - Monster truck jam
The Sunday News paper had an advertisement for “The Monster Truck Jam” that was coming to town. We decided to make a special day of it and we took the kids to see the show. They always wanted to see the Monster trucks in action and this was our first opportunity. We were able to see Big Foot, one of the original monster trucks, a couple of years ago passing through Virginia. But Looking at it in a parking lot is know where near as fun as watching these huge trucks crush perfectly good cars. This was every boy and every man’s dream. The entire way home they were begging for us to turn my husbands ford pick up into a monster truck. They had it all planned. We would put a lift on it and buy some huge tires, order all of the parts, do a little body work, and then we have our very own monster truck.
Of course being a mother I had to ruin all of their hopes and dreams of having a monster truck by telling them we could never afford it. When we got home that night my oldest son went on line to find out some information about what monster trucks are really made of and just how expensive can they really be.
The first thing he found out was that a monster truck in the M.T. R.A, Monster Truck Racing Association, the trucks can only be a minimum of 10,000 pounds. His dad’s truck isn’t any where near 10,000 pounds; I don’t care how much you add to it. These guys are taking of heavy steal parts and adding fiberglass to help them go faster. In the 1980’s when Monster trucks became popular an average truck would weigh in about 20,000 pounds. Now since they have become more into racing and are traveling at high speeds they are doing anything possible to take the weight off. Of course the monster trucks not used for racing keep a lot of their weight because it helps them crush the cars even more. Anyway, needless to say, it’s going to take a lot of heavy steal to make his dad’s truck come even close to the weight limits.
Even though he knew he was defeated in his plans to turn our truck into a monster truck, he went on to learn some even more interesting information about Monster trucks. He was amazed to learn that each tire is about 66 inches tall by 43 inches wide with 10 psi of air. They weight about 900 pounds with rims. Most of them use tires that are used for fertilizer spreaders and are called flotation tires.
If anything they have all taken a big interest in Monster trucks and want to know everything there is to know about them. They have found a web site that left nothing to there imagination. It has everything from the history of the monster trucks to a gallery full of pictures.