Super Rad: Check Out This F-350 Crew Cab Desert Truck
Kibbe-built full-size truck can take on the desert or parking-lot donuts with equal capability. The fabrication work looks like pure art.
We find it pretty hard to forgive a Chevy swap into a Ford pickup, but if we’re going to allow one, this might have to be the one exception. Say hello to the Kibbetech F-350, one badass off-road truck. This one has transformed from a four-door work truck into a desert-raiding stack of utter awesomeness. Ryan Kibbe of Kibbetech built the rig for Innovate Wheels to display at the 2017 SEMA Show, but this is no mere show truck.
Kibbe dropped by Hoonigan Headquarters in Southern California to show off just what this thing can do. Before you get there, however, you really need to sit through the walkaround of this truck. Kibbe’s work borders on fabrication porn down to little details like welds on the hood-pin mounts. That’s attention to detail that we can appreciate.
Kibbe spends a few minutes explaining what a “back-halved” off-road truck entails. In short, it means they cut the frame off behind the F-350 cab to fabricate their geometry. That means a completely reworked suspension with torsion bar-style links on a 1-½” sway bar.
Kibbe and Brian Scotto then give a really good look at how the four-link setup works on the truck. All of that custom work in the rear houses desert-racing necessities: a big spare tire, tools, and a 70-gallon fuel cell, to name a few.
Under the hood, Kibbe installed a mostly stock 6.0-liter LQ9 V8. If you’re not hip to the Chevy LS lingo — and why should you be, Ford Truck owners — that’s the truck version (“Vortec”) of the Chevy’s much-lauded LS engine. It would have sounded better with a Modular V8, but we’ll allow it this one time.
Anyway, Kibbe launches over a few jumps and then somehow manages to turn more than a few donuts in the tiny back parking lot. This is hooning done right in a big way.
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