Dentside F-250 a Total Dust Devil Prerunner for Off-Road Racer
Built by off-road racer Kyle Craft, 1978 F-250 Ranger Supercab prerunner with ’73 face leaves a big dent upon the desert floor.
Off-road racing comes naturally to all sorts of Ford trucks and SUVs. The biggest giant among them, of course, is Big Oly, the 1970 Bronco campaigned by Parnelli Jones and Bill Stroppe. Not only did the hardcore Mustang of the Dirt snag the biggest trophies, it also gave birth to a whole new class of off-road racer, the aptly named trophy truck.
However, before you can race in classics like the Baja 1000 or Mint 400, you’ll need a rig to pre-run the course. Off-road racer Kyle Craft built such a prerunner with his dad out of a 1978 F-250 Ranger Supercab. Recently, Solomon Lunger of Ford Era took a look at Craft’s craft.
“This is my 1978 Ford F-250 Ranger,” said Craft. “I got a ’73 front clip on it ’cause it looks a little bit cleaner. Worked with the lights a little bit better. We picked this truck up about four years ago. Was just gonna do a little prerunner project out of it. I’d seen a couple guys on Instagram doing the single-cabs before. I thought they looked beautiful, but I also thought the extended cab would look a little bit cooler.”
Though Craft started the build on his own, his father joined in to help steer the F-250 towards its final form. The result was a full prerunner built exactly like Craft’s own race trucks. The build also allows Craft and his team to pull parts off the Ford for his race trucks in case something breaks during a race. Plus, it packs a mighty punch on 91 octane with 850 horses, over 1,000 tuned and on race fuel.
“This is the heart of the whole truck,” said Craft. “Like I said, it’s a big block Chevy; we’re gonna get some haters for that, I’m sure. This was a plumbing nightmare. Most prerunners you see will have the radiators in the back, pumps in the back, better airflow. But we wanted to keep this truck super clean, not a bunch of stuff in the way. Keep it really slick. We piled everything up front. It was a little bit of a nightmare for the plumbing guy, but it is beautiful.”
The whole F-250 can be taken apart in two days, then rebuilt over 200 hours. Luckily, prerunners like his can go 5,000 miles (a whole race season) before such a task occurs; his trophy trucks only have a month to get ready for the next event.
“I finally got to really drive it about a month ago […],” said Craft. “We’re doing 100 miles per hour through like nothing.”
This is one badass F-250 we can’t wait to see leave all of the dents at the next off-road extravaganza.
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