Street Legal Trophy Truck: 2019 Ford F-150 Custom PreRunner
Donated by: Alan Shapiro
Written by: Drew Hardin
Photos by: HM
Off-Road Approved.
Alan Shapiro does not do anything halfway. When he raced offshore powerboats in the 1980s and 1990s, he won national and world championships. As a pilot, he’s flown everything from hang gliders to helicopters and enjoys a special passion for military warbirds. When he gave up racing on the water, he tried his hand at off-road racing and placed second in his class in the grueling Baja 1000. And when he got back into recreational off-roading a few years ago, he realized stock 4x4s—good as they are these days—had their limitations. So he commissioned the build of what was ostensibly a prerun-ner but turned out more like a thinly veiled race truck.
How It All Started
It was a Ford F-150 Raptor that sent him down this path. With a specially tuned suspension and plenty of power under the hood, the Raptor is about as close as one can get to buying a desert race truck off a showroom floor. Alan purchased a second-generation Raptor in 2017 and took it on an off-road-ing trip to Baja California. “It did fine,” Alan recalled, but when he got back, he decided he wanted to upgrade the Raptor to make it more capable. After having an all-new suspension installed, Alan took the Raptor on another Baja trip, and again, “It did fine, but there was a guy on that trip who had a full-blown, race-ready prerunner.
The truck’s builder happened to be on that trip, and he took me for a ride in that truck.” One ride was all it took, and Alan told himself he wanted to build one. The builder on the trip was Kevin Mahan of HM Racing Design in Temecula, California. “I asked him to build me pretty much a street-legal Trophy Truck,” Alan said, referring to the fastest, most ferocious vehicles on the off-road racing scene. The starting point was a two-wheel-drive 2019 Ford F-150 pickup, though little of that truck remains other than its aluminum cab and doors. The front fenders and hood are fiberglass pieces from McNeil Racing, as are the bedsides. “Those are literally just sides,” Alan said. “There’s no bed in it. Back there is the fuel cell, the cooling fans and the rear suspension.”
All About the Upgrades
One reason Trophy Trucks are so fast is their custom suspensions, which offer enough wheel travel and spring compliance to soak up rocks, ruts, and other obstacles and keep the driving wheels on the ground no matter how rugged the terrain. Alan’s second-generation Raptor had about 13 inches of wheel travel in stock trim, which is outstanding for a production vehicle. The suspension on Alan’s prerunner has 19 inches of front wheel travel and 25 inches for the rear with 40-inch-tall BFGoodrich off-road racing tires. Mahan fabricated the truck’s suspension using custom-built and TIG-welded control arms in front and long billet-aluminum trailing arms in the rear mated to coilover springs with bypass shock absorbers at all four corners. He put together a Trophy Truck steering system with billet arms and a power-steering cooler, while at the other end of the truck is a Trophy Truck-ready rear end housing with a 10-inch ring gear and 36-spline axles. These suspension pieces are mounted to a chromoly tube chassis with a race-legal roll cage tied into it. Full skid plates protect the undercarriage from the nose to the transmission. Also fully caged is the 5.0L Ford Coyote V-8 under the tilt-up hood. An Edelbrock supercharger and other modifications, including a custom air intake, intercooler, and MMR billet timing gear, combine to make 720 horsepower on any octane fuel. That power moves to the wheels through a custom-tuned Ford 10-speed automatic transmission upgraded with a billet converter and Suncoast valve body.
The stock instrument panel remains inside the truck’s cab, but it has been stuffed with so many gauges, buttons and GPS display screens that it’s barely recognizable. The driver and passenger sit in PRP Alpha race seats fitted with five-point race harnesses. A custom center console holds switchgear for the lights, fans, fuel pumps and other accessories, the transmission shift lever, activation for the fire suppression system and even cupholders. What’s the Prerunner like to drive? “It’s a very, very capable machine,” Alan said. “Kevin has been building race trucks for almost 30 years, so he has a lot of experience with these things.” Given the quality level of equipment built into the truck, “It could race at NORRA or SCORE events,” Alan added. “NORRA has a prerunner class in its Mexican 1000 rally, and it would be very competitive in that race.” When Alan took it to Baja, “It handled unbelievably well,” he said. “I would be literally miles and miles ahead of the guys in the stock Raptors.” The suspension would allow it “to main-tain 80 to 90 mph over some of the rougher terrain, where the Raptors would be going 30 or 40.” Alan discovered that speed and capability at that level come with a price. He had to tow the prerunner to the Baja trail rides, which meant investing in a second pickup and trailer. And there were other factors. “You have to treat it like a race vehicle. You can’t just hop in and go and expect everything’s going to work without monitoring temperatures, pressures and things of that nature. It takes special skills to drive it.” So Alan is having another truck built, a Ram TRX “that’s more fun and less work,” and he donated the prerunner to the Petersen Automotive Museum.
Time for Something New!
He knows the Petersen Automotive Museum well and also has friends with ties to it, including Bruce Meyer and Doug Whiteman. It was at Whiteman’s recent 80th birthday party, where he spoke with Meyer about the prerunner. “Bruce said, ‘Yeah, bring it over. We’d love to have that truck,’” recalls Alan. For Alan, off-roading is “One of numerous hobbies that I have. I'm really into mountain biking, motorcycles and flying aircraft. So now I’m going to do it a different way. Just a little bit more fun and not so serious.”
Thank you Alan for your Donation!
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