Show Me the Ozarks September 2022

Featuring Barry & Lawrence Counties SMTO

It’s All About Making People Smile for Fenstermaker’s Earthquake By Don Lowe

W hen Alan Fenstermaker was a youngster, he had an opportunity for an enormous thrill that had him dreaming of the day he’d be entertaining young and old alike while showcasing his own talents in monster truck shows. And about three decades later, that is exactly what Fenstermaker is fortunate to do in his own specialized off-road vehicle known as Earthquake. Fenstermaker fondly remembered, “When I was 12 years old (in 1985), I saw Bob Chandler (owner of the original Bigfoot monster truck, a modified 1974 Ford F-250 pickup truck) crush cars in the Philadelphia Spectrum.

“I thought, ‘One day I’ll have a truck like that.’ It took 30 years but finally I got a truck. I traded a nice 1964 Chevelle SS for a giant pile of broken parts. I worked on it and built it up, before eventually cutting the entire truck apart and starting over, and that truck became Earthquake.” This was an evolving process for Fenstermaker, and he said, “I started building mud trucks in the 1990s. Earthquake No. 1 and No. 2 were very large mud trucks. I always swore that if I built a No. 3, it would be a proper monster truck. “It was a natural progression. The raw power and agility of a pickup truck to crush cars and fly through the air and make kids smile is unique to the monster truck world.” In detailing the process for building Earthquake that started 9 years ago,

Fenstermaker explained, “Not only did I assemble the truck, most of the parts under it were hand-fabricated in-house. Even the brake rotors were machined from plate steel in-house. “The containment seat, roll cage, chassis, drive shaft cages, pinion shields and engine mounts were all fabricated in-house. It was a progression to fine-tune suspension geometry and chassis design to hold up to the abuse.” While Fenstermaker enjoyed building his monster truck, there were tough things along the way. “All it takes is time and money.

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