FORD F-550 SUPER DUTY CLEANS DOODIE ACROSS THE RUBICON TRAIL

Wheeling out on the Rubicon Trail is tough enough, luckily El Dorado County maintains a series of restrooms along the famous off-road course. Unfortunately, for the longest time, it was an arduous two-day job to pump them all clean. But thanks to a 2006 Ford F-550 Super Duty pumper truck, the job has reduced to a simple day trip.

When the F-550 was donated to the county it was a dually bucket truck with four-wheel drive and a Dana Super 60 front axle as equipped from the factory. It also rolled with four-inch axle tubes, Ford’s modular 6.8-liter V10 with an automatic transmission and 4.10 gears.

All that was before WFO Concepts in Auburn, California, got their hands on the truck. The goal was to build a low-geared, slow-crawling truck that could maneuver its way through the Rubicon’s giant rocks in order to extricate the nasty blackwater.

WFO placed a Northwest Fab crawl box in front of the stock transfer case of this Ford F-550 Super Duty, upgraded to 5.38 gears, added a four-inch Radflo lift, bolted up a full set of belly skids, rock sliders, custom front and rear bumpers, plus a very for real exocage.

Other upgrades include a set of 40-spline RCV axle shafts, a 40-spline ARB front locker further, and PSC hydro-assist steering. The whole setup rides on 41-inch Michelin run-flats mounted to 20-inch Stazworks super single wheels.

The single cab left lots of room to add equipment in the rear. Tool storage makes up the lower portion of the rig’s rear end, while the star of the show is a small Honda motor-driven pump that feeds a 400-gallon tank, plus there’s a power washer with 70 gallons of freshwater to sanitize the dozen outhouses out on the Rubicon Trail.

It might not be the nicest job in the world, but at least there’s a day of wheeling thrown in as compensation.

– By Micheal Accardi