SCORE Journal - The Official Publication of SCORE Off-Road Racing
Issue link: https://read.uberflip.com/i/1541562
FRANK VESSELS’ C10 PICKUP Classic Baja Race Truck Restored to Former Glory by Mike Vieira Photos by OC Product Photography One of off-road racing’s pioneers was Frank “Scoop” Vessels, who enjoyed a 30-year career in motorsports, winning 30 race victories and four SCORE Baja 500 Class Championships. Throughout his racing career, Vessels had several vehicles which he campaigned in desert and short-course racing, from a Ford F100, to the famous BFG Blazer, and this 1987 Chevy C10 Class 8 truck. All of Vessel’s trucks had a large BFGoodrich Tires decal on the side, due to the fact that he helped BFGoodrich Tire’s introduction into Baja racing, testing the BFGoodrich All-Terrain T/A Radial before the company officially debuted the tires in off-road racing. Vessels’ achievements included winning his class at the 1977 SCORE Baja 500 and 1000. He was also voted as SCORE International’s Rookie of the Year and Off-Roadsman of the Year in 1978. Vessels would go on to win his class again in 1980, which was featured on ABC’s Wide World of Sports. The televised win catapulted Baja racing and BFGoodrich Tires into the national spotlight. Throughout his career, he won many more off-road races, adding another class during the SCORE Baja 1000 in 1988. His Chevy C10 truck was campaigned in numerous races from 1985 through 1987, and won a SCORE Championship in 1987. Later, his son Kash Vessels rebuilt the vehicle, adding various fiberglass body parts because they were easier to come by, and replace. In fact, it stayed in use by the Vessels family for more than 20 years, before being sold off around 2007. While this particular C10 pickup had its place in off-road racing history, it was rebuilt from the ground up by its current owner, Dennis McCarthy, owner of Vehicle Effects, a company that builds and provides custom vehicles for the motion picture and television industry. Today, the truck is licensed, street legal, and is seeing both on-road and show duty. There are plans, however, for it to return to some racing use in the near future. McCarthy became fascinated with the truck in its heyday in the 1980s, and he made a failed attempt to purchase it about a decade ago. Another opportunity came approximately six months ago, and McCarthy was able to make a deal for it. “It was a running, driving truck,” he said. “I was simply going to clean it up, but I saw a couple of things that were in need of attention. One thing led to another, and the next thing you know, it was just a bare frame and cab, and I was getting it sent off to the sandblasters. We basically took everything off the truck that we could, and started all over.” The restoration project was headed up by Luke Orr, with an impressive end result. Decades of racing modifications had taken the truck away from its original form when Frank Vessels raced it. This included a switch to a later generation cab and fiberglass body parts, then back to the earlier body style, with what McCarthy believes presently is about a 1980 cab. Using a large collection of photographs of the original racing configuration, McCarthy has brought the truck back close to the form that Vessels drove with so much success in Baja and other races. During its racing time with Frank Vessels, the radiator was moved to the rear of the truck, with an air scoop over the cab, but now the custom Ron Davis radiator is back in its original front location. Some modern upgrades to the function of the original truck had to be made, including adding 3-inch King bypass shock absorbers in place of the original 2.5-inch Bilsteins, along with LED lighting by Rigid Industries. The truck also has air conditioning installed, but otherwise is pretty much as it was in its early competition days, right down to the paint scheme. The truck’s beginnings are a bit murky, as McCarthy tells us the VIN identifies as being from an Impala, and the chassis is far from an original configuration for a Chevy pickup of the era. Despite the owner’s decades of experience building and racing Chevy trucks, he has been unable to pinpoint just where the frame originated. Whatever it’s from, he says the frame was shortened, angled, and cut, to apparently maximize suspension travel and overall handling, and he wonders how the truck actually met specification requirements in its early racing days. Originally built by PPI/Cal Wells in 1984, this Chevy raised the bar for off-road racers at the time, with its heavily modified frame and 4-link rear suspension. It also originally used a unique, cantilever-style front suspension design in its first year in competition, but was then switched to a more conventional A-arm setup in 1986. The steering system also changed during Vessels’ time behind the wheel, from a traditional rack to a custom-designed, combination aluminum box and slider system, which McCarthy has restored in conjunction with Lee Power Steering. In further efforts to maintain the original configuration of the truck, the exhaust system and headers were laser scanned and recreated in stainless steel by Magnaflow Exhaust. The Dart V8 engine was built by Jim Shewbert and displaces 420 cubic inches to develop 600 horsepower and 570 pound-feet of torque. It uses an MSD ignition along with an Edelbrock intake and a Holley 900CFM carburetor set up by C&J Engineering. Other equipment of note used in the restoration includes 35x12.5x15 BFGoodrich tires, 15x8 American Racing wheels, 14-inch Wilwood brakes, front and rear, Speedway Engineering anti-sway bars, a Culhane transmission, and a Converter Shop torque converter. The rear axle has a Spool limited-slip differential by Sandy Cone. The body has metal panels and a Hanneman Fiberglass hood. Additional items on the truck include a Harmon Racing Fuel Cell, Mastercraft seats, Simpson belts, Autometer gauges, graphics and paint by Extreme Wraps, custom bodywork, and driveshaft fabrication were done by McCarthy’s company, Vehicle Effects. It’s great to see the preservation and new life this very significant vehicle has received, and the fact that it’s not just a museum piece, but one that will soon try to pick up on the race course where it left off so many years ago, makes it even better. It is no small task to rebuild a historic race vehicle such as this, and McCarthy has many thanks for the others on the team that helped make it possible, including Jake Kelley, Brian McCarthy, Mason McCarthy, Francisco Moreno, Jose Macias, Johnny Miller, Brian Gogerty, and Danny Eder. SJ