Driver/Team Profile – Hal Frost and His Cool Ride

Unless you’ve been living under a moon rock, you likely heard the news of Hal Frost’s stolen rockcrawling buggy last year. Right after UROC’s ’06 season opener, some thief stole Hal’s Twisted Custom pride and joy right from his storage yard in Las Vegas.

Once the insurance check cleared he was back on the phone with the guys from Twisted Custom in South Dakota ordering up a new and improved buggy. Fast forward to WeRock’s 2007 season opener for the unveiling of his new Twisted Customs buggy in Lost Wages.

There is no mistaking a Twisted Custom rig. Their detailed, yet simplistic form-following-function design is shown in every rock crawler that they build, which relies on their craftsmanship, experience and engineering. But, when it comes to Hal’s buggy, perhaps it is the clean symmetrical lines of this world champion proven chassis that catches your eye, or maybe it will be the wicked paint job – either one, this buggy is in a class all of its own.

Once you get past the bling of the paint and make it to the drivetrain, you will see what really makes this buggy unique. A healthy LS1 mill sends power to a turbo 350, which is then sent to an Atlas II transfer case, and finally along a set of High Angle Driveline driveshafts.

No gadgets or unproven items from the motor to the driveshafts, here its all about durability and simplicity. The cool-factor starts however in the Spidertrax’s axle housing. Each housing shares Hi9, quick-change differentials that are stuffed with 5.38 gears, Detroit lockers and CTM 300m axles & u-joints.

As you move to the outside of the front housing you begin to see how out of this world this buggy really is. The 35 spline inners and outers are joined together by a set of massive, specially clearanced CTM u-joints that are the size of grapefruits. Spidertrax knuckles and brake rotors complete the ensemble for a clean, bombproof axle with 58 degrees of steering. That kind of steering takes away any excuses for hitting a cone or your neighbor’s cat for that matter.

How this little shop in the Black Hills continues to come up with state of the art winning combinations are beyond me. This time they took a hard look at a 1550 driveline of a semi-truck and reengineered it with the help of Eddie at Spidertrax and Jack at CTM to produce an absolute bulletproof and state-of-the-art driveline. So, where does Hal park his new Twisted Custom buggy to keep it away from thievery? That information has yet to be disclosed, but word has it it’s under lock and key in an area referred to as “51.” If that is the truth, it’s a fitting place for this non-“moon buggy” buggy.