RESTORING THE CASTEX TT

It’s the Trophy Truck before there were Trophy Trucks. In the early 1990’s there wasn’t a Trophy Truck Class in SCORE. The truck was entered in Class 1. Built by North American Raceco in 1993, David Kreisler and Mike Monahan helped pave the way for a much-needed unlimited truck class in SCORE. The truck raced from 1993-1998 with Castex Racing livery. Castex, still in business today, is a Hollywood Rental company, providing equipment for movie and tv productions. The original driver of the truck was Keith Jackson. The truck was later sold to Mike Tieman who raced it in SCORE, then turned it into a buggy. The truck then sat abandoned in the Nevada desert to rust away. Dana Dague of Palapa Boy Racing got his hands on the truck and spent countless hours restoring it back to the original shape it was in when it first raced in ’93. The truck was in such bad shape, the motor had seized, there was no body and the entire frame had surface rust. Dana did all of the aluminum work in-house.

ABOVE: The front of the truck has a double a-arm suspension set-up. The truck was considered advanced for it’s time.

LEFT: North American Raceco’s David Kreisler had the idea of creating an all tube chassis with a complete fiberglass body to dominate SCORE races.

ABOVE: Trailer Products rebuilt the Chevy S-10 fiberglass body to closely match the original. Palapa Boy Racing and California Autobody painted everything as it was in 1993. LEFT: The Castex TT has Kuster 3” Coil and 3” bypasses on the front and rear. Today, Sway-AWay has the rights to all of the original designs.

BELOW: Powering the truck, is a Chevy V8 427 fuel injected motor built by Baja Jon Kennedy.

The fuel cell holds 84 gallons of race gas.

The interior features a simple set-up of gauges, Lowrance GPS and switches. A Lead-Nav system was added to the truck along with a modern light-bar. The original plan for Dana Dague was to run the truck in the 2020 NORRA Rally. Round HID lights were added to the front for the original look.