If you want information about BroDozer Monster Truck, nobody else can give you more. As Monster Trucks go, BroDozer has the distinction of being the first diesel-powered truck to compete in Monster Jam, an off-road truck that the Diesel Brothers believed could go anywhere but felt like they had to prove it to the world.
What is a BroDozer?
In the hands of the Diesel Brothers, a diesel monster truck had to be bigger than a typical rock-climber. It had to bash its way through any off-road competitor including the Jeep. The action of plowing through anything earned it a reputation as a bulldozer! With the Diesel Brothers moniker, what would seem like a better name for the truck than the Bro Dozer? Could they do more than that with a diesel engine?
Beyond the cheers of Monster Jam events, does anyone understand the accomplishment the Bro-Dozer brought to the Monster Jam? Many more people made more noise watching the BroDozer launch into space than screamed on a tilt-o-wheel ride. So, what’s all the fuss about? Just to be clear, did anybody believe the BroDozer had a simple destiny?
Facts about BroDozer
The BroDozer didn’t look destined to be a Monster Truck at the beginning. The Diesel Brothers were so impressed when they were young boys attending Monster Jam. They wanted to build their own Monster Jam truck. Just because the mighty Diesel Brothers built the truck and had this crazy dream, it didn’t mean anything. After all, everything the Brothers do is diesel. The dream always appeared on a distant horizon.
Why? Everything that performed in the Monster Jam ran on methanol. When the Brothers discovered the BroDozer in a rock climber they built, they knew they had something, but they weren’t sure what it was? They knew that the BroDozer ran on diesel, and it could beat anything it had met up with. Despite all that, it could be absolutely worthless! All they had was a tough truck with a name. But where did the BroDozer belong?
Will the concept work?
Discovery and the Diesel Brothers visited Salt Lake meet to discuss the possibility of developing a diesel Monster Jam truck. The Diesel Brothers brought up their BroDozer, a cross between a rock crawler and a heavy-duty diesel tow vehicle. Did anybody ever really believe it could be developed into a Monster Truck? They met up with performance team Wagler Competition Products, a group that turned the Duramax diesel into a performance racing engine, and they began to see the light. The BroDozer might be able to reach some pretty high-performance standards. Maybe someday they could rap on the Monster Jam’s door if they could solve a handful of problems.
Monster Truck crowds are kind of tricked by the performances of monster trucks. The stunts looks so easy to do. The screaming crowd doesn’t know how much work goes into the development of a Monster Truck, or how difficult they are to drive. For instance, doesn’t the driver have to steer the back wheels as well as the front wheels? The fans don’t realize how difficult it is to create a truck that can do all those stunts and actually have a successful run. In reality, the fans are not supposed to know. It’s entertainment. In reality, the task facing the builders is rife with potholes and failure is always looming.
The Brainstorming Stage
The diesel brothers joined with Wagler Competition Products and they developed the BroDozer into a diesel monster truck. Monster Jam sneaked a peak and got excited. They determined that the Diesel Brothers had developed a highly experimental truck. That’s where Feld-owned Monster Jam wants to be: Always looking to push the envelope with new ideas. When they looked at the diesel-powered BroDozer, Monster Jam saw a new fuel source. Diesel engines are more gas efficient and pollute less than gasoline engines, but monster Jam trucks run on Methanol. How often do you get an outfit like Monster Jam to swing the door wide open to you? Could the Brothers succeed?
What Was So Difficult?
A typical monster truck runs on a supercharged engine standardized for competition level performance, and the supercharger found in every methanol powered Monster Truck conformed to the same standards. It was the Jam’s standard configuration. It delivered a monstrous 1321 lbs/ft torque, a really amazing amount of power.
The BroDozer had to get to that level of torque to qualify, but superchargers aren’t necessarily a perfect match with diesel engines. The team opted instead to assemble compound turbos to raise the torque number higher, and that brought the engine within range of the Monster Jam’s standards. Diesel engines have strong torque to begin with. While they may not have as great a horsepower, torque is the number that turns a truck into a monster so to speak. It makes the truck fast off the mark. So the torque number was what Monster Jam wanted, and that was 1321 foot/lbs as previously mentioned, the torque produced by superchargers.
How to Meet and Beat the Methanol Supercharger?
The discovery of a new fuel source might mean something in a sport where the most competitive trucks burn 140 gallons of methanol in a single mile! They do 0-60 mph in better times than most high performing sports car travel on the pavement, but they’re not designed for drag racing. Watch monster trucks closely and you see super aggressive starts and stops, and only physics can explain how they get airborne for as long and as far as they do. Much of it is in the engine and the amount of fuel they burn. So, the question was, does a new fuel source mean something to the Monster Jam officials? The answer is yes, it does, but diesels had tried and failed before. How could the BroDozer meet the supercharged methanol-fueled competition?
The Diesel Breakthrough
The breakthrough in diesel would be revolutionary. Diesel would give Monster Trucks a new avenue to develop in the never-ending quest to be bigger and better. Would anybody be surprised if competitors have tried to develop a successful diesel monster trucks over the years? There have been about three or four in this century that have knocked on the Monster Jam’s door, but only the BroDozer looked like it had a chance. It could become the first to perform in the Monster Jam.
The 6.6 liter Diesel engine proved capable of 1100 horsepower, more than enough to qualify. But the crew looked worried. The diesel looked much smaller than any of the competing engines. Did the BroDozer have a chance?
Will it go fast enough?
Methanol-powered Monster trucks reportedly have reached 1500 hp, but did anybody believe that? Maybe that accounts for how high the trucks that weight over 12,000 pounds can fly through the air, but sometimes the numbers are an enigma. They look like they travel in the air at a higher elevation than motorcycles. When the Diesel Brothers finished their project, they had created the amazing performance Duramax powered BroDozer, and it had the numbers, but there’s more to a Monster Truck than any one component. When the entire truck is considered, would the BroDozer have a prayer?
Incredible features
The BroDozer truck’s motion is tight and it turns on a dime. It looks fast and powerful when it runs on Monster Jam tournaments. The truck flies through the air like the Wright Brothers’ planes on steroids! Leave out the diesel-powered drive train, and the BroDozer has everything it takes to perform like a monster truck. So what other features does the BroDozer have to compete?
It uses nitrogen charged shocks to increase control of the unwieldy wheels. It enjoys a heavy-duty tube chassis and rolls around on 66-inch trimmed thick tread tires. The BroDozer uses a four-link, high-performance suspension system that includes four main bars that connect the front and rear axles to the tube frame. The driver sits right at the heart of the truck surrounded by a steel framed safety cockpit.
The Footprint
Like all monster trucks, the BroDozer is built on a rectangular footprint that’s twelve feet wide, ten feet high and 17 feet long. The goal of all monster truck developers is to push the width and length while making the truck lighter and increase the stability. Lighter trucks go faster in races, and the wider stance might help it win freestyle competitions.
The Monster trucks’ cost of the build is anywhere from $100.000 to $250,000, but if you want to be in the bigger shows, you’ve got to go for the higher priced stuff like billet spindles for wheels. You can spend tens-of-thousands of dollars on Monster Truck parts like alloy front axels and comparable rear shafts. The list is long and expensive.
BKT Tires
The BKT tires on the Diesel BroDozer are agriculture products, 66-inch by 40-plus inches. The tires are extremely heavy. Monster truck owners shave the tops of the treads off to reduce the weight from 700 or 800 pounds by approximately 35-percent. Any reduction helps. The tire pressure in all four tires doesn’t exceed 22 pounds per square inch, so the tires bounce around like balloons as the trucks weave around the track. The bouncy quality of the tires is a requirement of the Monster Jam. The rear wheels are so independent they steer with as much effect as the front tires, greatly enabling the truck in tight corners.
While your typical shock absorber stabilizes the movement of the tire, in the BroDozer, more than half the weight of the vehicles is beyond the control of the elements intended to rein in the bounce. The BroDozer bounces a lot in fact. With all that going on, how could the BroDozer fail to make it to a Monster Jam?
How it Turned Out
The most amazing thing is that the truck almost failed to get where it was going. In fact, even with the Monster Jam waiting for this revolutionary truck after it was scheduled to perform in January 2018. It was delayed by six months because of mechanical issues.
Finally, on June 23, 2018, the BroDozer showed up at the Monster Jam in Memphis Tennessee, ready to show off its diesel-powered high-performance chops. It had a monster performance.
Related Questions:
What is BroDozer’s Monster Jam Routine?
BroDozer’s freestyle routine includes donuts, wheel stands, large aerial jumps and eventual attempts at the backflip. The Monster Jam also included the Brodozer in the race part of the venue. The BroDozer did racing, freestyle performance and two-wheel skills challenge. Heavy D drove it on its maiden voyage.
To show off the BroDozer’s agility and the skill of the driver, the BroDozer participated in the head-to-head racing event where the truck was paired together with another monster truck, and it raced to find a place in tournament brackets. Though eliminated, the BroDozer had the fastest time of the night and it continued racing until it qualified number one in racing. In the Freestyle part of the show in Nashville, BroDozer performed tricks and stunts including aerial jumps and hopped into the lead in judge’s scores early on. For the future, that’s promising. It suggests that the truck may one day be king of the freestyle competition. It was also competitive in the two-wheel challenge doing wheelies, bicycles and stoppies.
What is BroDozer’s intro music?
Each Monster Truck appearance is accompanied by a music hit to go with the truck’s routine. On its first appearance at the show in Nashville on June 23, 2018, the classic ZZ Topp hit “Sharp Dressed Man” was played during the unveiling and debut of the BroDozer, but the tune changed when the truck actually hit the track. Other tunes played during performances include the galvanizing “Can’t Hold Us” by Ryan Macklemore and Ryan Lewis. Colt Stevens drives to the incredible country sound of “Truck Yeah,” by Tim McGraw. “Party Hard” by Andrew WK actually got the play time during the truck’s first routine. All the tunes mentioned are sensational songs for Monster Jam events.
What is BroDozer’s body style?
BroDozer has a fiberglass Ford 150 Extended Cab body with the yellow paint job and the word BroDozer painted on the side. It’s a simple design that looks like a bulldozer’s look. BroDozer’s fiberglass body is its identity in the opinion of most fans. If the BroDozer crashes, the fiberglass body may come off without hurting the driver. It plays no structural or mechanical role in the BroDozer. If the “skin” came off, the driver will just keep going. Indeed, the top came off the BroDozer in its first freestyle event, and Heavy D took advantage of that when he popped his helmeted head out of the top and waved to the crowd. Fabricated truck bodies might fit other Monster Trucks, although the bodies are not considered interchangeable.
Who drives BroDozer?
BroDover is driven by Colt Stephens, Heavy D and Diesel Dave. Yeah, that’s right. The guys who built it couldn’t resist driving it in competition. That’s actually par for the course in almost half the trucks on Monster Jam.
Colt Stevens hails from Houston TX. Legendary Mystery Driver of the Doomsday, he’s the son of Scott Stevens, the driver of King Crunch. Colt Stevens is a willing, consummate Monster Truck driver.
Dave Kelly, also known as Diesel Dave, one of the two Diesel Brothers is a YouTube star and co-host of the Diesel Brothers. The Diesel Brothers developed the Monster Truck BroDozer, and Kelly pilots the truck in rotation with Colt Stevens and Heavy D.
Dave Sparks, also known as Heavy D, is the other half of the Diesel Brothers. Diesel Dave is a YouTube star and co-host of Diesel Brothers. The Brothers developed the Monster Truck BroDozer, and Dave pilots the truck in rotation with Colt Stevens and Diesel Dave.
As all drivers do, the Diesel Brothers underwent extensive training for their driving duties at Monster Jam University. The Diesel Brothers have diesels in their background. They believed a diesel engine configured properly could be responsive to the needs of a Monster truck. Because Monster trucks have run on untainted methanol engines for decades and it seems like the only way a monster truck runs, on untainted methanol engines. The Diesel Brothers changed all that.
