ONE man has spent five years, and thousands of dollars, single-handedly recreating the iconic Warthog truck from the Halo video games. Bryant Havercamp, a phone technician from Michigan, built the incredibly-detailed replica completely by himself, using traditional fabrication methods, a 3D printer, and the frame of a 1984 Chevy K10. The fully street-legal recreation is based on a 3D model extracted directly from the Halo game, allowing Bryant to match the truck’s measurements to the in-game version. Bryant told Barcroft Media: “Most people when they see this thing are just absolutely floored with how realistic it looks."
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MotorTranscript
00:00 Most people when they see this thing,
00:02 they're just absolutely floored with how realistic it looks.
00:07 [MUSIC]
00:17 [SOUND]
00:46 I'm the owner and builder of the replica of the Warthog from Halo.
00:51 [MUSIC]
00:54 I've built this thing from the ground up completely solo on my own.
00:57 Five and a half years of labor, thousands of man hours,
01:00 [MUSIC]
01:02 Thousands of dollars and the few times I've nearly killed myself in the process
01:06 of building it.
01:07 [LAUGH]
01:09 I'm a big Halo fan.
01:10 I've been ever since I first played it.
01:12 This is back in 2003.
01:15 I'm trying to build this thing as close to the actual Warthogs possible.
01:20 [MUSIC]
01:40 So the Warthog started off as the stripped down 1984 Chevy K10.
01:45 Just an old school 80s pickup truck.
01:47 The engine is based off a 1984 Chevy 350, but I've rebuilt it.
01:54 [MUSIC]
01:56 It's really exhilarating because it's like one of the most baddest things you
02:00 could drive.
02:00 [MUSIC]
02:10 If I had to put a top speed on this thing, I'd say 85 miles an hour,
02:18 redlining it.
02:19 [MUSIC]
02:24 >> Yeah, I was surprised when we first decided to do it and bought the truck and
02:29 totally stripped it down to just about nothing and started over with it.
02:34 I found it interesting.
02:35 >> I didn't know if it'd ever run, but it sure did.
02:40 >> So structurally, first I started with the roll cage.
02:46 Built the roll cage, got it all centered and everything where it needed to be.
02:49 And then I built everything else with structural angle iron.
02:55 The hood actually opens up like a snowmobile hood,
03:00 which reveals a 350 Chevy that I built.
03:04 Carbureted with a quick fuel carburetor, long tube headers,
03:08 Vortec heads, built a completely hydraulic steering setup.
03:13 So that the power steering pump feeds a hydraulic orbital,
03:17 which powers these hydraulic cylinders on the front.
03:21 I had to put custom made tusks on the front.
03:24 Those things you can't just buy in a store.
03:25 So I had to build those things out of metal from scratch.
03:28 And took me about two weeks of welding, grinding, and fabricating.
03:32 But I came out with two fully realistic tusks that I welded to the front
03:38 to give it that authentic Warthog look.
03:40 You have to put blinkers on it, so that's what these little guys are, LED blinkers.
03:44 And these are projection high beams,
03:48 cuz you have to have high beams for it to be street legal.
03:51 Your normal headlights, the off-road lights.
03:54 I used a 3D printer to construct some of the tricky bits,
03:57 like the rear view camera cover, different odds and
04:02 ends like the covers for the front headlights.
04:07 There's different things that are just hard to craft.
04:09 So a 3D printer is actually the best way to go about it.
04:12 So a lot of measurements went into every little angle,
04:14 every piece of it to make everything fit together.
04:19 I'd say the hardest part about building this thing is probably
04:23 the things I didn't expect.
04:25 I've had to rebuild the engine three different times for different reasons.
04:28 [SOUND]
04:32 The dashboard is completely functional.
04:34 There's a speedometer, there's a fuel gauge, there's button switches for
04:39 all your lights and airbags, the heater.
04:43 And these seats are actually racing seats I bought off of eBay.
04:47 They're fitted with a four-point safety harness to keep you strapped in.
04:51 Thus far, I've spent at least 10, 11 grand in material costs.
04:58 As for the value, it's hard to say how much it would actually sell for, but
05:02 ballpark figure.
05:03 If it sold to a diehard halo fan, I could probably get upwards of 100 grand,
05:08 I think.
05:08 [MUSIC]
05:15 >> Everywhere I seem to drive this thing, it turns heads.
05:18 Pulling to a gas station, people are stopping to take pictures,
05:20 asking questions about it.
05:22 People may not recognize that it's a Warthog, but
05:25 they just think it looks cool, so they wanna take pictures.
05:27 >> We were just pulling off the highway to use the gas station, and I saw it, and
05:32 I knew exactly what it was.
05:34 Told my wife, I was like, there's a Warthog over there, we gotta go check it out.
05:38 I grew up playing the first Halo.
05:42 When I had it up and running, and for the first time ever,
05:46 I was able to actually take it out on the road, take it for a test drive.
05:49 And just the feeling of driving this unique, beastly looking machine down
05:53 the road that looks like nothing else, just puts a warm, fuzzy feeling in your heart.
05:58 [LAUGH]
05:58 [MUSIC]