Ford F350 Stair Truck

– What even is this

This is a 1977 Ford F350, sold as a single cab with dual rear tires on a Dana D70 axle. Although it’s called a 1 ton truck, the gross weight limit is around 5 1/4 tons. As an upgrade, an airport outfitted it with a set of stairs so it could be used to access private jets.

In the 80s, the Bluth Company was rich, and owned one such private jet. This truck was stored at their local airport. When the company fell on hard times, they sold the jet, but kept the stair truck. After all, they needed to get around.

Without the stairs, the truck is actually reasonably fast. To encourage racing behaviour, a shorter rear axle ratio is available. The AI seem to prefer it, you should too. Likewise you can choose to lock the rear axle. This is good for doing skids.

– What is the mod

It’s built just for fun, for a break from more serious projects. I tossed around a few ideas with mclarenf1papa, looking for something unusual, settled on this one as a compromise between impossible and boring.

I intended to make this a week long project. I spent a week vacation doing the first 90% of it, and then another several weeks doing the last 10% in spare time. So it goes.

Thus in a lot of ways it’s not a particularly complete mod, and likely won’t be made one. It has two LODs, the close one and the far one. The textures are all dds but not superoptimized.

Likewise physics are plausible, but not researched in massive depth. There’s almost certainly more to simulating a solid rear axle than I understand how to implement, especially when it comes to leaf springs.

The skins on the cab version represent most of the factory paint colors available, sorted by paint code. The skins on the stairs version represent the TV car.

– Known problems

None. It is perfect. Shh no don’t say anything.

Ok fine one thing’s wrong. The AI is bad at driving it.

– What can you do

Do what you want. If you want to convert it to another game as a free mod there, that’s probably fine, just contact me before releasing it.

The rear bumper on the base model is included as an LOD in a separate kn5. This allows you to remove it if you want to stick something else on the back. I’m not sure how useful this is to people but it beats having to re-export the whole truck every time.

– Credits

Majority of stuff (model, textures, physics): Stereo
Some physics and general advice: mclarenf1papa

 

 

Assetto Corsa Ford F350 Stair Truck Download