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 us: “Most people when they see this thing are just absolutely floored with how realistic it looks."
Video Credits: Videographer / director: Adam Gray Producer: Joe Roberts, Ruby Coote Editor: Ross Dower
00:00Most people when they see this thing, they're just absolutely floored with how realistic it looks.
00:30I'm the owner and builder of the replica of the Warthog from Halo.
00:40I've built this thing from the ground up completely solo on my own.
00:45Five and a half years of labor, thousands of man-hours, thousands of dollars,
00:51and the few times I've nearly killed myself in the process of building it.
00:56I'm a big Halo fan. I've been ever since I first played it. This was back in 2003.
01:03I'm trying to build this thing as close to the actual Warthog as possible.
01:26So the Warthog started off as this stripped-down 1984 Chevy K10.
01:33Just an old-school 80s pickup truck.
01:36The engine is based off a 1984 Chevy 350, but I've rebuilt it.
01:42It's really exhilarating because it's like one of the most badass things you can drive.
01:48If I had to put a top speed on this thing, I'd say 85 miles an hour, redlining it.
02:07Yeah, I was surprised when we first decided to do it and bought the truck and totally stripped it down to just about nothing and started over with it.
02:22I found it interesting.
02:24I didn't know if it'd ever run, but it sure did.
02:28So structurally, first I started with the roll cage.
02:34Built the roll cage, got it all centered and everything where it needed to be.
02:37And then I built everything else with structural angle iron.
02:43The hood actually opens up like a snowmobile hood,
02:47which reveals a 350 Chevy that I built carbureted with a quick fuel carburetor,
02:54long tube headers, Vortec heads.
02:57Built a completely hydraulic steering setup so that the power steering pump feeds a hydraulic orbital,
03:05which powers these hydraulic cylinders on the front.
03:09I had to put custom-made tusks on the front.
03:12Those things you can't just buy in a store, so I had to build those things out of metal from scratch.
03:16It took me about two weeks of welding, grinding, and fabricating,
03:20but I came out with two fully realistic tusks that I welded to the front to give it that authentic warthog look.
03:28You have to put blinkers on it, so that's what these little guys are, LED blinkers.
03:33And these are projection high beams, because you have to have high beams for it to be street legal.
03:39Your normal headlights, the off-road lights.
03:42I used a 3D printer to construct some of the tricky bits, like the rear-view camera cover,
03:49different odds and ends, like the covers for the front headlights.
03:54There's different things that are just hard to craft, so a 3D printer is actually the best way to go about it.
04:00So a lot of measurements went into every little angle, every piece of it, to make everything fit together.
04:07I'd say the hardest part about building this thing is probably the things I didn't expect.
04:13I've had to rebuild the engine three different times for different reasons.
04:20The dashboard is completely functional.
04:22There's a speedometer, there's a fuel gauge, there's button switches for all your lights and airbags, the heater.
04:30And these seats are actually racing seats bought off of eBay.
04:35They're fitted with a four-point safety harness to keep you strapped in.
04:40Thus far, I've spent at least 10, 11 grand in material costs.
04:45As for the value, it's hard to say how much it would actually sell for, but ballpark figure.
04:51If it's sold to a die-hard ALO fan, I could probably get upwards of 100 grand, I think.
05:03Everywhere I always seem to drive this thing, it turns heads.
05:06Pulling to a gas station, people are stopping to take pictures, asking questions about it, you know.
05:10People may not recognize that it's a warthog, but they just think it looks cool so they want to take pictures.
05:16We were just pulling off the highway to use the gas station, and I saw it, and I knew exactly what it was.
05:22I told my wife, I was like, oh, there's a warthog over there, we've got to go check it out.
05:26You know, I grew up playing the first ALO.
05:30When I had it up and running, and for the first time ever, I was able to actually take it out on the road,
05:36take it for a test drive, and just the feeling of driving this unique, you know, beastly-looking machine down the road
05:42that looks like nothing else, just puts a warm, fuzzy feeling in your heart.
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