Black Dog — Bernie Champion’s Klos custom Mack Superliner

Like all classic icons, this masterpiece was crafted over time. Black Dog was created by Klos Custom Trucks.

Words by Chris Smith. Photography by Robbie Rose.

Bernie Champion was destined to love the Mack brand. He is the son of Tony Champion, a Mack fan from a long way back. In fact, we have featured Tony’s B75 Mack creation in an earlier issue of Australian Custom Trucks and in this issue we have his restored Turner’s Titan in the upcoming pages.

Bernie, a diesel fitter by trade, now works with his father restoring trucks for one of the most impressive private Mack museums in the world.

The word on the street is that it will become a public museum in the not too distant future. We’ll have much more of that in an upcoming issue of ACT.

Before we digress further, this is Bernie’s truck’s story and the truck in question is a Mark 2, or Series 2 if you prefer, 1988 Super-Liner with an E9 500hp Mack V8 motor.

The project has been a massive one and it has taken a few years to complete. Like any project of this scope there have been challenges along the way.

The end, as they say, justifies the means and the end of this project is nothing short of spectacular.

It is also a dream come true for Bernie.

“I couldn’t fault the work of Klos Custom Trucks at all. I was very happy with the job that they have done,” he firmly expresses to ACT.

He tells ACT Macks have always been his favourite truck, since he was a young fella. His dad had a brand new black 1982 Super-Liner Mark 1 (Series 1).

“I always wanted to either get that truck back or build a black Super-Liner,” he explains.

Bernie recalls his dad gave him great advice when he started looking for this project truck.

“He said some of the best trucks were the Tassie log trucks, because the cattle trucks have the issue of rusted out chassis rails. He said the Tassie trucks work hard, but it’s different sort of work.”

He found a truck online belonging to Dion Wilson. The truck was all white and called “Casper” after that friendly ghost. Ironically the truck is now all black.

The truck was used to cart earthmoving equipment and logging gear.

The truck’s pedigree is well documented and its original owner was Glenn Halsall. The original name was the “Silver Shadow”.

Glenn had bought it brand new and it had worked originally as a logging truck.

You might have picked up that Bernie’s dad had a Mark 1 (Series 1) Super-Liner and this is a Mark 2 (Series 2).

“The Series 2 was always my favourite even though dad had a Series 1, I wanted a Series 2 because they are bigger and higher in the bonnet and they have the square headlights. The engine was also a bit bigger,” he says.

The truck had recently blown up the engine and close to $57k was invested in the rebuild.

“I talked to a lot of people when I saw the receipts for that engine and because I paid a lot less than the rebuild, it was a really good proposition at the time, the engine is basically brand new,” he tells ACT.

“It’s got a new block in it and a full rebuild kit and I think it had 20,000 km, if that, when I got it. It had been run in enough to know that it was good.”

Bernie got a mate to look at it in Tassie, him being based in Rocky and all. His mate said if Bernie wasn’t going to buy it, then he would. That was the sign that this was the one.

At that time Bernie and Tony weren’t doing their own restorations. Bernie had seen what the Klos boys had done to Tommy Buckle’s truck and was impressed.

Tommy Buckle owned a 1986 Series 2 Mack Super-Liner that became the Lone Ranger when owned by Jon Kelly, former owner of Heavy Haulage Australia (HHA).

This was the first truck the Klos brothers had customised for someone and it was the only Mack they had ever done.

“Tommy is a very good friend of ours, if it wasn’t for Tommy we wouldn’t be doing what we are doing today,” explains Justin Klos.

“I fell in love with the Tommy Buckle truck,” Bernie says.

“I still have the picture of it as the Rig of the Month. Ever since that I wanted to do a big Super-Liner like that with a big Aero 1 bunk on it.”

Where better to start than with the customisers that built his favourite truck. He says Klos have the ability to make a truck appear old school and custom at the same time with their classic cool approach.

The conversation began with Justin and Turk Klos and they offered up a myriad of ideas when tasked with creating the perfect Super-Liner.

“What Bernie asked for was our interpretation of the best Mack Super-Liner and we hit it as hard as we could, building him the best Mack Super-Liner using our style,” recalls Justin.

“We have a lot of standard trucks.

I don’t play around with limited editions or anything like that but this truck I just wanted as a custom truck. This truck didn’t have any major history as far as being a limited edition or anything like that, so we didn’t have any rules to stick to,” Bernie tells ACT.

The Super-Liner made its way to the Klos Custom Trucks workshop and the restoration and transformation began.

The first thing was the chassis extension. It is now significantly longer with the sleeper cab added.

The suspension was changed from camelback to Hendrickson airbag suspension to improve the overall ride quality.

The original 12-speed transmission was replaced with an Eaton 18-speed Road Ranger.

The sleeper that was used was the last that Keith Aitken built. He was one of the biggest truck customisers in the 1980s and 90s building quality sleepers for Kenworths.

Justin explains the Keith sleeper was bought at the Keith auction and possibly the last Keith sleeper ever made and it had never been fitted on a truck.

“It was a brand new sleeper shell, which is super rare,” he explains.

“It’s a Keith sleeper which theoretically is a knock-off of a Kenworth bunk. We wanted to make it so it suited that make of truck so modified the Kenworth sleeper to become a Mack sleeper,” he says.

“Because we were putting it on a Mack we had to lower the sleeper, we had to take the roof off, cut it down and then make that roof fit on a Mack.

“Mack has always had the Mack imprinted logo on the back of the sleeper so we ran that idea past Bernie because again, this is building Bernie’s dream. Bernie got that part of the sleeper for us and then we grafted the Mack insignia on the back of the new sleeper.”

In line with having a Keith sleeper the Klos brothers also sought out a Keith bullbar. This, unlike the sleeper, was the preferred bar on many of the Super-Liners back in the day.

“Originally my truck had a Keith bullbar on it so I really wanted to put another one back on,” Bernie says.

“Klos found me a really good Keith bullbar that was designed for the Super-Liners.”

The bullbar was cleaned up and polished and now the Black Dog has both and original Keith bullbar and Keith sleeper.

It also has the Aero 1 air kit on top!

Justin admits Mack’s aren’t the easiest trucks to work on. This would explain why this was only their second ever. For the self-proclaimed Kenworth fans, they put every Klos touch on this project.

“We are Kenworth guys through and through, that’s what we know,” Justin attests.

“So the indicators are Kenworth with a Mack insignia, the Mirrors are the Kenworth style. It has so many of our influences on that truck to make it unique. Usually with a generic truck fit-out a Mack has got to have Mack indicators, it’s got to have a Mack sleeper it’s got to have Mack parts. But we put what we think are the right touches on that truck.”

He says everyone’s taste is different but this is the Klos interpretation of creating the best Super-Liner that ever existed.

This extends to the colour combination of the truck.

“When you think of a muscle car, if you have a black muscle car, it is bad-arse. That truck had to be black,” Justin affirms.

“The colour, if it wasn’t black would have had to be a burgundy chassis.

“Black and greys are the cool colours that give it that sinister sort of feel to it as well as that seriousness to it, that sinister stance to it. Trying to get that all into the one truck is pretty hard.”

Everyone that knows trucks and that is in the scene would recall Black Dog blew a diff when it came out of the Castlemaine Truck Show.

It was a bit heartbreaking for Bernie having come so far and being piped at the post.

However, it did provide for an overall restoration.

“The only thing that we didn’t originally rebuild was the back end. We bought that because it had Mack in the castings, in the pedestal of the suspension. It was a bit unknown because it was bought off the wreckers. It was the only thing that hadn’t been rebuilt,” Bernie explains.

“We blew a diff coming out of Castlemaine but this gave us an opportunity to rebuild both the diffs, so that has left nothing unknown and everything restored,” he says.

“It has a whole new drive-line, a rebuilt engine, it has an all new interior, the sleeper has all been restored and everything was pulled down to paint it, it has all new everything!”

The work that Klos Custom Trucks has done is…complete.

“The truck has equal detail, inside, outside and underneath.

For example, it has stainless wrapped tanks but the tanks themselves are polished inside, the parts you’ll never see,” Justin reveals.

“With that Mack, I don’t reckon I could ever top that.

“That thing is like the Holy Grail of trucks because it hasn’t been done before. It is a genuine original truck with so many personal touches to it!”

Rear Vision: where are they now?

Do you know where this truck is today, or have an update on its story? Tell ACT what happened next. We will verify current updates before adding them to the archive.