Red Bull — Evan Williams’ custom 1966 Diamond T

Evan Williams blends a Diamond T cab, Peterbilt sleeper and Western Star chassis in a remarkable custom build.

Words by Chris Smith. Photography by Greg Forster and Chris Smith.

I have been seeing this very interesting looking 1966 Diamond T P3320 around the traps for the last few months and I need to thank Michelle Wilkie the Editor of the Heritage Truck Association Australia’s newsletter for getting me in contact with its owner, Evan Williams.

After talking to Evan and hearing what it took to put the Diamond T together one question burned in my mind. Why would a retiree, that was never a truck driver, spend so much time and money on a project of this scale?

“One day while inspecting a retired friend’s model train display his wife said to me, “Now that you’re retired Evan, what is your hobby?”

“This question set in motion a casual review by me of my interests and how I might do something which gave me pleasure and a sense of achievement.

“After considering model trains and cars, a number of different Men’s Sheds, bowls and golf, Rotary and Apex, a variety of classic cars and even custom scaled truck reproductions, I finally decided, I needed to restore the real thing and for me it was a Diamond T truck,” he says.

“I had some spare cash that I had in a managed fund that I’d had for 40 years so I had the cash and it was surplus and I could have done anything with it, I could have bought a boat, we could have put it in to our home, or we could have put it in to a bigger home, we could have gone overseas and come back with a bunch of photos and some memories but I wanted to build something.

“I wanted to get my hands dirty and I wanted to do something unique that was mine and that nobody else could lay claim to,” Evan puts it into perspective and tells me some of the reasoning.

This wasn’t a light-hearted decision, Evan first looked at a totally different type of vehicle that he would convert into a truck, in retrospect, a much smaller and less costly venture.

“I started off with a little Suzuki Carry in mind. In this country it’s called a grey import and I was going to convert it to a bogey drive prime mover,” he tells ACT.

Queensland based, he found the vehicle in Dubbo and got some people to inspect it and put a report together.

“I sourced the vehicle, I’d sourced the axles, I’d sourced the people who could approve the chassis extension but when I got the report, I discovered that the vehicle had been paddock bashed and damaged underneath so I chose not to make that purchase, which was probably a mistake,” he admits.

“If I’d taken that vehicle it probably would have cost less money than what was put in to this one and I would have had a happier wife, I wouldn’t have had to buy a new kitchen and I would have still had some money left in the bank, but I didn’t make that decision, I went the other way.”

Back to that burning question, what was his motivation?

“I worked in the transport industry all my life but I never got to the nitty gritty of working behind the steering wheel, I was always around the peripheral directing and operating and doing ancillary things but not the nitty gritty,” he tells ACT.

“I’m more competent at tarping a 40 foot trailer than most of the truckies that came in to the TNT yard because I was tarping trailers all day every day so I was that close to it but I was never behind the wheel as a driver or an owner driver so that was the final aspect of the collage of experiences that was missing, so now in my mind I’ve kind of ticked all of those boxes around having been in the industry,” he confides.

“I already had my licence. I’d done that early on, I could see there could have been a necessity for that but because I had shown some promise, they directed me away from the yard and in to the office, and in the office I stayed.

“I didn’t go back in to the yard and my career went off in another direction and that’s the way it was.”

He says he spotted the Diamond T returning home to Queensland on a road trip.

“I spotted a similar model Diamond T to the one my father had owned, parked on a hill beside the Pacific Highway near Halfway Creek in NSW,” Evan says.

“While this was exactly what I wanted I wasn’t keen on the restoration process due to my limited skills, tools and lack of work area so I simply ignored this truck and started actively seeking out restored models.

“Over a two-year-period I found two restored trucks for sale which at the time seemed to me to be over priced and didn’t really have all the features I was seeking.”

He tells ACT eventually he took a day trip from QLD to NSW simply to see if the truck he had seen was still for sale.

Sure enough, it was there and still for sale, he simply photographed it and drooled over the photographs for another two years, thinking the urge to have a truck would pass and he would move on to some other hobby entirely.

But after almost four years he continued to maintain an interest in restoring a truck.

“In December 2015 I contacted the owner of the Diamond T on the Pacific Highway and asked if it was still for sale,” he recalls.

“It was still available. The purchase process was protracted since it was Christmas time, we were travelling and thousands of kilometres away. I finally took possession in March 2016,” he says.

It wasn’t an easy task finding someone that could turn his vision into reality.

He says his entire working career was spent in various facets of the transport industry and included all modes.

During the late 70’s and early 80’s he was employed by TNT in interstate road terminals in Melbourne and he says this may have swayed his decision to bring the Diamond T to a modern specification.

“In retrospect my eight years with TNT influenced my thinking and left me with a need to see the Diamond T perform comparably with a modern long-distance truck,” he admits.

A mate pointed him to a mob in Thorneside that did work on his tippers and his Bob Cat business. The short story is the person didn’t do that kind of work anymore and he referred Evan to his brother in Stanthorpe.

He contacted the brother and he agreed to do the build. This is where the direction on buying a donor truck came about. However, the fabricator wanted to cut the truck down the middle to widen it. Evan says he just couldn’t do that.

“That was just over the top, I mean I was happy to do lots of modifications, but I couldn’t see the need to cut it. The real issue was the windscreen and having to make a two-piece windscreen,” he explains.

Evan was looking at a potential donor truck in Norwell, QLD when the fellow that was selling the truck asked what he was trying to do. The guy told Evan there was a yard 200 metres down the road where they specialise in that kind of work and could accommodate what he was doing.

“It sounded really good because it meant I didn’t have to go to Stanthorpe to supervise the build, I could just go from home each day and so I went and saw those people, S & T Fabrications in Norwell, had a couple of meetings with them and put my wish list on the table. They came up with some numbers which were meaningless and then I said to them, do we sign a contract or sign some pieces of paper?

They just looked at each other then they looked at me and I shook their hands so it was all just verbal and I said when are we starting and they said next Monday. So I turned up down there with my work boots on and was introduced to Bronco and away we went dismantling the first truck,” he explains.

Evan says Trevor Brehmer who goes by the name “Bronco,” originally a cane farmer from the region, was instrumental in the build process with a great talent and vision.

Two weeks into the build Evan found a Western Star in Cairns and promptly bought it and shipped it to Norwell. It was a 1997 Western Star 3800e.

In addition to S & T, Oz Rods at Meadowbrook, who specialise in building hot rods, had input in to the build as well.

“They specialised in the glass, the door and lock mechanisms and powering the windows. They also did some fabrication work up front that I hadn’t been too happy with and had to redo it,” he says.

The Diamond T was completely disassembled and all parts except the cabin sold to other enthusiasts.

The Western Star had its cabin and fuel tanks removed leaving the chassis and entire drive-train in place.

The cabin was sold to the Palm Island Shire Council.

The Diamond T cabin was sand blasted, painted and mounted on a sub frame together with a 1998 Peterbilt sleeper cabin purchased from Retruck. The combined Diamond T cabin and Peterbilt sleeper cabin was then mounted on the Western Star chassis, supported by four airbags.

The bonnet, mudguards and grille were custom fabricated.

The fuel tanks came from yet another Western Star.

The original spider hubs were replaced with 10 stud hubs to enable the fitment of alloy wheels which were subsequently ceramic coated to maintain their shine.

The original Diamond T had a butterfly bonnet which was changed to a tilt bonnet like the Western Star it is now built on.

Evan says many other parts were sourced from other trucks, from interstate and overseas.

The re-engineered 1966 Diamond T P3320 now features air bag suspension, air bag suspended cabin and fully adjustable air assisted seating.

It is powered by a Caterpillar C12 engine driving through a 13-speed Eaton Fuller Roadranger transmission.

The truck’s accessories include 1200 litre fuel and 1200 litre water capacity, three stage compression braking, cruise control, three speed intermittent wipers, heating, air-conditioning, electric windows, UHF and FM radios, adjustable steering column, alloy wheels, dual air horns, Peterbilt 63” Unibilt Ultracab sleeper cabin, two bunks with inner spring mattresses, 700w microwave, 30 lt fridge, 150 w solar panel, 2000 w inverter, 200 ah house battery, led lighting, storage cupboards and wardrobes. The bumper at the front has a unique story as well. It was made up of two Diamond T bumpers welded together.

Originally the plan was to chrome it all but Evan was advised it would look rather ugly. An alternative method was used in which the bumper was painted and then strips of stainless steel was used to give it a unique look. The strips compliment the strips across the front grille.

The detail extends to the interior trimming which has the Diamond T symbol embossed on the seats and the ceiling. It really does look neat and tidy.

If you are curious about the name Red Bull Evan gives an explanation. He says for the fans of the cult classic trucking film White Line Fever, the truck in the movie is called Blue Mule. Well this one is Red Bull to use the same naming convention. The build took about 18 months in total and Evan was hands on the whole time working alongside Bronco and is proud of his achievement.

He has already been to a few shows and he plans to do more driving next year in March taking the Diamond T to the Lockhart Vintage Festival and Truck Show, the Clunes Historic Vehicle Show and the White Truck Muster.

The beauty of it all is that Evan is happy and after this major build he says simply, “I’ve got no regrets!”

Transport was always in the blood for Evan as he recently found out from his mother.

“While explaining my new found interest in heritage trucks my mother commented that trucking must definitely be in my blood. She went on to explain that during the 1890’s my great grandfather, James Newton, was a ‘Bullocky’ owning a bullock team which operated in NSW transporting wool and wheat to paddle steamers on the Murrumbidgee and Murray Rivers,” he tells ACT.

“Upon returning from Europe in 1919 my Grandfather, Frank Newton took up a soldier settlement at Cheshunt in the upper reaches of the King Valley in North Eastern Victoria.

“After farming for several years he won a Country Roads Board contract to maintain the Cheshunt – Buffalo River Road using a horse and dray. He then traded up to an Oldsmobile truck. Later he was contracted to maintain the Whitfield – Mansfield Road and owned an Austin Truck.

“One of my father’s first trucks was a GMC used to cart pulpwood from Mt Matlock to Maryvale Paper Mill and logs from forests around Noojee in Victoria,” he relays.

He says other trucks followed with interstate trucks hauling Hillman cars out of Melbourne and returning with general freight.

With a growing family a decision was taken to move from interstate to local work and many years were spent operating concrete agitators for Nunawading Concrete, Readymix and Specified Concrete.

Evan says as a teenager growing up in Melbourne his father, now deceased, owned and operated a red Diamond T P5000 prime mover hauling interstate for Hall’s Van Lines at Broadmeadows, Victoria.

“Their primary client was Rowntree Hoadley confectionary and he hauled an air-conditioned pantechnicon to and from eastern seaboard capitals,” he recalls vividly.

“The truck was always a stand out wherever it happened to be and I have fond memories of this truck and my dad’s attempts to have me join him in the industry.

“While I declined to join him in his involvement in trucking I did eventually join the transport industry working in all disciplines in a variety of roles but never as an owner driver,” he says.

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.