Eye Kandy — Robert Amenta’s 1985 Kenworth K125

Robert Amenta transforms a paddock find into a working Kenworth K125 with show-truck appeal.

Words by Chris Smith. Photography by Chris Smith.

We first caught up with truck driver Robert Amenta at the 2018 Alexandra Truck Ute & Rod Show while doing our popular truck show coverage.

Robert told ACT that he didn’t have his truck there at the time, but his mate piped in and said it was decent looking for its age and one I should look out for.

Sure enough, after six months, two seasons and a half a dozen truck shows later, I happened to spot this eye-catching Kenworth K125 parked at the Castlemaine Truck Show.

I had no idea who owned it, only that this truck stood out and I wanted to feature it in the magazine.

As I came towards the K125 Robert was there and instantly started the conversation where we’d left off in Alex.

He wasn’t one for words, like many of the younger truckies but we managed to squeeze a bit of information out of him.

Robert expressed he developed his interest in trucking watching his father drive trucks when he was growing up. His path would follow that of his dad’s and by 18 he started working as a truck driver.

A decade later, he is now a proud owner driver.

The K125 that is featured is a paddock find that he bought four years ago.

He explains it was in a pretty bad state and needed some extensive work just to get it out of the paddock.

This wasn’t too bad, considering many paddock finds need to be taken away by truck to the workshop. The K125 required a new water pump. A new turbo, belts, batteries and a set of tyres.

He has done most of the restoration, modification and customisation by himself but says anything he couldn’t do he enlisted the services of Shepparton based Kyzer Kustoms.

The whole project was done on weekends and spare time as he was working as a driver for someone else.

The whole truck was stripped right back and given a new lease on life.

“It was stripped right back, I had it on two chassis stands,” Robert tells ACT.

He explains to ACT he added the airbag suspension as well as changed the tanks, painted the cab, the chassis and everything else. He also fitted all the lights and did all the wiring.

Kyzer Kustoms helped with the guards and those not so traditional square tanks as well.

Robert has caused a bit of controversy with his choice of square tanks as opposed to the traditional round tanks found originally on this model. But you can be the judge of that yourself.

He also put on an 8-inch straight exhaust. This wasn’t an easy task at all he reckons.

He says there are always issues with this kind of project and for this one it was lining up the 8” exhaust.

With the combination of the twin stack, the twin aircleaners and the lights, the back wall of the cab looks very neat and tidy. It has Robert’s unique touch to it.

“It hasn’t been done before so I did it,” he tells ACT.

“Most Aerodynes have twin aircleaners similar to what I have, I just went off that and decided to make it different.”

The truck runs on 46” Eaton diffs, the engine is a CAT 3406 opened up to 400hp and matched to a 13-speed Road Ranger.

Now that the truck has been completed you should be seeing it at a lot more truck shows in Victoria.

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.