HEADLINES: Diesel Drag Racing Is As Hot As It’s Ever Been

Diesel drag racing is one of the fastest-growing segments in motorsports, and at no time is that more evident than during the winter months. Just look at the vehicles coming out of the S&S Diesel Motorsport camp. The team there is putting the finishing touches on a promising go-fast project in the form of wiring up a MoTeC stand-alone ECU to play nice with its CP3’s, SP3000 and injectors. Then, at the tail end of January, Carter Langellier—S&S’s competition injector builder—broke ground on a ’69 Camaro that we guarantee will turn some heads in 5.90 Index. Stay tuned for more news on these track-bound monsters in the months ahead.

Drag Racing, Drag Racing, Drag Racing

Another Diesel Dragster Is Coming Together

With various Pro Street and Pro Mod records attained over the years, Firepunk has moved into the dragster realm. Work on a ground-up rail has commenced at the company’s Plain City, Ohio facility and rumor has it that former Pro Street record-holder, Josh Scruggs, will be behind the wheel. The chassis is currently being widened and lengthened to accommodate a common-rail Cummins and Rossler TH400 combo, and all indications are that a billet-aluminum D&J Executioner will sit within the chassis once it’s complete. Next, the folks at Firepunk will get busy fabbing and mocking up the turbo and oil systems.

Former “Non-Compliant” C7 Corvette Gunning For 3,500+ HP

It might be the dead of winter, but the team associated with this head-turning Corvette are in no way hibernating. After the late-model C7 tagged the wall at last year’s Rocky Top Diesel Shootout, Ryan Milliken and Rod MacMaster pulled out all the stops. The next time this car hits the track its chassis will have been fully updated, it will be lighter, and it will be packing a Cummins with a monster-sized single turbo and an even healthier diet of nitrous. MacMaster, who will be pulling the ‘chutes, tells us the first goal is 200 mph in the eighth (3,500 hp), with a follow-up objective being to make the ladder at a gas event, potentially in PDRA’s Pro Boost field (3,900 hp or more). Get your favorite flavor of Orville Redenbacher ready, this car is going to be insane!

5.90s With A Manual?

Ty Owens may have set a lofty goal for himself, but if anyone can pull it off it is definitely the manual transmission quarter-mile record-holder. After laying claim to the fastest bolt-action pass through the 1320 in 2023 (a 10.48 at 128 mph), Owens has his sights set on pushing his classic body Silverado into 5-second territory in the eighth this season. So what’s the difference in going 5.90s vs. the truck’s current 6.60s? About 250 horsepower. Nothing a little giggle gas can’t help achieve. If Owens does pull off the feat, and given the current lack of standard shift transmissions left out there in the wild, he might just bury the manual diesel record forever.

And A Little Carnage, Too

Just When You Think You’ve Seen It All…

It’s no secret that the 6.4L Power Stroke is notorious for catastrophic, other-worldly-expensive engine failures, but Unlimited Diesel Performance stumbled upon a rare (ish) one recently at its Bremen, Ohio headquarters: a cracked cylinder. The Super Duty it was powering was brought to UDP’s care for a mysterious knocking noise and, while it’s anyone’s guess what the exact cause of the failure was, maintenance neglect will always come back to bite you with this engine. Perhaps more than any other diesel power plant ever produced, the 6.4L simply will not tolerate dirty engine oil.

Written by Mike McGlothlin