Rising From The Ashes—Rod MacMaster’s 3,500 HP Corvette Returns

Flash back to the summer 2023 and Rodrigo MacMaster’s C7 Corvette, formerly known as “Non-Compliant” (and formerly Duramax-powered) has reemerged with a Cummins powerplant and, tearing through the eighth-mile in 4.1x second intervals while cutting 1.0x 60-foots, seems destined for 3’s. Then disaster strikes. The car tags the wall, the fire-suppression system activates, and the forced rebuild begins. Now, with huge help from Modern Racing, a helping hand from Midgets Diesel Performance and, as always, Hardway Performance, the long road back is nearly complete. On the hub dyno, the ‘Vette cleared 3,114 hp before smoking the forward clutches in the transmission. With that fixed, spool tests complete, and the car loaded, it’s headed to Fueltech World Street Nationals 31^st in Orlando this week.

More Drag Racing

The Hollyrock Rail Gets Significant Upgrades

Wasting zero time this off-season, the folks at Hollyrock Customs have already started improving Mattie Graves’ 3-second rail. Turning to one of the industry’s premier fabrication specialists in Cody Fisher of 1X Precision Welding, an intercooler was designed, built, and packaged behind the driver’s seat, the twin-turbo Duramax mill’s oil and fuel filters were rerouted, the nitrous system received some attention, and the dragster’s wiring was even reworked to make things easier to work on. At the last ODSS race of 2024, Hollyrock owner, Mike Graves, told us they would be going back to basics with the car, focusing on simplicity and repeatability—and this is proof that he meant what he said. Look for the Hollyrock rail to be more consistent, as well as eye-catching, in 2025.

In The Dirt

HUGE Turnout At Diesels In Dark Corners

Imagine an event being so popular and well-attended that the action runs into the wee hours of the morning. Diesels In Dark Corners is one such event. This year, Friday night’s highly anticipated truck pull kicked off at 5 pm and didn’t shut down until 3:30 am. Along the way, Evan Davis stole the show in Limited Pro Stock (3.0 smooth bore). Up against 60 other trucks in the class, the “Grey Area” Chevy proved a Duramax still has what it takes to win in this unbelievably competitive (and Cummins-dominated) category. Other notable DIDC winners included Zander Lee (3.0, Saturday night), Tripp Haisley behind the wheel of “Rock Hard Ram” (Super Stock, Friday), Nick Headley’s “Binder Edition” Super Stock Ram (Saturday), and George Stratikis’ “Hercules” pulling out the win in Pro Stock on Saturday night.

SEMA Show 2024

Garret Niss’s Gold-Plated and Hand-Engraved, 1,700hp Third-Gen

It’s SEMA week, and this build is bringing a sample of everything the diesel industry is capable of producing. Born at Firepunk Diesel, it brought the likes of Exergy Performance, D&J Precision Machine, Krazy Kutting, and Reflections Automotive Detailing and Metal Polishing together to build the perfect jaw-dropper. It’s show truck meets stupid horsepower, with the truck laying down 1,700-rwhp before everything was torn down for gold plating and engraving over the summer. More than 2,400 labor hours later, Garret Niss’s one-of-one build is headed to Vegas to be displayed in the Liberty Forged booth. If you can’t make it to SEMA, stop by the Exergy booth at the PRI Show in Indy this December. It’ll be parked there next to Firepunk’s Pro Mod Duster.

Carnage Corner

Finding The Limits

When you’re living on the edge of what parts can take, sometimes you reach the breaking point. Case in point, Drew Carter may have found the outer limits of the 23-spline billet input shaft from Sonnax. His second-gen Dodge owns the fuel-only eighth-mile ET record for a VP44 Cummins at 6.26 seconds, which he believes translates into an impressive 964 to 984 hp at the wheels. For a truck that’s shown no mercy at the track, we would agree that this is the threshold for pain for a billet 23-spline input shaft that’s regularly subjected to 1,500-plus lb-ft and boosted four-wheel drive launches. Next stop, 35-spline input…

Written by Mike McGlothlin