Crazyhorse Is Back On Top

One of the biggest no-prep races of the year went down at Texas Motor Speedway on Friday night. There, racers covered a quarter-mile’s worth of distance down pit road in the middle of the storied oval track. Nathan Wheeler and the Cummins-powered Crazyhorse Ford went rounds in the 4×4 class until meeting Randy Seals and El Gringo in the finals. In a nail-biter, the diesel grabbed the win over one of the strongest-running AWD Coyote-powered F-150s in the country (a truck that went 8.66 according to the dragy…). If you’re a no-prep fan, get comfortable, these two are going to be trading wins for many years to come.

In The Dirt

Hub City Madness

If you like 2,000hp dyno runs, 100-mph dirt drags, expansive truck shows, all-night truck and tractor pulls and tire-disintegrating burnouts, then Hub City Dirt Drags is the event for you. We attended for the first time over the weekend, and it was more than worth the trip. ODSS racer, Nathan Bandstra, put on a show in the diesel truck challenge—ultimately parking his big boost Duramax in the winner’s circle and leaving with more than $10,000 in his pocket. Elsewhere within Wisconsin’s Richland County Fairgrounds, Jesse Warren’s U.C.C.-built 6.0L lit up the chassis dyno with a turbo-killing, 2,000hp hit, a road dedicated to hosting burnouts was collecting rubber all day, and everything from Hot Street to 2.6 and 3.0 to Super Stock trucks took to the dirt for the Friday night sled pulls. Stay tuned for full coverage from Hub City later in the week.

At The ‘Strip

No Mercy 16

Diesels once again made the annual pilgrimage to No Mercy (number 16 this year) to go radial tire racing. Among some of the heavy hitters were Firepunk Diesel’s Larson Miller running Radial Vs. The World, Hardway Performance’s Rod MacMaster doing the same in the Cummins-powered C7 Corvette, RLC Motorsport’s Michael Dalton, and Nick Bell mixing it up in N/T Pro Truck, and Skylar Fornes making a run at 6.00 Index. While compression ignition didn’t grab a win, Firepunk’s Duster went 3.92 at 197 mph in the first round of qualifying. Rod MacMaster, despite breakage and other gremlins, looks to be on the path toward 3.80’s (and maybe even 3.7X’s) at 200 mph, and both Skylar Fornes and Nick Bell made it to the semifinals in their respective categories before being put on the trailer. A strong showing for sure.

On The Rollers

Four-Digit Horsepower From An L5P Duramax—And A 10-Speed Allison

It was a good weekend for Travis Streif and his ’22 Denali. Strapped to Northwest Dyno Series’ industry-standard SuperFlow, the late model crew cab GMC laid down an impressive 1,015 hp. Thanks to the 10L1000 being built by FBH Transmission, the 10-speed automatic didn’t skip a beat. The nasty L5P accomplished the feat thanks to a set of injectors and a 12mm CP3 from Dan’s Diesel Performance, with DDP also supplying the potent 6.6L its air—a 64mm/88mm compound arrangement. Tuning from Blake Crenshaw helped bring everything together for what amounted to one of the highest horsepower figures made during the Fan Dyno session on Day 2 of the Hub City Dirt Drags.

Vintage Swaps

4BT Swapped ’41 Power Wagon

Diesel swapped Power Wagons never get old. These rugged, primitive, Military-intentioned trucks were once built to win wars and today outfitting one with diesel propulsion is about as cool as it gets. This ’41 has been fully restored but also stretched, tucked, and massaged to accommodate a 140hp 4BT Cummins extended long block from Big Bear Engine Company (its 4BTAA140HP model to be exact). Pieced together at Vintage Modern Performance—and with Herring Auto treating the Big Bear 4BT to a little added horsepower—it also benefits from a GM Performance 6L80E, a Dana 80 with 3.73 axle gearing from East Coast Gear Supply, a Dakota Digital gauge cluster, and a Vintage Air A/C Gen V system.

Written By Mike McGlothlin