WORLD’S QUICKEST POWER STROKE

RUDY’S DIESEL’S STRIP-SCORCHING 6.4L PRO MOD

In drag racing, speed and quickness are the top priorities. In the 14 months or so that Rawlings Barnes and the team at Rudy’s Diesel Performance have been running their new 2WD Pro Mod, they can already lay claim to being the quickest and fastest Power Stroke diesel drag racer in the known world. They are still dialing in the truck, fine-tuning the performance and getting used to driving it, but as of our press time the best pass they have recorded is 4.78 seconds at 152 mph in the eighth mile.

The Foundation

Like most Pro Mod racers, this truck started out as a pile of steel tubing that was chopped, bent, notched and welded into a strong tube chassis. The tube chassis was fabricated by Elite Fab and Design and is wrapped in GTS Fiberglass & Design body components that include a one-piece front clip, doors and bedsides. Only the steel cab from a donor 2008 Super Duty remains. The Nhra-certified roll cage uses a funny car style safety cocoon around the Sparco PRO-ADV seat that Barnes calls home while he’s blasting down the track. The 6.4L Power Stroke is set back deep in the front of the chassis to better balance the weight of the truck.

The Power Stroke mill, controlled by a Motech standalone controller, currently churns out around 1,200-1,300 hp, but the engine is built to handle and make much more than that. The team is slowing turning up the power nearly each time they take it out. The 2008 6.4L Power Stroke block and crank are completely stock, but the crank swings a set of Rudy’s billet forged rods and Mahle forged pistons through the cylinder bores. The block is capped with a pair of factory cylinder heads that were ported by Elite Diesel, and they use Rudy’s valve

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