Behind the scene: race builds

WHAT DOES IT REALLY TAKE?

Earlier this year, I made a huge change to my life, one I had been itching to do for many years: I moved out of southern California, where I was born and raised, to northern Idaho.

All the things I was nervous about (mainly the snow; this CA boy doesn’t have much experience living with copious amounts of it on a daily basis) quickly became fun challenges. With only a month under my belt, all those things have become SOP, and I’m loving it so far.

One of the most enlightening things I’ve gotten to enjoy, as far as diesel is concerned, is the building of upperechelon diesel race trucks (not too many of those in Socal). I’ve been able to hang around as a truck was rebuilt and tested in preparation for Ultimate Callout Challenge and the rest of the 2019 season.

UCC is the “Super Bowl” of diesel, hands down. While I need to keep secret which truck I got to be handson with until after UCC (due to the secrecy that surrounds these types of uber-competitive builds), it did finish in the top five at UCC last year.

Getting to that level in competition, being able to say you’re one of the top five diesel competition trucks in North America, is not easy. It’s something that takes a small fortune to pull off, and you don’t just have to spend that money once—to stay competitive, you need to keep innovating and ultimately keep spending, every single year and throughout the season as well.

For those of us wanting to take our 300-ish rear-wheel-horsepower trucks to 600, 800 or even 1,000 hp, that could be expensive and not an easy task at all. But taking a truck from 2,000 to 2,400 hp is exponentially harder (and therefore, more expensive). So, you’ve got a truck that does 10s in the quarter mile; very impressive, indeed! You’ve got one of only a handful of rigs out there capable of this.

However, getting into the low 9s, 8s or even 7s is a completely different game. Once at that 2,000 hp level, adding even 75 hp is a daunting task. At 2,000 hp, these engines are living on the ragged edge of what they’re capable of. They will break often; that’s a given.

To get a couple of seasons out of a $50k+ bottom end is an amazing thing. Many won’t get close to that. And that’s just the bottom end. There are turbos, injection pumps, rear ends, tires, intercoolers and so much more that won’t likely last the season. And these turbos aren’t your normal BW S366 at $800 a pop. Nope, they’re $6k versions, and there’s always more than one. Nowadays, there are often three.

Watching this truck during testing has been a real eye-opener. The first few hits on the dyno were mostly with last year’s setup but testing out a new wastegate setup. We were going for 2,000 hp fuel only.

After several dyno hits and multiple live tuning sessions, the setup ended up not working correctly and was creating so much drive pressure (exhaust pressure used to spool the turbos) that it was overpowering anything the boosted air charge was adding to the engine’s performance (think massive exhaust back pressure like a plugged exhaust). Once that setup was tweaked to the best it could possibly be, we had a week of eighthour days gone. A new turbo setup was decided on.

After another week of work just getting the chargers plumbed in and ready for a dyno pull, things were looking better. Then, after a few test hits and tweaks, the parts used just for testing—mainly the charge pipes—couldn’t handle the 150 psi of boost they were seeing.

Building tubing that will handle that kind of pressure is not easy and takes very expensive stainless steel tubing. The mild grade or even stainless tubing your street truck has won’t come even close to cutting it. At this level, the tooling, along with people with the skills to pull off this work, are few and far between. So, a mockup tubing system was designed, built and then removed and sent out to someone who could work with the “unobtanium”-type materials that could handle the abuse. Another week gone.

At this point, on top of the turbo issues, we’d seen CP3 pullies spinning on the shaft, causing low fuel pressure; blow-by systems giving us misinformation; tires spinning on the dyno giving us more misinformation; and so much more. And that’s normal when playing in the big leagues.

Winning races at this level is done with thousands of small tweaks and even more hiccups. It’s a true labor of love, and it has to be—or else you’d lose your mind.

My level of respect for these guys has never been stronger. Everything I’ve told you about here won’t even give you the slightest glimpse into what it really takes to compete at the top of the game. I wish every one of you could spend just a month watching what it takes. I assure you, you’d be extremely amazed. These guys are on a level that 99 percent of us will never be able to even fathom, and it’s amazing to watch.

Once UCC is over, I’ll be able to share a bit more about what I’ve gotten to see here. I can’t wait to share it. In the meantime, keep wrenching on those trucks.

I’ll see you at the track this event season!

WINNING RACES AT THIS LEVEL IS DONE WITH THOUSANDS OF SMALL TWEAKS AND EVEN MORE HICCUPS.