Winning at the Track with the 3000HP Diesel Master

(Pat)>> You're watching Powernation.

(Pat)>> From blowing up their engine on the dyno in spectacular fashion I might add, to blowing out the world record at the drag strip.

(Frankie)>> The Fire Punk Diesel Team always does something exciting. Today on Engine Power they tell us all about it. ♪ ♪

(Pat)>> It's pretty rare that we get a world record breaking drag truck in the Engine Power shop. So when Lavon Miller stopped by with his S-10 featuring a Cummins inline six diesel power plant that makes over 3,000 horsepower it most certainly caught our attention.

(Frankie)>> Recently the truck broke the diesel world record during Lights Out 12 at South Georgia Motorsports Park. Running in the radial versus the world class Fire Punk's S-10 overcame the four second barrier in the eighth mile going 3.998 seconds at 182.67 miles per hours.

(Pat)>> The power plant, aptly named The Executioner, is based on a 6.7 Cummins inline six featuring a billet aluminum block, 98 millimeter single turbo, five stages of nitrous with water injection, and a beryllium plate to keep the valves sealed up under some serious pressure. It's designed and manufactured by D&J Precision Machine in Cambridge, Ohio.

(Frankie)>> Lavon, Drew, this is crazy. We haven't really had anything like this in the shop before and we really appreciate you guys bringing down and telling us about it, but tell us a little about the truck and what this is?

(Lavon)>> Well this is obviously an S-10 in its original form. It's an old Pro Stock that we've done a lot of modifications to the chassis to fit a diesel power plant in it.

(Pat)>> This is some pretty serious hardware.

(Frankie)>> How much is this making?

(Lavon)>> This engine dyno'ed was 3,214 horsepower and 3,630 pound feet of torque. We originally had the cast Cummins block that he builds The Enforcer engine, which is a deck plate, ductile iron steel deck plate on top of the cast block, one inch longer rods, ductile iron sleeves, and that platform has worked well for us. We went about 100 passes on it at around 2,500 horsepower, and then we actually went to do some engine dyno testing with some different injectors and turbos and Hot Shot Secret's new oil and on the engine dyno it actually split the block right above the mains, and it separated the block. The whole engine came apart, and you're sitting there looking at it and you're like you really can't make the block stronger. That's where Drew kinda had this idea stirring around in his head that I think we can make an aluminum version of this. The main reason we went aluminum is so we could save weight for racing, and it's got the one inch taller deck already built into it. It's a little wider with the webbing on the side to add some reinforcement.

(Drew)>> We couldn't material into the cam bore area and under the mains that well and still get the bore spacing and everything that we needed so we kinda went outboard of the block and started designing the block. So we had more strength in that cross section where we had failures in the deck plate engines.

(Lavon)>> And that has your tooled steel bed plate. There's like six bolts per main, 5/8th studs. So there's a total of one million pounds of clamping force holding the crank in. With an inline six everything's trying to go out the bottom.

(Pat)>> Enter Hot Shot's Secrets. Now you were local to them. They wanted to do some testing and development on one of their products. Tell us a little bit about how that came about.

(Lavon)>> We have a chassis dyno in house and they called us asked to rent some dyno time like normal. We didn't think much of it. When they showed up instead of them bringing their truck and doing their own testing they just brought two bottles of additive and they said we want you to test our products. You just tell us what the results are. So I took my 2016 in there. It had 30,000 miles. It had fresh oil change. So I knew everything was good and healthy and we did five pulls back to back within five minutes of a baseline pull, and then we added the FR-3 Hot Shot's Secret additive to it. Let the truck idle for 20 minutes, and then five pulls back to back within five minutes, and had like a 23 horsepower gain. I was like this is crazy. I literally poured an additive in my oil.

(Drew)>> I remember you calling like this stuff actually works! I'm like what?

(Lavon)>> It reduced enough friction to add horsepower. This is crazy, and it makes believers out of people when you can prove the results right there on the dyno.

(Pat)>> You actually conned them into making some racing oil.

(Lavon)>> We've got all these race engines, transmissions. We need some racing oil. I know that they could be able to put something together that's specific for our industry, and that's what they set out to do. So they actually developed the Adrenaline racing oil for us, and that is a group four p-a-o base oil. So it's like best of the best oil with really a good additive protection package, and then it's also infused with the FR-3 with the carbon nano technology in it, and they have developed that into their racing oils that we use in this, and then we also use it in our trucks that are in the shop, daily drivers, work trucks.

(Drew)>> One of the hardest challenges we've had at the higher horsepower is keeping blow by under control and keeping rings from getting tore up, and with the FR-3 and the Hot Shot's oil we can see a blow by reduction in the engine because we hold the oil film better on the sleeves. With the FR-3 and the Hot Shots oil the degradation doesn't happen.

(Lavon)>> We did 17 dyno pulls on the engine dyno last year and we made 99 passes on the track before we tore it down and the bearings literally looked brand new. The still had the little marks from the dial bore gauge.

(Drew)>> Still cross hatch in the cylinder walls after all that abuse.

(Pat)>> Now this truck is a record breaker.

(Lavon)>> Well really the big chase that we've been after for a long time was getting a diesel in the three second range in the eighth mile. So been kind of a chase through the threes. There's been a couple of diesel dragsters that have been 4.04, 4.08, like they we're knocking on the door and we really wanted to do it with a door car, and this spring we were able to get that record with a 3.998 at 182 miles an hour. That was on a 315 radial tire. It was a big accomplishment for us because it's not easy. You can have all the horsepower that you want but you have to be able to control it. So we have a Bosch e-c-u and a power box system put together by Exergy Performance. So we have time based fueling. We can build a fuel power curve so we can come off the trans brake at about 1,400 horsepower and ramp that power curve up to 3,200. So we can control all our power by just controlling fuel ramp.

(Drew)>> We run on the lean side of the fuel curve. So as we add fuel it actually adds temperature. We run so lean that as you add nitrous it cools the engine back down, or cools the e-g-t's back down cause we're running clear on the lean side of the fuel curve, and that gives us control. The e-c-u can also save the engine.

(Lavon)>> Our next goal for the truck really is be able to get the thing in the threes on the big tires. So the big tires are a little bit tricky when it comes to too much power too soon, you shake the tire. Not enough power, drive into power, you shake the tire. We know it's there we just have to get our 60 foot better and that's one of our next goals, and then once we go back on radials we want to try to get the thing in the 3.80's. That's just baby steps. There's more powerful power plants out there that are more mainstream that would be easier, but because we bleed diesel we've got to do it the hard way.

(Frankie)>> And whatever Fire Funk Diesel does next we can't wait to see it. Up next, our Ram is a little rough but we've got a plan to get it roadworthy again.

(Pat)>> Plus we find out how the backyard small block holds up on the dyno.

(Frankie)>> You know how they say the faucet in a plumber's home always drips because he's too busy working on other people's pipes? It's kinda that way at our shop too. So it should be no surprise that we'd end up bringing one of our trucks in for some much needed attention.

(Pat)>> For years now we have been teaming up with RockAuto dot com on our Driveway Rescues to get vehicles in desperate need of attention back on the highway, and in that time we have worked on some very interesting vehicles and met some cool people, like Mack Metcalf who had a '72 Charger that was overheating. We helped him overhaul the cooling system and made some timing adjustments to get him and his dog Higgins back on the road.

(Mack)>> Want to get some ice cream?

(Pat)>> And Kelly Smotherman who found her dream truck, a '63 C-10 for sale in an empty field. When she discovered it had some fueling issues we hopped in the Driveway Rescue fan with a bunch of repair parts from RockAuto dot com and got her Chevy rolling again. Today we're gonna do something a little bit different. We're gonna Driveway Rescue ourselves. We have a vehicle here in the shop that is in dire need of some work.

(Frankie)>> The guys down in Carcass recently had this truck in their shop for some suspension upgrades and they mentioned to us that it was running a little rough and had a few lights on the dash. It's a 2006 Dodge Ram with a 5.7 Hemi, and we told them we'd gladly take a look at it and see if we could figure it out. ♪ ♪ Oh that doesn't work.

(Pat)>> I guarantee you that's why this is here. ♪ ♪

(Frankie)>> That'll probably stay for a while.

(Pat)>> First thing no charging. So diagnosis bad alternator. Get that changed first.

(Frankie)>> That can cause a bunch of other problems if the battery system's not tip top. So we'll do that first. Probably throw a belt on it too cause that one looks kinda rough, and then we'll go from there.

(Pat)>> Sounds good to me!

(Frankie)>> Before doing any work on the electrical system we always disconnect the battery. It's easy to forget but it's crucial to keep everything safe. Somehow Pat volunteered me to take out the old alternator. After removing some creaky bolts and making good use of a pry bar it finally broke free from it's mounting bracket. ♪ ♪

(Pat)>> We are well into the repairs on our Dodge, and I must say that alternator came off very well. What we've done is logged on to RockAuto dot com and got everything we needed for our setup. Now that includes o-e-m and aftermarket parts. They have a wide selection of whatever you need. It starts with our alternator. This is an A/C Delco professional series brand new alternator, and we also decided because we had a misfire we were gonna replace all of the coils and spark plugs. So we picked those up as well. We have o-e-m quality parts like our O-2 sensors. We're gonna have to replace them. We'll finish off the work with a fresh oil change, a new serpentine belt, and new strut rods for the hood.

(Frankie)>> I've got to say I disagree with Pat. The old alternator put up a little bit of a fight coming out, but the new one drops in to place very easy. With the power cable tightened down and the wiring harness connected it's good to go. No one enjoys replacing accessory belts but they are cheap and we already had ours off to replace the alternator. It's never a bad idea to replace one when working in the engine bay. Finally we'll reconnect the battery to check our alternator. An important step after every repair is to make sure that it was done correctly and it actually works. So we're gonna go ahead and see what our battery's at now since it wasn't charging before.

(Pat)>> 11.82, that stinks.

(Frankie)>> That's really dead. Go ahead and start it up and we'll see if it starts charging.

(Pat)>> Where are the keys to this damn thing?

(Frankie)>> There in the visor. I told you that.

(Pat)>> Are you ready?

(Frankie)>> Yeah go ahead and start it up.

(Pat)>> Clear prop. [ engine starting ]

(Frankie)>> Alright! [ engine idling ]

(Frankie)>> I'd say our battery's a little dead. So the voltage is a little high but the alternator is charging. So we're good! ♪ ♪ Got her?

(Pat)>> Before we go any further we'll replace the sagging strut rods under the hood. This job is pretty easy, especially if you have an assistant. Once the retaining clips are released the old strut can be pulled off and the new one snapped into place. These small quality of life improvements can make future work on your vehicle much more enjoyable, especially now that we don't have to work under a drooping truck hood. Look at that.

(Frankie)>> There you go! Yeah that's nice.

(Pat)>> That's the cat's pajamas right there. That's way safe. On to the next. Sometimes it takes a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to fix a poorly running engine but sometimes it's not too bad.

(Pat)>> The next issue we're gonna fix with our Hemi is why it is running so rough. It turns out it has a completely dead cylinder, number three. A quick way of determining if a coil pack is a problem is you can take the coil pack out of the dead cylinder and put it in a different one. In this case we put it in number one and the dead cylinder followed the coil pack. So that means it's got a bad one in it. So if we're gonna replace one we're gonna replace them all. So we got a set of Denso's from RockAuto and we're gonna put them all in. Another thing while we're in there is we're gonna replace all 16 spark plugs just so we know they're good as well. So time to get to work. If you're working on a low mileage vehicle it might make since to just replace the single bad coil pack. They can be expensive and they often last the lifetime of your truck without failure. Since this Ram has a lot of miles on it and several of the coils are a pain to get at we decided to change all of them and be done with it for good. The spark plugs receive a small amount of anti-seize compound before installation. These are NGK iridium plugs and are designed to last up to 50,000 miles. ♪ ♪

(Frankie)>> Oxygen sensors can be difficult to remove and they often need to be heated before taking them out. to make things easier we'll use an oxygen sensor socket. It has a cutout so it clears the sensor wires, and it works much better than an open ended wrench, which can round off the sensor hex. We had a code for a bad heater circuit in our bank one sensor two oxygen sensor. After verifying this with a multimeter the whole sensor can be replaced with a factory Mopar piece from RockAuto dot com. ♪ ♪ Our Ram is a little past due for an oil change. After draining the oil pan and removing the old filter we'll pre-fill the new one so the engine has pressure faster during start up. Of course the oil filter gasket receives a light coating of oil to keep it from catching and tearing during installation. We'll fill the engine with 5-W-20 full synthetic oil, which is the manufacturer's recommendation. Now we've got exactly what we like, no codes on start up. Alright everything's fixed on this thing. I cleared all the codes and they are all gone for good. How's that alternator install?

(Pat)>> It went smooth for me. Work fascinates me. I could sit and watch it all day. The nice thing about all of this is we got online on RockAuto dot com. Got everything we needed. It showed up and everything fit. So now we have a reliable running truck. We don't have to worry about it running like it did when it came in.

(Frankie)>> Here in the shop we really don't have to do a lot of diagnosis, and on our Ram our fixes really weren't that complicated but with modern cars becoming more and more computerized it's easy for a technician to feel overwhelmed without high level factory training. Matco has solved that with their Pro Assist remote support and programming device. This gives you direct access to over 100 o-e trained master technicians that have brand specific training for US, European, and Asian manufacturers. These master technicians can give you remote diagnostic support and access to o-e scan tool software. If you already have o-e software the unit can even be used as a J-2534 pass through device. One of the best features is that it offers remote assisted programming or flashing for new components when they're being installed. All of this adds up to the technician or shop being more efficient and taking less time for repairs. If you want to know more about any of Matco's diagnostic equipment you can reach out to your local distributor or go to Matco Tools dot com. Up next, we put our home built small block to the test in the dyno cell.

(Frankie)>> Recently we decided to build a small block Chevy much like we do at home, with basic hand tools, lots of sweat equity, and no dedicated machine shop equipment. Even though we miss the comforts of our shop we enjoy getting back to basics, and we're very happy with the results.

(Pat)>> Shortly before midnight we test fired the engine and it ran great. It all made us curious to know just how much power our home built 350 makes. Today we're gonna find out. We lit in the parking lot. We haven't touched anything. So give it a little gas-a-hol there. Just like in the parking lot.

(Frankie)>> Like a dream!

(Pat)>> Well it could be a nightmare here in a second depending on what happens. Do you know what the timing is?

(Frankie)>> No, I don't think you do either. I think we set it by ear in the parking lot and it's still there.

(Pat)>> If it starts like that you know it's in the realm of decent because it wouldn't start like that. If it was late it would backfire, if it was early it would lug and kick back. It didn't do either one of those. So whatever it is, is what it is. Let's check it after this run. This will be kinda exciting.

(Frankie)>> This thing runs really good. It still has great oil pressure.

(Pat)>> And you know why you're dyno'ing this?

(Frankie)>> In case it blows up you can blame it on me. I knew it. When you said here, you can sit in this chair, I was like there's something going on here.

(Pat)>> I'm gonna be back here like this. [ engine revving ]

(Frankie)>> Look at that, woo!

(Pat)>> I cannot wait to see what the timing is right there cause that actually made decent power. 276 at 4,800. See how it's already trailing down?

(Frankie)>> Already starting to go off a little bit, not diving but just starting to go off.

(Pat)>> 345.5 pound feet at 3,300. That's flat too!

(Frankie)>> Basically all we did to this was a cam and intake swap. That's actually really nice.

(Pat)>> I am officially impressed with what's going on.

(Frankie)>> For a parking lot engine over 325 pretty much everywhere. 325 pound feet that's good!

(Pat)>> What's really cool about this one is we didn't have to do a lot of stuff to it as far as like the distributor right. You hooked two wires up.

(Frankie)>> That whole Pertronix bundle is super easy to hook up. They made it really easy for the parking lot. We only needed power, and ground, and a coil, and that was it.

(Pat)>> I've got to go shoot the timing just to see what it is. By pure luck timing comes in at 34 degrees. Just about dead center and a good range for this engine. Let's make another run. ♪ ♪ Our oil pressure gauge is still attached! [ engine revving ]

(Pat)>> It's gonna print that same number, which it should. 273.6.

(Frankie)>> 345.5, pretty much the same.

(Pat)>> Shut her down Charlie! That's a nice engine.

(Frankie)>> For more information on anything you've seen today please visit Powernation TV dot com.