Determination, passion, and a supportive wife-that's the secret. If you weren't there in Bowling Green, Kentucky, to see it for yourself: Buck Spruill is the first guy to get a Duramax truck into the 10s. To get there, Buck says he's "broken a lot more stuff than most people," "kept really good records," and made his gains "a tenth at a time." In the real world most of us think that going fast is just about money, but Buck's here to tell you, "You can buy your way into being competitive, but you can never buy your way into being number one.
Back in 2002, Buck's brother Jess bought this Chevy 2500HD for the family farm in North Carolina. Buck and Jess have always had drag racing and horsepower in their blood. In the beginning Buck got his fix from a '77 Chevy 1/2-ton mud bogger with a nitrous-injected small-block and 44-inch tires. Then came the GMC Syclone that ran high 11s. And we should mention his wife Marlo races their Z06 Corvette. It was only a matter of time before he started racing diesels. His Duramax daily driver ran in the 11.90s before he really got serious with the truck you see on these pages.
With the help of Mike Cooper at Cooper Automotive, Buck has done some extensive drivetrain development with this truck-and not always by choice. Along the way he's blown up engines, transmissions, and now the rear axle. According to his Tech II (that he uses as a data logger), he's spun a Duramax to 5,760 rpm when the stock Allison input shaft broke. He's also gone through a few factory output shafts. Now he's running an off-the-shelf Suncoast Allison and torque converter and has made six passes in the 10s, with a best 60-foot time of 1.39 seconds. Said Buck, "That's like getting rear-ended by an 18-wheeler!"
"A few months ago, all I wanted to do was run in the 10s," but now he's rejuvenated. Now he wants to see what his truck and these Duramax's can really do. We asked him if he thinks he could ever be competitive with the Dodges? "No," he says, "But it ain't like I ain't gonna try."
 The only physical difference...  The only physical difference between Buck's LB7 and your Duramax engine is a set of TTS Power Systems connecting rods, ARP head studs, and a BD exhaust manifold on the driver side. Well, that and a huge amount of nitrous. Buck sprays the engine with three stages of laughing gas. One (0.090 shot) goes in before the intercooler and one (0.080 shot) goes in after. He adds a small (0.030 shot) third stage right into the air filter. With all that nitrous, Buck has enough air with the stock turbo to burn every ounce of fuel his TTS Extreme engine calibration, Super Diesel CP3 pump, and Industrial Injection injectors can deliver. |  A GTS fiberglass front bumper...  A GTS fiberglass front bumper cover, bedsides, tailgate, and roll pan shaved hundreds of pounds off the truck. Traction comes from M&H 30x14.50-16 DOT-legal Cheater Slicks mounted on Pro Comp 16x10 aluminum wheels. Buck tried running ultra-light, high-dollar racing wheels, but he kept tearing the lug centers out of them. |  An off-the-shelf Bully Dog...  An off-the-shelf Bully Dog propane kit is triggered at 8 psi of boost to inject supplemental propane. At these power levels it's just impossible to maintain the common rail fuel pressure at the top end of the track. The engine burns so much diesel-it literally runs out of fuel! That's where the propane comes in. Buck tunes in the mixture of propane and nitrous between each round on the dragstrip to match the air density and altitude. Sounds easy enough, but don't kid yourself. The cylinder pressures are high enough to bend stock connecting rods. Trust us when we say Buck's very familiar with what the inside of a Duramax looks like. |