2003 Dodge Ram 2500 - Diesel vs. Muscle Car

In our class, Hogue had to run as close to a 12-second quarter-mile time as he could at each track. The winner in our class would be the guy whose average from all five tracks was closest to 12 seconds. To keep things interesting, the judges wouldn't accept time slips that were any quicker than 11.80 in our class. That didn't seem like it was going to be a problem for us, 'cause the quickest Project X ran on registration day was 13.04.

Day One: It began with torrential rain at Cordova Dragway Park in Cordova, Illinois. There wasn't going to be any racing with standing water on the track, which meant we had time to size up the competition and wonder how in the heck cars like this were going to survive all week towing trailers full of tools, tires, and parts. Here's a hint: They didn't!

Even in the magazine world, things don't always go as planned. As fate would have it, Drag Week would prove to be plagued by rain from the very beginning. That was fine for us though, because Project X had never actually made a pass down the dragstrip before Hogue drove it up from Texas.

With the first drag race rained out, competitors were handed a map with the route we'd have to take to Indianapolis, Indiana, where the plan was to run at O'Reilly Raceway Park the following day. Some poor souls didn't make it more than three miles into the road trip before they broke down. At the time, we had no idea that Jack Miller's '68 Mustang that was fueling up next to us was packing a 425ci big-block with twin superchargers and nitrous. He ran 8.80s all week with this car at speeds up to 160 mph, which was good for second place in the Unlimited class.

Being the true competitor he is, Hogue saw the rain as an opportunity to do some development work with Project X. The engine wasn't getting full boost because the silicone hose on the turbo was leaking (we could hear it). So we pulled into the Illinois Dyno Center (309/523-9200, www.illinoisdynocenter.com) in Port Byron to see if they had any parts we could scavenge.

The guys at IDC were amazing and fixed the boost leak with a new hose and some clamps off a Power Stroke. Since we had no idea how much mojo our Cummins actually made, Tom Calvert, owner of IDC, got the truck strapped down to his chassis dyno to let us do some tuning.

With Jesse Calvert behind the wheel and Tom at the dyno controls, Hogue had to manually activate the nitrous because we still didn't have all the wiring and programming dialed in. We knew we'd either post a big power number or we'd be sweeping up pistons off the IDC's floor. Luckily, the brooms stayed in the closet and we rolled out of Illinois with a dyno-proven 860hp, 1,655 lb-ft common-rail Cummins.

We were roughly eight hours behind schedule when we rolled into the official Drag Week midway point (a historic old train station) just after 2:00 a.m. It looked like we'd have some explaining to do when authorities found us snapping photos of our race truck. But, like always, Hogue sweet-talked his way out of trouble. He also got us a police escort out of town.

Sometime after 3:30 a.m. we ran into an impromptu Drag Week car show on the side of an old country road somewhere near the Illinois/Indiana border. When we got there, six cars had already pulled over to help Brian Hinson replace a wheel on his twin-turbo LS1 Chevy-powered Mazda RX-7 (yup, you read that right). Seems that one of his racing wheels split apart after hitting one too many potholes.

There'd be no racing at Indy on that day, so the Drag Week officials decided to send the competitors West, back to Cordova where the weather was clear.

Day Two's checkpoint took us through a White Castle parking lot and through the drive-through for our first (and last) bag of sliders.

We found shelter under a bank drive-through so we could finish wiring our progressive nitrous controller while the rain continued to dump around us. Our new buddies, Brian Hinson with is 8.22 second RX-7 and Eddie Miller with his 8.26-second Duster (which would go on to win Drag Week), stopped in our makeshift race shop to do a little wrenching of their own.