2003 Dodge Ram 2500 - Diesel vs. Muscle Car

Day Two: We rolled into Indy and checked into a Motel 6 at 5:00 a.m. We figured we could catch at least three hours of sleep and a shower before we had to be at the track. Of course, when we got there it was pouring rain in Indy too, so out came the tools-and on went our water injection system.

Day Three: We drove all night across the state of Illinois and made our way back to Cordova for about four hours of sleep. We couldn't get the progressive nitrous controller to recognize the Dodge's throttle position sensor, so Hogue wired it directly into the horn relay so he could activate the nitrous on the track by pressing the steering wheel.

With our M&H drag radials filled to 35 psi and using the Caltracs bars, the Dodge hooked up better than we could have dreamed. Hogue had a hard time keeping his hand on the horn, so the nitrous wasn't working like it should. With the Dr. Performance Stage 3 module plugged in, the NX progressive nitrous system running the 125 pill, and the Diablo Predator Extreme tune uploaded to the ECM, we ran a best of 12.25 seconds at 118 mph.

Ouch! When Project X came back to the pits, it was losing coolant-lots of it! We feared the worst and popped the hood only to find that the water pump had failed. Keep in mind the engine had 200,000 miles on it! Illinois Performance Center had a water pump in stock down the street, so they had one of their guys run it out to the track. We were back in business.

Day Four: After getting the water pump replaced and fashioning a micro switch to trigger the nitrous (for real this time), we made another midnight run to Michigan and the U.S 131 Motorsports Park.

At this point, we got our race prep down to washing the truck, swapping the rear tires, turning the nitrous on, and uploading the Diablosport tune. Other competitors weren't so lucky. Brian Hinson's RX-7 broke a rocker arm that required him to "machine" the cylinder head with a chisel so he could install a replacement. Seems like a lot of trouble to go through for an engine that only makes 1,250 lb-ft of torque, doesn't it?

We'd love to tell you that we lined up next to this Caterpillar-powered Dodge and blew his doors off. But we can't.

Oh, we blew his doors off all right. But the only thing Cat on this gas truck were the paint and stickers.

We ended up wiring the second stage of nitrous to the horn button so Hogue could feed the engine with a few shots of nitrous as he staged the truck. This helped spool the turbo up at the starting line and improved our eighth-mile times.

It also led to our quickest quarter-mile time of the week: 11.76 seconds at 115.64 mph. That pass was too quick to count in our class, so Hogue let the truck cool down and brought it back around to make an 11.84-second pass.