Dale Smith Didn't Really Set Out To Build A Record-Breaking Ram 4x4 diesel dragster. "It all started as a joke," he says. "I used to tease my son, Jimmy, about his six-speed manual Ram, which was too slow for drag racing. Just to aggravate him, I said I'll get a Ram with an automatic and blow you away."
Well, there's a germ of truth in all humor, and Dale caught a severe infection. After coming across a low-mileage '98 Ram 2500 that had been in an accident and totaled by the insurance company, Dale decided to rebuild it as a race truck. "That kinda hurt," he says. "I took a real nice diesel and ruined it." OK, not exactly ruined, but certainly reworked.
Initially, he built it to run in the 12s, but then Jimmy got wind of his plans. "No, let's make that the 11s," Jimmy said. "On second thought, while we're at it, why not the 10s?" Ultimately, they exceeded their expectations and hit 9.97 seconds at 138 mph during the Indiana Nationals back in June 2007. How they achieved those astonishing numbers is even more amazing.
Despite Dale's experience drag racing musclecars in the '60s and his skills as a welder and fabricator, he admits that creating a 4x4 drag truck was a whole new animal. "That's when our headaches began," he says. "It was the not knowing part that made it so hard." But Dale figured it would be a good father-son project they could work on together, with work being the operative word.
The amount of custom craftsmanship involved was daunting. When they started this project about four years ago, diesel drag racing was still just getting started. They couldn't just grab the right stuff off the shelf, or if they could, it was beyond their financial means because there weren't many sponsors for this sort of project initially. That meant scrounging the salvage yards or making whatever they couldn't find.