This article is about building your truck the proper way for competition, same rules apply for gas vehicles for years!
BUILD IT FROM THE BOTTOM UP!
What does that mean?
When you add performance bolt-ons in order to increase Horsepower, it feels great out on the street! Every man's dream is having more power beneath you when driving! It's an addiction once you start by adding bigger injectors, turbo, air-intake and so on etc.
Killer vehicle for the street but when you take it to compete be it the dragstrip or pulling track there are rules for safety. Rules made in order to keep your vehicle from blowing up during competition. OEM parts are made for the vehicle's intended horsepower, when you add all the extras you have exceeded those specs for safe operation.
The standard for competition parts are the SFI Foundation which regulates all race parts and organizations such as NASCAR, Formula 1, NHRA and even DIESEL Motorsports. If you read our rule book online (free) you will find many references to SFI approved parts for our vehicles doing more than 12 sec in the 1/4 mile or 7.80 in the 1/8th mile.
This past weekend we had a very fast truck that competed with our regular heads-up class. Great truck and driver as well, he was very proud of building a truck to 1400+ HP to compete. It blew up going down the track, produced a big fireball and totaled his drivetrain. He didn't notice or could tell so he didn't pull over and spread oil, fuel and antifreeze all down the track. It took the track crew 1.5 hours to clean it up and they said it was the worse they had seen in cleanup in their 27 years (parts scattered all down the track).
On clean up we found parts of the flexplate/flywheel on the track and it was OEM rated not the SFI spec required. It is hard to tech this because of it's location. The young man was lucky it chose to go forward when exploding and not back into the cab. There are many parts on the bottom end that need to be replaced when building for HP! Dampers are required after 4800 rpm, crankshafts, cams, Torque converters, headbolts are specified needing replacement as per SFI specs! In other words read the rules first before bringing your truck to compete or before you start building.
Gas competition vehicles found this out years ago when they started to blow up on the tracks, then they started building their engines and drivetrains from the bottom up in order to handle the extra power!
I don't want to discourage people from working on their trucks for performance but think about what you are building before it blows up! A lot less costly if you start from the bottom up. Many of our sponsors have those very parts in order to keep you safe and running while enjoying your truck.
From what I was told the young man had 72,000 miles on the truck and it ruined everything including the engine, transmission and the backend of the truck from fire. A hard lesson and I hope this young man the best on his rebuild.
Starting next year the trucks running heads-up will be required engine and transmission blankets by most tracks. It keeps the tracks from massive cleanups, the materials needed to cleanup a oil down is close to $2000! As many of you already know our trucks carry double the oil and fuel of most gas vehicles.
Something to think about when tearing down for the winter and rebuilding those trucks for competition!
