Making 1,000 Horsepower
Ok, so if you are a diehard power junkie, you must be reading this and laughing. I can hear it now, "This oughta be good."_ That's because as I write this, there is no and I repeat NO known 1,000 horsepower 6.0 Power Strokes. However, from all of the people that I've talked to, we should be seeing a couple of them by the end of the year. So I'm going to talk about what they are doing.
These engines are pretty much as built as a 6.0 diesel can be built at this point in time. The cylinder heads, intake and exhaust manifolds are ported. Large custom twin turbo setups are being designed to light the 430 + cc injectors. Modified HPOP's are being tested on these vehicles to maintain the oil pressures. The pistons are aftermarket pistons with lower compression and reworked bowls, aftermarket rods and main studs are a must.
The heads and block are fire ringed and aftermarket cams have been installed. In one instance, they are using a solid roller cam to help with aggressive lift and stiff valve springs. Replacement low pressure oil pumps have been installed to survive the higher rpm ranges they will be running.
In addition to these modifications, some are opting for a healthy dose of nitrous. They are also using custom tuning to increase the RPM range (4000 to 6000 RPM's) of the engine as well as tuning the fuel curves to work the extremely large injectors. Transmissions may or may not hold and custom torque converters are required. Expect to spend anywhere between 30,000 and 55,000 dollars to get here, but technology and products should be out by the time this hits to make it a possibility.
Over the past few years, the Cummins diesel engine has dominated the horsepower market. In recent months, we have seen numerous 1300 + horsepower Cummins winning dyno events and dominating drag racing and sled pulling. But as technology changes, more and more people are becoming competitive with different engines. The world's fastest drag truck is now a Duramax, surpassing the previous best by almost 4 tenths. Recently, I had the opportunity to see a heavily modified 7.3L Powerstroke with an estimated 1,800 horsepower out pull everything around. These are very exciting times and as more and more companies start investing into new products there are great things to come. The past three articles are just some of the road blocks that need to be overcome to make big power. Who knows, in a couple years we may revisit this and do 1,000, 1,250 and 1,500 horsepower. Who knows?