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Last month, we were taking in the sounds, smells and sights of Ultimate Callout Challenge 2021 at Lucas Oil Raceway in Brownsburg, IN. Between the non-stop drag racing, dyno pulls, burnout pits, and all the diesel-themed goodies within the DPI Expo, there were a lot of great things to look at. One thing that caught our eye was the vehicle at the Premier Performance booth.
Named Six Pack, the vehicle I’m referring to is a custom-built ‘32 Dodge cab sitting on top of a 2001 Duramax chassis with a 12-valve 5.9L Cummins engine stuffed under the hood. Clearly, we didn’t just pass by without taking notice.
I spoke with Cameron at Premier Performance, a wholesale distributor of aftermarket performance products, to get the story behind the truck and engine. Six Pack was built for SEMA back in 2015 and the engine is a 12-valve Cummins with a compound turbo set up and nitrous.
“Basically, everything on the truck is stuff that we sell at Premier Performance,” Cameron says. “The engine, with compound turbos and a 150 shot of nitrous, makes 1,091 horsepower at the tire. It’s got a built BD transmission, upgraded Yukon axles, and really the engine has been overbuilt to be good to more than 2,000 horsepower. We’re limited by the tire. It’s just a fun show car that performs really well.”
As it turns out, the engine was built top to bottom by Industrial Injection. Anything you can do to a 5.9L Cummins was done by the diesel shop to hold 2,000 horsepower as reliably as possible.
“The engine has been bored and stroked,” Cameron says. “The turbos are a 71mm to an 84mm from ATS. We’ve gone through three different injector sizes to get it tuned correctly. There is a FASS fuel system on the truck that supplies all the fuel we ever need for it. The build for the engine and the truck took about eight months.”
As mentioned earlier, the chassis of the truck from the front to the cut in the back is a 2001 Duramax. It’s all custom after that. The grille and the cab are from a ‘32 Dodge, which was found out in a field in Idaho near Premier Performance’s headquarters. Those pieces got custom built to work with the chassis. The truck also rides on airlift suspension.
“Despite the age of some of the truck, it was in decent shape,” he says. “We kept the patina of it. It was a cool project to put together with all these different parts. It’s a fun truck to drive for sure, and it is scary once you get up on boost. We’ve never had any hiccups with it. The truck has been super reliable and that’s what we wanted. We wanted it to be completely reliable at that 1,000-1,100 whp range.”
After more than five years since debuting at SEMA, that’s exactly what Six Pack has been.
Diesel of the Week is sponsored by AMSOIL. If you have an engine you’d like to highlight in this series, please email Engine Builder Editor Greg Jones at [email protected].
