Diesel of the Week is presented by
Earlier this month, the Engine Builder team attended the first ever Sick Week, a five-day long automotive excursion throughout Florida featuring some of America’s quickest street cars competing in a drag and drive competition. With over 350 vehicles at the event, there was no shortage of sweet rides and engines to check out along the way.
Not expecting to see any diesels, to our surprise, we actually stumbled upon a few. And of those, the one that really caught our eye was Dave Workman’s 1957 Ford F100 with a compound turbo 5.9L Cummins swapped into it.
“I might eventually tune it down some and build something else, but I’ll have this thing forever just because of the sentimental value of it,” Workman told us. “It’s a pretty basic setup. I built it all myself and did the 8.50 cage and all the fab work on it too.”
Workman was originally gifted the truck at just 13-years-old from his father. With a gas motor and automatic transmission, it originally served as a daily driver throughout his teen years before he blew the transmission up.
Wanting a little extra power, Workman, who runs Porky’s Diesel Performance in Port Deposit, MD, eventually bought a rotted-out first Gen Dodge off a friend, pulled out the drivetrain, and dropped it in his Ford. His desire for power grew as the truck continued to develop, transitioning it from a basic daily driver to a competitive drag-racing machine.
The 5.9L Cummins engine inside of the small truck can produce upwards of 1,300 horsepower, which allowed it to make a personal best 1/4-mile pass of 9.60 at 138 mph. The truck was tuned down to around 900 horsepower when we talked with Workman during Sick Week.
“We had to tune it down because it can’t take that much power on the stock frame rail – the chassis is just about done,” he says.
The bottom of the engine is virtually stock, with ARP hardware throughout and the stock crankshaft and rods. The head has been ported and Workman said it has a “good” valvetrain.
The engine features a compound turbo system consisting of a 75mm over a 102mm and a 13mm P-pump. All together the set up makes 150-lbs. of boost, and the engine is mated to a 47RE trans and a Ford 9-inch rear end.
It’s tough to argue this diesel truck’s curb appeal, and we’ll be eager to know what Dave does with it next. And, did we mention Dave got third place at Sick Week in the Sick Week Freaks class? He also earned honors as the quickest six cylinder of the class as well.
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].
