Working the workhorse!

71ChargerRT

Well-known member
So my dad calls me up the other day and asks me to go over to the house he's working and pick up his trailer. I figure he's just being lazy so I go pick it up. I get there and see its 3/4 loaded with concrete, and I'm like wtf? Anyway I hook up and drag it home, and it's HEAVY! I take it over today to unload and I hit the scales at 22,300!!! Damn that sucker was loaded! I unload and cross the scales empty weighing in at 10,200! I'm impressed! The Ford was lugging with about 16,000#. I knew the trailer loaded, but not to the tune of over THREE TIMES the dry weight of the truck!

So how was your weekend?
 
Dude, my friend famously pulled a sleeper-cab semi with a loaded 53' trailer with his '99 24V dually... starting on a slight incline, no less. The only thing that concerned him was his clutch, which survived. The truck had oversized injectors, large exhaust, an upgraded turbo, and a programmer (which doesn't do nearly as much on a pre-common-rail truck).

Art to driver: "I'll get you over there." (digs for straps and chains)
Driver to dispatcher: "There's some lunatic here in a white Dodge diesel pickup that thinks he can pull me."
Dispatcher to Art's boss Steve (on the phone with Steve and the driver at the same time): "There's some guy there with a white Dodge that thinks he can tow it."
Steve to dispatcher (on the phone with Art and the dispatcher, also concurrently): "That's my guy. It's not a problem. It'll do it."

So, Art says to the guy, "We gonna do this?" He hooks and pulls the guy out of the intersection he's blocking, over to the closest shop (very close). The truck driver could not believe that truck did it. I don't know the exact weight of the truck, but the limit in MI is 80,000lbs. Art said the truck didn't like it much, and was puking black smoke and smelled of clutch, but damned if he didn't do it anyhow. No damage to the Ram whatsoever, other than probably taking 10,000 miles off the clutch in a couple of blocks. :D

Try that in a DuraTrash Silverado, and you'd likely bend the frame, if not rip the truck in half. Art's truck has over half a million miles on it, not easy ones, and there's not a squeak or rattle to it. Oh, and he now has a South Bend dual-disc clutch that weighs about 400lbs. The old one never did fail him after this stunt, he just upgraded. :dance:

Oh, and my weekend was awesome!
 
Damn, forgot the best part! The reason my dad needed me to go get the trailer was his 6.slow won't start! :D High pressure oil system issues.


My truck is still stock, with as far as I know, original parts. Only mods are an Airraid filter and muffler cut out. BTW the Airraid did dust the impeller on my turbo. [smilie=2:
 
I'm not sure--I'd have to ask him. I believe the semi ate the clutch or had some other driveline-related problem and that the engine still ran. Still, you're talking probably 50,000lbs or more. If he tells me the engine wasn't running, I'll call him out--but if I recall, Stretch saw this happening. I think Stretch was maybe on his lunch or on a test-drive in a customer's vehicle.
 
I have a southbend dual disk clutch in my dually, and I have no doubt it would survive such a stunt. Unfortunately, my truck doesn't have as much power as the one you're talking about because I don't have a programmer on mine.
 
Damn, forgot the best part! The reason my dad needed me to go get the trailer was his 6.slow won't start! :D High pressure oil system issues.


My truck is still stock, with as far as I know, original parts. Only mods are an Airraid filter and muffler cut out. BTW the Airraid did dust the impeller on my turbo. [smilie=2:[/QUOTE]
From what I'm told, Ford engines with their 3-stage oil system to run the injectors do NOT like synthetic oil. The first thing every Ford and diesel shop in town does is change the oil back to standard 15W-40 when they encounter a misfire or no-start situation. If he's running synthetic, tell him to knock it off and run Delvac or Rotella.

As far as reusable filters go, I've railed against them numerous times. Do what you choose, but the performance increase is only there when the filter is clean and cannot be as effective as a paper filter, and by the time it filters as well as paper it's more restrictive. As I like to say, "I'll never have one on my car," and I never have at any point in my life.
 
I have a southbend dual disk clutch in my dually, and I have no doubt it would survive such a stunt. Unfortunately, my truck doesn't have as much power as the one you're talking about because I don't have a programmer on mine.
He did this prior to the South Bend, on a stock-replacement clutch (which I'm sure had upgraded friction material). It did NOT like the task at hand--he readily admits that, but with the SB clutch he fears only for the trans and the axles. :D That thing is beefy!
 
Yep, my current one is sintered iron. It's just not going to slip, and the hotter it gets the harder it grabs. It has a positive coefficient of friction, which is the reverse of every other clutch material as far as I know. Hey, I keep trying to find a programmer for my dually, and I come up empty handed. Do you know of any place I might get one?
 
What year is the dually? If there's one available, you should call Kurtz Diesel because they'll find it... and that's where Art works. In fact, he'd probably be the one that answers the phone. He's a real personable guy; you'll enjoy talking with him. They've got a huge reputation for wicking up everything from VW Jettas to Peterbilts in the upper midwest. They know their diesel stuff--front, back and sideways, no bull. They've also got some pretty-good pricing, so it might be worthwhile to order parts they suggest from them. 1 (715) 528-4727.

He was also one of the guys in my Charger when I got the 129 in a 55, detailed in "The Remainder of the Evening's Festivities" in The Jass Hole. In fact, he's the reason I was going that fast, and also named The Black Bitch shortly before the traffic stop. :D :D :D
 
Oh, I figured you remembered enough technical trivia about my dually to catch the joke: It's an early '98-the last of the 12v's. No electronic tuning possible or necessary. Last I had it on the dyno it made 405 hp at the wheels w/o the nitrous. Bigger turbo, bigger injectors, wastegate set at 50 lbs, 3000 rpm governor springs, timing advanced, 4" exhaust...you get the idea. No worries, it'll drag itself up a slight hill if you really ask it to.
 
I was pretty-sure you were talking about the 12V (your other diesel is SRW, is it not?), but I didn't know for sure, so I went with advice rather than screwing around. :D

Still, anyone looking to hop up a diesel would do well to call those guys.
 
I was there. I know Art. I couldnt believe what I was seeing! I looked out the pas. window of my car, saw the tow strap hooked to arts truck and thought WTF......Oh! Thats Art. It's all good. The Iron Mnt. PD was behind the truck. I don't know if that cop even knew what went down. The Simi was loaded, it had an auto trany in it and the trany was toast. Thats how the air brakes on the big rig were delt with.

You should have seen that dodge tourq when he let it loose. It was somthingto see for sure. The Truck driver had his phone in his hand and was shakin his head as Art started pulling him.
 
I bet it was impressive. The 2nd generation diesel dodges ('94 to '02) don't have very stiff frames. They're stiff enough for normal use and then some, but if you really apply a bunch of torque they'll lean way over to the right. I cracked the windshield in my '98 pulling out into fast moving traffic with a fema trailer behind me.
 
Nope, and I'd rather have a 12v in almost every situation. They have two downfalls compared to common rail motors-they're loud, and they are smokier at any given power level. Well, it's also easier to make up to a certain amount of power with a common rail-namely, whatever you can make on the stock cp3 pump and turbo. Once you go beyond that it gets as least as hard and expensive, and probably worse to make the power with a common rail vs a 12v with a p pump.
 
I'm certainly not one argue the point, but Art's boss Steve sure knows how to make a lot of power out of one. He was at a truck/tractor pull with his daily-driven common-rail. In street trim, he did a full pull on your standard sliding-load pulling sled and kept going... right out of the stadium, all the way across the pit area (probably another 800 feet) and got stopped at the entry/exit gate for the pit area by event staff.

"What the hell are you doing?"
"I figured I'd take it home with me!" :D

The guys running multi-engine dedicated pulling tractors were not happy with that performance, as none of them could even approach doing that. The officials were pissed, too, because they had to drag it back, though I think Steve offered to do so for them. :D Of course, the crowd was going absolutely nuts. :dance:

Then he drove it home, and took it to work the next day. :bwuhaha:
 
Sure, it can be done. It's just expensive. At around 500 rwhp, the cp3 injection pump runs into it's limit. If you're a big boy, you add a second pump that's driven by a belt. Not real cheap. If you're not, you send yours off to get it hotrodded. Or, you do both. Stock replacement rebuilt injectors for a common rail are around $275 plus cores the last I checked. That was as cheap as I could find them. Those are only stock. I think you can put bigger tips on stock injectors, but there are limits to how much you can make that way. A set of GOOD injectors for a 12v is around $900 if I remember right. If you only want to make 500-600 hp you can get by for around $550 or so. That's for all 6. The weakest stock p pump installed on a dodge truck is still capable of more than 600 hp without doing anything you can't do at home with the pump still on the engine.
 
I'm certainly not one argue the point, but Art's boss Steve sure knows how to make a lot of power out of one. He was at a truck/tractor pull with his daily-driven common-rail. In street trim, he did a full pull on your standard sliding-load pulling sled and kept going... right out of the stadium, all the way across the pit area (probably another 800 feet) and got stopped at the entry/exit gate for the pit area by event staff.

"What the hell are you doing?"
"I figured I'd take it home with me!" :D

The guys running multi-engine dedicated pulling tractors were not happy with that performance, as none of them could even approach doing that. The officials were pissed, too, because they had to drag it back, though I think Steve offered to do so for them. :D Of course, the crowd was going absolutely nuts. :dance:

Then he drove it home, and took it to work the next day. :bwuhaha:
Now, that was just plain showing off.
I love it! :)
 

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