Diesel Power Challenge 2014 Video: Day One On The Dyno Was Both Humbling And Enlightning For Competitors


Diesel Power Challenge 2014 Video: Day One On The Dyno Was Both Humbling And Enlightning For Competitors

One of my favorite gigs this year was hosting the 2014 Diesel Power Challenge for the fine folks at Diesel Power Magazine. The event is held in and around Denver, Colorado each Spring and it is essentially the diesel equivalent of Drag Week. Instead of drag racing at different tracks all week, event organizers have devised seven challenges for the trucks to take on and all of them are scored. At the end of the week, the driver with the highest score is awarded the title and the trophy as the all conquering winner of the Diesel Power Challenge. The winner is also invited back for the following year’s event to defend his belt. Pretty cool, right?

The events are pretty varied and they go as follows:

 

Dyno challenge

Trailer towing obstacle course

Eighth mile trailer tow time trial

Quarter mile heads up drag race

Ride and drive

Fuel economy loop

Truck pull with weighted pulling sled

This video introduces you to the competitors, introduces you to the trucks, and brings you all the action from the first day’s fun on the dyno. As was the case last year, several of the competitors fell well short of the numbers that they were hoping to see and that was for a couple of reasons. The first is because of elevation. On any given day, the DA in Denver can be from 5,000-9,000ft above sea level. Very few of the competitors have ever seen anything like that and tuning quandaries abound when you only have three pulls to make and limited time to work on the tune up. Secondly, the dyno is a bad ass. ATS Diesel Performance has a Mustang MD1100 chassis dyno that has been beefed and outfitted with enough parts that it is equipped to handle modified big rigs, so when these guys are hammering it with their powerful pickups, it still isn’t sweating too hard. It seemed to use that this dyno was impossible to spike and some competitors certainly tried that.

This is Diesel Power Week on the MotorTrend YouTube channel so I’ll be posting each video as it hits their page this week. I had a ton of fun during the week that we shot this deal and hope like heck to be back “up on the hill” next year for the 2015 edition of the program!

PRESS PLAY BELOW TO SEE THE FIRST VIDEO FROM DIESEL POWER CHALLENGE WEEK WHICH HIGHLIGHTS THE DYNO DAY AT ATS PERFORMANCE IN DENVER –


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