2016 NHRDA World Championship Recap

Power Driven Diesel partner Will Terry went to the 2016 NHRDA World Championships and had great run, placing second in the 10.90 Class. Will ran a fast 10.870 122.91 to place just a fraction behind Chris Perales winning 10.890 123.25. We’ll explain below how a faster time lead to second place.

The journey to Texas and the World Finals started in rare, or typical, fashion. In what became a theme for the trip, we blew a transmission coolant line. Fortunately, the view of the mountains, and the fact that Will is a rolling fluid vendor made the 45 minute repair pass quickly. After repairing the line and topping off the truck with seven quarts of ATF, Will was back on his way.

Outside of Albuquerque, Will ran a test of the new PDD towing twin turbo setup. Heading east on I-40, will ran a quick test to show that on a steep grade, between 65-70 mph, the new towing turbo setup provided plenty of boost with now signs of overheating. We were able to make around 45 psi boost with EGT never going over 1100º. The power was more than needed to tow the junker and we achieved 1 mpg better than the old turbo set up did on the same trip.

At the event Will ran the 11.90 index class and the 10.90 index class. Unfortunately the 11.90 class didn’t go as well as hoped and Will was eliminated about half way through the field. Obviously the 10.90 went great.

The strategy was to cut great lights by deep staging at the starting line. This allowed for much quicker reaction times, but it also risks a red light! Luckily we never had a red and Will kept going rounds. The last round was a close race and we actually thought we won at first. It turned out both trucks ran too fast. In the 10.90 class the first guy to the finish line wins as long as they don’t go faster than 10.90. If you run quicker than the index then you do what is called a break-out. In the finals both trucks broke out and in that case the guy who breaks out less wins.

Will ran a 10.87 and Perales ran a 10.89, so we lost by .02 seconds! It was a fun long day running two classes and we can’t wait until next season!

After scoring an amazing 2nd place finish, Will had another setback when, at 328k miles, the 650hp, ’98 12v tow truck decided it had had enough. The image below of two Power Strokes hauling our Cummins back to Utah says it all.

Slowly but surely, the Fords brought our boys back to Utah. With mixed emotions we made it home. Glad to have the Junker back, but sad a Ford had to bring it back.

With the trucks back at the shop it turns out it was simply a broken pushrod! Will had in an old set he bought a long time ago. Now the tow pig is getting a set of PDD stage 1 rods to rule out that problem ever happening again!