Project Leftovers: The Rise of Frankenstein

A few months ago, long-time diesel enthusiast Todd W. approached me with the crazy idea of building a truck to compete in the Diesel Power Challenge. We'd both seen the competition morph from simple 5-600HP trucks with bolt-on parts into the current 1100+HP full blown street/race truck combinations of present. Another new trend is that all of the serious contenders have common rail diesel injection motors built on newer truck platforms that are less than 10 years old. Mechanical injection is a thing of the past at this competition and someone needs to "revive it" so to speak. Many claim the high altitude of Colorado has caused the older mechanical injection trucks to be non competitive due to spooling issues. Todd lives at 5,800 ft elevation and is no stranger to building and designing turbo setups that will spool at high altitude.

Our plan is simple: take Todd's "old" Green 98' Dodge Ram 2500 4x4 quad cab long bed with factory equipped 12 valve Cummins motor and transform it into a Diesel Power Challenge Candidate aka Frankenstein. The truck will remain true to its roots and retain a Cummins-based motor and P7100-based mechanical injection system.

Frankenstein will be built using predominantly leftover parts from past racing projects, multiple mixed and matched brands of turbos and coolers, and new parts as necessary to build a solid, reliable, and powerful DPC contender. This is not another zero budget junker truck build, it will have adequate funding combined with ingenuity to create a Monster.

We'd like to state from the get-go, this thread is meant to be both informational and promotional in an attempt to get Frankenstein, aka Green Monster, aka Todd's Truck voted into the Diesel Power Challenge in 2015.



The truck has been around for several years putting down solid full-weight 11 second 1/4 mile passes and 900+ HP dyno runs, now it's time to step up the airflow and build something even more competitive.

1.5 years ago:
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utTAs4kQHs4"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utTAs4kQHs4[/ame]

2.5 years ago:
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1GyrxIiq7A"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1GyrxIiq7A[/ame]

Awesome!

In the performance diesel industry, the highest bang for the buck turbo currently available, in our opinion, is the Borg Warner S475 part number 171702. For roughly $650-700, you get exceptional turbine flow combined with a massive 100 lbs per minute of air.

Todd and I spent a couple days going back and forth discussing the air setup, Todd ran some numbers and decided that (2) S475's would provide the the required turbine and airflow requirements necessary to support 1200+ HP on fuel-only. Another benefit of the S475's is they are modular and easily upgradeable to higher flowing 80mm compressor wheels should the need for power/airflow grow. These turbos were purchased new, 100% box stock from a Borg Warner distributor.

Todd had a Garrett-based GTX4202 left over from another racing project so it will be utilized as the second stage/manifold turbo in the new triple turbo setup. True to form, Frankenstein is starting with a mixture of new & old turbo parts from different manufacturers.

Will, you should talk to John a bit about this. He lives in CO, races at Bandimere often, and just dynoed over 1300rwhp at 8800ft on Saturday on fuel only, more on spray.
He's running a maxed 12mm pump on a 4WD 97 ECLB.
I think his name on here is little6cylinder.

He might have some advice, or might even want to get on board with this.

And if he does the DPC this year, you might want to wait until the following year to go head to head ;-) His truck is incredible and pretty damn reliable.


I love the idea though! Good luck.

Your the man!

Getting tired of seeing awesome CR's win, not really but a good dinosaur needs to take it back old school.

Looking forward to your thread.

2 475s? That a hell of a lot of air.

CorneliusRox said:

Will, you should talk to John a bit about this. He lives in CO, races at Bandimere often, and just dynoed over 1300rwhp at 8800ft on Saturday on fuel only, more on spray.
He's running a maxed 12mm pump on a 4WD 97 ECLB.
I think his name on here is little6cylinder.

He might have some advice, or might even want to get on board with this.

And if he does the DPC this year, you might want to wait until the following year to go head to head ;-) His truck is incredible and pretty damn reliable.


I love the idea though! Good luck.

Click to expand...

His truck is damn impressive! I'm sure he could provide some good input.

^^ I was thinking the same thing. His truck is awesome and this truck will be amazing if I had to guess. I, too, am tired of seeing all CR trucks.

I look forward to seeing y'all build this monster!

The first order of business was to mount the GTX4202. Todd first tried to use a leftover standard Steed Speed T4 manifold with dual ports combined in conjunction with a leftover BD-Diesel diverter valve. From the pictures, its clear that the second wastegate port would not work as it was too close to the GTX4202 compressor housing when reverse mounted.

Next Todd tried to fit a new Comp Steed Speed Manifold with the GTX reverse mounted:


Then forward mounted:






There just wasn't going to be enough space for the triple turbo setup and since this is a street truck, things like AC cannot be deleted.

Watching to learn


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

CorneliusRox said:

Will, you should talk to John a bit about this. He lives in CO, races at Bandimere often, and just dynoed over 1300rwhp at 8800ft on Saturday on fuel only, more on spray.
He's running a maxed 12mm pump on a 4WD 97 ECLB.
I think his name on here is little6cylinder.

He might have some advice, or might even want to get on board with this.

And if he does the DPC this year, you might want to wait until the following year to go head to head ;-) His truck is incredible and pretty damn reliable.


I love the idea though! Good luck.

Click to expand...

Yes, John's truck is impressive.

estrada5.9 said:

Your the man!

Getting tired of seeing awesome CR's win, not really but a good dinosaur needs to take it back old school.

Looking forward to your thread.

Click to expand...

Thanks!

oldestof11 said:

2 475s? That a hell of a lot of air.

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Yes, it should be enough air to run with the top contenders in the DPC challenge. We've got about (6) months to proof test this turbo arrangement and make sure it's the right match for this type of competition.

diesel_importer said:

^^ I was thinking the same thing. His truck is awesome and this truck will be amazing if I had to guess. I, too, am tired of seeing all CR trucks.

I look forward to seeing y'all build this monster!

Click to expand...

If this truck ends up running half as good as it looks on paper, it should be very competitive.

Looks like one hell of a build in progress! Following this one!

Oh my... Best of luck. Can't wait to watch!

Scribed.... This will be fun to watch

Judging by max's results with his new 475/591 compounds and how easily he spools those with a similar turbine arrangement, you might not need the spool valve. What about flipping manifold up and turbo backwards?

Curious to see how the engine temps will be during the tow portion of DPC, knowing that the 12 valve head coolant flow is not to good.

will24 said:

Looks like one hell of a build in progress! Following this one!

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X 2, always enjoy your builds!

I am sure excited to be doing this. A huge thanks to Will for helping me out with all this. He is pretty much the master of build threads so I am very glad he is running this one so I can spend my free time in my garage. Like he said, Will and I have been planning this for a few months. He should be able to answere most questions but I will try to post on it very frequently as well.

For those who care here is a little history on Frankenstein. This is the first diesel I have ever owned and i got it around 2007. It had a manual at first and was just beautiful. I pretty much ruined it with all my mods. It was a holy grail quad cab 5 speed 12v truck with 90K original miles when I bought it. It now has an auto and goes a lot faster. I ran this truck in nhrda in 2010 in the SS class back when 11 second trucks were contendors. I actually took 4th place in this truck at the first world finals in topeka. That year Idaho Rob was the favorite to win. He broke his trans which opened the door to everyone else. Then I should have been eliminated by Shawn Elertons 10 second ford but he blew an intake gasket and couldn't spool at the line so I just kept going rounds and ended up taking 4th. best time for this truck was 11.08 @ 123mph at the 2010 world finals. since then I have been working on a dedicated SS truck and this truck served as a test bed for ideas to use on that. As a result I have accumulated a bunch of parts that I should have sold off but didn't. Now they will all be put back on this truck with hopes of beating its old times by a fair margin.

Hopefully it all works out as hoped for and we are able to compete. If we are not able to get into the dpc it will still be a fun project.

01CUMMINS24 said:

Curious to see how the engine temps will be during the tow portion of DPC, knowing that the 12 valve head coolant flow is not to good.

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Don't really know what you are referring to here. The only tow portion I am aware of is the trailer obstacle course and 1/8 mile trailer drag race, I think the temps will be fine for those periods of time.