Untold Story of Cummins Best Manifold: Banks Innovation Revealed

00:04 Give me, give me, give me, give me. Ah, one side draft manifold extracted. It’s kind of hard for me to imagine—I came up with this 24 years ago. That’s the truth. I was down at a conference in the Long Beach area and I ran across a guy named John Stang. Turns out John Stang

00:24 ran the Cummins Skunk Works back then. They were doing a new V8 engine. They were also doing a common rail version of the 5.9 to come out in ’03. This is around ’01 midyear thereabouts. I said, “You know, how’d you like to go 300 mph with a common diesel?” He said, “I’d like

00:44 that. I’d love that.” I said, “Well, I got this Streamliner. It’s been 382 with a 300-inch Dodto and a 12-71 blower and a little bit of nitromethane and alcohol running through a 3-speed automatic. I mean, nothing scientific there. The car is a dart.” And I showed him some pictures of the car. We later

01:05 put Cummins on it, tried to tease it a little. He says, “Why don’t you come back to the Skunk Works about 4 miles south of Cummins, Columbus?” Got the drill on the V8. They’d only done a couple of them. I had seen him earlier before the talk. They didn’t know what

01:21 his capability was and they didn’t have a customer. They showed me the common rail development engines, too. I said, “Man, that injection technology rocks.” My evaluation was—I love the V8, but you’ve got a customer for the common rail. Why don’t we do the common rail?

01:39 And we do it in a pickup truck. Cummins stock was like $27 a share. It was extremely low. They needed this new engine technology. They needed a shot in the arm. And I went, “You know what? You also need younger stockholders, institutional stockholders. How about make Cummins stock kind of in vogue?

01:59 This is a youthful thing we’re doing here.” I found some records. I thought we can break these records if we go 210 mph. Putting a big diesel in an automotive-size vehicle is a Clessie Cummins thing. He did that to promote his diesel engine in an automobile and

02:17 drove it all over the country, including the Bonneville Salt Flats. So, I—“Why don’t we Clessie this deal? Let’s do it in a pickup truck, but let’s cut down the frontal area a little bit, hot rod the hell out of the suspension, chassis, etc., so that it’s rock solid.

02:35 Put a big quick change rear end in.” They agreed. They had no budget, but they had used dyno engines. And I went, “Well, they’re not blown up, are they?” “Yeah, we’ll give you a couple of used dyno engines.” They rigged one of them with a larger turbocharger, tuned it a bit.

02:52 They made like 404 horsepower and they shipped it to Azusa, California to here. We put it on our dyno—we made like 402—and we’re within a couple of horsepower. So, we knew we were in agreement if we’re starting to talk horsepower with Cummins Engineering. I also wanted to

03:10 drive it on the street. I wanted the thing to be streetable. I wanted it to be able to pull our pit trailer, which is all our tools, our workbench, our wheels and tires, our quick change gears—all that stuff. We developed the engine first. How do we get enough horsepower to set those records? We

03:28 started at 400 and change. And we decided—this thing’s got an airflow problem. If we want to go further, we got to do something about the airflow. We looked at the intake manifold and went, “That’s got to go ‘cause we want to get in and port those intake ports.”

03:40 Started looking at what we could do for bolt pattern. We modified the head, designed casting for the Big Hoss side draft, did an exhaust manifold which is fabricated. Now we’re nearing 540 horsepower. Call up the guys at Cummins and we tell them and they go, “Oh,

03:59 you’re bullshitting me.” You know, was the first reaction I got from the first engineer I talked to. “That’s impossible.” Well, they knew something was up because we kept upping the fuel calibration. So, they knew we were up to something. Timing was changing around a bit, too.

04:16 But they’re not believing me. So, I said, “Well, we have matched engines. Send me another head and I’ll do it. Put the side draft on it. Extrude hone the manifold. Do the whole thing.” Did it. Sent it to them—540. Now, we need even more air. When we were done with

04:32 everything we did, we had 735 horsepower at about 3,100 RPM. So, we built the truck. We put it in the truck, automatic trans. We drove to Bonneville. We drove onto the salt, unpacked the gears and the wheels and tires, made it a racer, and I was driving it to the starting

04:53 line with a country radio station on [Music] ‘cause this is a full-on street-driven truck. The officials stopped me and said, “Hey, you can’t drive a race vehicle in the pits.” I said, “We drove it here. Didn’t you see us drive in?” “Yeah, we saw you drive in. It’s now a

05:19 race vehicle.” So, what a scene. We broke the record on the first run, but it’s got to be a two-way average. Our best two-way average was 217. Our best one-way back door out the end of the fifth mile was 222. We got it back to LA. We refreshed everything and drove it on the Hot Rod Power Tour,

05:41 which I think was like 1,700 miles that year. We drove it back to the location, drove the power tour, drove it home. Then we took it to Cummins. And in about a week, we hit every major Cummins facility in the United States and showed it to everybody. This is the record

05:57 engine from back in 2001, 2002. So there is the world’s first side draft Cummins manifold for a B series Cummins on a 5.9. This is the record engine. Cummins did not participate in the cost of building this truck at all. I did it ‘cause I was nuts for diesel—I still am. It’s in the

06:22 NH museum. If you ever want to see it, and if you want to see the engine, it’s here at Banks. We’ll be happy to show it to you, tour you around a bit. I’ve decided to bring back the Big Hoss, specifically designed to fit the 6.7, and do it as a casting. I also want it to be

06:40 affordable. Looking at the head in the 2025, I am in love with these intake ports. And with a side draft, you get much more uniform cylinder-to-cylinder boost pressure distribution. I want to have my way with this new engine. We’ll find out if there’s room for improvement. And I’m going to do it on

07:00 video in our new series, Killing a Cummins. [Music] I’m shopping for an engine right now. Like and subscribe because you don’t want to miss this.