The Leader in Diesel Performance
By Tim Gavern David Downs Goliath at Baja A virtually stock 2003 Cummins diesel-powered Dodge Ram 2500 4X4 Pickup truck takes 3rd Place in the “Stock Full”
Guess what I’m doing? Gambling? Nope. Checking out the wom… um… sights? Nah! You got it: sitting in my hotel room on a Halloween night in Vegas watching the cinematic great “Catwoman”. Man… isn’t life great? How on Earth did I miss this gem?
Imagine driving a 1,100 hp, Twin-Turbo sport truck
Hola. Just a little ditty to illustrate how much Banks has been in the media this Summer. It’s been amazing!
It has gotten to the point that we’ve even coined a new term for hot rodding it to the max. We’re going to “Banks it.”
Nice.
In Print…
OK, you haven’t heard from me in a while and I’m going to use the same excuse as everyone else; Power Tour, blah, blah, blah. But since I am doing so, I would like to continue my theme on fuel economy with a report from the Power Tour. As you know, we took five vehicles on the Tour, four trucks with diesels of various flavors and one truck with a twin turbo small block Chevy. One of the trucks that completed the entire 1700+ mile trip was the Banks Sidewinder Dakota. You remember this truck, it holds the world record as the fastest pickup truck at a top speed of 222 mph. The cool thing is, it is completely street drivable and is actually fun to drive.
How many of you know that Banks’ Race Shop is building a roadracing truck? Did you know that the truck is going to be diesel powered? That’s right! A diesel powered roadracing truck! And it will be twin-turbocharged!
What’s the big deal you say? Well, diesels have several advantages over gasoline. First is mileage. Diesels generally achieve 20-40% higher mileage than gasoline-powered equivalents. Improving mileage means less fuel stops in an endurance race. This is a huge advantage and one that can shave critical minutes off of a team’s total time.
Remember when you were a kid and you heard that sound? You know, the sound that could motivate the dead to rise and you to drop whatever you were doing and run like hell screaming with whatever coins you could find clinched into your tiny hands? It was a melody that seemed to carry through the air even from miles away and could interrupt anything that was going on in your life at the time making you swing your head it the direction it was coming from. Yeah…
Perhaps you’ve noticed the lack of blogs from all of us during Power Tour? The days went by like lightning. There was, literally, no time to blog. Here’s how our tour went.
Day one:
Wake up (5:30 a.m.); shower; shave; meet in hotel lobby (7:00 a.m.); quick breakfast (7:15 a.m.); schlep bags to the truck-of-the-day (8:00 a.m.); drive to event city (usually around 300 miles); park truck at booth (2:00 p.m.); get swarmed by gawkers (2:01 p.m.); talk to people about Banks products (2:01-8:00 p.m.); pack up trailer (8:00 p.m.); eat dinner (9:00 p.m.); sleep (10:30 p.m.); zzz
Repeat six times.
