How Gale Banks Became the Godfather of Turbocharging

00:02 it took merely half an hour after the invention of the internal combustion engine for its creators to realize that forcing air into it would result in a more powerful output this inevitable Discovery sparked their worldwide effort to build superchargers these crank

00:18 driven apparatuses that compress the air fuel mixture and gave an engine more power than it could ever produce naturally these superchargers had a dirty little secret though parasitic loss let’s say you have an engine that makes a hundred horsepower naturally aspirated and a supercharger that could

00:34 produce 50 horsepower on top of the engine well in theory it should produce 150 horsepower combined but in the real world it may only produce 130 horsepower since 20 horsepower was used in rotating the supercharger and overcoming frictional forces this fundamental problem would soon be

00:52 solved by a Swiss engineer named Alfred buke his 1905 patent for an exhaust driven turbine connected to an axial compressor to force air into the cylinders was the first the world had seen what we know today as a turbocharger in the German warship the hansistat

01:13 Danzig the turbochargers could raise the diesel engine’s output from 3 400 horsepower to over 6400 horsepower and even during World War II the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress used a turbocharger on each of its four engines to compress the oxygen sparse high altitude air and to

01:31 denser oxygen-rich air similar to sea level to counteract the power loss at high altitudes the turbocharger was the quintessential Problem Solver for the internal combustion engine but one last obstacle was still to be conquered and it was the hearts and minds of hot rodders the win the Super stock

01:48 Championship since the late 60s one mad scientist has been at the Forefront of showing the world the power potential of turbocharging Automotive engines his expertise was forged in the hellish conditions of dry lake beds and Salt Flats at velocities over 280 miles per hour

02:07 where it started as a tiny engine shop to fund his college expenses transformed into one of the most prolific diesel tuning companies on the planet Gail Banks and diesel trucks is akin to Carol Shelby and the Mustang Alois roof and the Porsche 911 Smoky Nagata and the

02:25 Toyota Supra you can’t mention one without the other in this sixth installment of Legends we will unravel Holly hot rodder building boat engines became the Undisputed king of diesel tuning Gil Banks grew up in a perfect storm for a hot rider Southern California which

02:51 was a financial Powerhouse during the post-world War II economic boom and its geographical landscape of dry lake beds like El Mirage and desert highways was a recipe for birthing legendary hot rodders at an alarming rate Gail got his start at 14 years old by tearing down the engine in his mother’s

03:08 1931 Ford Model A and then fixing it by increasing the output from 40 horsepower to 105 horsepower thanks to a laundry list of speed Parts by 16 he sold his first Racing Engine a duel over at Cam’s Studebaker Indy car engine under his newly found company CP Auto and Marine

03:27 racing engines and used the eleven hundred dollars to offset his college tuition by the early 60s with two engineering degrees in hand and a 53 Studebaker Gail had his Crosshair set on land speed records his 53 Studebaker Starliner was powered by a 337 cubic inch small block Chevy

03:47 engine and used an ingenious air intake that increased the air density feeding the engine the faster it went and it was immediately banned after setting at 159 mile per hour record and would go on to add 30 miles per hour to that record at the Bonneville Salt Flats

04:04 air density was quickly becoming a focus Forum higher altitudes and hotter temperatures like Bonneville were less than ideal for making power since the density of oxygen was thinner than back at sea level the answer to this just like in the B-17 Flying Fortress was boost and a whole lot of it

04:31 the water became the Proving Grounds for Reliable High horsepower engines the immense shock loads and the endurance needed to survive living a life between Peak port and Peak horsepower hours at a time was a tall order for any engine builder where the competition was using root

04:49 style superchargers like the 671 Banks experimented with turbochargers in a jet boat named hurry round Hondo using an 1800 horsepower twin turbo big block Chevy engine running methanol it won every race it was in including the njba and the apba Nationals and broke many records in the process

05:10 the change to turbos from superchargers proves to be less punishing to the engine’s internals like the main bearings and provided extended engine life and far fewer rebuilds between races his name would become the topic of discussion not only in the racing scene but Corporate Offices worldwide as his

05:28 turbocharged engines regularly were featured on the front cover of magazines an unlikely name emerged from those corporate offices and it was Volvo who wanted banks to develop a turbocharged package for the Volvo 240 Coupe and sedan Banks produce 14 prototypes over two years which culminated in the

05:50 introduction of the 1981 Volvo 240 turbo the car the Turbo 5 Volvo it’ll blow the past right out of your mind affluent customers kept bank’s engineering pretty busy even through the energy crisis of the 70s notably a twin turbocharged big block Chevy powered Corvette called The

06:11 Sundowner which was piloted to 240.7 miles per hour in the thin high altitude air of the Bonneville Salt Flats this car would get the attention of Executives at General Motors who read about the car in popular hot rodding magazine and wanted banks to break the record in a Pontiac Trans Am

06:31 and they would do exactly that by a 43 mile per hour margin the following year we’re using turbocharging here to achieve power numbers that a few years ago were considered impossible Banks would take his turbocharging philosophy and apply it to the 6.2 diesel unbeknownst to GMC and six

06:53 weekends of work later it was force fed by a Turbocharger and made an additional 60 horsepower and 115 pound-feet of torque totally transforming the anemic 6.2 to an adequate Workhorse seeing how revolutionary this was for the 6.2 diesel GM would partner with banks to offer a dealer option

07:17 turbocharger package and would beat the Cummins turbo diesel as the first turbo diesel to Market by one year and many acknowledge this to be the Genesis of the light duty diesel tuning era that still is thriving today Banks would really solidify themselves in the diesel Market once they began

07:36 development on the 5.9 liter Cummins diesel it was from the factory extremely robust had a bulletproof mechanical injection system an under square-borne stroke which gave it great torque production it was plagued by a poor induction design that unequally distributed air into the cylinders

07:54 having cylinder one and six running richer and hotter than the others since air likes to take the path of least resistance Banks would develop a dual Inlet twin Ram which better distributed the air across the cylinders and combined with a fuel plate and turbine housing upgrade the 5.9 with the bank’s

08:12 power pack made an additional 94 horsepower and 214 pound-feet of torque over the stock output while maintaining 50 state emissions legality foreign [Applause] we picked up about 108 horsepower and almost 240 foot-pounds of torque by bolting on the bank’s power pack system

08:40 the potential of the 5.9 Cummins would be displayed in Guild bank’s stomping grounds the Bonneville Salt Flats with a one million dollar r d budget a Dodge Dakota and a Cummins turbo diesel the 5.9 power plant maintained the stock Pistons crankshaft and connecting rods

08:57 with polished cylinder heads and more aggressive camshaft grind a whole set variable geometry Hy 55 turbocharger an air-to-water intercooling and produced 735 horsepower and 1300 pound-feet of torque yes I wanted to do something to show the general public that diesels could be

09:23 sporty they could be fun fast powerful quiet clean uh and efficient it will go on to set a world record dethroning Ford and Roush as the fastest pickup truck at 217.314 miles per hour and even hitting 222.139 miles per hour in qualifying Banks would compete in almost every

09:49 arena with diesel powered trucks from drag racing the Baja 1000 even time attack at Pikes Peak during this time the diesel tuning aftermarket was left largely unchecked while laws did prohibit tampering with Emissions Control devices on vehicles many aftermarket parts suppliers would

10:09 use the code word off-road use only on products to shift any liability of misuse onto the end user this worked until the trend of rolling coal became popular unlike gasoline engines diesel engines can operate in a broad range of air fuel ratios as rich as 15 to 1 or as lean as

10:30 60 to 1 but below 25 to 1 the engine will produce excess soot or leftover carbon from incomplete combustion while it may look cool to some it is essentially unburnt fuel that is wasted to the atmosphere and can produce dangerously high egts and decrease fuel efficiency what was once a byproduct of

10:53 poor tuning and over fueling the engine became a trend to dump clouds of smoke on purpose usually on an unsuspecting Prius and go viral on YouTube if you don’t have the air and you add the fuel you blot out the sun and the EGT gets well so you got to have the air if you’re going to make the power

11:17 banks on the other hand exclusively kept emissions equipment intact and stayed true to a tuning philosophy That clouds of soot was no good and he was essentially exiled for it within the diesel tuning community being based in California he made sure all of his products offered for Street

11:35 driven trucks had a California air resources board executive order meaning even though they weren’t OEM Parts they still complied with emission standards in all 50 states this forward-looking approach gave Banks Engineering a sort of immunity when the EPA subsequently cracked down on

11:53 emissions defeat devices and Diesel tuning this approach wasn’t without criticism in the diesel Community it essentially created three groups of diesel owners those who would follow bank’s philosophy and keep the emissions equipment and 50 state legality those who would do the

12:09 exact opposite and delete the emissions equipment for The Highest Potential power output and simpler maintenance and then those in the middle who would keep the emissions equipment until it failed or posed a reliability concern and then would delete it as the cost to replace

12:23 equipment wasn’t financially viable as a truck’s age and depreciated since mid-2007 all light duty diesel pickups sold required a DPF or diesel particulate filter to filter particulate matter like slip from exiting out the tailpipe over time this filter will essentially

12:42 clog and the particulate matter needs to be burned off with a region cycle which consumes a lot of fuel and in cases like the 6.4 Power Stroke the region strategy injects fuel on the exhaust stroke washing out the cylinders contaminating the oil and slowly destroying the engine over time

13:00 while Banks has shown you can make great power with the DPF and scr systems intact many owners to this day still opt to delete the systems altogether Banks has always been a futurist adopting turbocharging as the way to increase air density in a racing engine way back in the 60s when a Roots blower

13:21 was all the rage even at 80 years old he still educates the next wave of aspiring tuners and Builders and regularly uploads to his YouTube channel which I will say is an absolute Treasure Trove in wealth of knowledge while names like Carol Shelby and Vic Edelbrock are more recognizable in the

13:40 American hot rodding space Gail Banks deserves a seat at the table amongst the greats being just as influential in shaping a generation not as much with gasoline but with diesel foreign