Semi Truck: Banks Freightliner Super Turbo Pikes Peak Truck

Supercharger + Turbo = Pikes Peak record?

What is a Super-Turbo? It’s an engine with both a supercharger and a turbocharger attached, according to Gale Banks of Banks Racing.

What is a Super-Turbo? It’s an engine with both a supercharger and a turbocharger attached, according to Gale Banks of Banks Racing. His team of aftermarket experts has designed a Detroit Diesel Series 60 engine using both kinds of forced induction to help racer and world-famous stuntman Mike Ryan take a shot at breaking a world record at the 2013 Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. We got a chance to see the truck at Irwindale Speedway during its first ever run since getting an engine transplant and lots of other interesting upgrades, including multiple waves of water/methanol injection and water-cooled brakes. You can see video from the racetrack run on the Banks Racing YouTube site.

At last year’s race, Ryan lost braking with just 3.5 miles to go, and ended up spinning out into a guardrail. A screenshot from just before that wreck is currently the main photo on the home page of the Pikes Peak web site at: www.ppihc.com. Recovering from that took more than 30 seconds, and he still managed to beat his old record from 2006 by 5 full seconds. The 2012 race was the first since the 156 turns of the Pikes Peak Highway were paved all the way to the summit, so it’s no surprise that Ryan was running faster than ever before, but with all the modifications to his truck made by the people in the Banks workshop, he was poised to demolish his previous record…

Read the rest of the story, and check out the photos at trucktrend.com