1998 Ford Ranger

Any growing sport has an overwhelming amount of firsts. And in diesel motorsports, it seems there's a new record set and a new truck born every minute. Well, it's been a minute.

Meet Wayne Robbins' '98 Ford Ranger, the first back-halved, lightweight, Pro Street truck packing a 4BT Cummins with more power than most of its six-cylinder brethren. How about 700 hp on fuel alone? That's 175 hp per cylinder, and roughly the same as one of its 5.9L relatives making 1,000 hp.

Already in possession of a four-wheel-drive Ranger capable of low 8-second eighth-mile times, Wayne set out to build something very different with this truck. As the owner of Spooled Up Racing, which specializes in beefing up manual transmissions for sled pulling, Wayne was more familiar with the sled pulling aspect of diesel motorsports. So he used this project both as a learning experience and as an opportunity to get involved with some of the biggest names in the diesel aftermarket. "I'm not a drag racer--I build NV4500 sled pull transmissions--but we'll get it figured out," Wayne told us.

Starting from the ground up, Scheid Diesel provided a custom roller cam, and TFS Performance handled the machining work, in which the main bearing saddles and caps were line-bored so the crankshaft, which was also balanced, could spin as true as possible. In order to make the cylinder walls perfectly round, the engine was bored with a torque plate installed (to simulate the stresses of the cylinder head). Then the head was bolted down with 9/16-inch head studs. Arias 11:1 compression pistons and oversized valves from TFS Performance top off the internals.

With the engine spec'd as close to perfect as possible, Wayne brought fuel into the equation. A Holley 150-gph fuel pump feeds an inline injection pump built by Shiver Diesel to flow as much as 750 cc of fuel. A set of dual-feed JL Machine injectors ensure plenty of fuel makes it into the combustion chamber.

Searching for the perfect fuel-to-air ratio, Wayne decided to try an S200 over S300 twin-turbo setup. With this combo, boost levels stayed in the 70-psi range, and the truck made an incredible 707 hp on TFS Performance's dyno--which was without seeing what the ZEX nitrous system could add.