Diesels are better known for their torque than their horsepower outputs, but Zeigler Performance Diesels spat that preconception into the trash last weekend when its Ram truck recorded an outrageous 3,336 hp (3,382 PS) at the Ultimate Callout Challenge in Idaho Falls, Idaho.
Not that it exactly came up short on the torque front. The same dyno pull revealed the Ram was pushing out an equally insane 3,642 lb-ft (4,938 Nm) of twist action courtesy of a highly tuned 6.7-liter Cummins inline-six engine running an unholy 180+ psi of boost though a compound turbo setup and a generous shot of nitrous.
According to the Engine Builder website, the Ziegler truck was the last of the competing trucks to be strapped to the dyno, at which point its team had 2,621 hp (2,657 PS) and 3,677 (4,958 Nm) to beat. Ohio-based garage-owner Justin Ziegler didn’t quite top that torque benchmark, but he pulverised the power target, and smashed the previous all-time UCC dyno record of 2,929 hp (2,970 PS) in the process.
Related: 2000 HP Chevrolet Silverado Bursts Into Flames During Ultimate Callout Challenge Dyno Run
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The Ram’s power delivery is so explosive that the real action is condensed into a couple of seconds when the Cummins engine starts boosting and the truck does its best to climb right off the rollers, its brakes visibly glowing orange behind the wheels. Organizers actually cleared the stands directly adjacent to the dyno to make sure no spectators would be put at risk if one of the trucks’ engines decided to let go during a pull and scatters its guts all over the crowd, something that has happened before.
But since the Ultimate Callout Challenge is a multi-discipline event that also requires vehicles to pull a sled and hammer down a drag strip, we also get to see the ZPD complete an eighth-mile sprint in only 4.99 seconds at 148.51 mph (239 km/h), and watch another Dodge truck, nicknamed “Running in the Red”, showing exactly how to haul the mother of all trailers in this video from the 1320 Video YouTube channel.
As for why you’d want to torture an engine by making it pull all that weight, I guess that comes down to a mischievous human desire to make machines do crazy things they were never designed to do. If that sounds like your cup of diesel and you want to lose yourself in an entire hour of footage to find out more about the 2022 Ultimate Callout Challenge, check out the video below.
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