Every Summer Bully Dog Technologies hosts a dyno competition at their facility in Aberdeen Idaho. This year Bully Dog got the attention of the diesel community by offering a total of $8000 prize money with $3500 going to the overall winner and a $1500 split between the top three in the Dodge, Chevy and Ford classes. This generous payout brought in trucks from all over the western US.

A dyno competition is a contest between vehicles and competitors who each run their vehicle on a rear wheel dyno that measures the vehicles power output in horsepower and torque. At Dog Days each competitor was allowed two runs on the dyno with the best number going towards the competition. Before we go on to talk about the impressive numbers that these diesel trucks produced, everything is relative so lets just put some things into perspective. A Ford, Chevy or Dodge diesel in stock form will produce roughly 300hp and 600 ft-lbs at the rear wheels.

Chris Werner's 2001 Dodge Cummins produced a jaw-dropping 1,450 horsepower and 2,767 lb-ft of torque.

In the world of high performance trucks the inline six cylinder Cummins engine used in Dodge trucks rules. In most types of diesel competition it seems that the Cummins dominates. One of the main reasons the Cummins works so well is that the injection system can be modified to inject enormous amounts of diesel and the inline engine configuration makes it easier to mount either a larger turbo or a twin turbo system.

And to top it all of, the Cummins engine is built tough so it is capable of withstanding the stresses occurred when substantially increasing power. But although the Cummins still continues to dominate the Chevy Duramax is getting closer all the time. Its just in the past few years that guys have figured out how to make the Duramax produce big power and they seem to be getting closer to the Cummins all the time.

Of the three brands the Ford Power Stroke seems to be the toughest to modify for big power. This is mostly because the injection systems used on the both the 6.0-liter and 7.3-liter Power Stroke are just not capable of flowing enough fuel to compete with the Duramax and Cummins at this level. With the general hierarchy of Cummins, Duramax and Power Stroke in mind it makes sense that the majority of competitors at Dog Days were using Cummins engines and that the overall highest power in each class also follow this trend.

Custom Auto's 2005 Duramax was the top Chevy producing 939 horsepower and 1,401 lb-ft of torque.

The diesel fanatics that an event like Dog Days attracts are completely obsessed with horsepower. These guys spend unthinkable amounts of time working on their trucks and fine tuning them for every last bit of power. Like most types of motorsports diesel performance is not a cheap past time either. The top three trucks at Dog Days had easily $40k in modifications not counting the $40 to $50k cost of the truck. With some competitor having close to $100k invested into their truck its no surprise that they take the competition pretty seriously. The dyno is also a way for these guys to judge if their latest power adding modification is working correctly.

When I showed up at Dog Days with camera in hand ready to capture the event I was surprised to see the blue and orange Dodge owned by Chris Werner. I have seen this truck a few times before and it always puts down some really impressive numbers. This truck is extremely powerful but at the same time is still driveable on the street with a little modification. When I showed up Chris was under the hood changing out the injectors. He was changing the injectors because they had installed smaller injectors that offer better fuel mileage for the drive out from California to Idaho. The task of changing injectors takes some time so it would be a few hours before we would see the truck run.

Mike DeFord from Bully Dog was on hand to help lead the event and hand out $8,000 in prize money.

As Chris was up to his elbows in Cummins, the trucks were filtering onto the dyno one by one. The first big number of the day came from Christian Questad in his 04 Dodge with 758 hp and 1,327 ft-lbs. A very impressive number that only a few years ago would have been good enough for an overall win. But things have changed quickly in the past few years so as impressive as Christians 758 hp he probably won’t be taking home the $3500 overall prize. A rumor started to go around the event that the guys from Custom Auto were going to inject as much nitrous as possible in their Duramax. The night before they had run almost 1,000 hp and were putting in larger nitrous jets before their run. Everyone took notice when they rolled their black Duramax onto the dyno.

For their first run they ran on diesel only (no nitrous) with an impressive pull of around 750hp. On their second run they injected nitrous and at 939 hp there was a huge bang possibly from the 1,080 lb-ft of torque the Duramax was producing. Of course we all thought the truck had broken but much to everyone’s relief the truck was fine. The loud bang was caused by a driveshaft breaking inside the dyno. Fortunately the broken driveshaft on the dyno was used to connect the front rollers to the rear for running four wheel drive vehicles. The Bully Dog technicians quickly removed the shaft and the competition resumed.

The next big number came from Zane Koch in his Ford Power Stroke. As we said earlier the Power Stroke is the underdog in diesel competition but Zane and his crew at Wide Open Performance have figured out how to make this engine produce power. Their twin turbo Power Stroke is one of the most powerful and fastest Power Strokes in the nation. Zane put down a very impressive 871 hp. That was enough to beat his closest competition in the Ford class by 370 hp. To put that in perspective, that’s a victory of more horsepower than that of most sports cars!

Zane Koch was able to coax 871 horsepower out of his 7.3-liter Power Stroke.

Finally Chris Werner got his injectors changed and rolled onto the dyno. This truck has produced over 1,000hp numerous times and features a dual stage nitrous system that is capable of injecting lots of nitrous. On his first run Chris pulled out all the stops and ran a mind-boggling 1,450 hp and 2,767 lb-ft of torque . To the best of our knowledge that is the most horsepower every recorded from a diesel pick up. Absolutely amazing! A few trucks ran after Chris but it was clear that nobody was going to top his huge number. Chris Werner took home $4400 and was crowned King of Dog Days 2008.