No matter what you do to it, there comes a point where an engine just can’t hold itself together anymore. During a recent dyno competition, that point was reached by a Ram HD pickup whose builders were trying to blow past 3,000 horsepower. Their Cummins failed spectacularly, and it did so with a camera pointed right at it, recording in slow motion for us to enjoy.
The truck in question was the “Red Delicious” Ram built by Randy’s Transmissions of Utah. According to Diesel World, the 2006 Ram 3500 HD runs an Industrial Injection Cummins sleeved down from 6.7 liters to 5.9, with a concrete-filled block and all the hardware needed to produce thousands of horsepower. It has fully built rotating assemblies, water-methanol injection, and an enormous tri-turbo setup capable of generating 130 psi of boost. That’s good for 2,200 hp at the crank before its three-stage nitrous setup comes on, which pushes it to 150 psi of boost. In theory, this truck can crack the eights in the quarter mile, though Randy Reyes attempted to crack another barrier over the weekend: 3,000 hp.
Instead, he cracked more than a few other things.
While the truck was running on the dyno, something went very wrong, and the Ram‘s engine popped. The force of the explosion sent parts from the grille and a piston flying, and caused significant damage to the truck’s body. From the video, we can tell that the front bumper, hood, windshield, and firewall were all compromised by the blast. As for the engine, its sides burst out like Rorschach at the end of Watchmen. The cylinder sleeves are visible like viscera—it’s straight-up mechanical gore.
Randy’s Transmissions doesn’t blame the engine’s supplier for the failure; he considers it a known hazard of trying to produce huge power. Reyes indicated on Instagram that he’s undecided about rebuilding the truck with a billet block or letting it go to rest. At a minimum, it’d be fun to see what it could do with the billet block—or, how much more violent its failure could get. That’s not the outcome any of us want, though it’d be a grim consolation prize for an engine like this going up in smoke.
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