A New Duramax Powered ProMod Hits The Dragstrip 

Coming off his 2018 Outlaw Diesel Super Series Pro Dragster Championship in his Duramax powered dragster, NGM Racing Owner Wade Moody set out on a new adventure with a new challenge. He decided to move into the highly competitive ProMod class for 2019 with a totally new race car.

He purchased a Jerry Bickel Race Cars ProMod chassis with a carbon fiber C7 Corvette body and built a billet Duramax 408 cu.in. twin-turbocharged and nitrous oxide ingesting diesel burning engine to propel the car down the track. While some doubted that his NGM Diesel Race Engines Duramax engine could deliver the power needed to make a heavier ProMod car competitive against the other ProMod racers. But never one to stand down from a challenge Moody and his team went to work spinning wrenches, fabricating parts, building, assembling and wiring the C7 in hopes of taking the 2019 ODSS season by storm.

Chassis

During the off season Moody and his team went to work on the ProMod project starting with the fresh Jerry Bickel Race Cars chassis getting it ready to accept a Duramax diesel and ready to race. Lamb Components double adjustable coilover struts were hung from the front of the chassis mated to the Bickel chromoly strut mounts and control arms. Steering is actuated through a lightweight rack and pinion steering rack while braking is handled by Lamb two-piece carbon rotors clamped by 1-piston Lamb calipers. The master cylinder is mounted low on the driver’s side forward of the firewall along with a Hurst Roll Control line lock solenoid to help in staging.

In the back the rear axle assembly is located with JBRC adjustable link arms and mounts to allow Moody and his team to position the axle housing precisely where they need it. The housing is stuffed with Lamb Components internals including spool, gears and axle shafts. Rear braking is handled by Lamb two-piece carbon rotors with two-piston calipers giving them the squeeze. The axle assembly is tamed with a set of remote reservoir Penske double adjustable coilover shocks with PAC Racing coil springs. Meaty rear 17.0/34.5-16 Hoosier drag slicks are mounted on a set of Weld Racing Delta-1 wheels to plant the power to the ground when Moody mashes the loud pedal.

Duramax Power

Power for the ProMod beauty comes from an NGM Diesel Race Engines built 408 cu.in. billet Duramax that Moody and his team built in house. The custom billet aluminum engine block is stuffed with a Winberg crankshaft that swings R&R rods and Diamond pistons through the sleeved cylinder bores. A custom NGM spec camshaft actuates custom 35mm NGM valves within the billet cylinder heads through custom NGM lifters and Trend Performance pushrods. The heads are held securely on top of the billet engine block with a set of custom ARP studs and capped with a custom fabricated billet aluminum intake manifold with runners feeding into the cylinder head’s intake ports and dual plenum’s feeding the intake runners. A dry sump system using a Weaver Brothers dry sump pump, a large Peterson Fluid Systems aluminum oil tank and custom NGM oil pan keep the engine well lubricated as it spins up to its 7,500 RPM redline.

Fuel And Air

Custom built tubular stainless steel headers were fabricated by Todd Connick and Moody to position the custom built Bullseye Power turbo chargers down low on each side of the engine with a 4-into-1 merge collector and V-band clamp. A Turbosmart ProGate 50 wastegate keeps boost levels in check while the turbine outlet features an integrated “crossbolt” to protect against a turbine wheel failure. Spent gasses from both the turbos and wastegates are funneled out from under the front fenders between the front wheels and front doors on each side of the car.

To fuel the billet beast Moody relies on a Waterman Racing Components mechanical pump to draw fuel from the front mounted fuel cell and hand it off to a trio of Industrial Injection 12mm CP3 high pressure fuel pumps mounted to the front cover of the engine. The pumps send the high pressure fuel through the fuel rails and into a set of Industrial Injection Cobra fuel injectors to spray plenty of #2 into each cylinder. To augment the raw diesel injected into the engine Moody also relies on four stages of nitrous oxide from a Nitrous Express system fed by two large Speedtech carbon fiber bottles into a nitrous rail that feeds the four high flow solenoids. Each NX Solenoid branches out to two locations spraying the left and right banks of the engine simultaneously with one stage spraying into the turbo compressor inlets and three stages spraying into the compressed charge on the compressor outlets on the way to the intake manifold.

Controls

MoTeC electronics are relied upon to control and log virtually everything within the car. The MoTeC tuning is handled Kory Willis of PPEI to make sure that the car does exactly what is expected every step of the way from startup to burnout and launch to shut down the MoTeC system controls and monitors the car from tip to tail. The stout NGM Diesel Race Engines 408 cu.in. billet Duramax engine package is estimated to deliver right around 3,000 horsepower along with 3,000 lbs-ft of torque to send the C7 Corvette down the 1/8-mile strip in just over 4-seconds.

A SunCoast SFI flexplate and Pro-Loc billet torque converter are relied upon to deliver the power from the Duramax into the Rossler Transmissions built Turbo 400 automatic transmission housed inside a beefy SFI approved Reid Racing transmission case. Power from the transmission is handed off to the rear axle assembly through a PS2 drive shaft. Once inside the rear axle housing Lamb Components gears and axles send the power to the wheels.

After the amazing Jerry Bickel chassis was loaded with the engine and drivetrain the NGM team turned their attention to the carbon fiber JBRC body. While it is designed and built for the chassis, it wasn’t intended to have a twin-turbocharged Duramax diesel under the hood so some modifications had to be made primarily in the hood which was handled by Carl Stevens while Todd Connick, Dennis Hall and Moody handled the rest of the modifications that were required on the body. The carbon fiber body was painted a deep black finish before being wrapped in the PPEI livery by the team at Rage Wraps.

Final Touches

The final touches to complete the race car were the wiring and electrical system comprised of several MoTeC  modules and what seems like miles and miles of mil-spec harnesses and connectors throughout the car. The system monitors temperatures, pressures, suspension travel and much much more as well as controlling the engine, injection system, transmission, braking and more. Not only is nearly everything controlled by Willis’ MoTeC programming the system also collects data from all of the sensors to report back to Moody and Willis after each pass so that they can further fine tune the machine.

Moody and his team hoped to have the C7 completed in time to campaign the entire 2019 ODSS season, but there was just too much work for the small team to complete before the season opener. After about ten months of working on the car with several rumors of it competing at the “next” event Moody and his PPEI team finally made their official 2019 public debut with the ‘Vette at the Rudy’s Fall Truck Jam in Julian, NC at the Piedmont Dragway. The PPEI ProMod lived up to its hype as Moody set the pace in qualifying running a 4.33-second pass to take the top spot.

Amazingly during their outstanding runs at the Rudy’s event Moody was not using lock-up allowing over 40% slippage to be easier on the equipment for their first time out and still put up low 4-second passes at nearly 170 mph. The team is working toward using lock-up in the future where they could pick up 2-3-tenths of a second in the 1/8-mile and 15-20 mph through the traps. Maybe we’ll see Moody drive the C7 into the 3s during the 2020 season, we sure hope so!

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