Banks Power plans to sell diesel crate engines with up to 1,350 horsepower.

Of all the crazy builds I have seen at SEMA this year, the most anticipated one comes from Banks Power’s famous California diesel tuner. The Chevrolet C20, called LokJaw, attracted a large group of people all the time I parked near the Amsoil booth.

Under the hood, LokJaw is equipped with one of the wildest engines imaginable, a 6.6-liter Duramax diesel V8 engine with a sparkling Banks intake manifold and Whipple supercharger on the top. Banks Power founder Gale Banks participated in SEMA with his store’s latest work and took the time to explain with me how he planned LokJaw as a test bed for the upcoming high-performance diesel crate engine series.

As a rolling car advertisement, this truck can certainly run perfectly. The people who have been around LokJaw want to see the immaculate engine compartment, the banging body and the slanted back bed-and learn more about what is happening under the skin of the truck. The representative of Banks Power Company explained that the supercharged diesel engine will produce 850 horsepower. Considering that Gail Banks told me about his experience in manufacturing diesel engines in cooperation with General Motors, this number sounds reasonable and is used in the U.S. Navy. The combined light tactical vehicle of the Marine Corps and the Army.

"We provide approximately 5,000 Duramax, or Banks-slash-Duramax engines, to the Army each year," Banks revealed. "So far, we have completed about 17,000. So we know what to do."

Banks believes that a series of diesel crate engines that provide high power, unique sound and high red lines may be popular in today's aftermarket industry.

"If we can turn it into a turnkey setup," he said, "I think some people want to use diesel engines to drive their hot rod ideas-trucks, cars, etc. Just want to be different!"

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This particular truck was originally found in a dilapidated semi-barn, Banks Power brand manager Jay Tilles found and purchased it for $1. Rust, aging, and peeling of the plywood bed, this 3/4 ton Chevrolet seemed to be a cause of failure until the staff returned it to the store.

"It actually worked! To correct this, we let it run," Banks said. "You can see the street through the bed. I mean, this is just a wreck, but a driveable wreck."

"What can we do with this thing?" Banks asked rhetorically. "The tilt of the bed and the opening of the hood, the whole concept of going down the body line from front to back, really fascinated me. Jeff Transu from Fresno came up with this."

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Of course, a rat-stick modification like LokJaw requires a serious power unit to live up to the Banks Power name, so a more typical turbocharged diesel engine simply won't work.

"People don't pressurize diesel," Banks told me. "This is not done yet. The old two-stroke Detroit diesel engines, in the past, were supercharged, so they can start them-this is not a real performance device. Starting the two-stroke requires airflow, and the GMC blower provides it, that blower It eventually became a drag race tool for Top Fuel and all kinds of people."

Although modern diesel engines can generate the necessary compression to start without using forced induction, generating the torque required to drive today's heavy-duty pickup trucks and SUVs usually means that something needs to be installed. But a turbocharger uses exhaust gas to spin the turbine to generate a lot of heat, plus the heat generated by pressurizing any gas or liquid. So Banks went out to find something more efficient.

"Compared with the old supercharger, I need a higher boost number and a higher air density," he told me. "This device uses a screw supercharger developed in Europe. It is Lysholm, the name of the person who came up with the screw blower. Today, many people make screw blowers. I think the best example is Fresno's HP Family."

The efficiency of the Whipple screw supercharger allowed Banks to start working on the engine itself, hoping to obtain a much higher red line than ordinary turbo diesel engines.

"We developed the blower camshaft for diesel engines," Banks revealed. "No one has ever made a blower camshaft. It is different from a turbine camshaft. We increased the lift, increased the duration, moved the camshaft out, and absorbed a lot of extra airflow."

LokJaw's Duramax can now spin up to the screaming (for diesel) 5,500 RPM red line, while trucks such as GMC Sierra HD and Chevy Silverado have a top speed of 3,450. But higher RPM means more airflow, once again challenging the efficiency limit of banks.

"A good intercooler is essential here. With this, we should be able to add more than 30 pounds of boost. It is more efficient, so it does not heat the air. So I look forward to if it can provide" Enough total volume, enough total mass, more than 800 horsepower. Maybe more. "

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Tilles told me that he thinks the engine can produce 650 horsepower on its own, and the engine can produce up to 850 horsepower due to the NOS setting bolted to the rear bed of the inclined plywood. However, by pairing a supercharger with a turbocharger, the Banks Power crate diesel engine lineup will always reach 1,350 horses. The two work together and were once called the dual charging of the Lancia Delta S4 rally car, but now Banks And his team called the "Super Turbo" setting.

"Engine, this is the foundation," Banks said. "We will make a supercharged version, a turbocharged version, and a super turbo version. This is compounded, one blows into the next."

Of course, at the level of power that Banks wants Duramax to produce, a large number of other modifications are required to make a sufficiently reliable engine for military and hot rod applications.

"I invented a new low-end," he revealed. "Lower crankcase, oil pan, a complete system to reduce impact loss. Usually, it is cruel to remove the oil from the rotating crank rod assembly, using a scraper or other impact device. This will inject a lot of air into the oil And heat the oil, so we came up with this setting. It's low-key. If you put the engine on a Chevrolet, the distance from the centerline of the crank to the bottom of the oil pan of a normal pickup truck or Mustang is too large. So we have a brand new At the low end, we use it on military engines. We have a different version, and it’s even lower for our crate engine plan."

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Heat is still one of LokJaw's main concerns, so much so that Banks Power researched multiple solutions to prove how much the smallest detail can make a difference. Even the wheels have small fins that help draw hot air from the huge Wilwood 15-inch brake rotor and the engine compartment itself.

Banks explained: “They pump the hot air from the brake rotor outside.” “No one has ever done this before—I have never seen it before, maybe it’s done. It’s very important in the front. , Because it absorbs hot air from the periphery of the brake rotor, but it also absorbs hot air from the engine compartment. It provides you with better cooling, better charge air cooling, and better water jacket cooling. It can reduce For the temperature of the engine compartment, use wheels to evacuate the engine compartment."

Banks worked with Sparc to design custom wheels, but he estimated that 30 to 40 different aftermarket and original equipment manufacturers contributed to the final product, LokJaw. I asked him what the next step was on the file. It turns out that when the famous SEMA tightening completed LokJaw, they never even started the engine!

"I really want to know how this sounds," Banks said. "When we come back, it will come out and run on the dyno, so we will hear it there. We will have a full show on the Banks Power YouTube channel about the engine and how we rate it, so for Talk. Is it A, B, C?"

LokJaw's power plant will give birth to a series of Banks Power diesel crate engines with unprecedented performance for public use. But Gale Banks also hopes to go further in the near future.

"I always wanted to make a hybrid version," he revealed. "In the second position-they call it P2-coaxial with the centerline of the crankshaft. Place an electric motor generator where the torque converter is normally located, move the torque converter back so you have a Part, it fell there and then bolted to the rear of the engine."

Most consumers may think of Volkswagen and semi-truck when they think of diesel engines, but the locomotive industry has used diesel-electric drive systems for many years. These mills are slightly different. They use a diesel engine to spin a generator, and then use an electric motor to power the wheels. Here, electricity and diesel power will directly complement each other. In the era of clean diesel, imagine the grunt produced by combining instantly available electric torque with a higher-speed diesel engine.

"The motor generator itself is enough to produce 536 horsepower, and the torque figure is sky. So you talk about torque filling at low revs, which is very important," Banks told me. "It will reach 7,000 RPM, so I can also make some serious gas twin-turbo hybrids-I plan to do that."

Source: bankspower.com, sema.org, transoudesign.com, chevrolet.com, whipplesuperchargers.com and wilwood.com.

If you like large engines, then the 108,000 horsepower Wärtsilä is your best choice.

Michael Van Runkle grew up surrounded by Los Angeles automobile culture, often attending small enthusiast gatherings and large industry exhibitions. He learned to drive the gear lever of a 1948 Chevrolet pickup without a gear. He currently drives his 1998 Mitsubishi Montero every day while daydreaming, hoping to complete the Porsche 914 project one day. Since graduating from the University of California, Berkeley in 2010 and joining HotCars in February 2018, he has written in various media.