“It just an old farm truck with a few things done to it,” explains Dan Vallance. When in reality, the “Old Farm Truck” is really a wolf in sheep’s clothing. This ’97 3500 has the ability to show up to most pulls and take home the win.

How is that possible you ask?

Well, as with anything motorsports related, it all starts under the hood. Vallance dropped off the 12 valve engine at D&L performance in Wichita Falls, there they performed all of the machine work; like boring it 0.020” over and balancing the rotating assembly to 7,000rpms. From there, Vallance had Midwest Truck Products in Cantril, IA assemble the engine. Each cylinder has Mahle Motorsports pistons connected to a Carrillo rod which is connected to the factory crank. A Hamilton camshaft was chosen to work the valves and Premier Engine Design worked over the head. To get the heads to flow 237 CFM on the intake side, they had to cut the intake manifold off, so a Joker Fab intake manifold was chosen.

For fuel, a set of 5x.025 duel feed injectors are fed with a highly worked p-pump. To ensure that the pump has enough fuel, Vallance opted to run a gear driven Enderle fuel pump. On the exhaust side of things, a Steed Speed T6 manifold directs the hot exhaust to a Haisley HX60. The HX60 feeds a water to air intercooler and then into the manifold. This combination of parts is good for 1200 horsepower to the crank, according to Vallance.

Per TTTPA (Texas Truck and Tractor Pulling Association) rules, the driveshaft u-joints have to be shielded and the flywheel needs to have a blanket around it to protect people from debris if something were to fail.

The custom truss helps to prevent the axle from flexing and, also, serves as a mounting point for the upper links.

With that much power, it is important to have a clutch that can hold. So, Vallance opted to run a Valair competition triple disk clutch backed by a NV4500 manual transmission. The power is then sent through the factory transfer case and into the drive shafts via 1480 u-joins.

The axles are running 4.88:1 gear ratios with Yukon Gear and Axle spool in the rear and their Zip locker in the front. The lockers are connected to SCS axles in the rear and Haisley 35 spline axle shafts up front. The axles turn the KMC XD Series Enduro 17” wheels wrapped in 315/70R17 BFG AT’s.  To keep the axles firmly planted on the ground a custom truss was built in the rear along with ladder bars.

While on the track, Vallance keeps track of what is going on with Auto Meter Pro-comp ultra gauges.

In the back, a custom flat bed was made to lighten up the rear and reduce some drag.  Then, Vallance mounted the fuel cell in the bed to make filling the truck easy.

This truck has been a work in progress over the last couple of years, and has become an extremely strong “old farm truck.” Vallance say,s that it routinely sees 6,200+ rpm down the track. One of the really cool aspects about this truck, is that at any given day, Vallance can stand on the podium against some of the strongest guys in his class.