Chaba Project Drag Racing truck breaks into the 7’s. The team from Thailand that took the NHRDA World Finals by storm when they showed up back in October; just reached a huge milestone. December 5th, they broke into the 7’s with a 7.986 pass at about 167.15 MPH.
The team originally built the truck in 30 days in order to ship it to the US to make the NHRDA World Finals. When they got to the US, they took the truck to North Star Dragway for some testing and tuning. Unfortunately, they lost their motor on the first pass. Being a well prepared and well oiled team they brought a backup engine. The team ended up spending all night and into the early morning hours pulling the engine and installing their backup. By 6 am the next day, they were back on the track making passes again. This shows their amazing commitment and dedication.
During the NHRDA World Finals, they only made a few passes (still didn’t’t have an official NHRA license). Most of the passes were mid 8’s with a best ET of 8.227. They just couldn’t quite reach their goal of breaking into the 7’s. After the event, they stayed and made some additional passes Monday at the Texas Motorplex to get their NHRA license. This alone is pretty impressive considering everything they went through, but the team wasn’t finished even after this achievement.
The team has continued to push and refine the truck since they got back home to Thailand. On December 5th, they achieved their goal of breaking into the 7’s with a 7.986 pass. In addition to reaching the 7’s, they are the World’s Fastest 4 Cylinder diesel truck! Yep, that is right. It is powered by a 4 cylinder 3.0L Isuzu engine. The 4JJ1 engine is an inline engine available in the US in NPR cab over trucks. The 4JJ1 engine is a common rail engine that in its factory configuration is able to produce 150 horsepower and 282 lbs-ft of torque. Estimates have the Chaba Project Drag truck somewhere north of 800 horsepower. We at Diesel Army just wanted to say Congratulations!
Here is a link to their run on the December 7th. The loud pop and flash you see while making the pass is the turbocharger letting go. So, even though this was their quickest pass ever, they still have more left!