The Will To Succeed! Chance O’Daniel Is Determined To Win!

Anyone who has dedicated a large amount of time and effort to creating something knows what a draining process that is. It literally can take everything out of you. We know people that basically take the next month or two off after completing an enormous project that took a year or more to finish. So, we can only imagine how Chance O’Daniel felt after completing his drag truck, only to split the block on the 5th pass…

O’Daniel wanted to compete in the NHRDA Pro Street class, so he started with an ‘01 single cab long bed 2wd truck. In the rear, O’Daniel installed a Ford 9” and built a custom rear suspension with coil over shocks. Up front, he swapped out the ¾ ton hubs in favor of a ½ ton hubs. The truck is not back halved, but does feature a full roll cage, drive shaft loop and the other necessary safety features. The truck is rolling on Champion Wheels wrapped in Mickey Thompson drag tires. With O’Daniel in the truck, it came in right at the 4500 lb mark (bare minimum for the class).

Powering this beast was a 6.7 Cummins block that he picked up from Industrial Injection that had been filled. O’Daniel opted to stick with a 5.9 crank but upgraded to Carrillo rods and Ross Racing Pistons (12.5:1 compression). Holding the rotating assembly in place is an Industrial Injection 14mm Gorilla Girdle. Up top, a Joker Fabrication 12v head is held down by ARP studs.

For fuel, a mechanical lift pump feeds the PDR 13 mm Stupid Pump, which feeds the Scheid Diesel 5×34 injectors. For air, a Steed Speed exhaust manifold is connected to a Manning Motorsports 76mm high pressure charger which is feed by a 106mm low pressure charger (both BorgWarner S400 turbochargers). To keep the air temperature under control, multiple stages of nitrous were added as well as water injection.

Behind the engine is a Diesel Performance Converter (DPC) torque converter and a 47RE built by Darren Morrison. To help O’Daniel keep an eye on everything as he is running down the track, he opted to install a Computech DataMaxx data logger. The cool thing about the DataMaxx is that is acts like an instrument cluster, but it is also, recording critical information at the same time.

“We built the truck to compete in this year’s NHRDA Pro Street class. While tuning only on it’s 5th pass I heard a pop that I haven’t heard before. Judging from the oil coming up on the windshield, I knew it wasn’t good. When we got it home, we went straight to work. We pulled the head and were not expecting what we saw. There was a crack all the way down the block. While we are still not sure what exactly happened, we decided to go back to the drawing board on the engine,” said O’Daniel.

After spending countless hours and money on this project, a lot of people would not have known what to do or had the will to do anything more with the truck. It probably would have either sat in the garage until they finally sold it or the “for sale” sign would have gone on it right then and there. But not, O’Daniel. He simply licked his wounds and starting figuring out what he needed to do, to build another engine.

“As of now everything is in machine shop and we are hoping to get it back together to make a few races before the season is over. The guys at Manning Motorsports are pretty much doing the engine this time around. It will have their turbos, head, injectors and pump. I’m very excited to get this thing back to the track,” expressed O’Daniel.

As with any big undertaking, it is never just one person that gets the job done, it takes a team working together trying to accomplish a single goal to make things happen. O’Daniel wanted to give, “Big thanks to SJO services for sponsoring us and standing by us when things broke! I, also, wanted to say thank you to my friends; Toby Nock, Cody Griffith, John Weatherby, Jason Watlington and Jarod Green for all their help with the build,” said O’Daniel.

We hope to keep up with O’Daniel as he gets the engine and the truck back on the track. With this much determination, we are sure that he will be a contender in the 2015 season. Stay tuned!