Manual transmission trucks aren’t exactly the go-to choice when it comes to going fast. But, it seems the difficulty in shift timing, traction, and weight loss has gained some popularity. Back in July, at the Gateway Diesel Wars, Jessey Rhodes from the St. Louis area broke the late record of the manual transmissions with an 11.28 at 126.20 mph.

While Jessey’s run was impressive, it was Ryan Pini of Medford, Oregon that has now set the bar even more. Pini’s 2005 Chevrolet Silverado was originally built for a fun drag/daily driver truck with an automatic transmission. When the automatic transmission failed, he removed the ZF6 transmission from his pull truck and slapped it into this truck, so he could pull over the summer.

With a mildly built bottom end, Pini has pushed his truck down to an 11.149 at 129.63 mph. Pini relies on the Danville Performance tuning, dual CP3 kit, Dynomite Diesel Performance Super Mental fuel injectors, and an S480 over stock turbocharger system to power him to make this kind of pass. Holding the power is a South Bend triple disk clutch and Yukon Gear and Axle locker.

Still outfitted with the stock cylinder heads and intake manifold makes this even more impressive. Oh, by the way, Pini went on to sled pull that same day in the Super Street category and won. This truck can do it all.

The only weight he’s shed in hopes of a better elapsed time is the passenger seat and gutting the bed. That being said, he has a lot of room to grow. He’s planning on running a set of drag radials in the future to hopefully bury this truck into the 10-second range.

What’re your thoughts on this? Does this interest you in building a manual race truck? Let us know in the comments below!