Big rigs on pikes peak tonite!

[joesoot]

Tonite @ 11pm Pacific on ESPN2... THE BIG RIGS RACE UP PIKES PEAK. . WOO HOO!







EDIT: was on 8-25-01

 

[DAWG-1]

Big Rigs are fun to watch race that hill . Thanks for the info, Sam.

 

[swamp rat]

It was on Thurs. night as well right after the M/C and ATV's but due to the 28 day rule my TiVo let me down. . That was the first time in 9 months TiVo screwed me. Oh well, at least I can watch it in the morning after I get home from work. This time I made sure TiVo will record it for me.

 

[Vaughn MacKenzie]

Thanks to Joesoot's 'heads up' I was able to catch the show last night. I read the thread at 10:57 so I caught it just in time!!!



There were only 2 featured bigrigs, one each tandem and single rear axle. The single axle truck spun out part way up so there was not much coverage of it.



The tandem axle Kenworth was awesome to watch. The driver was pusing it to the limit and doing all sorts of all-wheel drifts, and kicking the rearend out powering up the mountain. ESPN didn't give a lot of details (never liked ESPN's coverage of some motor sports) about the truck or engine, other than it was Cat powered backed by a slick ZF transmission. It was like the transmission used on Indy racers, you ratched the shifter back to downshift, forward to upshift. That would be totally awesome to have on our trucks!



This truck made the 12. 4 mile trip in just under 14 minutes, this is a mostly gravel road full of hairpin turns. It is pretty amazing this big rig completed the run at an average of 54mph. Anyone who has driven that road knows it is not for the faint of heart. I drove up there once in 1987.



Another observation was the lack of smoke he made. Even with the driver hammering the throttle off boost he barely made any smoke whatsoever. It responded quickly and was obviously quite powerful. It must have been running propane or at least twin turbos. The race starts at about 9000 feet elevation and ends at 14,110 feet so were talking about very thin air.



Vaughn

 

[DieselB59]

The truck is a KW T2000 with a Cat C16 engine. The ZF transmission is an automatic transmission that has to be shifted like a tiptronic with a joystick. It weighs just over 20,000lbs and replaced the original red racer which was a T2000 which had dual Cummins N14s which were rated each at over 700hp. It ran the quarter mile at 12 seconds in Englishtown in 1998. WOW!

 

[joesoot]

The footage ESPN showed (about 5 seconds worth)of the old Red Racer blacked the sky pretty good

 

[swamp rat]

Not sure if any of you caught it but the driver of the single axle racer mentioned an organization that was attempting to bring back the Big Rig racing to the states. He said they were going to run road courses here as is done in Europe and S. America. I'd love to see them come back to the Super Speedways and short tracks myself like the old GATR trucks back in the '80's.



They used to run GATR events every year in Gnashville during the State Fair. One year two rigs got together coming out of 4, bumping and grinding down the front stretch and wheels tangled sending them straight into the turn 1 wall @100mph+. Shook the grandstand to say the least, and removed a 3 foot section of concrete retainer. Now thats RACING not Rubbin!