SCORE Journal - The Official Publication of SCORE Off-Road Racing
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/764754
What both England and Wedding emphasized is that the engines ran great at the SCORE Baja 1000, even though the chassis and other components of the trucks came apart around them. "We found the abuse points of the trucks and we will go back and continue to work on those areas," said England. "But we sell a very a dependable and reliable engine and it's not uncommon to see these engines with 600,000 or 700,000 miles on them as the rest of the truck is falling apart. This was another way to take the Cummins engine to the next level to maintain that reliability. I won't be happy until we show up at Baja someday, and everybody in our class is disappointed that we are there." Wedding agreed by saying, "Roger and I have enough racing in our backgrounds to know that if we step back a bit we can be proud of what we've done so far. We aren't going to be satisfied though until we finish and finish well." England was more light- hearted about the results and pointed out that both DRIFT DRIVERS CHRIS FORSBERG AND RYAN TUERCK STAND BY THEIR TRUCK AFTER A PRE-RUN IN BAJA. A TRANSMISSION FAILURE WAS AMONG THE MISHAPS FOR TEAM VALVOLINE-CUMMINS AT THE 49TH SCORE BAJA 1000. trucks were street legal and became their primary modes of transportation in Colorado and Ensenada when they needed to make a run to the grocery store. "We were never concerned about not having enough horsepower when the race got going," England said. "We didn't turn the wick up that much, we electronically massaged the ECM and we got about 500 horsepower out of the engines. We did change the machining on the intake manifold to open up air space for it because traditionally the number one and number six cylinders tend to run a little hot. Through our Cummins Technical Center, we also removed the cast manifold on the head and replaced it with a fabrication that gave us better airflow through the whole thing." As a note, the 2003 Cummins engine didn't require a catalyst to meet U.S. emissions, which could have contributed to the performance of the 5.9-liter. 080 SCORE JOURNAL