There's an old hot-rodding adage, "Speed costs money, how fast do you want to go?" In the case of Mike Brady and his '05 Ram SRT-10, the price of speed has been four sets of exhaust and some broken-engine internals, but the reward has been worth it. He's made a lot of friends building his Viper-powered Ram, and garnered respect on the drag strip, as well.
Mike carries a jack and a set of drag slicks in the bed, along with a nitrous bottle and a 1-gallon fuel cell for the alcohol and water injection.
The heart of any SRT-10 Ram is the 505ci V-10, and it wasn't long before Mike started tinkering with it. After some basic engine modifications, Mike wanted to go full bore, so the engine was dropped off at DC Performance in Los Angeles, where the block was sleeved and the forged crank was balanced before being bolted in with billet steel bearing caps. The reciprocating assembly consists of I-beam connecting rods and 9.2:1 JE pistons that were picked to go with the rest of the planned modifications. A Comp cam finished up the short-block before things got a little complicated. Work began on the intake manifold, as injectors for nitrous and fuel for the Nitrous Express system were plumbed in. Left naturally aspirated, this motor would have been a handful, but Mike wasn't finished. Instead, a Paxton supercharger and aftercooler were installed, then set at 9 psi. To keep detonation at bay, an FJO water and methanol injection system was installed. With the additional variables of boost, nitrous, and alcohol, the factory computer needed backup, so the Nitrous Express Maximizer II controller was wired up while the factory computer benefited from a Jensen JTEC calibration.
Westminster Transmission built a stout automatic to handle drag-strip abuse. Here's the switch for the line-lock that allows for neck-snapping green lights.
The Ram rides on QA1 adjustable shocks and custom springs up front, and flipped factory springs and QA1s in the back. A Currie Dana 60 is built to handle the V-10, but as you can imagine, the power can overwhelm the leaf springs and wrap them up, so a Caltracs traction bar system keeps the truck consistent on the strip. Factory 22-inch wheels were powdercoated satin black to fit the look Mike was after, then the brakes were upgraded to drag the speeding Ram to a stop at the big end of the track. The factory Brembo calipers were fitted to EBC rotors and pads while the rear axle was fitted with down-sized Wilwood calipers and rotors. We know what you're probably thinking, "Why on Earth would someone put brakes on the rear that are smaller that those it had when it rolled off the assembly line?" The answer is simple: you can't run 10s in the quarter on 22-inch wheels. Okay, maybe you can, but a 6,000-pound truck needs all the help it can get when it launches, and 15-inch-wide drag slicks make a huge difference. When the smoke settled, Mike's best pass was a 10.73, and he has the broken pistons to prove it. Plug the weight and E.T. into a horsepower calculator and you get more than 1,000 flywheel horsepower; but for a blown, nitrous V-10, that sounds about right.