Highlights from the 2023 Golden State Diesel Fest

1,000+ HP Diesels Put on a Show

It’s been said that California is one of the best states in which to drive a hot rod, and one of the worst states to own one. The same could be said for diesel trucks, as in recent years the Golden State has cracked down immensely on all sorts of modifications to compression ignition engines. The real question though is, do these restrictions stop hot rodders from hot rodding? The answer is no! In the last couple years, we’ve seen a rise in early smog-exempt trucks swapped with diesel engines, as well as rat rods, and pre-1998 diesels. We’ve also seen some awesomely modified newer trucks, as lifting or lowering your ride to give it a change in attitude is a great way to show off your build. There’s also wild paint, and pure race trucks that can churn out four-digit power numbers with ease.

Show N’ Shine

The Golden State Diesel Fest is held at Sacramento Raceway, which is not only an awesome dragstrip, but a great location for folks to come from all over. There is a huge Bay Area contingent, as well as trucks from Oregon, Washington, and Nevada. People from Southern California too are willing to make the 6-8hr drive up, to show off their rides. In all, it’s quite the good time!

Probably the best place to start is with Jason Clifford, who brought a whole group of trucks built by Welderup in Las Vegas, Nevada. There’s of course the giant Peterbilt semi truck, a Cummins-swapped Dodge Charger, and a vintage Apache. All three vehicles were top notch, and one could literally spend hours looking at the details on these rides. From the turbocharged welder on the big rig, to the chain-driven blowers on the charger, daring to be different was on full display. Even the Apache eschewed the common Cummins swap for a quad-turbocharged Detroit Diesel.

With hundreds of trucks on display, there were a bunch of standout builds in Sacramento. Sky-high lifts were represented well, as well as swaps, and slammed trucks.  Taylor Swanson brought his immaculate slammed Chevy powered by a rowdy 12-valve Cummins to the show, eschewing the popular LS swap for diesel power. Nate Wilson probably had the most unique swap of the event, with a 12-valve (again) powering a Lincoln Continental, and backed by a manual transmission! There were also Duramax and Power Stroke swaps, along with a sea of 20-plus inch wheels as far as one could see.

Dyno Competition

In addition to the “show” part of the event, there was also a whole lot of “go,” either in the form of blasting down the dragstrip at 120 mph, or blasting the dyno rollers up to triple-digit speeds. The dyno was on hand as part of the North West Dyno Circuit’s mobile dyno challenge, which stops at various spots across the country during the year. The NWDC has a number of classes including stock turbo, big single, fuel only, and of course all the big dogs in the Unlimited class. You could also just run your truck up on the rollers, to see what kind of power you could put out.

As far as power numbers are concerned, a number of trucks were able to break the 600 and 700 horsepower barriers, with newer common-rail Dodges and Duramaxes leading the charge. At the end of the show it would be two race trucks however that would post up the big numbers. Rex Gully from Allied Diesel had has P-pumped 24-valve with nitrous on the dyno, where a single foot-t0-the-floor run yielded a massive 1,015 rear-wheel horsepower. The other heavy hitter was Kenny Bruner from Capitol City Diesel in his UCC truck. With a fully built engine, huge amount of nitrous, and compound turbos humming along at more than TK psi of boost, Kenny made a very impressive 1,450rwhp fuel only, and cracked the bottle open to make an even more massive 1,629hp and closing out the session in front of an appreciative crowd.

Drag racing

The Golden State Diesel Fest was held at a drag strip after all, so it should come as no surprise that plenty of people were more than willing to spin some tires, and take their trucks down the track. We saw everything from dang near stock 18-second trucks to 10-second stormers, with the majority being somewhere in between. You could do fun runs just to see what your truck was capable of, or you could enter the Bracket, or 7.70 or 6.70 classes. These last two are index classes, where you have to run an eighth-mile as close to 7.70 (about 12.0 in the quarter-mile) or 6.70 (10.50) as you can.

Once the drag racing got started, there was anything and everything that went down track, but there were a few standouts. The white crew cab of Colton Thomas was one of the quicker trucks on property, running consistent low 11s, while DSS brought a number of drag trucks to storm down the quarter (or eighth) mile. A couple of cars showed up too, with a lightly modded BMW 335d leading the charge with 8s in the eighth-mile at around 80mph. Finally, another standout was Nick aka Six_Oh_killa who brought his nitrous-infused 6.0L to run pass after pass in the 11-second zone, at 115 mph.

Come Back….This Year?

Normally this is the part of the coverage where we’d tell you how much fun it was, and you should really check it out next year. Guess what, you won’t have to wait that long! You see, Sacramento hosts another huge diesel event in the Fall called Truckmania, where both diesel and gas rigs mix it up on the quarter mile and in the show. There’s also side by side racing and sled pulling! So mark your calendars, order your performance parts and polish your wheels, for if you missed the glory that was the Golden State Diesel Fest, Truckmania will be coming soon.