Courtesy of Engine Builder
One of the best parts about the PRI show for many people is getting a chance to catch up with folks you might not have seen much throughout the year. It serves as a reunion of sorts. One person I always enjoy catching up with and seeing what new engine goodies he’s cooked up over the year is Jeremy Wagler of Wagler Competition Products.
Jeremy has been featured by Engine Builder several times over the years, both here in the Diesel of the Week series and as a previous winner of our America’s Best Engine Shops award back in 2017. Every year, Jeremy and Wagler always have something beyond cool in their PRI booth, and 2023 didn’t disappoint. He had a number of new things on display, including this brand-new billet Duramax engine.
“My guys just got it ready right before the show,” Jeremy Wagler told us. “We’ve been planning on doing it for years.”
That plan was put aside temporarily due to Wagler’s popular DX V8 Duramax builds that are out running in a number of pulling trucks. However, Wagler’s drag racing customers, who favored the Duramax platform, didn’t want the big, heavy, DX engine, so Wagler brought this billet Duramax to the forefront.
“We basically modeled it off of a GM Duramax to where all the factory heads, the factory oil pan, rear covers, front covers, and just about every component of the factory engine can fit in,” Wagler says. “It’ll be lightweight. We mainly designed this for drag-and-drive events, so there’ll be an oil-cooled sleeve for those customers, and we can take it out for the pure drag racers.”
When Jeremy mentioned he designed this for drag-and-drive events primarily, we were a bit surprised given Wagler’s focus on truck pulling, but also not overly shocked because he has a good track record with drag racing customers as well. Additionally, a properly put together diesel truck/engine combo can certainly compete at drag-and-drive events – especially when they have a Wagler-built diesel engine.
“This is one of our first ones of these engines,” he says. “We have five or six of them already sold to drag racers, but one of the first ones in testing will be oil cooled. We’ll be doing oil-cooled sleeves, that way we can run it for many miles and put some testing on it and then release it into drag and drive. We own a drag strip and I see the drag-and-drives, and I think it’s a good, fun way of getting into drag racing.”
If you’re familiar with Wagler’s Duramax stuff over the years, then you’re no stranger to his DX platform, so how does that compare with this new Duramax engine?
