3,424 HP V24 Peterbilt Semi With 12 Blowers!
Over 3,000 Horsepower with 1,704 Cubic Inches, 12 871-Blowers and Nitrous!
Sounds impressive right? Well if you like horsepower and trucks you can appreciate Mike Harrah's custom 359 Peterbilt show truck. Yeah, yeah maybe it's not really something you can drive on the street easily or even get a chance to use all of it's power, but it's still bad to the bone! This is biggest semi engine ever built which is usually found in ships. The "Big Mike" V24-71 Detroit Diesel is two V12 Detroits joined together nose to nose with splined cranks. It adds up to 1,704 ci. It's ridiculous, on a grand scale but that's what makes it so unique and cool!
V24-71 Detroit Diesel Engine Design
Making one of these via two V12-71 Detroit Diesels (12 cylinder, V configuration, 71 cubic inches per cylinder). All 2 cycle Detroit Diesels have gear driven superchargers. They have intake ports in the cylinder liners and exhaust valves in the head. The blowers scavenge the exhaust out through the valves in the heads, when the piston clears the liners. Out of the factory, they made somewhere around 400hp. Slightly more when turbo charged and even more if they were aftercooled. These engines were governed at around 2200 rpms. In a truck you would want to keep the rpms high and start downshifting around 1700 rpms because the power and torque dropped off significantly at lower rpms. These were not engines you could "lug". The surging idle (called governor hunt) is due to worn governors or improper adjustment. Most buses (city and interstate), some semi trucks and construction equipment used 2 cycle Detroit Diesels back in the 60's through the 80's. They were great for applications where they could sit and run wide open all day. They were loud, even with a muffler and resonators, and they sounded like they were running faster than they actually were. Most applications are using 4 stroke diesels today.
Custom 359 Peterbilt Semi
This custom built 359 Peterbilt is a stretched cab all decked out on two steel frame rails reaching 40 feet long. So this truck alone is the size of a school bus! imagine it pulling a 53 foot trailer! That is just mammoth! But remember it's a show truck so it'll probably never pull anything anyways! The engine and transmission alone weigh 9,800 pounds. The video below shows the engine builder dyno'ing the engine before it was installed. It was said to have made 3,424 Horsepower with it's 12 871-Blowers and Nitrous. The amount of nitrous used it unknown. The 871-blower surge on a 2 stroke diesel sounds pretty wicked!
3,424 Horsepower V24-71 Engine Dyno Video
