One project car making more than 400 horsepower is enough to ruin a perfectly normal afternoon. One project truck making that kind of power with two powerful motorcycle engines, a nitrous system, and a switch that basically asks, “Would you like your wheelies supervised today?” is, understandably, a whole different can of worms. In Cleetus McFarland’s latest shop update, the twin-engine truck returns after a long spell at Chris Moore’s place, where it got sorted, reworked, and turned from a chaotic science fair volcano into a much sharper kind of bad idea. It Finally Runs Like The Truck It Was Supposed To Be Cleetus McFarland YouTubeWhen the truck first showed up, the assumption was simple: throw standalone ECUs at it, clean up the tune, and go have fun. Instead, Chris Moore and company found the kind of gremlins that turn “easy fix” into “see you in six weeks.” The engines checked out mechanically, which was the good news. Compression, leakdown, cam specs, and valves all looked fine. The real problem was in the wiring, where two injectors were getting the same signal.From there, the fix list kept growing in the most project-car way possible. The truck got two MaxxECU standalones, clutch upgrades, better synchronization between the engines, an alignment that apparently transformed it from barely pushable to drivable, and new OEM starters because the aftermarket units were cranking too slowly. The payoff came the second the truck fired up. Instead of sounding half-finished and vaguely offended to be alive, it barked to life like it had finally remembered what it was built for.It also got wheelie control, because of course it did. There’s now a toggle for whether the front end behaves itself, with a laser ride-height sensor helping keep the nose down. Good thinking. The Dyno Number Got Pretty Serious Cleetus McFarland YouTubeBefore the latest round of fixes, the truck had laid down roughly 328 horsepower. After the cleanup work, it went back on the dyno naturally aspirated and immediately showed how much was being left on the table before, climbing to basically 350 horsepower. For a twin-engine setup that already looked like it wanted to wheelie through every gear, that's a pretty neat bump. Smooth Is Good Cleetus McFarland YouTubeThen came the nitrous. The setup was intentionally mild, with what was described as about a 25-shot on each engine, good for roughly another 50 horsepower. In theory, that’s a conservative move. In practice, once the bottle was warmed and the system came online, the graph jumped to 410 horsepower. That’s nearly 100 horsepower more than where the truck had been before it went away for repairs, and the jump happened in a way that looked as dramatic as it sounded."Flip the switch if you want your wheelies. If you don't want the wheelies, no problem." - Chris MooreWhat was pretty cool to watch was the way it arrived matters. The team kept pointing out how smooth the power delivery looked, which is probably the most comforting sentence possible when the vehicle in question has two engines, flames, nitrous purge, and a documented history of trying to point at the sky. Smooth is good. Smooth means maybe the truck won’t immediately attempt to separate the moon from the rest of the night sky. Out It Goes To Became A Problem Again Cleetus McFarland YouTubeThe best thing about this build is that it only spends a few minutes pretending to be sensible. Once the dyno session wrapped, the truck went out to the track and went right back to being a rolling threat assessment. With wheelie control off, it did exactly what everyone expected and still somehow looked surprising doing it. It carried the front end, charged hard, and generally behaved like it had taken the dyno result as a personal challenge. The Best Kind Of Stupid Ending Cleetus McFarland YouTubeThen the truck reminded everyone that project vehicles always keep one more joke in their pocket. During a run, the steering suddenly bound up. The culprit turned out to be the steering rack falling out of its brackets and shifting over enough to cause trouble. That’s not ideal, though in the hierarchy of terrifying mechanical failures, “not one of the electronic things we just fixed” probably counts as a partial victory.They patched it, tested the wheelie control again, and kept driving, because that’s the only proper ending for something this stupid. By then, the truck had already made its point. It’s faster, better sorted, and somehow even more entertaining now that it works properly. Now if only we could get one of these sold at a local dealer...Source: Cleetus McFarland (YouTube).
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