Trucks have always been popular with some folks because you can haul lots of stuff in the back, from family farms to construction, you name it. In 1990 GM introduced the 454SS pickup spawning the performance truck market, following up the next year with the GMC Syclone based on the S-10 platform with the Buick turbo V-6 under the hood making it the quickest factory truck in the world at the time. In 1993 Ford jumped on the bandwagon with the F-150 Lightning in an effort to capture some of the sales of the popular 454 SS offering from Chevrolet. While the Lightning was discontinued in 2004 GM revised it’s offering to the Silverado SS in 2003, installing the 6.0 liter engine from the Cadillac Escalade featuring 345 HP and 380 ft lbs. of torque.

Though the Lightning is no longer manufactured, thanks to the NMRA providing a class for trucks to race the performance aftermarket has embraced them and there are some quite fast ones racing across the country, but enough about Fords here. This article is about the new fastest Silverado SS in the country, and it belongs to Murray Robbins out of Tampa, Florida.

Robbins pick-up is a 2005 model he purchased new with malice aforethought to create a beast. He ran the stock motor for a while with a Kenne Bell supercharger on top, and then when the time was right stepped it up last year with a built 408 stroker from Robert Fulco designed to handle about 1,500 horsepower. Dennis Ramsey’s Performance also out of Tampa, handled the build which includes a full Air Ride suspension, custom intercooler and nitrous.

Ramsey also handles tuning on the truck through a F.A.S.T. engine management system, just last Thursday it was dyno tuned with the nitrous for the first time and put down 710 RWHP on a 125 shot and 15 pounds of boost. Previous best ET was a 7.35 @ 92 MPH at Sunshine Dragstrip, last week he ran a 7.38.

Last night was the first outing on the bottle and they are still figuring the best way to launch the truck to achieve the best 60 foot on the M&H 16 inch slicks. The first pass with nitrous was a 7.13 after spinning the tires hard. The second pass resulted in a 1.60, 60’ 4.54 330’ and 7.03 @ 98 MPH 1/8 mile time, certainly enough to get the truck to the 11.00’s and some bragging rights. After the TNT session going over the data logs he discovered the Compushift needs some adjusting, as it was shifting the transmission at only 5000 RPM. This along with some minor tweaks to the fuel curve should have the heavy hauler running into the six second zone, enough to break the 10 second barrier in the quarter mile.

Murray plans to attend another test session next Wednesday to get the truck into the six second zone and I herd talk of fitting the truck with a twin turbo set up to push it to 26 pounds of boost in the future, right now I can only guess what another 600 horsepower would do, but I can’t wait to find out.