It’s pretty rare to have a diesel event based on only one brand. But this past July, a flock of Fords descended upon the small Tennessee town of Newport as part of the annual Riffraff East event at the KOA campgrounds. Riffraff Diesel Performance owner Clay Note, and his wife Kristen, have made the trek annual for the past four years from their Eagle Point, Oregon-based home and business to the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. By design and history, RRE is a very family-friendly event and has drawn “blue oval” faithful from far and wide.
As in years past, the event started with a spaghetti dinner Thursday night at the KOA pavilion before the diesel action starts on Friday. The entire upper section of the campground and most of the cabins were occupied by Riffraff East attendees, making this the largest event to date with more than 200 people and nearly 100 trucks. Even though the large group of Ford faithful came from different areas across the country, they seemed like fast friends, laughing and having fun together late into each night, but without the problems and difficulties we’ve seen at some large gatherings.
With the aid of an official police escort, the large contingent of Ford trucks numbering upwards of 100 paraded from the campground over to the English Mountain Dragway for an afternoon of drag racing. But at the Riffraff event, drag racing is more about having fun than cutting a perfect tree or tripping the win light through the traps. There are no brackets and everyone is encouraged to run as many or as few passes as they like.
Additionally passengers are commonplace, including kids; even young ones in car seats had a blast running down the track. Many first-time racers were also able to enjoy the thrill of drag racing without the stress of serious competition. While there were many 10-, 11- and even some 12-second 1/8-mile times, there were also a few seven-, eight- and nine-second times too, with people having fun no matter what the time slip indicated.
Following the action on the track, which included a ventilated 7.3L engine block for Jonathan Jones on his high-mileage project truck, the group of Ford fanatics headed back to the KOA pavilion for the fourth annual potluck dinner. Guests brought a tremendous amount of food that was enjoyed by all with plenty to spare. Even after the food was cleared, many attendees remained at the pavilion sharing stories, getting to know one another and enjoying bench racing.
Saturday’s activities were held at the campground and pavilion with a mini Riffraff Diesel store set up in the pavilion with show specials and discounts on some of the most popular Ford upgrades and maintenance parts. It also was the day for dyno runs; Jonathan Jones and his team from No Limit Tuning & Design brought up their Dyno Dynamics chassis dyno and set it up at the campground. A total of 28 trucks ran across the rollers with Jason Kubis’s exhibition pass putting down the most power with more than 700 horses to the wheels of his daily driver ’08 F-250.
Cash awards were on the line for the most powerful trucks at the event. This was done by engine classes as well as highest power overall. Lower-power trucks had reason to run the dyno too, since No Limit Tuning & Design was offering custom tunes and a chip tuner as a prize for the lowest horsepower truck of the day. The custom tunes were awarded to Alex Witte and his ’97 7.3L F-350 that eeked out 220 horsepower this year, but the chip and custom tunes will help him move up the power chart next time.
Tony Salokas’s ’01 F-250 took home the top prize for most powerful truck overall and highest power ’99-’03 7.3L with 635 hp to the rear wheels of his pickup. Matt Maier’s ’97 OBS F-250 delivered 610 horsepower to the dyno rollers, making it the highest-powered ’94-’97 7.3L of the bunch. The highest power 6.0L truck was actually Nick Blendow with his ’04 Excursion, but due to his working relationship with Riffraff, his 500+ horsepower run was considered an exhibition dyno run, making the prize winner Tyson Proffitt with his ’04 F-250 that put down just less than 500 horsepower.
The 6.4L engine group had a similar situation with Jason Kubis, who works as a salesmen for No Limit. He posted the highest dyno run of the day with his 6.4L ’08 F-250 putting more than 700 hp to the rollers with his exhibition run. Ben Proffitt (no relation to Tyson) had the next best 6.4L dyno pull with his ’08 F-250 making nearly 540 horsepower. The only 6.7L truck that dynoed was Brian Dunn’s ’12 F-350 that put almost 430 hp to the rollers.
During a break from the dyno action, we got together nearly all of the trucks in attendance for a class picture of sorts that was truly impressive with a field of Fords flooding the campground. Saturday wound down with a BBQ dinner at the pavilion provided by Terminator Engineering, followed by the much anticipated raffle drawing for $8,275 worth of prizes, products and certificates in addition to the $700 in cash awards for the top dyno performances. Big prizes included custom tunes from No Limit as well as injectors from Full Force and pumps from Terminator Engineering, along with many other prizes and certificates from Riffraff Diesel Performance and other supporting vendors such as ISSPRO Gauges, John Wood Automotive and One Up Offroad.
As darkness fell, the flock of Ford fans were treated to a fireworks show with fireworks donated by Steve Perry’s Fireworks out of Columbia, South Carolina, which wrapped up the fifth annual Riffraff East event in style.
If you’re a fan of diesel trucks with blue ovals on the grille, the Riffraff East event is one you’ll want to put on your bucket list. Check out www.riffraffdiesel.com for the latest on their annual event. And, check out the next few pages to see what you missed in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee this year.
DYNO RESULTS
Name
Year
Make
Model/Engine
HP
TQ
Tony Salokas
2001
Ford
F-250/7.3L
635
1090
Matt Maier
1997
Ford
F-250/7.3L
610
1075
Cory Burdette
2002
Ford
F-250/7.3L
582
1075
Gabriel Williams
1995
Ford
F-250/7.3L
553
884
Ben Proffitt
2008
Ford
F-250/6.4L
536
960
Joey Frazier
2003
Ford
F-250/7.3L
532
860
Jordan Truitt
2000
Ford
F-250/7.3L
529
900
Chris Christian
2000
Ford
F-350/7.3L
510
860
Tyson Proffitt
2004
Ford
F-250/6.0L
496
800
Mike Khairzada
2002
Ford
F-250/7.3L
481
825
Tom Weedman
2001
Ford
F-250/7.3L
481
715
Roland Mueck
2001
Ford
F-250/7.3L
451
720
Nathan Keaton
N/A
Ford
N/A/6.0L
436
740
Jamie Kimmel
2004
Ford
F-250/6.0L
436
730
Brian Dunn
2012
Ford
F-350/6.7L
429
715
Chris Guest
N/A
Ford
N/A/6.0L
427
700
Rick Eckerle
2003
Ford
Excursion/7.3L
402
730
Martin Guernsey
2004
Ford
F-250/6.0L
356
700
Bob Wells
2003
Ford
F-250/7.3L
347
602
Jason Pandolf
2001
Ford
F-350/7.3L
342
550
Steven Rish
2000
Ford
F-250/7.3L
334
535
Josh Hubbard
2002
Ford
F-250/7.3L
320
560
Miranda Neeley
1999
Ford
F-250/7.3L
314
500
Josh Beverly
E1999
Ford
F-350/7.3L
286
500
Eric Schlitzer
2000
Ford
Excursion/7.3L
279
480
Alex Witte
1997
Ford
F-350/7.3L
220
310
Jason Kubis (exhibition)
2008
Ford
F-250/6.4L
711
1160
Nick Blendow (exhibition)
2004
Ford
Excursion/6.0L
523
1080
English Mountain Dragway
Dept. DW
2117 Old Newport Hwy
Sevierville, TN 37876
423-721-6464
KOA Newport
Dept. DW
240 KOA Lane
Newport, TN 37821
423-623-9004
www.koa.com
No Limit Tuning & Design (Chassis Dyno)
Dept. DW
1910 S. Greenwood Ave.
Chattanooga, TN 37404
423-486-1116
www.dynoproven.com
Riffraff Diesel Performance
Dept. DW
P.O. Box 416
Eagle Point, OR 97524
541-879-1052
www.riffraffdiesel.com
Travel from the KOA campground to the English Mountain Dragway was handled with an escort courtesy of the Newport Police Department. It’s much better to see flashing lights in front of a line of diesel trucks rather than in the rear view mirror pulling someone over!
A large contingent of Ford Power Stroke Diesel fans line the strip at English Mountain to watch and participate in the drag racing action.
Tyson Proffitt (near lane in red ’04 F-250) and Joey Frazier (far lane in gold ’03 F-350) blast off heading down the 1/8-mile strip.
Ben Proffitt gave the ever-enthusiastic “Parts Guy” Ed a ride down the strip in his ’08 F-250 that was consistently laying down high eight-second passes.
Mike Khairzada not only drove his ’02 F-250 down to Tennessee from New Jersey, he also ran it on the strip posting the best Veggie Garage-fueled time on the track with low nine-second passes at nearly 80 mph.
More Fords getting after it on the track. Drivers were able to make as many passes as they wanted and could line up against friends to see who was quickest.
Nick Blendow drove his ’04 Excursion all the way out from California to take in the Riffraff event. The big SUV was making high eight-second passes on the strip.
Friday night’s potluck dinner provided more than enough food for everyone in attendance with a large variety of specialty dishes from regions all over the country.
Riffraff owners Clay and Kristen Note enjoyed this year’s RRE with the newest member of the family, four-month-old Cameron. We wonder how long it will be before lil’ Cameron is blasting down the track in daddy’s Ford.
Riffraff East is not just for the newer Ford trucks either. We saw a large contingent of OBS 7.3L trucks too. Most of them got together on Saturday morning for a group photo.
There was a good crowd on hand to watch the dyno runs throughout Saturday at the KOA campground among the trees.
Cory Burdette’s ’02 F-250 sports a big lift with a custom suspension built by Burdette and a 7.3L under the hood that delivered nearly 600 hp to those huge rear tires.
The exhibition dyno pull by Jason Kubis’s stunning white ’08 F-250 yielded the only 700+ horsepower run of the day.
The 6.0L in Tyson Proffitt’s ’04 F-250 fell just short of the 500-hp barrier, but still won the award as the most powerful 6.0L of the day, even if it was on a technicality.
The big winner of the day on the dyno was Tony Salokas and his ’01 F-250 that put 635 hp to the rollers on the No Limit chassis dyno.
Matt Maier’s ’97 F-250 represented the OBS guys very well with seven-second passes on the track and more than 600 horsepower on the dyno.
Ben Proffitt’s ’08 F-250 put well more than 500 horsepower to the rollers to take the win in the 6.4L engine category.
After the dyno action wrapped up, the group gathered in the campground pavilion once again and enjoyed a BBQ dinner courtesy of Terminator Engineering before the raffle drawing where nearly $10,000 worth of prizes were awarded.
To wrap up the 2013 Riffraff East festivities, Steve Perry’s Fireworks donated fireworks for a show after dark. The bright explosions above the campground wowed the crowd young and old alike.
Text by Chris Tobin and Photos by Celena Kimmel, Chris Tobin and Kyle Tobin
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