Longtail Boat Drag Racing in Thailand is CRAZY!

Hi guys, hello from the canals of rural Thailand. Today I'm about two hours outside of Bangkok to attend the 6.9 Thai Longtail Riverboat track racing competition. This is a track racing event for boats and many different classes. This is the Toyota 5k class. Toyota made a series of engines called K-series. It's not the Honda K-series. These are the Toyota K-series. They were built in the 70s and 80s and they were mostly in like small trucks and vans and made like a whopping 60 horsepower. The people here in Thailand have taken those Toyota K-series engines, put high compression pistons in them and ITVs. Now they make north of 100 horsepower and when they strap them to these tiny little wooden boats, these things are freaking fast. This is the starting line. It's basically a floating dock which they hold on to and that's where they're actually. This is definitely the busiest boat race event I've ever been to in Thailand when it comes to the amount of spectators that are here. The boys are ripping. I'm telling you. All this way, all that way, the entire both sides of the canal totally ran with spectators. God, this is awesome. By the way, if you want to find out about events like this, I do a monthly car event calendar. It's on my Patreon page. The link is in the video description. If I was you, I would come out to these events, bring a lawn chair, post up, grab you some Thai whiskey and sit here and get day drunk and watch boat race. Look here guys. So this is one of the engines that's out of the boat. So this is the Toyota 5K. You can see it has the ITVs and then here it has a custom made tubular header, four into one. So basically they just take this, bolt it to the boat. This is what they use to steer it and the throttle. And then basically the propeller shaft comes out of here to the back of the boat. Very nice guys. Very good. 5K engines. They sound so good. Like it's weird. I never even heard of this engine series until I started coming to these boat races. Like I don't think anybody modifies them in cars or trucks or anything like that. I guess because they're so old. But here in Thailand, they're so plentiful and so cheap. It's like the really good way to get into Thai long tail river boat racing. And then you get into the big dog classes that run the turbo diesels that make four to $500 power. And that class is racing today. And that's the main event of the Thai long tail boat race, which we're going to get that this afternoon. But for now Toyota 5K, they only make about a hundred horsepower, but they're super cool. Pretty quick. I just noticed something down there where that bridge is. That is the starting line. And I just noticed here, they have a rope going across with flags on it. So this is going to be the finish line, but it almost looks like it's quarter mile. Let me go. Oh my look. Random turbo's sitting here. Is this eighth mile? Eighth mile or quarter mile? 350 meters. Okay. Thank you Chai. So it's 350 meters. So a quarter mile is 402 meters. So it's more than an eighth of a mile, but it's not quite a quarter mile. So this rope signals the finish line, right? I want to show you something super interesting. This guy right here has an iPhone set up and he's recording through this. So the red line is the actual finish line. So they use this and the phone to dictate who actually won the race. So they can like freeze the footage and see who crosses the red rope first, which the red rope signifies the exact finish line. That's fascinating. I've never seen that in any other form of motorsports. The sound dude, those things sound so sick. Oh my God. Look at this. Wow. That looks freaking delicious. Holy crap. Look at that. You will never go hungry at a Thai motorsports event. Food everywhere. These people love their Thai food. I don't blame them because Thai food is some of the most delicious food we've ever seen in the world. How do you transport a boat? So look, they just tossed their boat up here. And then look here. So they have two spare engines and the bed of the truck. And then they just tossed the boat on the top of the truck and head to the race track. I hope you can hear me. The PA system here is loud. Look at this. Literally never seen a boat race in Thailand. In my life of attending these boat races for five, six years, never seen one this big. I mean, this is wild. Hello. Dude, look at these boats. Wow. Holy ----. Okay. These are the fast boats. So all of these are running the Isuzu D-MAX, 4JJ, built engines, big turbos. Most of them you'll notice are twin compound turbo setups, intercooled, massive tons of boost. We're talking about 50 PSI plus a boost, pushing close to 500 horsepower. Look at that monster. Holy crap. I'd put my money on this guy winning pretty much the overall at this event. It's very obvious that this is a very well-built 4JJ. Compound setup, the main single, the bigger turbo is massive. Look at all the titanium piping. This is a really, really well-built engine. Tested for the turbo diesel boats, which are coming up soon. I'm really worried about falling in the water. I'm really worried about that. Griffin, those boats are so freaking fast. If you've never came to Thailand and got on one of those boats, you have no idea what you're missing. It's literally a once in a lifetime opportunity. If you want to ride on one, check the video description for all the information for how you can jump on a 500 horsepower Thai long-tail river boat yourself when you visit Thailand. It's a crazy experience, but for real, I don't think I've ever been to a boat race here in Thailand that's even a quarter of the size. There's so many people here. They're laughing at me because this is mud. I started to slip and I almost ended up in there. This is a problem. I legitimately can't get a canal front spot to film. I kept trying to move around to get different angles. I can't get a canal front shot. I'm making this random Thai guy vlog for me. Thank you, bro. You're welcome. Yeah, also, my name is Oum. I'm the owner of At Home Service Garage, but I have the Subaru engine put on a long-tail boat, about 350 bhp, nearly Suvarnabhumi Airport. Ladies and gentlemen, now we have the diesel engine long-tail boat race. Guy has a Subaru shop. He builds Subarus, obviously, and he has a long-tail boat with a big turbo EJ on it. What the hell? Listen to that thing. These things seriously make 400 to 500 horsepower, and you'll notice a lot of times I have a guy riding with them, and the point of that guy riding on the boat with them is to keep weight on the front of the boat so the boat doesn't turn into a plane, because it has happened before when these things actually can. This is a no prep event. Are any boat races prep events? Do they prep water for boat drag racing? I don't think they do, but regardless, this is no prep racing in the canals of Thailand. That's probably going to be my YouTube title. That's a good title. Look back here. Look at all that diesel smoke. Holy crap. If you're here on the front line, you're just going to get blasted with diesel smoke for the rest of the day. As you know, we are in the middle of monsoon season here in Thailand, and the last thing we need is for this event to rain out. We don't want the track to get wet. It's already a no prep surface. Could you imagine if it rained and the track got wet as well? Oh man, there would be zero traction for these boats. Planning your trip to Thailand and you want to take a ride on a 500 horsepower turbo diesel Thai longtail riverboat pushing 50 psi of boost, check the video description for all the details on how to make it happen. Thanks for watching, and I'll catch you guys in another YouTube video very soon.