Chris Patterson on 3000 Horsepower Diesels, Building Race Trucks and Ultimate Callout Challenge

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Chris Patterson, how do you get a nickname like Mr. 3000?

Well, typically you earn a nickname like that when you make 3000 horsepower, which I did.

But I really got the nickname because I was the first one to make

3000 horsepower on a chassis dyno in the diesel performance game, like

a roller to the tire, not an engine dyno. So yeah, that's probably how I got that name.

Okay. When you say rollers, actually, we're talking about a little bit about the soft

camera, but what kind of dinos do these diesel competitions typically use? What brand?

That's funny. That's definitely a loaded question. Okay.

In the diesel performance world, there's only one dyno that the whole industry says

matters, and that's the Superflow 849, and it belongs to the Northwest Dino Circuit.

So every year, there's a yearly competition in Indianapolis,

and it's called the Ultimate Call Out Challenge, and all the competitors come around and they

basically see who can live the longest. It's triathlon, sled pulling, drag racing, and dyno

challenge in one weekend. So that's the dyno that's there, and that's where it's all considered

legitimate. So you call it a triathlon then. Do you compete across the board? Or at least the last,

how long have you been competing actually? That's a better question.

We've been competing for quite a while now. I would say probably 2018 was the first year I was

on a roster and probably had a decent shot at doing something good. And then the diesel

performance racing is a very wide array. To say diesel performance, that's a very wide array.

So what I was doing is what I call the triathlons, drag race, dyno, sled pull.

There's some other segments you can incorporate dirt drag, you can incorporate street drive

and legality and rules, levels, fiberglass, full bed, interior versus not.

The big ones in the game is the three. And then of course in diesel performance,

you have sled pulling, that's separate. You have diesel drag racing like ODSS,

strictly diesel drag racing. So there's a wide variety in the diesel performance world.

Mm-hmm. Of the triathlon, we'll call it, which one's your favorite? Which one do you feel like

you excel at? Like drag race, dyno, sled pull. Yeah. My favorite one is sled pulling. We just

got there for a second, but you're referring to which one is your favorite? Yeah. Which one is

your favorite? The sled pulling is where you lean towards then. Yeah. Of the triathlons,

drag race, dyno, sled pull. Sled pulling is probably my favorite. It could be argued to be the most

destructive. 30,000 pounds sled, six tires, 2000 plus horsepower, 30 seconds wide open throttle,

nothing will go wrong at all. Right? But sled pulling is incredibly fun. Drag racing is fun,

it's addicting, it's competitive, it's a driver's sport, you have to know how to drive,

it's not all about the machine. But dyno-ing is the most controversial. I don't know if it's

the most fun. Every time I get on the dyno for the big power stuff, I hug and kiss my wife,

goodbye, I say a prayer because it's scary, dude. You're talking between five and eight

nitrous solenoids, four to six bottles in the truck. Like I put those pistons in myself, back

the F up, you know, like we're going to see. But below like 3000 horse, dyno is easy and

dyno is fun. It's very repeatable. After 3000, you're literally tossing the baseball in the air

and hitting it with the bat at the right time, at the right temperature, at the right location,

has to be a perfect scenario. So one of the things we're talking about, so the first time

you did 3000, what was that experience like? That was quite interesting. You know, I can tell you

a whole bunch of really good stories, but I'll try to keep it short. But we, we were in Ohio

at the king of the street challenge. I believe this was like 21 or 22. I think it was 22.

And we had lived all through the segments. And on paper, we had 2500 horse to the tire that we

knew it was going to do. And I was like, all right, cool, I got a plan. So I went to the host of the

event. I went to the dyno operator and went to the safety coordinating people. It was like, oh,

hey, I'm going to do two pulls. The first pulls going to do 2500. And we're going to let it cool

off for like two minutes. And the second pull should do around 3000. And they're like, oh,

my God, no, this, this is crazy. It's going to blow up like, don't like, no, trust me,

it's going to work. Well, then I had to get all the chiefs of the Indians. I had to get them all

around it together. It's like, listen, we need to back these people up from here to here, from

here to here, because we're going for it. And I rolled up to it. I was the second last to go of

this heat. The first pull did 2500 and 18. I let it idle for a minute or two. And the second pull

did 3089 to the tire. And that was the first time that a diesel vehicle has ever made 3000 on a

chassis dyno. And my world changed. I wouldn't say for the better. But what I did do was I

instantly called my wife and completely broke down crying on the dyno tire still rolling babe,

I did it. I finally did something. And, and that was the first breakthrough that that got us that

Mr 3000 that you asked about that was the day. One of the other things you're telling me off

camera is that you kind of had to prove that too, though. It wasn't just a matter of just do a once

and accounts sort of deal. At least was that within just the general community or what was kind

of the overall reception of that? I don't think it was received very well. And that's okay.

Mm hmm. There was definitely that night in that driver's meeting, the group of people huddled

around that racetrack hours after it happened. There was some short people, some tall people,

some thin ones, some thick ones, but a bunch of them said it would never happen again. And I was

like, Well, how do you know? You didn't do it. And so we did six months later, we did 3401

three days after Rocky Mountain Race Week 2.0. That was 1500 miles.

Oh, so you did Rocky Mountain Race Week at that point too, then I did. Okay,

I did. I wouldn't say I finished as fast as I could, but I finished the event,

which anyone that's ever done a drag and drive understands what it's like to break the beams

on the very last day. That's tough. We went through about six transmissions that week.

It was interesting. But I drove on six Nitto triple five drag radials. And we swapped over

to Hoosiers every day at the racetrack to four Hoosiers. We towed a U-Haul. That was my first

time to ever do a drag and drive. And I learned a lot. We had two trucks and both trucks had

filled blocks. So hard block. They say you can't do that either. I'm good at that.

I have so many questions now. I want to stick to the drag and drive thing for a second.

Because drag and drives have their own rules on how much you can bring with you and all of that.

Absolutely. You said you did what, six transmissions?

Yeah. Was there, did you just have six handy or?

Oh God, no. Okay. So I had three. I had three. Okay. You're talking like $15,000 to $18,000

transmissions. A 48 RE built, built to the hill. That's the factory four speed automatic

that came in Dodge diesel. It's basically a glorified 727 with an electronic overdrive on

the back and Sancher shaft, 37 splines, solid input shaft, fat output, Maldunes, full manual

valve bodies, all the line pressure. And I had, I had, I learned a lot. You know, if you cook

enough cakes, you figure out what tastes good and doesn't taste good. So then where do the other

three come from then? Oh yeah. That's right. So we had three ready. At one point, I think we did

two in one day at one track. It's so bad. Any real racer knows that you can pretty much overhaul

anything anywhere. You could be a 711 gas station, put pistons in a motor. Like we've done a lot of

stuff at O'Reilly's. And, and we repaired a few at the track. And then one time we are racing at

Texas Motorplex in Ennis. It was about an hour from here. And we smoked the trainee about nine

o'clock at night, pulled it out of one truck because I had two trucks running in this event.

And I had a thousand horse 06 mega cab. And then the green truck was like 2000 horse and they

were both solid blocks. And we put the transmission in the black truck drove here, got here at

midnight, stripped it down, left here at 530 in the morning, went straight to the track,

put the transmission in, drove straight to Tulsa, broke it the next pass, put one in. It was that

type of event. So you were able to come back here for when you were at Ennis. What'd you do when

you broke it in Tulsa? Did you come back here again? No, I think we just opened it up right there

at the racetrack. Okay, gotcha. Yep. It was it was bad. How long

beginning to end? How long does it typically take you to just swap a trans in there or rebuild?

Do you are you rebuilding them on site or you just swap one in? Depends on how many you have in hand.

Think of this like a revolver. How many shots do you have? That's all it is. At this level,

you're talking a truck in street trim that weighs 6500 pounds, that makes 2000 horse,

3,000 pounds feet of torque, using all four gears. We're talking a 135, 60 foot,

trapping 143 in the eighth mile. Things get ugly. This is like a bucking bull. I don't know what

that's like, but I imagine riding a bucking bull is really hard and violent. I'm a full manual

valve body. I shift it myself. I don't have an air shifter. There's no I am a driver. I'm not a

co-pilot. So it's one hand on the wheel, one hand on a shifter. And back in the day, I had a few

buttons of nitrous, but I upgraded to several controllers now that turn on my nitrous for me.

Turns out that's a lot better than just hitting a button. I definitely want to talk about nitrous,

but one of the other things you mentioned earlier was the solid blocks and how people say you can,

for example, drag and drive with those. How do you make that work then? Because

don't you run into overheating issues typically? Or how's that? Yeah, what's the concern there?

There's a lot to talk about there. That's the rock on the building.

That could be a windshield and it has solid blocks. What we do is we have a wet block

that takes full coolant and then we fill it with moroso hard block. It's just like concrete.

There's a few passages you leave open to allow coolant flow through the motor. And then I'm

externally supplying coolant flow to the head. Full radiator, full flow to the stock normal diesel

guy. When you look at this engine, you might not even know, you might not even be able to tell

that it's filled and modified. But some of mine are my upper level competition motors are definitely

filled. Now I have a 3000 horsepower motor right behind you on a stand that is full wet.

We're looking for 25 to 2800 horsepower sustained, like a 10 second top dyno run,

like a sustained load. That's a big difference, right? Yeah. And no sleeves, no deck plate,

no hard block. It's a CGI 420 MPA alloy from Hamilton Cams. It's aftermarket block,

very excited for how that's going to turn out. Going to put that thing in in a couple of weeks

here. Okay, actually touch on that then. So what point do you get an aftermarket block compared

to a stock block? Well, there's a lot of ways that question committee answered. It's in what you're

doing with it and how long you want it to live. Okay, you can hold a grenade and pull the pin.

Just don't let the handle go. Well, how long can you hold it? Right? I typically say 1000 horsepower

stock engines live a long time with one turbocharger fuel only. After you get two turbochargers,

the 5.9 can make 1000 a lot longer than a 6.7. The 6.7 is a bigger engine, a bigger bore, a lot

more torque, lower boost, more fuel, you can burn easier, cleaner, more power, blows up sooner.

Then you start getting to aftermarket connecting rods, and then you're talking the 12 to 15

horsepower engine ranges. Then you start talking into blocks. After if you want more than 1200,

I'm going to put you straight in an aftermarket performance series block. And then if you want

more than 2000, man, here's a couple of grenades. I'll give you the best, but it's like a tally

marker. After four strikes, you kind of got to line it out and start a new line. And that's how

this game can be. How you use it depends on how it lasts. Connecting rods, because I come from

mostly on the show, it's been primarily gas cars. When you say aftermarket connecting rods, what's

what kind of material are you putting in these trucks? Because it's a whole different ball game,

I imagine. It is. Well, luckily for you, I have every flavor under the roof that I can show you.

There's three solid configurations or choices or levels. There's a stock connecting rod. And of that,

you have cracked cap, a powdered metal rod has a cap that's cracked off of it, so it can't be

reversed. These are also splayed caps. The caps are crooked. And the stock connecting rod can do

1000 in a single, let's just say that's roughly about 1600 pound feet of torque. Then your second

choice for a stock connecting rod is a 12 valve 24 valve VP 44 or mechanical series connecting rod.

That's a forged connecting rod. And it's a machined cap. And it has some small bolts. And

that's like 1200 horsepower, but you're talking three to $600 for a pair of rods. After that,

you have a waggler street fighter connecting rod, which is about waggler competition products.

And to my knowledge, no one's really broke that rod. I know a guy that made 2800 horsepower with

that rod. So at 1000, if you come to my shop and you want 1000, you get a waggler street

fighter connecting rod because it's overkill, it's bulletproof. It has a half inch rod bolt

compared to a seven sixteenths. It has a very nice wrist pin bushing in it. And then it has

a diamond interlock cap. It's like a design like a pyramid or a ledge and they're tapered in a way

you can't get them backwards. And it has the ultimate shear. It doesn't have a dowel in the

center. It actually has these great big tangs that lock into the cap. Oh, okay. And that rod

is $2,000. And basically, nobody has found a normal limit. I'm sure there are some

saying for one or for a set, a set of six. Okay, that sounds like wait a second. Yeah.

You weren't kidding about those diamonds. Diesel diesel prices are different, but not that bad.

Yeah. So yeah, $2,000 set of six. They have ARP 2000 or maybe they're L 19. There's a few rod

bolt choices. And then after that, there's another choice, which is a waggler billet connecting rod,

which is a true billet steel. Now, I don't know if it's 41 40 year wet material, but it's cut out

of a piece. That's nice. The waggler street fighter rod is a forged connecting rod here in America.

And then the billet rod is a true billet rod. Okay, then there's one more choice. And it's

the Mac Daddy. And it's the DNJ X beam connecting rod. There's five of them, five sets right behind

you on a bench. They have oil passage through the center. So the wrist pins forced oil,

they are an X beam design compared to an I beam, compared to an H beam. So there's pros and cons

incredibly strong, the most expensive they cost about 3,800 for all six. I've broke or I have

hurt probably six of them. Generally, I break pistons melt pistons, and it sprays the rod with

aluminum. But I did bend one of those rods, and we sent it to him. And they're like, What did you

do? It's bent. And I'm like, Well, you know what we did. It's been my bad. It was a really bad

combination that I put together. And it let me know. But that's the Mac Daddy connecting rod.

How often do you go to that level of connecting rod, though? Is that just for you personally,

or you had customers do it sometimes? Yeah, I've probably only had five or six people that have

splurged for that level of addiction. Because that's all it is the distance between more and

enough never closes that gap remains the same. It's just always existing. So we're always wanting

more. So I like to build for the future. But we don't do too many of those rods because you're

talking a $20,000 engine, no fuel, no air, so no injector, no pump, no turbos, you're talking a

long block for $20,000, $30,000. It's incredibly expensive. And the menu has a lot of options.

You know, it's it's very good. Well, let's talk a little bit about customers and what's the standard

kind of build here? Because obviously, you are all in the it wasn't Mopar space is that the way

you define it? Oh, yeah, I'm definitely Mopar or no car, fourth time generational drag racer in my

family. I grew up in shops, I've done homework at the receptionist desks in the office, I fall

asleep on the work benches growing up. When I got out of high school, I knew exactly what I was doing.

And my family was a Chrysler family. And in 2003, Cummins put a 59 common rail in a dodge. And that

was just the best thing that's ever happened to Chrysler. I was building transmissions at the dealership.

And I wondered why they were breaking input shafts. And I found out what a bully dog was. I

didn't know at the time. But in 2003, I learned real quick. And I've been crazy busy with dodge

diesel ever since we offer three things we offer performance, we offer repair, we offer

remanufacturing, we build our own engines, build our own transfer cases, our own transmissions,

we do our own axles. So that's remanufacturing side, I ship things like motors and whatnot.

And then we do tons of repair bumper to bumper, AC brakes front end, I have wholesale accounts

with fleets. I have hot shot customers. I do a lot of that. And I'm really wanting to push that

hard in the future. And then I also have performance. And it's basically me, the client and the truck

and what their goals are. And it's a three way relationship. I'm pretty particular about who

I do work for. But it's a relationship that we have for a long time. And I want to invest in

the right people and go do good things in the future. Do you have a lot of performance folks

coming through here then as well? We do have a lot. When you get to a certain level in a build,

whether it be drag racing or drifting, road course, or just the badass three car,

you'll have to upgrade your transmission. And when we're talking sequential transmissions,

there's no one on the planet would have stronger gearbox than 6xd. And the proof is in the pudding

here folks. Half the FD field is rocking a 6xd and even 3000 horsepower vipers have not been able

to tame the best that 6xd has to offer. So if you're ready to take it up a notch, go to 6xdgearbox.com

and when contacting them to place an order, use code monoxide five or reach out via socials to

figure out how one of the baddest transmissions on the planet could fit in your build. Let's get back

to the show. There's not necessarily a fine line between repair and performance. If you come in

with a blown head gasket on a 6x7 and you have aftermarket tuning on it and you're pushing

rail pressure and duration and all the fun things that are related around power,

you're going to blow that head gasket out. So we do o-ring, you cut a groove in the head,

a wire presses on the head gasket, it holds boost. We also do firing replaces the head gasket,

firing portion. And then we offer head studs ARP 2000, ARP 625 custom-aged. So yeah, you can come

in here with stock injectors and stock turbo and get a head gasket, but you are going to get 625s

of fleece coolant bypass, grid heater, bolt fix and o-ring cylinder head, all brand new gaskets,

boost test, valves adjusted, like it's all done right to last another 150, 200,000 miles. So it's

kind of the both in the same. Okay. Let's say I want to get into this into the diesel game tomorrow,

right? Let's say I got a hundred grand to spend and you know, I kind of want to go down that

performance side, whether I want to be racing, whatever. What am I getting? Okay. If you were

to guide me, be my my shaman on this journey. Yeah, so you're coming in and you got a hundred

k to drop and you want to go have fun with us. I'm going to tell you to go get a 060759 Dodge

2500 quad cab short bed automatic. That is the Fox body Mustang of the diesel performance world.

They offer every possible component you can dream of. If you want a hundred percent bill of engine

oil, paint, valve cover, they have those. I'm a fan of the stock stuff. And I like engines looking

like they came from Chrysler that way with compound turbos and a 14 millimeter stroker pump and

makes 2000 horse like you can't even tell it's really modified. So the most important thing

about coming in here is your expectations and what you're going to be doing with the vehicle.

A lot of people screw this up and they take your money and they tell you what you want to hear

and they sell you something that ain't going to do what you want to do with it.

And then you're going to be the one stuck and then you're going to get mad and go to another

shop and it's going to be the same thing better or worse. So I would advise

$100,000 third gen five nine put a six seven in it put X beam put waggler whatever your goal.

Let's say 2000 horse. That's a wonderful number for a $100,000 truck, but you're talking a $15,000

training a full manual valve body or standalone transmission control module. Do you want interior?

Do you want a roll cage? Do you want four link? Do you plan on going down the racetrack sanctioned,

which means a license, which means a chassis cert? Are you going to sled pull? Do you want to

dynamite? Do you like nitrous? Do you want more than one turbocharger? Do you want to explain to

your wife how to drive it? Like, do you have the ability to change your oil and just your own head

studs? Or am I going to have to work on this thing every day? Those are a lot of questions that you

have to iron out. So yeah, 100,000 will get you done. It could be a show truck that has no safety

equipment that only makes 1000 because it has a stock connecting rod or 2000, but you never raced

it because it wouldn't possibly work. Or it could be a bad boy that you don't care what it looks

like at all. You care about time slips, distance pulled, dino graphs, things like that. Those are

going to have a major, major impact on your budget and your expectations of the job that you're

hiring us to do. That is a lot of questions, man. I have to have these conversations every day. And

I bet 70% is fixing customers and customer education. That's, I mean, you just kept going there. You

kept rattling them off. I was like, no, he is. I told you I can talk. No, no, no, but like these are

like, again, these are the questions and considerations that I'm like thinking like,

oh man, do I want a show truck or do I want to race truck? So let's say I got 100,000, I want

to race truck. All right. So we've already established you're going to put a six, seven in

there. What's the rest of that look like? How do we maximize that 100,000 just for the time?

So you're being certified and all that. Yeah. So you're full safety. You have an 850 cage cert.

You have a 10 point roll cage. You have new harnesses. You have a Hans device. You got $3,000

worth of personal safety equipment that you wear. You have two stages of fire suppression,

one for the engine, one for the cab, two different places for fire, two different levels of priority,

and then your brake system and your fuel cell. And if you want fiberglass or not,

do you just want to drag race it and you're only going to drag race it? Do you want to hook it in

the dirt and go sled pulling? Okay. Because now you're talking $10,000 worth of sleds pull

suspension, tires, wheels, hitch, shocks, weights, box, technology, guillotine, licensing, turbo

chargers, different rules, different drive shot, drive shaft safety loops versus U joint safety

shields, different power disconnect points. Okay. So diesel performance is very broad.

Yeah. I feel like this is like a, like a decision tree. It's like, there's all these

decisions over here and all of this and it just keeps getting deeper and deeper.

It is. It's a series of clicks and groups. They don't all talk together. Sled pullers have

different rules than drag racers that have different rules than dirt drag guys that have

different rules than drag and drive guys. It is vast. Like to the point of, let's talk about

a drive shaft safety loop. You're familiar in the gasoline world. What's that mean to you?

What's a drive shaft safety loop to you? It's a good question. Typically,

why don't you educate me on this because I'm not gonna, I don't know. Okay. Yeah.

Typically, it's a 360 degree loop that's at least an inch by let's say 120th hour,

83,000 chrome molly tubing. It's halfway down the drive shaft and it encapsulates the whole

center of the drive shaft. Oh, okay. I know something. Oh, yeah, yeah. That's a loop.

Gotcha. Okay. Drive shaft safety loop. Yeah. Okay. That's for the middle.

What does that do for you joint failure? He doesn't do anything. If the middle of the drive shaft

bows, it'll hit the loop and stay contained, but it's going to rip the joints and kick it out.

So then you have in sled pulling, you have you join safety loops six inch long,

three eighths thick aluminum or quarter inch thick steel has to completely encapsulate a

U joint that you can see from outside the vehicle. Okay. Well, that still sounds a little

ridiculous. So if you can see the rear U joint at the rear axle, and you have a six inch long

shield covering the joint, then you have a loop in the middle of the drive shaft, right? You still

need another U joint shield on the front drive shaft U joint. Even though you can't see it,

it's still transmitting 3000 pound feet of torque. Let's put a shield on that bad boy. I've lost

about eight drive lines in my career of racing. I've seen U joints come through the floor. It is

crazy when drive lines explode. I wrecked last year at UCC when I lost a front drive shaft.

It's nuts. Safety is not taken high enough by any means. I don't even think about that a little

like, I mean, so have you had any safety scares then that kind of like brought you to reality?

Oh, yes. I definitely fully believe I've innovated the diesel industry in several ways.

I'll let other people say whether they're good or bad. But one of the things that happened,

another long story. We're at Delaware. I forget what year, but this is the king of the street

challenge. And that is street legal vehicle, full interior, like windows, radio, wipers,

blinkers, horn registration, full interior, drag race, dyno, dirt drag, street drive,

two rounds of sled pulling, five events, three days. Nothing goes bad at all. Yeah. I got

kicked out this past year, but I got way out of hand. It was fun, but I got way out of hand.

They kicked me out at first and then I got kicked out later. State troopers showed up is a cool

deal. Big, huge fire burnouts, all sorts of stuff. So anyways, we did really good. And then we were

doing sled pulling Saturday night. No, I got a backup. I got a backup. I had a $8,400 cylinder

head that was brand new. Top of the line, CNC ported, big name builder, still have the heads,

got three or four. They're like between 75 and 8,500 dollars apiece. And we put this thing together

and we work it out here in Texas. And then we drive for three days to Delaware. And then we

drive a hundred miles on the street at 8,000 pounds because that's sled pull away. And then we

go three seven second runs in the eighth mile, which is absolutely nothing because my opponent

couldn't touch the times we ran. So I didn't need to turn the truck up. And then on the fourth

pass, it wouldn't spool up at the line. It only had five cylinders. It was misfiring. And I didn't

know why. And it was like, do, do, do, do, do, do, like you could hear a dead hole. So I lost that

round, came back to the pit and had a valve tulip 85,000s and intake valve, no nitrous backfires

or anything and no EGT problems, like $2,200 fairer valves. And, and the other people the

track like, Oh, just lash it out. It'll be fine. These valves grow. No, I've never had a valve grow

like this. So we changed cylinder heads. I had a competitor at the track, Josh McCormick,

props to Josh. He beat us in the dyno. He's at 4,000 horse. I've raced with Josh for many years.

He helped us out. He had a stock cylinder head. He gave us intake shelf and everything at 530

in the morning. We took off this cylinder head because it was new and the valves were growing.

And I didn't want to drop a valve put on a stock head put on an intake. All this stuff got it

together did dirt drag got like second place in dirt drag. Then we did sled pulling. And I think

I got second in the first heat. And I think I got third in the second heat, but I broke my rear

axle. I destroyed the rear axle. I'm talking gears in your hands, the adjusters, we could not repair

the rear axle. At this point, it's midnight. The next last day of the competition, the next morning

is dyno, like nine o'clock in the morning, dyno 25 trucks. And it's the last segment of the event.

And I have no rear axle. So all the guys start talking in the pits and they're like,

what if we dynamite in front wheel drive? Okay, I'm like, y'all've lost your damn mind.

No one's going to go for this. I turn around and the guys already had the drag radials on the front.

They already removed the rear drive shaft and had it in four wheel drive, which was front wheel drive.

And they were like, no, we're gonna, we're gonna spin it up and try it. And I'm like, the sponsors

are not going to go for this. So I get the phone. Hey, what do y'all think? Oh, you already knew

about this? Everybody knew that this was a go except for me. Well, I'm the only one stupid

enough to do it. So I'm like, Oh, fine. Put it on the jack stands, we'll spin it up real quick.

So we spun it up real late at night, like 120 miles an hour, fourth gear, front wheel drive

on the jack stand, one o'clock in the morning at the racetrack. And, and this is in Delaware,

and it's October. So it's like 35 degrees and it works. So the next day, we put a side by side

on the dyno and spin the side by side in one direction and it made like 35 horsepower. We spun

the side by side in the other direction to spin the dyno the other way and it made like 34 horsepower.

So we're like, Oh, great, we're good. Let's do this. I put my stupid truck up there on first in

front wheel drive and everybody's so scared. They made me sign an extra liability waiver release

thing. Like this is stupid. I don't recommend any of these things I say or do, do not do any of this.

Yeah, kids. So I spin it on tune one in front wheel drive on the dyno and it did 1550.

And everyone's like, Okay, that's good. You probably shouldn't, you have a number now.

Like I think I was sitting in second place. I'm like, No, that was, that was the first pull.

Okay, let's turn it up. So we did tune three and added three kits and nitrous.

Okay. And it did like 22 or 2300. And I'm like, now we're in first by like 200 or 300 horse. So

I'm like, this is comfortable. You should stop Chris, you know, hey, do it again.

The voice on this shoulder is like, show them 3000 horsepower in front wheel drive. Okay.

Tune five, five kits. It exploded. Okay, halfway through the pull. It broke at 2500 horse halfway

through the pull. I'll show you the block. It took number six cylinder wall and blew it clean

out like six inches and block just blown completely out of the back. But I had fire suppression.

I had a lifeline eight pound bottle of fire suppression. Maybe it was a 12. And I had 11

nozzles under the hood. And as soon as I felt the thermal expansion from the windshield saw the hood

bow up and go back realized, Oh shit, this is on fire. I just exploded the engine.

I closed my eyes, lifted off the pedal, pulled the pin until I quit hearing funny noises.

And about four or five seconds later, the fire is completely out or not even that.

It was seriously like a second and the fire is done and gone. And in less than three minutes,

the foam is still spraying. And guys are like, Oh my God. And we took first place

front wheel drive completely forgot about the stock cylinder head. I mean,

a hundred pound valve spring stage one drop in a stock diameter valve like minimal port work.

You shouldn't ever do these things. And I put a 3000 horsepower tune up on it.

Who the hell was this guy driving this truck that day? This guy right here, Mr 3000.

I wasn't Mr 3000 that day, but I was definitely had the attention.

So you straight up just you just forgot about that. I did. Yeah, I forgot.

It was like two days ago, we put the cylinder head on. We'd already been dirt drag racing

and sled pulling and destroyed the rear axle and converted to front wheel drive and dyno trim

injectors, turbos, you know, things like that. Yeah. Putting all the bottles in it like who knew?

Who knew? Let's talk trims, actually. That's a topic that was really interesting to me when

I was talking to Dustin. All right, let's say we're going from, or what's the order of events?

Or does every event have a different order like, you know, dyno drag? Okay, so they change it up

on us. Okay. So I guess it doesn't matter which example we use. Let's say you go from dirt to

dyno. What's that trim conversion look like? That's pretty good. So on the dyno challenge,

it depends on the level of the event, not every event. Do we turn it all the way up?

Let's just say we're doing the big one, the ultimate call out challenge fiberglass doors,

Lexane windows, parachutes, fiberglass bed, like slicks, you know, as fast as we can go.

For the dyno, we're going to put in the big injectors. We're going to put on the big turbo

chargers. We put in all the bottles. We take out all the nitrous jets, like for drag racing,

you can have small jets to make it behave. And for dyno, you don't need nitrous jets at all,

you're just spraying all of it. And then rear suspension is very critical, like a suspension

limiter, you don't want the rear suspension having to travel. And then you put 1000 pounds of sled

pull weights above the rear axle or hang them like from a butt hurt bar on the back of the hitch or

something like that. And then inflate your tires to 50 or 60 pounds and hope that they survive.

Okay, now let's see we're gonna go drag racing. And is that typically eighth mile or quarter?

Eighth mile. Eighth mile, okay. Now I'm scared of the quarter mile stuff in the diesel game for

sure. Yeah, eighth mile is where it's at. So then you're talking a radial or a slick. You're gonna,

I, if this is the big event, I'm going to put the small injectors in for drag race and small

turbos and take out all the big nitrous, because I want to turn it down in order to turn it up.

The tuning needs to be advanced and high duration, but a smaller injector make less power but make

more power with less stuff and make it longer. Yeah, because you're trying to get, are you trying to

get as much power down low at that point then? Or is what exactly? It's power management. Just

management in general. Okay. That was another thing we were discussing off camera. So you guys

don't exactly have like a standalone system in these. Is this all like stock you see your stuff?

This is the Wild West Cowboys from Texas. I have a stock computer, a Cummins Bosch 849 controller

that comes on all the 0607s. Until six months ago, I was running a factory rail pressure sensor,

like 29,000 psi instead of running like a 35,000 psi valve or sensor. And then I run until six months

ago, a factory map sensor. So it stops at 37 pounds of boost is where it quits registering

boost pressure. And that's fine because after 20 pounds in this game, we're shooting for the moon.

20 psi and a 1000 horsepower truck is getting somewhere. Haltech has once again pushed the

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check out the various plug and play solutions for your platform as well, including some install

videos. As always, you can use common oxide for 5% off. Let's get back to the show. It's

probably 600 horsepower on an efficient setup. So now we're running a, I think it's called a

five bar map. It's 140 psi and I can read up to 140. So it makes power management a lot easier.

Okay. We're starting to learn a lot more in this past year or so. Well, that was one of the things

that, you know, Dustin, when I had him on the show, he was talking about how young this game is,

the whole diesel performance game compared to the gas game. What have you seen that's evolved in

the last five, 10 years? What are some big changes that have come? The most, the biggest and most

changes I've seen have been efficiency and knowledge sharing. We are way smarter than where we were

five, three, eight years ago. If you look back in time, diesels are notoriously smoking and

oil down and explode and kill transmissions. Motors have split in half on tracks, transmissions die

every day. It's nuts. Well, now we're efficient and we're a lot smarter and turbo technologies came

a long way. So now we kind of one turbocharger. The ability to use nitrous and the knowledge

around it is way further than when I first started. And we use a lot more nitrous now than we did

back then. And that makes it clean. So that makes no smoke. Now we run stand-alones that have a wide

air-to-fuel ratio like a Lambda sensor. So now we actually look at air-to-fuel ratio. I mean,

we, the industry, me, no, the industry, yes. They look at Lambda and they look at tuning. They look

at cubic millimeters and real turbo compressor mapping and calculating air-to-fuel ratio and

measuring air-to-fuel ratio and making them as efficient and as clean as possible.

Tuning-wise then, you don't do any tuning yourself, do you? Okay.

What does that look like when you're, again, competing between these events? You're switching,

do you have all this kind of loaded up? Do you have to, okay, so do you have to pull up the laptop

and just switch? Okay. This is very much like street outlaws. They pull in, they put the computer

on the hood and then crop their hat up and then punch numbers and I don't know, we could put a

little, we could take a little and that's what it is. That's a good reference. Dad is good,

ain't bad. I just binge-watched. So I never watched it as a kid, right? Maybe an episode

here and there or whatever, but like, I just binge-watched. I think it was like, what, all

15 seasons last fall. So it's fresh. You were actually able to watch that? I couldn't get to

the last season. That's dedicated. I was dedicated, man, like, because I was just kind of getting ready

for PRI at that point. And I was just like, you know what, like, let's just see what this is all

about. Not granted. At a certain point, I just kind of started tuning out a little bit. Like,

just kind of like background noise, but like, either way, it was kind of cool. I'd see, like,

how it progressed through the, you know, what, 2010s. It's kind of cool to see some of the brands

that I've had on the show too, like on there. So they've had probably a higher rate of change

than we have. They, as in the gasoline performance world, y'all's technology is absolutely amazing.

The anti-lag, the staging limiters, the boost limit per gear, like, it's insane. Diesel guys,

we're like 18 months, 24 months. I mean, obviously, some pioneers in the sport have had stand-alones

a lot earlier. But now, more and more, guys are putting trans brake turbo 400s with no lock-up

torque converters and running a standalone down track that is truly, they floor it and then just

let off a button and the truck drives for them. They're just riding. That's what I say is, I'm

a driver, not a co-pilot. I drive my truck. I always have and always will. Some of these guys,

in this game, they just let off the little red button and hope the dude that they said to put

it in told the other dude what they said to put it at and hope it works out. And they're just the

face that regurgitates it. Yeah, we're a lot different than that. We build our stuff, we

break our stuff and we drive our stuff. What's the most expensive mistake that you've had when it

comes to the racing side of things? Does anything come to mind? That's a hardy lie.

That's the best question I've been asked in many years. That's very good. I've done this a lot.

I've had a lot of questions. The number one thing is the stupidest thing and that's human error.

A mechanical part always has a limit. I have not found the mechanical limits of my engines.

I found my human limits. I found my limits. I found my tuner's limits, my guy's limits. But

we've never blown up a motor that was not our fault. The one that exploded. I've only exploded

two engines. The stock one that came with the truck. Well, that's free. That's like bingo.

That's the one in the center of the car. That one doesn't count. It's a stock engine. Anybody

that blows a stock engine in their vehicle, that one doesn't count. That's free. And then one built

motor I forgot about the cylinder head on, right? The stock cylinder head. That one counts. I blew

it up. It did not blow up. I blew it up. It's a big difference. So to answer your question,

the most expensive lesson I've ever learned was in 25. And it was at the Ultimate Call Out Challenge.

And it's a triathlon, drag race, dyno, sled pool. No rules. Let's just say no rules.

I went all weekend and did not turn on the nitrous. So I went all weekend on fuel only.

We got, I don't remember all the numbers. I think I got fifth in drag race,

and I only used like 1400 to drag race and got fifth. I think we had like 565 at 135 or

somewhere around there. Okay. That was fair. And then I wrecked. I broke a drive shaft and wrecked.

And then we dynoed and we did 2000, like four or five times, but I think it stopped at like 25 or

23 fuel only had no clue. My nitrous didn't come on, which I was having problems. So you only have

30 minutes on the dyno. So you're always in a crunch. And then sled pulling. We got second.

And we were on fuel only. And the whole event we got second, which is great. If I would have had

my nitrous, I would have had first no doubt in my mind. I would have done the number on the dyno

and we would have had first place. So the most expensive mistake is not checking your own tune

up. And by the expense, I say it like you have eight people, you have five trucks, three trailers,

probably six hotel rooms, five days of eight people in six hotel rooms, 12 days away from the

shop, 500 gallons and diesel fuel. We took two motors, three transmissions, like two sets of pumps,

four sets of injectors, probably 10 turbochargers. It's $100,000 a weekend to go to the ultimate

call out challenge and try to compete. And I did it. And I did it the best I've ever done. And I've

done it for years, probably six years, pretty much always been top five. And this year, this past

year, 25, we did our best. We got second and I made the mistake and didn't even have nitrous

turned on. And I carry that weight. And I don't plan on competing at the ultimate call out challenge

again. And I can say here, I don't really plan on racing much this year. I'm ready to start focusing

on business and my marriage. I want to put my marriage first and my business second. That's not

been the past eight years of my life. I'm tired. I'm broke. I'm tired of being broke. I'm ready to be

happy. I want to stay married. And I want to have my own company. If that means the helmet

collects dust, so be it. There'll be tracks. I've got four or five trucks. Tracks are all across

Texas. So I'm going to stay here for a little while. So I'm living with my best results of second

place. I'm fine with that. I'm content with that. I gave it all my effort. But it's a human failure

that I didn't click all the like the boost parameter, the RPM parameter, and the throttle

percent primary. You have safeties. I didn't have them all turned on. Okay, that's a lesson.

Another expensive lesson was the stock cylinder head. Yeah. Yeah, that's a $10,000 block that I

blew the back of it out. Plus ruin the connecting rods. Plus six pistons broke down the middle.

Plus the camshaft it took out. Plus fixing the cylinder head that wasn't mine. Yeah.

Lessons are easy. You know, it's a, it only matters if you don't learn anything from your

lesson. If you don't learn anything, it's for nothing. But if you learn from your mistake,

then it's worth it. Have you gotten first at the ultimate college challenge before? Nope.

Okay, but always top five. Yep. I don't have a first place finishing trophy. I have first place

drag race, first place dyno, first place sled pull, dirt drag, street drive, whatever I have

all those. I don't have first place position from the triathlon of all three put together

or really a sweep first drag, first dyno, first sled and first place for all three segments.

You're talking $50,000 payday. Wow. But yeah, I always wanted that and I tried my hardest

and I've forced it the past three years. I have forced racing. I just cannot do this anymore.

Hmm. Is there, is there people have done clean sweeps then out there? Like for those events?

I don't, I don't know for sure. I don't think

maybe in the first year or two of the competition, there was a few that clean

sweeps, but you're talking back then there were like six to eight competitors. Right.

And last year, I think there was 17 competitors signed up and 12 showed up.

I've been to competitions that have had 71 competitors for the triathlon, 71 trucks

to dirt drag, drag race, dyno, sled, pull, street drive, drag race, like holy, you're talking seven

rounds of drag racing in a, in a 48 RE. Yeah. That's not easy for a Dodge diesel guy for a

possible, but insanely difficult to do it at that level then.

I would say to get us clean sweep at UCC or King of the street would be the hardest feet

in all of diesel drag racing to get first in every competition of the segments and get first

place overall. I don't know of anyone that's done it and anyone that could, they're probably

going to be the baddest dude alive right now or the most lucky individual because so much of this

is luck. One competitor, one Titan has a problem and then you lose a very fierce competitor and

then it completely changes the demographic of the weekend. You have to live for three to five days

every day racing just cause you're winning Friday night. Doesn't mean you're winning Sunday.

I've, I've been there. I've been in second. I've been so close and then I went 35 feet

in sled pull and smoked a training and then took last and went from second to like,

I think it took me to fourth or something or fifth. It was tough. It was a hard one. It was

a real hard one to lose. But you know, when you're in that moment and the pressure's on you and you

have all the live streams and you're at a competition where let's say there's between 20

and 30,000 people at the event all weekend and there's 500 trucks on the property competing

and then you lose in front of everybody and I'm a very controversial competitor. I have a reputation

to some, they love me. To some, they hate me. When you lose in front of everybody,

you can't act up. When you open that door of that truck and you get out and no one, you just took

a L, you can't throw those gloves or that helmet and you can't cuss and you can't start getting

on here and making excuses. You have to learn from it and you have to be a leader and show others

because there's a lot of, there's a lot of, there's a bunch of pressure out there.

Everyone's always watching everything you do these days. So I always try to act right.

Most of the time I try to act. I definitely act up. I haven't found anybody perfect yet.

That's the truth. And yeah, you're going to be like episode 196, 197. I don't know,

we'll see you in the stairs. I haven't met anybody perfect yet. Well, I'll let you know when I get

to a thousand. There we go. Speaking of being that kind of role model, let's call it, you mentioned

you have like a 19 year old kid over here working as well. How do you be a role model for this

upcoming generation? Because you said you're about to turn 40. How do you make it? I'm 26.

I'm getting old. Can you tell? So, well, I have to learn. If you don't learn something every day

where you're even trying, you have to try every day. And if you don't learn, you're not trying

life hard enough. I've made a lot of mistakes. I've had to humble. I've had to answer for things I

don't want to. And I've had to learn from that. And I always try to implement better to people

younger, the people that are older and have experienced these things. It's our job to

raise these other people better because they're going to be the ones taking care of us when we're

old, which is a really scary idea, right? Terrifying. Yeah, it's a completely scary idea.

But I want relationships that last a long time. I told Riley, he gives me 10 years. I'll give him

the company. I don't have to be full owner in this bad boy. I'm in a position now where we've

been working really hard up here for about eight years at this event or at this, this company,

this enrable diesel, this Dodge diesel repair facility. And I don't have to turn the wrenches

anymore. I don't have to talk to all the clients. I don't have to run the schedule. I don't have to

look at the bills. I should. And that's why I'm changing my ways because I'm ready to make,

you know, the next five to 10 years way better than the last five to 10 years.

And I'm going to put everything in the people that stand behind me to give them the very best

conditions to get the best possible results they can want. And I'll do anything to support them.

Hmm. How about when it comes to the education side of things, right? Because you don't know what

you don't know when it comes to what is the biggest misconception, right? If for somebody

that wants to get into the diesel game, what are some mistakes that you see that could be addressed?

Education is tremendous. I spend a lot of time educating customers on my beliefs,

my opinions and the way I do things. And you can educate people in life. You can educate them

on how to use their hands and how to use tools and how to do things mechanical. For example,

everything that we do, humans have done, these engines, someone designed these diesel engines.

There's nothing to say that we as modern day people are any better or worse than the guy that

originally designed the engine, take the transmission, take an automatic transmission.

That really hasn't changed much. We still have valve bodies. We still have constant and variable

pressure pumps. We still have solenoids. We still have clutches, bands, levers, strut, anchors,

sprags, all these things. The technology is the same, but yet we're better at it. Well,

there's a lot of area for improvement in these products. These, these people, you have to teach

that if I build a motor, I'm not putting in a part that was a known component to fail. I don't

build stock transmissions because they're terrible. Life's too short to be stock. If a component's

going to fail, I'm going to put it in the training so it doesn't fail. And then I prefer to get all

of my help young and blank like a canvas that's ready for the first stroke of color from the

artist brush. If you bring in bad habits, you can't break that. And there's a lot of opinions in

this game. And I'm very opinionated in this diesel game. I'm very particular on what I do.

And I want my people to do what I want to do, not what they want to do, because it's not their

engine specs or their program they're running. So older texts can definitely bring in bad habits.

And it's hard to correct that. Younger texts, I can invest, you know, two, five, eight years into

and do continue in education, but push them for how I want them to be and mold them and

create them. And then that is going to in turn, turn a long employee, a long friendship into family.

When it comes to engine programs and specs, and now granted this part, you won't necessarily have

to share out there. What is it that you think you do differently compared to other competitors that

kept you successful and at the top for so long? Anything in particular? I think there's several

things. Number one, I'm blatantly honest. I'm blatantly dry. I don't have a filter which sees what

you get. Number two, I only give you what I know works on my experiences. So my specs

from what I've done and didn't work, I'm never going to cross that again. If I ran, let's just say,

piston ring gap or piston to wall clearance or transmission shaft play or clutch clearance,

line pressure, all those things are variables and they're all pieces of a cake and you can

shape them and create them to how you want it to taste. And I've done a lot of experimenting.

I've broken a whole lot of stuff. I've had a lot of stuff really work out very well.

I think the best piece of advice I could give on engines, on transmissions, in tuning,

the most stock you keep it or the closer to stock parameters, you keep it the longer they live.

You don't have to have custom pistons. You don't have to have valves that lift the,

let me rephrase that, you don't have to have a camshaft that lifts a valve

further than what the head flows. So a lot of people have a radical ass camshaft with a head

that doesn't flow what that valve is lifting at and it's wasted time. It's wasted power below

the curve. It's wasted low flow below the lift. There's a lot of opportunities. Well, they fly

cut pistons. Now you have sharp edges for pre-ignition. It is a diesel. It depends on pre-ignition.

And then you're creating vortices in the like a turbulent, violent, volatile fire on top of the

piston. They melt easier and you didn't even need that big-ass camshaft to start with. If you

would have stuck with a cam that didn't need a valve relief, you would have saved yourself a

thousand dollars for the relief, run a cam that would spool up 400 RPM quicker, idle better.

A combination, combination, so much of it. And a lot of people go crazy. They think they got

to decompress it to run more boost. Oh no, I love compression. So there's a lot of parts there.

Interesting. Okay.

All right, let's talk about the rest of the combinations. So you touched on cam.

Is there anything else that's important when it comes out? At this point,

are you talking about turbo sizing as well? We can talk about all those things. So there's

happy islands. You know, we all know Hawaii, like that's a great place to talk about, right?

One day I'm going to go there. Maybe next year, you never know. If I don't race, right?

So there's happy islands and you have to get in a boat and go to the next island and the next

island could be bigger, smaller, far, short. Well, that's how horsepower is. 800 horsepower,

$20,000. A thousand horsepower, $40,000. Well, my God, Chris, it's only two or more horsepower,

or now you need a built motor because that stock connecting rod is not going to do this a long time

for you. It might, but I don't want to do that to you. I don't want to charge you $20,000 and you

leave and then TX2K is this weekend and let's say we take it out tonight and then we throw the rods

on I-35 at 1130 tonight. Well, now it's like $60,000 or $50,000 because you took out your ECM.

I had a customer throw a connecting rod, it blew past the block, broke the starter off the adapter

plate, the connecting rod hit the brake line, cut the brake line, truck had to ditch it.

37s, welding truck, twin turbo, 800 horsepower, 8,000 pound, Dooly, Texas,

pop liner, welding truck, six inches lift, Carly Long Arms, 37 inch mud grips, ditched it.

Like things go bad quick. So you want a thousand, you need a built motor around me or you sign this

liability of release and you have had all the educational talks and here you go.

So okay, let's just keep it real short and simple, 800 horse, a single turbocharger, 100%

over injector, a 12 millimeter injection pump, stock injection pump is eight millimeters,

so it's a good size for volume. And then you're tuning your head stud, your push rod, your valve

spring, 20 to 30,000. Well, you need a transmission no matter what. So then you have choices there.

Then after that, you're talking 1,000 and 1,200. Now you're talking 120 to 150% over injector,

a bigger turbo like a GT 42 vs. 72 89 for $950. They're absolutely amazing turbos and they make

good power for a long time. And then you're in the built motor range. And after that,

you're talking 2000 horse. So then you're talking 200, 250% 14 millimeter pump, two turbos because

that's way funner than one turbo or one turbo with a whole bunch of nitrous if you're only drag

racing two turbos if you're on the street call those compound like a two stage air compressor

big turbo blows in small turbo small turbo blows into the motor. And then 2000 horse.

Now with all this, there's one rule I've always said it's the five gallon bucket rule.

Whenever you got on the weekend with your buddies and you know you're going to be acting up put

a five gallon bucket in the bed of the truck because you're going to need it to pick the pieces up

the pistons, the rods, the block, you're going to you're going to want to pick up your carnage.

Everyone likes it. Everyone wants a piece of their busted block. Here you go. Here's your

piston. What was left of it? So they explode. For sure. But for a tractor engine, they're amazing.

It's a straight six diesel engine. You know 15 36 24. They are so simple. They're naturally balanced.

You can you can leave the cylinder head on and do push rods,

valve spring injectors and make 1000 horsepower and it'll live for like multiple years.

It's very impressive. There's not a lot of engines that make 1000 from the factory.

They're only rated at 325. Yeah, we're slightly over that now. 1000 on the ground 325 at the

flywheel. Impressive. It's the LS one of the diesel world. It's the 2JZ of the diesel world.

Really the 2JZ. Yeah. Okay. And I definitely want to talk about that because we're talking a

little bit about that off camera earlier. We do want to touch on that. Let's go back to the islands

though. You mentioned so what 800 horsepower 20 grand 1000s 40 grand. What are what are those next

islands look like? Oh, 100. Okay. 2000. Okay. After that, you don't even don't even keep track.

Okay. So that's really the only next jump is from 1000 to 2000. Just yeah. Okay. And the way I build

motors, it's going to be a stock rod. And it's like 800 to 1000. It'll be a street fighter. It's

like, you know, 800 to 15 or 1215. And if you want anything over about that, aftermarket block,

DNJ rod, big, big stuff, like you need probably 40,000 for just the motor, 20,000 for just the

training, 10,000 on fuel, 10,000 on air, it's only 4000 for the turbos with six grand worth of pipes,

flanges, sensors, couplers, hoses, clamps, vibrant, you know, it's expensive stuff, intercooler.

Speaking of all that aspect, are you doing a lot of the welding here yourself or what does that

look like? Just a little cheap AC DC TIG welder 220 amp jobber have had it for like 10 years.

We do all of our own welding, pretty much aluminum, steel, cast iron, stainless, whatever.

Okay. How much is custom versus you could get it from a supplier of some kind?

Ooh, it's a good question. You can get anything you want to from a supplier.

The very best products in the world don't mean shit if they don't have customer service.

So you have to learn who to do business with and who not to do business with.

And then turnaround time, there's three things in this game that I tell every person.

The quality of part that you're being sold or that you're buying,

the customer service before and after the sell for the part or the services provided,

and then the price point, how much is it? When you change that order, quality, service, price,

you get different results. And that's the exact order I go in. I'm not the cheapest guy by any

means, but I'll always stand behind my work and I'll always try to offer the very best product

on the market. Now there is budgets, there is decisions, but there's a whole lot of good stuff

out there and there's a whole lot of bad stuff. I try to build everything myself. The more factors

I control under this roof, the better my product is and the better service I can provide and the

more expected outcomes I can guarantee. When you start involving other companies and other people,

other tuners, other injector builders, other turbo builders, other engine builders,

training builders, whatever it is, the more people in the conversation, the muddier the water gets.

So then, and I'm talking present day, what happens five years from now,

who cares? That's up in the air, especially with private equity gobbling up everybody.

That's right. That's a big thing now. It's a big thing to pay attention to in the quality space,

but who are some of the brands and partners and whatever vendors that you work with right now

that you respect that you would wholeheartedly recommend? Is there anyone? Sure, absolutely.

Everyone I've worked with has become very good friends and family. The number one relationship

that has done the most for us and our longest relationship is probably Don and April Morrison

at Flux Diesel Injection. They're a family owned diesel fuel injector company. They're here in

White Right, Texas, so they're like two hours from here and I'm all about my Texas based companies.

Don and Ape have stood behind me forever since the very first time I was referred to them. I

called them. I want a thousand horse. I want 250%. I thought I knew and they educated me and then we

opened a relationship and I bought injectors and they got them and we put them in and then we started

going nuts and then Don's like, trust me, man, I got this injector. It's going to do this. It's

and we learned things and we went forward and we went backwards, but we developed a bunch of stuff

and then we made a decision not to go to an event because we kept blowing up motors and we finally

had a motor that held and then it did 2500 and everyone's like, it'll never do it again. And

then it did 25 and then it did three and then it did 34. So Don and Ape at Flux Diesel,

they have been absolutely amazing. So they do all of our fuel injector work. Then I've had an

excellent relationship, Dan Valance, Val Air Clutch. He's 20 minutes down the street. He's a

clutch guy. He builds some amazing sled pulling clutches, but he's an amazing friend, sponsor,

associate to have in life. And we buy all of our clutches from them. Our transmission,

torque converters, input shafts and rebuild kits come from them. And that leads me to the

torque converter discussion, which is also Phil Taylor of diesel performance converter,

DPC converter. He's out of state. He's in Georgia. And that's okay. We love Phil. Phil stood behind

us forever. Phil builds the converters for Dan. And so I buy the converters from Dan because he's

like 20 minutes down the street and it still fills converter from Georgia supports my Texas guy.

I don't have to pay shipping. I don't have to pay cores and they're in stock.

The torque converter has been amazing with Phil. We've broke a lot, but we've sold a whole bunch.

And then that goes into the input shaft, which is Matt Sancher, Sancher Performance Development.

He made a 37 spline industry first solid 4748 RE input shaft. No oil goes through the shaft.

Traditionally, when you lock up a torque converter, there's a ply circuit in the center of the input

shaft locks the torque converter. This one is backwards. So the shaft is solid. Amazing. There's

only one broken. Some have been wounded. I've wounded one, but only one's ever been broken in

the industry, which is amazing. And then in the transmission, we built our own transmissions.

We've never had an input shaft failure since we went to Matt. And then also that leads us to the

valve body, which is Muldoon's diesel and Muldoon's is in Delaware or maybe just north of Delaware.

I forget the name of that state. The only state that matters is Texas. But John builds the amazing

valve bodies and he is ADD, OCD, ADHD. He is definitely on the spectrum and we get along so

good. He's a wealth of information. His valve body program is amazing. The week we went through

six trainings on drag week, I talked with him exclusively. He was like, Hey, don't try that

pump pressure. I told you all that shit wasn't going to work. Turn it down to this and do this

and run this. And then let me know. And we did. And it worked. And it worked. And I just,

I started talking with John more and more ever since. And that's our transmission department.

And then we have Yukon gear and axle. Yukon has sponsored me gears and shafts. And we've had

amazing results out of that. VS racing turbochargers. Surely, you know, VS racing. Amazing.

Billet ball bearing water cooled turbos for less than a thousand bucks. 106 by 118 GT 57

replacement is $2,100 out the door with that is crazy what you're doing with those two. Oh my

God, brother. I have overspent the shit out of them and they don't explode. I haven't. I better

knock on some wood. I haven't ever exploded one of those turbochargers. Wow. What kind of

PSI are you getting out of this? Like again, that's such a low level question.

Yeah. Used to be I couldn't answer that because of my stock map sensor. I would say,

Oh, 37 pounds. That's just where it stops reading. Right. So I put a GoPro on my helmet at one track

and had a standalone boost gauge like everyone runs that normally runs gauges and stuff,

data acquisition. And then just down the drag strip, like a 550 pass, it said 120 pounds of

boost. Okay. Conservative. And then I've been on the dyno with triples and I've seen 200.

I've also seen 140 typically 140 to 160. Now there's these really stupid things called

wastegates. They're completely ridiculous. So that plays a role. And then nitrous has the most

bear on boost pressure from what I've seen. Okay. Yeah. And that all just gets way more intricate.

Obviously, it's more than just the number on the gauge and all that. I do want to talk about

nitrous though, we've kind of been dancing around at this whole. Oh, it's the best thing invented.

It is. I'm not supposed to say it, but it's literally like the bam bam. It is like the best

stuff ever. Way more powerful than a turbocharger, way more powerful than diesel fuel by itself.

But the combination of diesel fuel plus boost pressure, plus atmosphere in a bottle. Oh my

God. It's like, it's like the best stuff. So you were running six kits, correct?

I've had a bunch. I've had up to eight solenoids before. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So

explain how all that works for me. Is that just like you just keep adding one each sort of pass?

Sure. Excellent question. A lot of people don't know, especially gas people. I'm surprised you

didn't ask if it was wet or dry. Okay. That's a good one, right? Yeah. All dry. Okay. We don't

flow any fuel. All of our fuels directly injected. Okay. Direct injection through the fuel injector.

Gotcha. So when I say a kit, I mean a solenoid. And typically when I'm in a solenoid, the small

solenoids, Nitrous Express is another wonderful, amazing sponsor that stood behind me forever.

So typically a small solenoid is a Nitrous Express 15300L, which is 125,000 internal restriction.

We supply that each noid kind of gets its own supply line and probably with its own bottle.

So that would be like a dash six supply with 125 internal restrictor on the solenoid to a dash

four hose straight to the pipe, no jets, no pills, no cannons, no stupid,

nothing's literally a three eight MPT to dash four bung in a pipe in a charge pipe onto the

intercooler or the turbo or whatever. And then each noid gets its own supply line. So a small kit is

125. Let's say you had five of those five 15300 L 22 amps a piece or 17 amps or whatever.

And that's about 300 horsepower per solenoid. That's drag race. That's sled pool. That's like

down track horsepower. And then one of those you might put on a button or two of those you might

put on a button you might put like a 55 jet or an 85 jet or 100 jet. And that's like a spool jet,

like when you're half throttling, you want to get the turbos up to speed, you kind of bump,

bump, bump, bump, bump, bump. And it'll, it'll add five pounds every time you bump the button.

And then you have the big nitrous. And this is the really, Oh, God, I love this.

Everyone said I was crazy when I first did it. And I was and still am.

Have you heard of a nitrous express Lightning 375? You haven't heard of these?

This whole world is really, really, I don't know a ton about that. This is the biggest,

the biggest solenoid nitrous express makes. Okay, we supply it with a dash eight hose.

So point five internal diameter to the hose with one 15 pound bottle with a high flow valve.

And then that goes in the noid and coming out of the noid is another dash eight,

point five diameter hose that goes to a half inch pipe plug to a dash eight fitting in the

charge pipe independently. So let's say we have three or four of those solenoids.

The internal size of that solenoid is point three, seven, five of an inch. Okay. So three

eights of an inch. Right? So it's that big, right? So you got three or four of those with a 15 pound

bottle at 1250 psi of its own supply. So yeah, you got six bottles behind you. You have to open

them all and you got these huge hoses that you hope a hose doesn't blow off and start whipping

around on the cab with you. One year I put all these bottles in the backs. I didn't want any hoses

in the cab. I've seen a bottle come out of the cab through the windshield. I've seen hoses. I've

lost a few hoses. It's scary. Dash eight hose whipping around on the cab with you. The thing's

15 feet long, unsecured for six foot of the cab. Yeah. Yeah. Elephant trunk empty nitrous as fast

as it can. So okay, if you just start doing some basic math, we're basically spraying an inch and

a half diameter of nitrous. If you got 3.375. So that's already 338. So that's what nine eights.

So that's an inch 125 right there. 1.125. Then you add in all your 1500 L's that are 125

piece. You got four or five of those. That's going to be another half inch, five eighths of an inch.

So a bunch, a bunch. Okay. So what does that equate to then use flip all that on? What is

that like one good nitrous run and everything works on the dyno 3000 horsepower plus eight

to 14 pounds of nitrous emptied and three tenths of a second. Like you've seen the dyno runs. Oh

you get it. It's four plate. You get it running good and you're dragging the break. The rotors

turn orange. We have four rear brake caliper rotors and you drag the break to make it jet black smoke

and then you jab the fuel and you bump nitrous until it cleans up the smoke and then you make

10 or 15 pounds of boost and then you jab it more with fuel makes it smoke. You hit the brakes

more and then you grab another spool jet. So you're like two or three spool jets in now on the dyno

and you're dragging the break and it's smoking and the rotors are orange and throwing metal.

I'm talking 50, 60 feet in the air molten rotors. I have a pile of rotors here. I can show you.

You gotta show me that after that. And your two or three kits and you're holding back 15 or 20

pounds of boost and the whole entire truck is shaking because you're at 80 miles an hour.

You're at 2800 RPM and final gear and then you're just holding the boost and as soon as he says

we're good or you say we're good, hit the button, hit the load. He brings on however much load you

say. I have to say these things in a certain order. He brings on the load you say when you say it and

you run as fast as you can through the RPM of the load on the dyno. The dyno has no rules.

Drag racing, it's an eighth mile. There's staged, pre-staged, a laser two inches off the track,

six inches apart. There's 330, there's 660, there's a thousand, there's a mile per hour

speed trap at the end. Sled pulling has a counter wheel that goes on the ground that measures

mile per hour and distance pulled as a floating finish. That's the racetrack. The dyno doesn't

have any of that. You calibrate the dyno at 2000 RPM and the gear you're going to pull in.

You tell the dyno operator what load and when to bring it and then he does it and then you just

floor it. Well, you toss the baseball in the air and swing the baseball bat at the right time with

the right trajectory and you might hit the ball and it might do a home run or he might file and

it goes out or he might miss altogether. It's a strike. So you have to do all these things at the

perfect time between sitting there 800 horsepower, melting your brakes, trying to get the boost

pressure up enough that you can slap. Oh, here we go. The nitrous slap. That's the word they hated.

So you can slap it all at once and it's literally how long can you hold your hand on the skillet?

Well, how hot's the skillet? If the skillet's 100 degrees, you could put your hand on the all day.

If the skillet's 120 degrees, how long can you touch it? 20 seconds? 15 seconds? If the skillet's

140 degrees, how long can you touch it? Yeah, well, this skillet's about 300 and freaking degrees

like it's like I might burn myself if I touch it too long, but the horsepower that we're known for,

the horsepower we make the Mr. 3000 is only good for winning dyno competitions. That is it. If you

strapped, if you change the rules to the dyno, if you put it on a hub dyno and you had a generic set

of rules with a generic load that was the same for everybody and you had to pull from 2500 RPM

to 5500 RPM at 50% load and you were allowed 500 RPM of rise per second, it would be a really long

pull. 25, 3, 35, 4, 45, 5, 55. Is that six? That's three seconds if you're allowed. All right. Something

like that. It's a bunch. It's more than three tenths of a second or one tenth of a second or six

tenths of a second. The more power you make, the easier you push through the load. If the rules of

the dyno change and the load is variable and it controls RPM rise, engines are going to explode

like crazy. There's no way we could do what we do. Now, if you changed your engine development

program and you did not have eight kits of nitrous, well then sure, you could make horsepower that's

sustained over RPM over a long period of time, but there's no way I would ever try to hold this

engine back on RPM. It is scary and insane every time we go up. So you're saying if you would just

do fuel only all day long? Yeah, fuel only all day long and you had a set rise of RPM,

you could manage your power, but whenever you just shower power is what I call,

like how long can you touch the red hot skillet on the stove? That's all we're trying to do. But

if you know that you have to hold it for five or six seconds and it has to live, it's a whole

another. What if the rule is different? If your engine blew up on the dyno, your runs don't count.

Well, right now if it blows up, the number still counts. You still did 1400 or 8500 or whatever

the heck the number is going to be, right? It counts, but if you had to drive it off the dyno,

now you're talking a different set of rules.

All right. So let's just say you were given the power to completely change the dyno events

across the country. What's the rule set? What would be the perfect rule set if you were to run

a dyno event? Well, definitely going to be a hub dyno because tire slip is the thing,

the ability to hold a tire to a 40 inch roller. Like that's hard to do. I've definitely had

expensive mistakes there. I've put VHD on the rollers and spun tires and ruined it.

It would have to be a hub dyno. Has it ruined the rollers? Yeah. You put a oily substance on

the roller and then the next guy really hates you. Josh McCormick blamed me for years for not

making power when he could have because I put VHD on the roller before him. It's fine. It still

blew up. His blew up. I'll still take it, whatever. Me and Josh battle all the time. I guess I should

say did. Don't plan on battling much anymore, but a hub dyno with a set RPM rise across the second.

It has to be a laid out rule. Okay. Short story, shorter, long story, short. I did the diesel

power challenge in 2019. I was the official alternate. This was in Colorado. Street legal

trucks, drag race, dyno, street drive to 13,000 feet at the Red Rock Ampli Theater, 100 miles,

eighth mile drag, no quarter mile drag race, eighth mile drag race with a skid steer on

a bumper pull trailer, a 10,000 pound skid steer on a 28 foot steel bumper pull trailer,

eighth mile drag race, signed me up. That's freaking cool. And then it also had a fuel economy

test and this was done. This was done at the ATS diesel dyno in Colorado and the roller RPM

varied. It was a simulated road drive. You had to keep the RPM of the roller between these graphs

and your RPM had to stay between them for every second your RPM was out. It was

certain points off and the load would go up and down. So you'd have to throttle in to maintain

the roller mile per hour and it would lug you to like 1200 RPM. You would have to downshift

on the roller. Guys were downshifting in our trucks. So that was very, very interesting.

That's an example where there's a set rule on the dyno. You have to drive the same condition

everyone else has to drive in. If you dyno a truck like that, it would be fair. It would be

way more fair. I simply took advantage of an open system. That's all I did. There's no rules on

the dyno, still no rules. When it comes to dyno, I remember watching a banks video or whatever.

That's like, again, that's where I learned a little bit about diesel stuff in the last couple

years. Let's say somebody comes here for an 800 horsepower, 1000 horsepower truck. Are you doing

any dyno work? Is it so just copy paste at this point? And if they do go to the dyno,

what do those pulls look like? Okay. That's there's a lot of good stuff there.

We'll come back around to Gilbanks. I definitely want to talk about it. Sure.

800 horse. No, I'm going to street tune it. Our dad will all get on the streets into the

tuner or vice four or five revisions. Definitely looking at data. It's so cookie cutter,

800 to 1000. I don't have to go to the dyno. Most people that get 800 to 1000 are realistic,

minded folks. They're not asking for too much or too little. They probably most of them don't

have built motors, so it's a little bit more of a safe 800 because you can make it 100. It's not

safe and you can definitely make it safe. So those are cookie cutters. Now after 1000, yes,

we do go to the dyno. We use calibrated addiction. His name is Robert Ivy. He's down in Kingsland,

Texas. He's about three and a half hours south of here. He has a Superflow 849 dyno in his shop.

That's the very same dyno that the Northwest Dyno Circuit has, which is the dyno for competition

in the diesel performance world. It's a Superflow 849. It goes to UCC. It travels the whole North

America all year. Robert has the same dyno three hours south. Robert's my tuner. It's 150 or

or 180 or I forget. It's a set hourly rate to get on the dyno. So I got a 43 foot triple axle

scenario or dual tandem, whatever. I load up trucks. I drive them down. I spin down there all day.

Leave the house at three o'clock in the morning. Come home at nine o'clock at night. Dino in three

or four trucks and they're on the rollers all day, like 10, 12, 15 pulls. It's nuts. We do steady

state load testing. Let's say you get it in your pull gear, like fourth gate, fourth gear, one to

one, steady state roller, your torque converters locked up. And then let's say you want to find

out how fast the turbo can spool up at RPM. Let's say 2000 RPM, give it all the fuel at 2000.

But at 2000 RPM, you cannot overcome the speed of the roller. The load of the roller,

the engine cannot make enough power. We're talking like 80,000 pounds of force.

And then he can drive into the roller at 2000 and it stops the dyno and just

and he goes wide open and just sits at 2000. How long does it take the turbo to come up to full

boost pressure and how much fuel does it take to make the turbo spool up steady state? And then we

try 1900 and then 1800 and then 17. And then we'll try 21 and 22. We will bring fuel to make the

turbo chargers or turbo spool up as fast as it can. And then that's how we like to tune it.

And that's working on the bottom half of the curve. That's not saying, oh, it made 800 do

another pull. It made 805 add two more degrees. It made 843 add two more made 880. That's not,

that's not increasing power. That's increasing drivability and turbo charger response on the

street. Think about this. On gasoline, y'all control air. You have a throttle body. You have a

sensor that reads vacuum. We don't. We have no throttle bodies. We have no vacuum. We run

unlimited air as much as fast and as cool and as dense as we can get it. Great. So we have to find

out how to spool it as fast as we can. And that takes fuel to do it and you drive into it. And

this is where you're looking at those stoichiometric air to fuel ratios of diesel. This is where

you're doing cubic millimeters of fuel injected to how much air the turbo charger moves according

to the compressor map and getting a theoretic horsepower on paper and then getting proven

horsepower on the ground. So I go do that and I'll work out these customers trucks forever.

And then it's like, yeah, we did 12 pulls. We picked up 113 horsepower total on a safe number.

But now we picked up 400 pound feet of torque and we got 400 RPM quicker spooling turbo now.

Okay, another way to think about this. If you're blowing up balloons at your birthday party,

the bigger the balloon, the harder it is to blow it up, the harder your lungs have to push air into

turbo chargers, intercooler pipe diameter, intercooler core thickness, intercooler flow,

head flow, head volume, T4, T3, T6, turbines, all these things, the turbine housing ARs,

they all air, it's all about airflow. Well, you have to inflate that thing every time,

every time you breathe, you have to charge that thing up to full pressure,

charge it as fast as you can. A smaller pipe charges up quicker and has a higher port velocity,

which has more of a turbulent combustion process. Nitrous just helps all of it.

Two turbos does it even better airflow as much as you can.

There are some things you said there, like when you're talking about the velocity and all that.

How does that go into, again, everything about this seems to be like a sizing thing because

you're trying to move as much air through there as possible. Does that kind of impact how you

build various stages of trucks? Again, 1,000 horsepower, 15, whatever.

I guess do you have a particular philosophy when it comes to that that might differ from

anybody else or not really? There's definitely forks in the road. There's definitely combinations,

there's definitely sizing. This has to be very appropriate. I could say this is like bowling.

If you and I are going to go bowling tonight and you pick up a 13 pound bowling ball and I pick up

an eight pound bowling ball, I'll probably be more accurate all night and have higher points

across all the games because it's a lighter weight that I can consistently control. Yours is

going to be so heavy, you're going to lose the ability to control it. Now it has more momentum

and will knock down more pins and have more torque and inertia and mass and all that.

It's way harder to control. You can't utilize it to your best ability. If you have a smaller turbo

that you can drive harder, make boost sooner, which means more torque, which means less smoke

for us because it's burning the fuel faster. You'll make more power down low. Now the bigger

turbo, bigger guy, he's going to catch up, but he's going to have to catch up like two or three

seconds after you're already a gear or two ahead or you might be at 40 pounds and he's at 20 pounds.

And by the time you're at 60 pounds, he'll be at 100 pounds. And then he's going to come on like

freight train. So there is sizing 100% sizing. And this is again, where what are you going to do

with this truck? Are you going to drive it to work on Monday? Are you going to take the wife out

tonight in it? And then do you have a skid steer going to go move around? You want 800 to 1,002

turbos built motor, like you want a truck that's strong. But if you're only going to take it and

do a sunshine hauler, only pop the sunroof and never put anything in the bed and only drive it

in perfect conditions. Absolutely. 200%. One big turbo, a stock motor. And here you go, have fun.

It's cheap. It's fast and it will explode. But you're not going to hook to a sled. You're not

putting radials on it. You're not going to dynamite. You're not going to take it to dirt drag. You're

going to drive it on the street. After 1000 horsepower on the street and two wheel drive,

all they do is spin tires. I could take you out on the property and take you in six trucks right now

that will destroy the tires till 120 miles an hour and two wheel drive. You can't go wide open.

I can't I can't emphasize enough how much fun 800 horsepower is and how useless 1200 horsepower is

daily and two wheel drive. Now four wheel drive. Well, now you're talking how I drive, which is

1200 horsepower and four wheel drive 100 miles an hour every day, 4000 RPM every day. And you can

control it, but you can't really just drive around full drive and dodge diesel all day long and never

put a transfer case in it or, you know, lose the front driveline. These trucks aren't meant to do this,

but they sure do. I was going to say we come from the north. It's like we're always in four wheel drive.

Yeah, that's right. That's right. Jealous of you guys down here. You guys can drive whatever you

want down here. We have nice trucks. We have beautiful weather. The race tracks are open 51

weeks of the year. What's the week they're close? Christmas Eve. Typically,

typically Christmas Eve to New Year's Eve. Okay, all the racetracks close, but the streets never

close in Texas. They never close. You want to go out tonight? It is TX2K. I guarantee you

you have a good time. We'll probably be in jail. My wife is out of town. I can't I'm watching the dog

like you can't go out tonight. We got to stay here.

Trends. I would have two questions. I'll go with this one first. I'm going to use drag racing as

an example. It's a very kind of universal thing that it's easy to equate to. What's the fastest you

a quick fast? Sorry, what's the quickest you've gone at the at the track? I like how you use your

words quick and fast. Those are two different things. The best track time I've ever got was in

UCC in 24. And I went down this track at 2000 horsepower, which is like tune two. And

and you sometimes you have to crawl before you run. And the stupid truck went 543 at 143 and

it weighed 5500 pounds and it did it on fuel only. And I was like, wow, it went really fast. And I

turned it down and it went faster than when I turned it up. It was interesting. And for whatever

reason ever since, and I haven't ever been that fast. I've had a lot of problems ever since then.

But I've never had that much luck in and that weekend at that track. Now we've done some testing

here on like no time events at the track. But the prep on a track in Texas is probably the

very best prep you're ever going to come to. If we go to Innis tonight, I guarantee you're going

to see guys losing their shoes, losing the centers of the wheels on the three piece race wheels,

it'll shear off all the bolts like the prep is nuts. So I can get down in Texas way better than

I can get down in Ohio or Delaware or Indy or Tennessee or New Mexico or Colorado or Salt Lake

or any of those other big ones. The prep is insane. So I can turn it up and it holds and it works.

But yeah, 543 143. Okay.

And then is that kind of like a sort of like an unlimited class? Is that index? How is that

exactly worth? That's as much as it'll hold. Okay. What is that? What does it look like below that?

Right? Because you weren't always doing 543s. Okay. What are what kind of classes are we talking

about when we talk diesel racing? Okay, great question. There's a bunch of classes in diesel

racing. Let's talk about diesel drag racing. There's the real big one outlaw diesel super series,

ODSS. Grupper guys owns this. There's about three or four sanctioned bodies in diesel racing.

This year they're coming together and we're all sitting at the table and we're actually

listening to one another, which is different from years of the past. So now that we're all

around the table eating dinner, we can have some good conversations and things can go forward.

There, there is really, really big drag racing, mainly on the east coast,

some on the west coast, hardly anything in the center. That's nationwide. So

590 index, 670 index, 770 index and sportsmen bracket, name your time, all eighth mile.

There's rules and then there's like super pro. There's pro stock diesel. There's some unlimited

groups in the sanctioned bodies. And then there's definitely the index and the brackets.

The index and bracket is definitely bigger. It's way easier to be a bracket racer than it is a

heads up triathlon champion. Bracket racing so easy, it's boring. I can't do the same thing. I

have ADD. I feel like I'm on the spectrum. Who wants to leave something the same,

make it stronger, faster, better, lighter, more powerful. So I tend to do the hell marries.

I kind of like no time and I kind of like exhibition runs more than I like

trying to do your personal best or go rounds. A lot of the racing I've done, it actually isn't

even a racing. It's your best time down the track. Reaction doesn't matter and we don't really have

opponents. We do solo runs. It is the most strange form of racing I've ever seen. But for

whatever reason, that's kind of how it has gone in the triathlon with the multiple segments.

Now, if you're only drag racing, this truck that you brought that you want to build, if we're only

going to drag race you, all your safety equipment, all your, your, your hawns device, your personal

gear, your roll cage, your, your wheels, your licensing, your certifications, then you're going

to be a 59670 guy as close to run to 590 as you can. If you run 589, you ran too fast, you're out.

Right. Yes. 591, you left a hundred on the table or 10 on the table or whatever. Yeah.

And reaction time matters and qualifying and ladder and who you draw and time of the evening,

the air density, the vapor pressure, density altitude, adjusted corrected altitude,

correction factor. There's all these really good words in the game.

But sometimes it's just really fun to just he haunt down there like a cowboy and that's,

that's what I do. Okay. I'm definitely the wild. I'm the joker. Like when I pull up,

people generally like, Oh, shit. Here he goes. Watch this. Hang on.

Is he going to hit the wall this time? I don't know.

Have you hit the wall a couple of times?

Twice. Twice. Okay.

Yeah. One time I lost some pistons and put about five gallons of oil on all four

radials. Don't do that at 130. And then one time I blew a front drive line and it transferred

2,500 horsepower to the rear tire because it blew the front drive line and so it spun.

And then I lifted and got the brake, which transferred all the way to the front.

And I have four calipers on the rear and a little tiny 516s lightweight rear rotors.

So it locked the spinning tire and then it came around and then it put me in the wall.

It was very dramatic, very slow and uneventful, but it was fun.

All right. We talked about, you know, lower horsepower trucks, lower, you know,

quotation marks. Yeah. Let's say I want a five second truck. What does that take?

If I'm going to build you a five second truck and we're going to do this for fun,

we're going to build it to make 2,000, but 1,500 horse will do it and we're going to shell

everything out of it. So a regular cab, long bed or short bed, short beds look a little bit

different. Are we talking, was it third gen still? Oh, absolutely. That's the only one you want.

That's the best. I mean, you can get an older Mustang, but there's Fox bodies everywhere. Yeah.

You could get a 68 Camaro, but, you know, no one really wants that. Everybody wants a Fox

body with an LS. I mean, they make chassis kits. They make that. What's that 25,

five SFI chassis kits for a Fox body that's pre-notched and you can put it in and that

bay right there. Yeah. Like, oh, yeah, pull it in. We'll knock it out before we leave today.

Like that. Yeah. It's only 50 hours worth of work, but you can buy it and it shows up in a box.

That's how dodged diesels are. That's how the third gen diesels are.

Gotcha. So third gen. All right, we'll start with that. Now, what's all the fun stuff that we're

adding? Oh, nice. And if you only want to run fives and only drag racing, we're putting on a GT55,

so we're going to get a VS racing for $2,100. We'll do an 88 to a 92. We could do a 98,

but really an 88 is going to do what you want it to do. And then we're going to put two gates on

it, which I completely hate waste gates, but this is what you want it because you want to drag

racing. You want fives and that's it. No sled pull, no street drive, no interior, no AC. You can

keep the power steering because you're going to want the power brakes because it has a hydro boost.

But yeah, drive lines, $2,000 worth of custom drive shafts, about $1,000 worth of drive shaft

shields front and rear. You can do stock axles front and rear, stock gears front and rear

for only going, you know, 550s to 520s. It'll do that. But you're going to want to light as you

can. 5,200 pounds will do it. No problem. And it'll live for a long time. Transmissions will be

happy because you have one turbo, you have half the amount of torque, and you have nitrous, which

is a top end power gang. So that's how you carry out the mile per hour once you're hooked up.

So it's real simple. Okay. But the difficulty for you lies in that you're doing all these other

aspects as well then. Is that what a difficulty lies? That and then what you're doing with that

truck. If you have a truck that's purpose built to only drag race, if you have a enclosed trailer

and you are going to unload this thing at the track and drag it with your golf cart down to the

burnout pit, fire it up, do a burnout, stage it, run it, kill it at the ticket booth, get the golf

cart back to the pit, that's a trailer queen. So that you can go really fast for really cheap and

have a lot of simple parts. When you say cheap, how cheap are we talking? You're probably going to

ship your car soon or know somebody that will. And as someone who used to work in freight logistics,

I understand the difficulties of finding reliable transport, especially when trying to make it to

rallies, racetracks, or the warehouse to hide your Corvette because you're going through a messy

divorce and when she says everything, she means everything. Anywho, Nick Scheer is the proud owner

of Sure Thing Logistics. Having traveled much of the country with every type of vehicle you can

imagine, he's got the experience and reliability that you want to ensure a safe journey for your

pride and joy. If you want to find out what it takes to ship your vehicle, go to surethinglogistics.net,

fill out the intake form, and be sure to let them know I sent you. Let's get back to the show.

What would it all in for a five second? All in something like that, 40, 50 grand's a good one.

Oh, okay. Sure. For the whole truck. Transmission, like, you know.

Are we talking cages at this point as well, though, or no?

Yeah, probably. I mean, you can buy a roll cage for $2,500 and you can have someone install it for

two. Okay. Yeah, fair off. But you know, how nice do you want this stuff that dictates how well it

fits and, you know, choices. Right. Yeah. It's all Alucard. The menu is very vast.

Which one's the more expensive one? It would be Dino or Sled?

Or is it like? I'm going to say sled pulling is going to be more expensive because if you only

want a number, I could give you a motor that would make retarded horsepower, ridiculous horsepower.

And it's like, the only thing you can do is spray it, get on there and don't ever run that

tune on the street. Don't do just turn it off, turn the nitrous off. But if you want 2500 horse

through a bunch of stock parts, I could do that. Okay. Sometimes. But if you want to go sled pulling

at 2000 horsepower, now we're going to have to build something. Okay. So it's application. Okay.

What are you doing? Okay, so quite a bit more up. I guess one of the main components that you're

so to speak, doesn't matter for sled pull. Now, I know that's a ridiculous statement to make.

But typically, sled pulling trucks, you let's take a 30 smooth bore. What are those words?

3.0 diameter turbocharger, so around 76 millimeters. Smooth bore, no map groove in the turbocharger.

They plug the front of the turbo with a tool. They limit the air. Typically, a 76 or 30 smooth

bore sled pull truck will make about 1200, maybe 1350, 1400 horse to my knowledge. Now,

these guys don't ever talk about their horsepower, but that's also sustained power from 2500 to 6000

or 3000 to 6000. The whole time, it might start at 1100 and it's going to end at 1000, but it peaked

at 1250 or whatever. RPM to RPM fuel only, and they can do it for like 30 seconds at a time.

That's endurance. That's like think of a monster truck. Think of a NASCAR. Endurance. And then

think of a top fuel or a pro stock. One hit. That's all you got. So sled pulling 38,000 pounds,

floating finish. It pulls you to a stop 30 seconds wide open throttle. You're not allowed nitrous

because there's different rules. Remember, we covered the rules. Now the rules are different.

So a different turbo setup, a different intercooler setup, no nitrous, no water injection, no water

cooling across your intercooler. Like, good God, brother. The hoops you have to jump through is

tough. So you don't run nitrous in sled pulls then? I mean, I do. Oh, sure. But I'm a triathlon.

I'm a crazy man. If you're only, if you're a sled puller, and you only sled pull, and you have

a quarter million dollar sled puller down there in that bay, no nitrous, no water, one turbo,

extreme limitations. Okay. Extreme limitations versus me, unlimited, no rules. But I got to

do all three or all five or whatever segment we're doing. Okay, that makes sense. And I'll slowly

start winding us down here. But what was the Gail banks Gail banks thing? What were you talking

about there earlier? I'm really glad you brought up Gail banks. This is going to piss a lot of

people off. I met Gail banks in 2018. I had the opportunity to spend four or five hours with him

dinner and evening a conversation, you know, Gail banks has forgot more about diesel

than our new generations will probably ever know. This man is highly disrespected in the diesel

industry. Gail has innovated so much of diesel performance throughout the 80s and 90s. He is

definitely an innovator. And I don't know why people hating his marketing amazing his products,

they work, they're overly engineered and they're overly complicated. But if the factory incorporated

a boss for a zip tie to hold a harness, Gail put that in his product, plus all his other stuff.

We do a lot of BD or we do a lot of we do a lot of BD diesel products, but we also do a lot of

banks products. Banks is the most widely marketed, most widely sold, highest disrespected company

in the whole products game. But I still put on a lot of the parts and they still work. But Gail's

a heck of a guy and the day that we don't have him, the day that we don't have john force,

this this world will be different in the performance game, both gasoline diesel alike.

Okay, I was I was nervous about what I was saying. Okay, no, no, nothing.

No, he's always got to stick up for Gail. He has done so many things, dude. He like land speed guy,

the turbocharger innovation, he pioneered a lot of that. He was, he's definitely a godfather

that brought an idea into the room. And now the other generations are taking it even further.

It's kind of like, that's saying like, you know, you stand on the shoulders of giants.

That's kind of, I've never heard a bad thing about him personally. I mean, common sections aside.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. There's gonna be a lot of very good comments on all these conversations. So

I expect a pop in section. I'm not going to reply to any of them. I always tell people

that cracks me up. It's good. It's good toilet humor. I try to educate everybody,

but some people just can't teach stupid like, okay, if you don't have common sense,

you can't teach somebody common sense, you can't give it to them. They don't acquire,

they're just screwed. I stand by that statement. Common sense goes a long ways.

If you ain't got it, you can have a hard time in life.

Well, before we start wrapping up here, is anything else you want to talk about anything

that I missed perhaps? Anything come to mind? Not really. I mean, we talked about,

we talked about drag and drive. We talked about all the sled pulling stuff, the dirt drag racing,

the horsepower wars, like, I don't know, it's, it's insane, you know, I just think that more

people need to understand what they're getting and what they're expecting and, and that cake

tastes really good when it's cooked just right with the right amount of ingredients on the right

chef. No, I get a restaurant you go to is going to dictate how good it tastes.

I mean, I've seen a guy cook three cheesecakes in a week. So I mean, I get it.

I mean, I'm definitely a quality over quantity guy. I'm looking for good customers,

good trucks, long lasting relationships that have many good times memories like we go to the track.

We, we charge people that guy that picked up that motor this morning that built 15

horse motor. You saw a beautiful engine. I told him, you put it in, you get it running,

bring it out to the finals. We're going to have campers. We're going to have grills. We're going

to be doing things that you get in trouble for like, come out, have a good time. What's the

worst thing that happens? It explodes. We'll fix it. So I'm all about encouraging bad choices and

good stories. Is the six, seven just the, the go to nowadays? Okay. Sure is. What are the other

alternatives? Obviously to five, nine. Is there anything else that people are really building?

The only engine that matters. All the other ones suck. Okay, guys. That's just my opinion.

You know, I don't sit in a V squat to P, you know, all that straight six in a row ready to tow.

The Cummins is amazing. It's tractor motor. That thing is just, it's built so well that you can

take it much further than the factory intended. That's why it's so cool. What other stock engine

can make a thousand horsepower with a head stud pushrod, valve spring, turbo and injector?

That's it. You don't even have to take the head off. Well, you have to put a transmission in it

for anything more than a tune, but that's a sign. But the engine, the transmissions,

lots of opportunities. That was another thing that Dustin said when we did a podcast with him was

yeah, sure, you have to do it. You have to build the transmissions, but you have to do that for

everybody. Is that the case? That's right. Okay. That's right. I don't know anybody that runs around

with stock transmission regardless of what flavor your engine is. And if you do have a stock

transmission, it's just because you can't afford the built one and you're babing it along to get the

built one. I don't care who you are. If it's a Dodge diesel and it makes 300 horsepower or 3000

horsepower, that thing's going to need a diagram transmission, at least one. And I'm here for it.

When I first started building these, I had adapter plates that I had studs on because I was wearing

out the threads on the bell housing. I'm talking like I could change a band in 25 minutes. You

smoke a second gear band, slide that trend, leave the transfer case on it, leave the drive shafts

on it, slide it back, pop the band out like, good gosh, dude. It was nuts what you can do

and how far you can take it. But I've also had to learn how to build all these things.

Well, there's, there's just, there's a lot of ways, all these things. It's a very versatile

platform. You can, you can take a Dodge diesel and you can make at least 1500 a day with a

gooseneck in Texas and never leave the state line hauling stuff around. You could make an ambulance

with a bed on the back and you could save lives every day. You can put 800 horsepower compounds,

37, 6 inches and go lift kit and go drive off in the, the, be a pipeline welder. I don't recommend

that. But if you are a welder and you have a Dodge diesel, you need three or four of them,

the whole just three or four trucks, you can do so much with these trucks. You can haul the

president around. You can haul sunshine around and have armor on wheels. It's insane. It's

absolutely insane, the versatility. Why did the triple setup not work for you? By the way,

you want to touch on that? The triple setups didn't work because it came on too hard, too quick.

You have to get turbines up to speed like turbo, turbocharger shaft speed matters.

You know, you got to get them to 60 or 80,000 RPM before they're really moving any air. Well,

and you have three of them to wind up and all three of them kind of hit about the same time.

In other words, I would go on the dyno from 2,300 RPM, 20 pounds of boost, dragging the brake,

bringing the turbos up to tip in on my way to wide open. It'd make 100 pounds halfway to wide open

and be at 100 pounds of boost by 2,500 RPM, not even hit the full load yet. And by the time the

loaded hit, it'd be 200 pounds of boost and just smoke the tires on the dyno or blow right through

the torque converter on the training as fast as it could. I had to slow down the rate the boost

came in. And of course, not doing it with waste gates, and it's already spraying nitrous on its

way up. So I had to get really big turbos so they would come on slower. The triples, they were so

small, and there's three of them, they spooled up real quick. Compounds, they're really big, but

there's only two of them. So they're bigger and they spin slower. They're harder to make them spin,

which is a cushion like an insurance cushion for the power to hit on nitrous on the dyno.

And then on the on drag racing, the triples was kind of the same way. As soon as I would get in

second gear, and it would lock the converter and come up to full boost pressure, it would just spin

off all six tires or four tires or whatever the column, it was too much too quick. Makes sense.

Well, on that note, at the end of every episode, I'd like to ask the guest one particular question

that goes like this. You have an unlimited budget, and you get to pick three cars or in your case,

you can also do trucks or jets or whatever the hell you want. But you have to choose a daily

driver, a show car, and a track car or truck. Okay, okay. And they can be custom builds, right?

Yeah, I can say my dream. Yeah, you can weld a Ford and a Chevy together. Have fun.

Daily driver, I want to get a 07 Sport, regular cab, half ton, all wheel drive, third gen, electric

blue. And I want to take a half ton truck, half ton axles, drop it in the weeds, and put a constant,

full time, all wheel drive transfer case, no switching from two wheel full wheel,

all wheel drive all time. And I want 2000 horse instant, like nitrous on demand, like proportional

throttle percent. And, and that's like a street truck, daily driver. And then you said show car,

like something take out and look good, like take the wife out and stop in cars and coffee.

Yeah, yeah. I want to 0304 Cobra, Ford Mustang Cobra. Nice. Yeah, you know, like twin screw,

Kenny Bell 1000 horse, G fit, our T 56 or whatever. Yeah. Or like, you know, 98 Supra,

big single, 1400 horse Toyota Supra six speed. Okay, those are my shows. I'm gonna like, you

got to choose one. Oh, we'll go Cobra. We'll go Cobra. Okay. And I have to ask, are you gonna go

to Mr. Cromer out or are you gonna do another color? Sonic blue. Sonic blue. Blues my color.

All right. Ironically, I don't have any blue vehicles. Blues my color. Okay. So electric blue,

07 daily driving sport truck, and then 0403 sonic blue Cobra. And then what was the other one?

Track, track, any kind of track. Okay, I'm going to get you here. I bet you ain't gonna see this one

either. I have dreams of taking another half ton third gym, dropping it in the weeds, all will

drive again. Nitrous bipedal again, aluminum motor. But I want a shelled out bed. I want the

radiator in the bed. I want a watered air cooler. I want independent front axle like a,

like a CV axle high mount front diff. Now I want an independent mount rear diff CV axle rear diff.

I want a like a five link rear suspension. So when you throttle in the vehicle picks up and it

toes out in the rear tires to make it straight. And when you brake and you dive in a corner,

the rear tires go in to make it turn. And I want to do a pike's peak daily driver style diesel

four wheel drive truck. Like pike's peak at like 2000 horse nitrous on demand because nitrous is

more powerful than turbo. And pike's peak is like 13,000 15,000 feet like 144. I think it was like

14600 or something like that. Yeah, let's do that. Well, I want to check my knowledge after

we end this is a 14 625 here fact check me actually Google. We have, we have sat around and talked

until it makes my arm hair stand up. I've got a list. That's why I'm kind of done doing triathlon.

I'm done being only diesel. I was close 14 115. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. How many turns?

Wouldn't it like 140 turns or it's insane. It is. I think it's like 12 miles or 14. All my friends

is doing it this this June. So that's gonna be cool. But it'll be a diesel. Oh, it's the only

thing I don't have spark plugs. Are you kidding me? My wife has an Audi. That's it. Well, we have a

Jeep. That's her Jeep too. I don't know, even my tractor, even my lawnmower diesel. It's no,

it's diesel around here. But wouldn't that be something that all three of those builds are

so unique? I mean, okay, the Cobra or the Supra, that's the exception. If you have to have some

spark plugs, forced inductions and iconic or a viper, right, or a viper with a Cummins motor.

No one's done that. There's been a viper. No, there's been a Cummins Lambo, a gold one. Yeah,

yeah. One way. One way. One way diesel built that hasn't done anything. Hasn't done anything.

I think I saw that one. Was that the one that I saw that SEMA might have been? I don't know.

Probably. I'm getting all this. The only thing you've seen it done is fire up, back up, rev up,

pull back on the trailer. Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay, I know what you're talking about.

Imagine a viper. Imagine a 2500 horsepower, aluminum, single turbo, four kits and nitrous,

34 by 16, slick in the back, drag and drive, Dodge Viper with a Cummins.

That'd be cool. I have an appreciation for cars with these. It's very underappreciated

this year in the States, but like one of the people I had on the show at PRI,

he was an engineer. Do you remember when Audi went to Le Mans with those diesel cars?

I do. I do. He was an engineer on that program. It was a V10 diesel, right? I think it was a 10

cylinder. Yeah, at least so, yeah, yeah. And then didn't it have a hybrid electric motor in the

training too? Oh, that part I don't remember. It was furious. Yeah, it was insane. No smoke.

They did. They did two documentaries on those. I don't know if you've ever seen them.

No, I haven't seen documentaries, but I've watched some of the racing. Very impressive.

We have a lot to learn from the foreign diesel like European stuff.

Way cleaner. The fuels cleaner. The emissions are, well, we shouldn't talk about many emissions,

but the emissions are way more realistic. And they have had diesel longer than we have. And they

like think about all the, the Volkswagen, uh, Golfs and, and all the little small SUV diesels

in the flat face diesel vehicles over there. Way more than America. Are they a little more

lenient on diesel in the EU? You can get away with more. That probably explains that we don't

get as many here stateside than imported. Okay. Well, yeah, as soon as it comes here,

you have to do this. Yeah. Other countries, we didn't see anything. Yeah. You know, but then

if you want to talk about that, let's talk about the, uh, the, the cargo ships coming across seas

that four 12 foot diameter stacks burning crew number one, that's basically mud. And then, oh,

wait, but when you come close to our country and you get within visible range of our land,

you have to turn off crude and you have to burn straight diesel because it smokes less coming

in out of our ports. And you can still see them chugging a mile out four stacks, chugging diesel.

Well, they already turned off the crude. So imagine whenever it's 50 miles out on the coast.

Right. But we want to talk about what we do over here versus over there. Come on.

Come on. I didn't know, I didn't know there was a different types. That's crazy. I didn't know that.

Different on the water. You get like half a mile nautical on the water. The rules are different.

Huh. On that note, where can everybody find you? We're all over a lot of places,

but mainly Facebook, YouTube, Instagram. I pretty much do everything under Chris underscore

pat 05, but I don't do much personally more. Everything's now is business. So unrivaled diesel

Facebook, unrivaled diesel on YouTube. You're going to start seeing a lot more of that. We

started recording here and showing these things and showing people how we build our engines,

how we build our transmissions and why we think what we have works and what you can do to get

the same results we have. It's all cookie cutter. There's nothing proprietary in this building.

I promise. That's awesome. And well, first of all, thank you for taking the time to sit down.

This is a really, really fun conversation. Absolutely. That's for everybody else.

Thank you for tuning in and we'll see you all next time. Peace.

Chris Patterson on 3000 Horsepower Diesels, Building Race Trucks and Ultimate Callout Challenge

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