Don’t Get Ripped Off Buying Parts

Welcome to the Diesel Podcast presented by DFC Diesel.

Vinny, welcome back to the Diesel Podcast, how were your holidays?

Man, we had a blast.

It was nice and chill this year.

Usually, I got like 30, 40 people to show up at the house.

And you're just going 100 miles an hour trying to get everybody

fed and entertained.

And it's a little more mellow this year, so we enjoyed it.

And I actually got some golf clubs for Christmas,

so I'm pretty excited about that.

Sounds like you had a good one.

Yeah, how about you guys?

It was good.

It was pretty low-key, it was extremely warm here in Colorado

for all of December, so there was no snowy Christmas.

It was like spring kind of.

And I was excited to get back in the groove of 2026.

There's a lot of cool things to look forward to.

But I was sitting around the other day

and I was browsing Facebook.

And I was seeing some of the Facebook groups

I'm a part of for Dermax or Powerstroke or Cummins,

different ones.

And people asking a lot of questions about,

should I buy from this place?

Should I buy this part or this horrible situation happen?

And I thought of you, because you've worked in diesel

for 20-plus years, I'd say, at every level, right?

From installs, e-commerce, the shop level.

I mean, everything.

And so I thought, I need to get Vinny back on.

And we need to talk about how to not get ripped off

buying truck parts.

So you have a lot.

It's a fantastic topic and one

that I'm extremely passionate about,

because at the end of the day, I love helping people.

My position, like you mentioned,

has changed a lot over the years.

And I started out as a technician, broke my back,

ended up on a phone behind a desk doing sales,

and then worked as a service rider for over a decade.

And you just see bad situations play out.

And it's almost always when the customer thinks

they're saving money.

And that urge to try and save money almost always

turns into a very, very bad experience.

If the price is too good to be true, it usually is.

And if a shop is selling a product at a certain price

and you can jump online and buy it 30%, 60% cheaper,

that's not even a realistic scenario.

You know from your past where you

worked in a diesel industry.

Profit margins in this industry on parts,

especially performance parts, it's about 20%.

So if you're finding a part 30% to 60% cheaper

than what the shop quoted you, you're in China realm.

You're in, this is some super junk shipped in from overseas

and it's probably gonna be a bad experience.

Where do you start?

Like maybe what I'll do is I'll start like

how I would look for a part or what I would do

and I'll like take off my hat of doing a diesel podcast

and having worked in it for a long time.

So I'll just make it about some other industry.

If I was looking for something, I think the first thing

I would do would be to find other consumers

that are looking for the same thing I am.

And it might pop up a Facebook group

and might pop up Reddit.

I might find something on Instagram,

some page that I follow.

And I kind of get a feel for what's good

based on other people's experiences.

I think the next thing that I would do is then like,

okay, what kind of reviews can I find about this company?

Like, is that the right place to start,

the wrong place to start?

What would you suggest?

I mean, yeah, the reviews is probably the best,

the best point, you know, people are quick to complain

and they're very, very slow to give coup de gras.

So, you know, people aren't running around the internet

saying, oh, this place is amazing.

This place is amazing.

The internet's a pretty negative place.

And so, you see a lot of bad.

So, if you see a company that's getting good reviews,

that's probably a really, really, really good company.

Like, they not only produced a great product,

they shipped it quickly.

They followed up with the customer quickly.

They followed up with an email making sure

you got the part.

That's what earns you a good review in today's day and age.

You could have the best part in the world,

but if you ship it two days late,

or if it doesn't show up for a week and a half,

or if you don't post a tracking number to an email

the day of the order,

you're probably gonna get a bad review,

even if the part is good.

I've seen this with a very good friend of mine,

Paul, at Complete Performance.

Man, they've got great products,

they've got some great processes in line,

and they just get the worst freaking customers.

Like, I've ordered parts from them for years,

and I don't particularly care when the part gets here.

I have four diesel trucks.

So if one's broke down, waiting on parts,

I got another one to drive.

But that's not the case for everybody in this country.

And so I see these terrible reviews

that Paul and Chris have to field and deal with,

and it's almost always about shipping

or the part was damaged once they got it,

which it's wild to leave Paul and Chris a bad review

because it obviously didn't leave their warehouse damaged,

they're not that stupid,

they're not gonna ship out a box that's smashed to hell.

And so that obviously with common sense,

we would determine that that probably happened

after it left their warehouse

between getting to the customer.

But the customer goes and bashes them with a bad review

and FedEx damaged the part.

So take a lot of that into the process

because you just got some really stupid people

with a very serious lack of common sense

ordering parts online,

and then they get it and the box is damaged

and they bashed the company they ordered it from,

not FedEx, who actually damaged it.

So the reviews is a great way to start

fueling whether or not you're getting a good quality product.

If it's got a ton of great reviews,

it's probably a super great part.

But also take those reviews with a grain of salt.

If it's got five star reviews and two one star reviews,

read them.

If the guy's like,

oh, it's not the color I thought it was when I opened it.

That's an irrelevant review, that's stupid.

Or oh, the box was damaged when I got it.

That's also an irrelevant review.

That doesn't talk to the manufacturer

to who boxed the product.

That's FedEx.

That's whoever shipped it.

So yeah, I go out for reviews.

I do what you said.

I talk to like-minded people.

I'm into archery hunting.

I shoot archery for fun.

So when I'm looking for a new site with my bow,

the very last thing I'm gonna say

when I go into a group looking for advice is,

what's the cheapest X, Y, Z?

That is not what I want.

I want to purchase and have a good experience.

So I go in and I ask guys like,

hey, what site are you using to shoot competition?

I need to be shooting at 15 yards

and I need to be effective at 100 yards.

Oh, well I'm shooting X, Y, Z site.

Okay, well how much was it?

850 bucks.

Well, that's how much my bow cost.

But you know what?

If I want to be effective at 12 yards and 100 yards,

that's the price I gotta pay.

What blows my mind is these truck groups

and you get in there and they're putting up

a picture of their 2020 Platinum

or their 2020 King Ranch or their 2020 Limited

and they're like, what's the cheapest tuner for my truck?

What are you even saying?

Like, how is that your thought process?

Like, you're gonna put cheap junk on a $100,000 truck.

That blows my mind.

Like, I will never ever understand that frame of thought.

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Do you think,

well, there seems to be like two different paths.

I did a podcast in December with Dynamite Diesel Products,

and we were talking about OEM parts.

And I was like, I'd say 99% of the people

I know with a diesel truck, they're not into performance.

They don't know any of the brands that I have on.

They don't know most of the brands like you deal with.

Something breaks on the truck.

It goes to the Ford dealer, the Ram dealer, GM dealer.

They're used to what their part distribution is.

And so they don't know anything about

who builds the best injector,

is the best injection pump,

the best transmission door converter.

They're just used to OEM.

And I think it can be intimidating when you step out of that

because it's like a whole new world opens, right?

Like if you jump on a website and search a turbo for an LML,

how many pop up?

Or for a 03 to 0759,

like how many different brands are there?

And you get all the different language

and the naming and the sizes.

It's super overwhelming.

And I think where you get the information

of what is best can really be tricky.

Because you just said with that 2020 example,

do you want a race truck?

Do you want a street truck?

Or you just need something that performs like stock

that's reliable and you're gonna get different answers

all across the board based on what you wanna do with it.

Yeah, no, you're 100% right.

And the diesel performance market has been so hoared out.

I've been in it for 20 years.

I've developed my favorite brands

based off of experiences.

If I'm selling on a customer a turbo

and that turbo comes back in two or three weeks,

I'm never selling that turbo again immediately.

I always say this funny thing

that's just been kind of my thing,

but you stick your pecker in a mousetrap once.

Like that's not an experience you wanna have twice.

When you got a pissed off customer

on the other side of the counter, it's a bad day.

And I really do cherish people.

Like I love making people happy.

I love selling good experiences.

I love seeing those five-star reviews.

So a bad experience for me is extremely bad

and I will never ever put myself

or the customer in that situation again.

So being a new diesel owner

and my mindset as a new diesel owner,

which was a long time ago,

but my mindset was when something OEM went bad,

the last thing I wanted to do is give OEM a chance

to put another bad thing on my truck.

And so my brain, at 20 years old,

my brain said, well, if those injectors failed

at 35,000 miles on my five nine Cummins,

I'm not putting stock injectors back in it

and I'm gonna nerd out on this fuel system

and figure out why they failed.

In my situation in particular, I got water in my fuel

and so I never wanted to get water in my fuel again.

So I got ahold of Brady from industrial injection

and back then they had two options.

You could get reman injectors or brand new.

The reman injectors were almost half the price.

You know, like we're talking like 2020 or 2005

when I went through that,

I probably could get a set of reman injectors

for like 1,100 bucks versus a brand new set of injectors

was over two grand and I went for the two grand

because I want warranty.

I want something goes wrong with these things.

I don't want there to be any wishy-washy,

oh, you cheered out and got remans

and we don't have as good a warranty on those.

Not saying that's what industrial did,

but in my brain, when I see something

that's half the price,

I know I'm not gonna have as good of an experience.

And so I went for the brand new 150 horse injectors

and then I wanna make sure

that I'm not getting water in my fuel.

And so I, back then there was only two options.

You had air dog and fast.

And so I started looking at the two

and trying to do my due diligence and comparing the two

and it combed down to the water separator

that they were both using.

And in my brain, the one that fast was using

was a better filtering element.

And so I went with a fast fuel system,

but it was a ton of research.

It wasn't like I sat down on my computer

one evening after work and picked out my parts.

I mean, I nerded out on common rail fuel systems

and low pressure fuel systems for a month

before I purchased anything.

And you don't really have to do that anymore.

Back then, all we had was Cummins Forum,

Facebook didn't exist.

Now you got a lot of groups

and a lot of these groups are filled

with really bad information.

Unfortunately, everybody that owns a smartphone

can post on social media.

And if you don't know what you're looking at

or what you're reading,

really dumb people can sound super smart

if they say the right things.

If somebody gives you advice on a Facebook group,

click on their profile and do a little Facebook stalking

and see who they are.

If they don't work in the diesel industry

or they've never worked in the diesel industry,

I probably wouldn't take advice from them.

Find somebody like you or your channel

and watch these videos,

particularly about helping customers out.

And a lot of people that are doing videos

on the internet are trying to sell something.

Very few people are just putting out good information

to try and help the viewer.

So if you can find people that are just posting good content

that are obviously in the diesel industry

or have been in the diesel industry for a long time,

latch onto those people and ask those questions.

Most of them are gonna be helpful.

I mean, right before our podcast started,

I got a random phone call from a Virginia area code

and I thought it was spam,

but I answered it and some old man

that saw one of my videos

and he just had some questions about his L5P.

He was nervous.

Saw a bunch of stuff in the L5P groups on Facebook

that scared him.

He thought his truck was a piece of crap

and at the end of the conversation,

he's like, I'm putting hot shots in my fuel.

I'm putting hot shots in my oil.

I'm putting hot shots in my def tank.

Is there anything else I should be doing?

I'm like, man, you're doing better than most people.

And so, there's good people in this industry

that are willing to help.

I would just reach out, find those people.

Do your due diligence.

Don't go to a group full of strangers for diesel advice.

That is wild.

I think what's really tough with the pricing,

I think pricing dictates a lot of,

a lot of where people can get ripped off.

And, you know, if I think of having no budget,

like I know there's like a handful of people

if I was going to build a truck

who I'd call and say, what do I do?

And I'm going to be spending 30 grand on a transmission.

I'm going to be spending 100,000 on, you know,

an engine chassis set.

Like it's just going to get really expensive,

but that's not where most of us are.

And the economy in general kind of sucks.

People don't have as much disposable income.

Things are tighter.

And they get in that position where they're like,

okay, do I spend $4,000, $4,500 on a brand new set

of injectors, or do I go to this other tier

or this other line?

And I saw that on some Facebook group.

It was these refurbished injectors

from a company I've never heard of.

And they were priced really low.

And there were a couple of guys that were like,

no, you call this place, you call that place.

But he's in a tight spot, right?

And we all know what that feels like

where he doesn't have $4,500 to go spend

on this brand new set of injectors.

So when we get into that realm

where we don't have the disposable income

to go brand new, how can we avoid being ripped off?

Like we went through the reviews a bit,

see the reviews, gloss over them, read over them,

see if it's about shipping or what it's about.

But then like how do I know where to buy them from?

Like if I go into Google and I type in

like who sells the best turbo,

the top of the list is gonna be companies

who paid to reach me with Google AdWords, right?

And I'm gonna fall into the ones that rank high

due to good SEO and things like that.

Simple list because that's a great,

fantastic, amazing question.

Throw the price out the window.

You're not purchasing new or remanufactured injectors,

you're purchasing experience.

If you purchase the brand new injectors,

you're gonna have a good experience.

If you purchase the remanufactured injectors,

you're going to have a bad experience.

It may not be tomorrow,

it may not be three weeks from now.

Some point in the future,

when you buy remanufactured anything,

you're purchasing a bad experience.

It may be a month or a year down the road,

but if that remanufactured injector

is utilizing a cheap Chinese nozzle,

which I know we're out there,

I get emails about them all the time, you know?

Oh, this is Fu Wang from China.

I sell mass amount of injector nozzle you buy from EM.

Oh, get the hell out of here.

I'm buying American.

I'm buying good quality.

I'm gonna buy Bosch.

It's not American, but it's better quality

than whatever she's selling.

And so I get these emails all day long

for injectors, for turbos,

for anything diesel related.

So I know the stuff's out there.

I know people are purchasing it.

I've seen it.

It led at the diesel shop I worked at previously.

We would install these customer supplied parts

to help the customer.

And it always turned into that customer bashing the shop

when that cheap Chinese part failed.

And so it got to the point

where we refused to install anything

that customers provided.

We'd summed it down the road.

We turned the work away

because we didn't want the one star reviews.

And so as a customer service person

talking to the customer,

purchase the experience that you want.

If you want a cheap experience,

you're gonna have a bad one.

If you want to have a good experience,

it's gonna cost you some money.

I don't give financial advice,

but if I found myself in that situation

where I needed a product

that I maybe couldn't afford today,

I've never used a firm,

but I see it everywhere now.

If it's not an option to get the best quality financially,

but you could do it if you used a firm,

I would say go that route

and just pay that off as fast as you can.

But at least it's an option.

That wasn't an option you and I had

when we were getting into the diesel performance stuff, man.

I mean, you wanted a set of injectors.

You're gonna have to have a couple of thousand dollars

up front.

We didn't have a firm back then.

Dude, I think it's a great option.

Probably not.

Like I said, I haven't used it.

I don't know what the interest rate is on it,

but I can give your viewers a list

of people to purchase from.

I would be looking for companies

that have been in the industry for a long time

because you don't last in this industry

unless you have really good customer service

and you have really good morals and values.

We've, you and I have seen people come and go.

And usually when they go quickly,

their dirt bags are trying to get rich quick.

They don't follow through on the customer service side

of things.

So if I was gonna tell your viewers

where to purchase parts,

thoroughbred diesel, XDP diesel,

diesel power products out of Spokane,

those three companies have been around

for almost two decades, if not longer.

You're probably gonna have a pretty good experience.

I purchased parts from diesel power products

before I ever worked in the diesel industry

when I was just an enthusiast.

Brian Howell took really good care of me,

checked up on me, was sending me a message on my birthday

or that Christmas to check up on the kids

and the wife and stuff.

So when you have people that care that much about you,

you're gonna purchase a really good experience

from those kinds of people.

So thoroughbred diesel, XDP diesel

and diesel power products would be my top three

if I had to name drop just cause they've all been

around forever and I've done business

with all of them forever as an enthusiast,

as a service writer, as a technician.

I bought parts from those people

and they've always done well at taking care of me.

So I feel like your viewers will be just fine

if they deal with those three companies.

It's been really cool with the podcast.

Coming up, gosh, when this airs,

it'll be like the 10-year anniversary

of the diesel podcast.

I was like, wow.

10 years.

I remember the very first episode you and I did too.

It's crazy to think about that,

but I've had a really, I think, fortunate experience

in being able to talk with the manufacturers

and the companies that I have known about for a long time,

but I didn't know them.

I didn't know the voice,

I didn't know the story behind them.

I didn't know their philosophy,

but it's made a big impact on me

and what I would either use on my own truck

or I get messages a lot where people say,

hey, Patrick, what would you do for a fuel system?

What turbo would you use?

Who builds a good transmission?

I need a transmission.

And a lot of times they're not companies

that are like partners on the podcast per se.

It's just people that I've gotten to know.

They know build really good stuff.

I love fast fuel systems.

I always liked them.

I always believed in the product itself,

but being able to talk with Brad and Jake

and different people there,

I really liked that company.

I really like Fleece Performance.

I really like their approach to building products

and how they do it.

I like Dan from Dan's Diesel Performance.

I'm Lenny from Dynamite Diesel Products.

Like I've been able to spend a lot of time with these people

and get to know their brands.

And I hope that when people listen to them,

they're able to get an insight

and it maybe sticks in their memory a little bit

that if they ever need a turbo or injector

or manifold or some fix-it part,

they know a place they can look at and research.

But where this kind of all transitions,

you had mentioned working at the shop level

and people bringing in parts.

How do I not get taken advantage of

if I choose a diesel shop to install or fix my truck?

I have no experience with this.

I've never worked on that side of it.

I don't know if it's maybe they want all payment up front.

Maybe they can't give you a time to do the repairs.

Maybe, I don't know what the warning signs are,

but how do I not get taken advantage of

during an install or a repair?

So that's a super, super loaded question

for a couple of reasons.

When I worked at a diesel shop,

there was a couple of different situations, scenarios

that played into that.

So in the beginning, customer supply part's not a big deal.

We almost preferred it at one point

because it was like, we don't gotta warranty it.

And we would tell them that, like they'd come in

and be like, hey, I bought this turbo online.

Will you install it?

100%, absolutely.

Well, I took it to three other shops and they said no

because they wanted to sell me the turbo

and they didn't want to install

the one that I purchased online.

I'd be like, man, I prefer that

because I ain't gonna warranty it.

And they're like, what do you mean

you're not gonna warranty it?

You didn't buy it from me.

So I got no skin in the game.

Like we're gonna bolt it on.

It's four bolts, a v-band clamp,

a drain and an oil supply line.

As long as it leaves here,

not leaking oil and making boost,

we did our job and we did it correctly.

Two times, I won't say the name of the company.

Two of those turbos, the turbine housings

that were casted in China cracked

and cut the customer's trucks on fire.

One of them burned to the ground and he lost everything.

The other ones, they were able to get it out

but the truck was almost a total loss.

Like we had to put a new cab on it and everything.

Both were 6-0 power strokes.

And so kind of internally as a company

looking at how catastrophic that was,

we kind of got to the point where we were like,

we're never installing that company's parts ever again.

Like we will not touch them with a 10-foot pole.

Somebody shows up here with them, turn them away.

Luckily, those two customers were cool.

We were able to show them what happened.

Obviously a cracked casting

has nothing to do with installation.

Neither one of those customers tried to sue us

but it was a big red flag.

It was a bad experience that we as a business decided

we were not gonna install that company's parts ever again.

And there's not just one company

shipping garbage around this country.

There's a lot of them.

If it's not one of the companies,

I would feel pretty safe saying

if it's a company that you haven't had on your show,

the customer probably shouldn't be doing business with.

There's a really good Facebook page

called Diesel Shop Owners Group

and Paul Rutledge put that group together.

Paul and Chris Rutledge are very moral and ethical people.

They're not gonna sell you a bad experience.

They're not gonna recommend somebody to you

if they're not good people.

And you don't get to stay in that group

if you've ever screwed over a customer

or a customer felt like you screwed them over

and you couldn't justify it, you're out.

So anybody in that group is probably pretty safe

to do business with as well.

Between you and I and the companies you just mentioned,

we can point people in the right direction.

So hopefully they land on your video and they see this

and reach out to you or me.

And we can save them from a bad experience,

but there are a lot of shady people

in the diesel industry, man.

And it's at a shop level to answer your question,

how do you not get screwed by the shop?

If they want all the money upfront, that's sketchy.

That's very, very sketchy.

I never, as a service writer,

I don't wanna get all the money upfront

because what that inevitably does

is it creates a situation where your truck

is gonna sit at that shop for a very long period of time

and you're probably not gonna see it again

because they got their money.

So you always wanna keep a little bit of something

on your end of the table.

It is not abnormal for a shop

to wanna deposit to cover parts,

especially if it's a very high volume shop

like where I worked where we're doing 60, 70 trucks a week.

You order $1,000 worth of parts for 70 trucks

in one week, you're playing with bankruptcy.

Like that's scary.

If none of those people come and pick those trucks up,

you're out of pocket 70 grand plus payroll.

That's a bad situation to put yourself in as a shop.

So if the shop's asking for a deposit,

they're probably smart.

They've probably been in business for a long time.

If they don't ask for a deposit, that's scary

because it's most likely a fly by night,

one or two tags, a couple of buddies that got together

and started a shop, they're not good businessmen.

They don't have good business habits,

good business practice.

And so those are things to look at.

And I wouldn't have thought of that

had I not worked in a shop environment

and dealt with other shops stealing work from me.

And that's how they would do it.

Oh, well, that shop wants a deposit.

Oh, Vinny's asking for a deposit.

We won't ask you for a deposit.

We'll float the parts, we'll take care of you.

Or we want everything upfront.

And so those are situations that I had to deal with

and navigate with customers.

And at the end of the day,

I told the customer this,

they would take our, I gave everybody an estimate.

We were 100% transparent, there was nothing to hide.

I'd give them an invoice, parts labor.

They would run around town,

take it to five other fly by night shops,

try to get them to beat our price.

And they would come back to me and then sometimes,

sometimes I'd never hear from them again,

they just take the cheaper shop and that's fine.

But sometimes they would come back and they would say,

hey, why are you $1,000 more

than this guy down the road?

Well, a couple of reasons.

First of all, we're sitting in a 33,000 square foot facility

with 22 drive-in bays and 18 technicians.

So that's not nothing.

Also, you as the customer, if this part fails,

what do you expect?

You want me to send a tow truck for free?

You want me to answer the phone on a weekend?

Do you want me to answer the phone after hours?

That's all valuable.

That's not, none of that is free.

Toe trucks are not free.

My time as a service rider is not free.

I didn't own the company,

but if the customer wanted me to answer my cell phone

after hours and wanted me to talk to him on the weekend

through a problem, I'll sell you that experience.

That's $1,000 more than the guy down the road.

That's not going to answer his phone after hours.

He's not going to answer his phone on the weekend.

And he's definitely not sending a rollback for free

if something goes wrong.

And so when I presented that to the customer that way,

they would almost always pay the extra $1,000

because it's what you expect as a human.

You want to be taken care of after a large

financial transaction.

So back to the whole, what's the cheapest thing for my truck?

I'll never, ever understand that mentality

because I just, I don't live there.

One of the things with shops that I have

a little bit of experience with that I look for,

like I know things can get hectic, right?

You got to cab off or yours, you know,

there's going to be some clutter, you know,

in a bay, right?

There's going to be some of that.

But I always look for how it's laid out, if I can see it.

Like, I think sometime last year,

I think you'd said, hey, does anybody know a shop

in New Jersey?

I'm looking for, you know, I have a customer up there

and I don't know how many people that are going to hear

this podcast live in New Jersey, but

I had visited auto works diesel

in Caldwell, New Jersey a long time ago.

And it's a little shop, nice little town.

And it was like almost surgical,

their layout of how they were doing things.

And everything was in bins and the technicians,

you know, had gloves on and everything was put.

It was just, it was watching like a production.

And I remember seeing that and I'm like,

I would bring my truck here.

I would, if I even had to put it on a flatbed

and ship it to him, I would send it to those guys.

It was that impressive.

My brother has a, he bought a 78 F-250

and he wanted to do a Cummins conversion,

NV5600 complete like restoration of this truck.

And I'd heard about a shop here in Colorado

about three hours south, through the podcast actually.

And like we drove it down there

and I got to walk through it and see it.

And it was the same thing.

Like it was very segmented where

the race trucks were built over on this side.

The repair was here.

This is how everything was organized.

The bathrooms were clean.

The lobby was really nice.

It just, it made you feel good about spending money there

and trusting them.

If they're like putting this much effort into

is our lobby comfortable?

Am I greeted?

Is like the way still like all the things

that you guys go through,

like are they put in the correct spots and organized?

So I think that's something, if you could see it

and kind of get a feel for the environment,

that might factor into a little bit as well

as far as do I want to give them

$5,000, $10,000, $50,000 to do this job.

100% yeah.

Yeah, you walk into a little dingy shop

and everything's greasy

and the toilet seat's got toilet paper on it.

You know, if they don't care about their facility,

they probably don't care about your truck.

You're just a paycheck to them.

And that's never where I'm going to spend my money.

You know, that's now that I no longer work

in a shop environment, I take my trucks to a shop

because I don't have one here on my property.

I actually don't even have a concrete slab

to jack a truck up on and check ball joints.

If I wanted to, it's just my property's all dirt.

And so the shop foreman that worked at the shop

I previously worked at left and started his own shop.

And the thing that's valuable to me about them is

he is hands down the most meticulous dyad guy

I have ever met in the 20 years

I've been in the diesel industry.

Like perfect example, I bought a 6.0 power stroke,

low miles, then sitting in a barn for years,

which is scary, that's the worst.

Like a low mileage garage kept diesel trucks

scares me more than a high mileage truck

that's towed trailers every day

because at least it was working.

The fuel system was running.

There was no stagnant fuel in the tank or the lines.

That's ideal.

Like if people are buying purchasing used trucks

you want the high mileage truck

that got driven every day

that got oil changes, you know, once a month.

You don't want the truck to sat in a barn for five years.

As cool as it sounds or as neat as it is to post up

a 30 year old truck with 27,000 original miles

that is a terrible situation.

I bought this truck.

It was a dream truck for me.

05 four door long bed, single rear wheel,

Harley Davidson F 350.

I've always wanted one.

I love that interior.

I love a four door long bed and they're rare.

They're very rare.

So I bought it knowing I was probably gonna have problems.

Drove it for a little while.

Sitting in a stoplight one day and the truck just dies.

Fire's right back up.

Something's wrong.

No check engine light, no codes.

So I take it to the shop.

I take it to my buddy Chris

at Quality Auto Salvage here in Georgia.

He goes to the truck, drove it every day

for two weeks, could not replicate the issue.

Checked everything that could possibly cause that issue.

Cam sensor, crank sensor, FICUM.

Everything that could cause a random 6.0 cutoff,

fire back up, no codes.

Everything checked good.

He refused to throw parts at my truck.

Even though he knew the top five things

that could cause that situation,

he did the right thing

and he didn't throw parts at my truck.

He told me to come and get it.

Keep driving it until it becomes more of an issue

or until it leaves you stranded, which sucks.

I don't wanna be stranded.

But that's what you're looking for

when you're trying to find a shop to work on your truck

is somebody that's gonna be honest and say,

hey, I cannot replicate or find the issue.

Therefore, come get your truck,

drive it till the issue becomes more persistent

and then we'll figure it out for you.

If a shop calls you and says we think

or it could be or in the past it was,

get your shit out of there.

Get the truck out of that shop and don't go back

because that's when they load the parts can

and they just start firing

until they accidentally get it right.

And I've seen that happen the entire 20 years

I've been in this industry.

I've been very lucky to work at some very good shops

with some really talented diagnostics people.

And they are hard to find.

I have a list of shops that I've kind of built

in my head over the years

that I really trust to help customers

because our customers aren't just sitting here in Georgia

they're traveling around the world

they're traveling around the country

they're traveling to Canada

they're traveling down to Mexico.

I was talking to a guy yesterday in Yucatan

with an F350 with a 73 in it.

So, when he was calling to ask

if he should put this part on his truck

that the shop down there told him to put on there

and I was like, absolutely not.

That thing's gonna leak oil, it's gonna be a nightmare

you're gonna have a bad experience, don't do it.

So I'm always happy to help.

If people watching this video

are looking for answers to questions

I love answering questions.

I will, I refuse to go to bed at night

until all my Facebook messages are answered

all my text messages are answered

all my emails are answered.

I cannot go to bed with notifications on my phone screen.

So, if anybody wants to reach out

I don't know everything.

I am an expert at nothing.

I know a lot about diesels

I know a lot about the industry

I know a lot about manufacturers

I know a lot about shops.

I'm always happy to help

if anybody has questions

they can reach out.

Common question we get from you guys a lot is

hey, I need a diesel engine.

I either, you know, I can't wait this long to get one

or normal place I get stuff from it.

It just takes too long or I don't

they don't have the parts in it that I need.

Maybe my truck's not stock or I tow heavy with it.

I don't want to go back with just a stock engine.

DFC diesel is a sponsor of the podcast.

We worked with them, you know, hand in hand

on doing episodes answering technical questions.

They have a complete lineup

of Cummins, Duramax and Powerstroke

remanufactured engines

that are set to a standard of ISO 9001 2015 standards

which is a huge deal in the aftermarket

and there's certain levels of quality testing validation

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So, you know, when you get one of those engines

the type of quality that's built behind it

with an industry leading warranty

that's really comprehensive.

And, you know, the other thing with that

is, you know, sometimes the options that are out there

it's just it's a basic OEM engine.

You want a little bit more

you don't want to have the same failure again.

So there's a bunch of different series of engines

that they have from core, street, tow haul

and also the speed of air series

which we've covered on the podcast before.

There's a lot of really cool benefits to it.

And if you have questions about that, reach out to them.

If you don't know the type of engine

that you're looking for.

If you go to dfcdiesel.com

there's a ton of info there.

You can send an email or you can reach out to them.

Also, they're working with speed of air pistons

which it's the only piston that pays for itself.

And there's a lot of really cool technology behind it.

So you can add that into your build

and be able to get better fuel economy,

you know, increased power, increased torque

and better engine life out of it.

You know, some of the most common engine applications

or series of engines that they have with that lead time

a lot of them are in stock

or they have really short lead times.

So you can check your favorite retailer

or go to dfcdiesel.com, check them out

to see what's in stock, see what you can get.

If you have questions, maybe you want to do, you know

something that's outside of the normal series of engines

they have tons of choices for rods, cranks, pistons,

valve train upgrades, tons of different things.

So if you're in the market, definitely make sure

and hit on over and check them out.

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One of the things I really look forward to,

you reminded me of it,

is I like when my point of contact

at a shop is opinionated.

Like you're very opinionated on parts.

Kat from Siskiw Diesel's really opinionated on parts.

Other people are.

And when they're like that, you know,

if I went to you and said, hey Vinny,

I'm looking at part X, but on my truck

and you're like, dude, that sucks, don't run it.

I won't even sell it to you or don't even buy it.

You need to run this one.

I know that that's because of experience.

Or if I went to Kat and said, hey Kat,

will you put this on my truck?

She's like, absolutely not.

I will not use that.

This is the one I'm gonna use.

This is what you need to do.

Then I know that, one, they have an investment

in their business to have like experience with it

and they're pointing me in a direction.

So I don't like, if I ask questions

and it's just kind of wishy-washy or it's like.

Yeah man, we'll throw it on.

Yeah, we don't care.

Yeah, bring it in.

We'll throw it on there for you.

Not a big deal.

Yeah, that's scary.

That means they don't know anything.

And they shouldn't be working at a diesel shop.

Yeah, it's, I guess it's kind of,

it's hard to do that, right?

Like we know because we've been around it

or enthusiasts for a really long time.

But when I think back to when I was new,

I didn't know anything.

I think the first part I ever bought, gosh, it was like 2008.

I think I got it from Thoroughbred Diesel.

And it was just because I found it, you know,

like it popped up and it was a smooth kind of experience.

But the one thing in 2026 that absolutely scares me

more than any other part on a truck.

I'm sure you have a lot of information with us.

Is tuning.

Because in the past, like if we go back a long time,

I'm not gonna name companies

or talk about what kind of tuning or anything like that.

But you had like a handful of places that were really good.

And sometimes they would specialize in Duramax or Ford,

power strokes or Cummins.

And they were tuning, you know, big race trucks

or tuning daily drivers.

You had a problem.

You could reach out to them.

They had a phone number, a social media presence.

There was accountability.

And then it became like the wild, wild West

with what people like to do to their trucks now

where there isn't, the big names aren't doing it.

They don't want the cases.

They don't want the felonies.

They don't want to go bankrupt.

They don't want to deal with any of that stuff.

And that space has been filled by places

you may not know.

You may not know who's doing the tuning.

There isn't that accountability.

And it scares me so much

because look at the price of trucks.

Like I'm dating myself,

but I remember finding like a mid-level trim,

maybe even like a Laramie or something,

50 grand, $55,000, four wheel drive diesel truck.

You're not touching that now.

You know, you're 90,000, 105,000, 110,000

for some of those nicer ones.

And I'm like, who am I trusting to tune my engine?

So like, I guess maybe to step away

from the repair a little bit

and kind of focus on the upgrades that people like,

what are your thoughts with not getting ripped off with tuning?

So I'm gonna go a little deeper on this

just to paint the picture

because it is an important topic.

We got out of deletes a long time ago

because a good friend of mine got busted,

phoned me, told me about the whole experience,

sounded terrifying.

Didn't sound like something I wanted to deal with.

We kiboshed it.

We got rid of anything and everything in the shop

that could have ever been associated with deletes.

And cold turkey quit and it hurt, it sucked financially.

That was a terrible, terrible decision to have to make

as a service rider at a shop.

And it put the shop owner and myself at odds.

I was demoted over that decision.

I lost a lot of customers over that decision.

But I didn't go to prison

and I didn't get Hillary Clinton in my bathtub.

But it sucked.

And prior to that decision,

we had never replaced a six, seven power stroke engine ever.

And we were a shop that specialized in power strokes.

Starting in 2020, a couple of years

after we made the decision to stop,

and a lot of the people that you and I both know

that we're doing really good tuning,

they all got in trouble.

They all got fine.

They all got prison sentences or a lot of bad stuff

happened to really good people.

And so you get all these fly by night people

in the industry that are now doing that tuning.

And we are replacing six, seven power stroke engines

left and right, lift or failure, spun crank gears.

Never seen a spun crank gear before that.

Like I'd heard rumors, there was one company

that was just constantly preaching on Facebook

about welding crank gears.

And we're all sitting down here like,

what are they doing up there?

And it was tuning.

It was that shop's tuning that was spinning crank gears.

And I'm not a tuner, but just to very lamely

put that puzzle together.

If you're injecting fuel at the wrong point

of pistons coming up and down,

you can almost create like,

you're putting force against the piston

when you shouldn't be,

which is pushing force through the rod,

which is putting force on the crank.

And as the crank's trying to go this way,

all this fuel's being hogged into the piston

and the crank starts trying to go this way.

And now you have a spun crank here.

So tuning guy, I don't know the exact timing

and injector duration and all that stuff

that goes into creating that scenario.

But I know that that's what's happening

because when we were buying good tuning

from these three companies, we didn't see those problems.

And when those three companies got in trouble

and stopped tuning,

and Tom Dick and Harry slinging tunes

out of their grandma's basement,

wearing tighty whiteies and a white beater,

all of a sudden are flooding the market

and everybody on Facebook's talking about these dudes

that I've never heard of before

and how amazing their tuning is.

And then all of a sudden my parking lot is full of trucks

with those people's tuning on it

with spun crank gears and cracked pistons

and shattered rods.

It's very much, very obviously a tuning issue

because the good people are gone, the hacks are here

and now we're doing repairs

that we've never done before.

6R140 transmissions, we were hogging 820 horsepower,

a stock 6R140 for years.

Dual fuelers, SX-E369, stock injectors,

upgraded intercooler, really good tuning,

eight and a quarter was not unheard of

on a six, seven power stroke.

And we were doing it for years

and we never built a transmission.

We'd never blown up a 6R140.

It just wasn't a thing.

Then Facebook sensation so and so over here

comes out with this amazing 6R140 trans tuning

and I got a freaking parking lot full

of blown up 6R140s.

The saddest part is easy as that is to recognize

from within a shop, the individual users don't see it

on a pattern scale like we do.

And so when I'm trying to tell them,

hey, get the trans tunes off your truck,

that's why your transmission's blown up.

They're like, no man, that guy's got like a,

he's got like a hundred thousand followers on Facebook.

He's amazing.

Okay.

I don't care, keep it.

I just sold you a $12,000 transmission

and you paid a bunch of labor and flew it.

I don't care.

Come back in a month, we'll do it again.

I'm simply telling you this

because I've seen the pattern.

I know what's happening.

I know it's tuning.

I'm trying to save you money

and some of them listen and some of them don't.

And the ones that don't listen,

we made a lot of money off of.

And that's sad.

It's sad that trying to be a helpful person

causes you to lose customers

because they just don't want to believe it

because at the end of the day,

a guy working at a diesel shop like me

for years and years and years,

I only see the bad.

Healthy people don't go to doctor's offices.

The guy that's got a million miles on his LML

and never been in a shop

is never gonna, I'm never gonna see that guy.

He's not my customer.

It's the guy that blew a head gasket

at 30,000 miles with an LML that I had to fix.

And then we studded it and then it blew another head gasket.

And then we're trying to figure out

why these LMLs are blowing head gaskets left and right.

Those are the people I see.

I don't see the people that are happy with their truck.

I don't see the people

that had a great experience with their truck.

I only see the people that had a bad experience.

So I got to put the patterns together

and then figure out,

we got to do all the mystery work

to put this together and figure out

what's causing these repeat failures on a mass scale

because we did so many LML head gasket jobs.

But you and I had a conversation years ago

about LML head gaskets.

And in the comments, 860,000 views later,

we had a bunch of pissed off LML customers

saying that LMLs don't blow head gaskets.

Well, obviously theirs hasn't,

but the ones I'm talking about absolutely did.

So it's frustrating.

It's really frustrating trying to help people

in this industry.

And you got a bunch of keyboard warriors

calling you an idiot

when all you've done is tried to share your experience

to help people save money.

That's why I love to have shops on the podcast

or people who have worked at shops on the podcast

because they're like,

they're in between the customer

who they're the sample size of one, right?

Like they've never had a problem with their truck

in 300,000 miles.

It's the greatest truck ever.

Well, they just have a sample size of what they own.

You're getting who even knows how many per month

or per year,

but you're getting a lot more feedback from them.

But then you're also working with

ever many dozens or hundreds of

aftermarket companies that are in that space.

So you get the feedback from both ends.

And it's a great way to kind of bridge the gap.

That's why I thought you'd be perfect to have on

to discuss like how not to get ripped off.

Would you say like on a positive note though,

is it easier to find out

or is it easier to avoid getting ripped off now

in like 2026 than it was five years ago,

10 years ago?

Yeah, there's this podcast.

This podcast is amazing.

Like I've never been paid to come on here.

You've never, I've never paid you to have me on.

Like this is just a very honest relationship

between two guys that did business together for many years.

I bought parts from the company that you work for.

You sold parts to the company that I work for.

We had a great relationship and we remained friends

after you quit that company.

And after I quit the company I worked for.

And so this is a very honest space.

There's no money involved here.

And when you have, when your viewers

have that available to them,

there are people that pay to be on your show

and there are people that you've interviewed

that maybe had an angle or wanted to sell something

but there's so many honest conversations on here

where there's no money initiative

and that's invaluable to the customer.

Like this conversation is invaluable.

The people that watch this video,

you're just getting raw honesty completely unscripted.

I think you asked me what two days ago if I could do this.

Yeah.

And I don't even know what we're specifically

gonna talk about.

Like this, it doesn't get any more honest, you know?

And it's funny doing the whole YouTube thing.

It's like you're not scripted.

So you say one word wrong

and people just flame you in the comments

and I love it.

Like they don't realize they're just helping us.

But it is honest at the end of the day

whether we slip up and say something wrong or whatever,

but yeah, the fact that this exists,

this did not exist when you and I

were getting into the diesel industry

or when we were, not even the diesel industry,

when you and I were just enthusiasts

and you were trying to race your truck

and I was trying to sled pull with my truck

and we were learning this stuff hard.

Like we would buy injectors from somebody

that we thought was reputable

and then two months later,

they were out of business

or we got tuning from somebody

that everybody was worshiping online

and then three months later, they were out of business

and that was a scary time

because I'm not made of money.

Like there was a point in my life

where I made a lot of money

but I still didn't wanna waste it ever.

And so the fact that platforms like this exist is awesome.

The scary thing is the Facebook pages

like I frequent probably 70 different diesel related

Facebook pages between Powerstroke, Duramax and Cummins

and I see so much bad information posted on it.

Like people just worshiping brand X intercooler pipe kit

and I'm like, bro, I've installed 30 of those things

and every single one of them was different

and every single one of them didn't line up

and every single one of them,

we had to beat the heck out of it with a hammer

to get it to fit

or we had to throw the boots that came with it away

to buy boots that did work.

But I see these guys on Facebook just bold face lying

saying it popped right in, it fit perfectly.

And I'm like, there's no freaking way.

There's no freaking way.

I got 30 bad ones in a row in a shop environment

and you just bought one in your driveway

and it just fell right into place.

So that's a little bit scary

but easily enough, it's avoidable.

So if you're in the Facebook groups

and you feel like you're getting bad information

and you feel like you're not getting honest answers

and you feel like you're getting sold a marketing line,

reach out to Patrick, reach out to me,

reach out to Patrick and he'll get a hold of me

or somebody, if you're having an issue with turbos

we know good turbo people.

If you're having an issue with injectors

we know good injector people.

The big thing that I would look at

and this kind of just came to me as I was talking

if you're looking at a company

and you're looking at spending a lot of money with them

see if they're on LinkedIn.

I follow a lot of diesel companies on LinkedIn

and none of the sketchy people

that I've dealt with in this industry are on LinkedIn.

And if they are on LinkedIn, their accounts are dead.

Like they haven't posted in years.

They've never, they're not on there every day.

Like I follow fleece performance on LinkedIn.

They are commenting, posting active every day.

SNS Motorsports, they are commenting, making videos

putting stuff on LinkedIn every day.

You have nothing to gain by putting content on LinkedIn

other than being accountable to your peers in the industry.

Because you put something on LinkedIn as a manufacturer

and it's not perfect or factual or good.

You're gonna get called out

by other really good companies that are active on LinkedIn.

It's not like Facebook.

Like Facebook and Instagram and TikTok

they're popularity contest.

Anybody will say anything on there for views

and likes and clicks.

Not LinkedIn.

So if you wanna like weed out some of the BS

in the diesel performance industry specifically

and you're looking at parts from a company

jump on LinkedIn, search that company.

If they don't show up or if they show up

and they're not active

probably a pretty good way to gauge

whether they're reputable or not.

You just reminded me of a conversation I had

with a shop owner.

And he had been listening to your podcast

for a really long time.

And some of the guests you've had

I've decided to carry their product lines.

And he had sent me a picture

of one was for fuel additives and some other ones.

And I think what you just mentioned there with LinkedIn

like I didn't come into this conversation

even thinking about it from a shop perspective.

But if you do have a shop

and you're looking for how do I not get ripped off

offering parts to my customers.

LinkedIn would be a really good way

cause it does like I just recently got on there

like last year and it does.

It takes away a lot of the drama

and the like click farm stuff and everything else.

And it's really just about where to find

places that are solid.

I'm not sure if like an enthusiast

would jump on there and look

but for somebody that's in the industry

that would be a great place to start

and be able to see those kinds of things.

I think the other part you mentioned

I'm really passionate about content.

And I'm not just saying this specifically

about the diesel podcast.

Like I do listen to other truck podcasts.

I do find value in what they say.

I find value in your channel.

I really like what you do.

There's other people

that are really solid content creators.

But when you like I had someone mentioned to me

it was on I don't remember if it was on our Instagram

or what page we have.

But he said I don't buy a product

unless a company has been on your show

and they've been on and I've heard them talk.

So and I never even thought of that.

But he obviously looked at it like

you're gonna be on for an hour.

You can't really hide for an hour.

There could be a curveball I throw you.

There could be something I ask that you can't

you don't get from a magazine ad.

You don't get from a PA announcement.

You don't get from a billboard.

You don't get from a t-shirt or hat or something like that.

Like you have to hold a conversation for an hour

or when you do a video and it's 30, 45 minutes long

like you can't hide from the camera.

You can't hide from the content.

And so that's a great way.

And I love how kind of legacy media it is dying out.

The old way of it is like I'm sure you know

like with your parents or uncles or older people

like they would buy stuff based on like

you get a mailer like a piece of paper in the mail

and like a coupon book and they would buy it, right?

Like I remember that stuff and I'm like

there's no depth like what's it made out of?

How does it work?

Why'd they think of making this product?

How does it install?

What is it good for?

Like you need an hour to talk about that

or at least 20, 30 minutes to be able to do that.

So I think the point you made is extremely valuable

and I mean the world saw it during the last election.

It determined, podcasts determined an election

and in some part I don't know how much

but when you're willing to engage for like an hour.

I agree with you.

100% on that.

I seriously believe what you just said.

Yeah.

Yeah, Joe Rogan saved that election.

Sean Ryan saved that election, right?

And this channel is gonna save people money.

Like you cannot hide from the, like you said

the camera, you can't hum on this show

and spew BS for 35, 40 on a nowhere

and not get caught.

Like it's just not possible.

And so I think this is a very valuable place for enthusiasts.

I think it's a very valuable,

like the biggest thing that I see

in this industry right now.

You know, I didn't know where I was gonna go

or what I was gonna do

when I quit working at the last shop that I was at.

And I did the same, like you said

about a year and a half ago I got on LinkedIn

and that's where I started seeing

where LinkedIn falls in the world of social media.

It's not a social media site at all.

It's a site for professionals to get their name

out there and to get hired by these companies

and that's not what I use it for.

You know, I use it to vet manufacturers.

I use it to vet people that I'm selling parks for.

Like it's how I decide

if I take somebody serious or not.

And unfortunately there's gonna be some people

that take advantage of that.

But at the end of the day really good marketing

sells really bad parts.

And that's unfortunate because there's some people

that are very talented at marketing

slinging garbage in the diesel industry.

And it's videos like this

that are gonna set people apart

and hold people accountable.

And the crappy thing is in today's day and age

we can't just call out and say,

hey, company X, Y and Z are garbage

because you get sued for slander or something like that.

But it makes it hard, like especially with what I'm doing

you gotta be careful, you gotta tiptoe.

Like you wanna just say the quiet part out loud

and be honest to save people money.

But at the same time you got everybody's sue happy

and got an attorney on speed dial.

And it's just, it's a hard part,

it's a hard ethical mountain to climb and stand on.

Because while you're trying to save customers money

and sell people a good experience

you do have to worry about getting sued.

And the Sean Ryan Dan Crenshaw thing

is a perfect example of that.

But Titan in the podcast industry

and he's got a dude trying to sue him for being honest.

Like that's the reality of the world that we live in.

We don't get to be honest without consequences anymore.

Yeah, yeah, I think I agree with you.

Like the approach that I kind of take is like

who impresses me like that I see in the diesel space

and then I wanna talk to them.

And if they're not on or haven't been on

it might be a reason why, you know?

Because it all comes back to,

I think maybe I chatted with you about this.

A lot of these, I think I'm at like 800 episodes

or something so they've all kind of bled together

to some extent, but I love helping people.

That's why I do this.

That's why I got into this.

And yeah, it's about trucks

but I learned like early on it's not just about a truck

it's not just about sheet metal and moving parts

like it's a livelihood for some people.

It's a dream for others.

It can sometimes tie into a loved one they had,

a truck they inherited.

It reminds them of their dad or their grandfather.

It's much, much, much deeper than just truck parts.

And I know you, as long as I've known you

you like to help people.

Like that's, I think the foundation of everything

we've ever talked about and you've ever done.

That's why I do it.

So I kind of look for places that you can find companies

you can find guests you can find conversations to have

with people who are like-minded.

And ultimately I don't want to see anyone ripped off.

Like I read horror stories, you know

of people who spend thousands of dollars

and they don't get the product at all if ever

or the trucks a nightmare and it just sits

and I just think with the information

that we have available the way we can reach people

how accessible like you are other content creators are

you can find that information

just helping like one person maybe stop and say

I'm going to read those one star reviews.

What were they about?

Oh, they're about the packaging.

Oh, they didn't include the, the coosie in it

or the hat or the sticker pack or whatever.

So they got a one star.

Well that's different than like the part didn't fit

and you know broke or blew up or something like that.

So yeah, I know my wife has taught me a lot

about actually reading the reviews.

You know, I used to scroll and scroll through

and count them and she'd be like, go in there and read it.

You know, especially with Amazon purchases, like I'm,

I'm the worst, like I'll be cooking dinner or something

and I break a utensil and I'm like, what a piece of junk.

I'm like, go on Amazon and find it.

She was like, well, read the reviews.

I'm like, I don't need a review.

I don't need to read it.

It's got 1200 five star reviews.

She's like, read them.

And I started reading them and man, there's so much

like you can bought farm five star reviews nowadays.

Like that's terrifying.

Yeah.

But yeah, I mean, it's the same for me

at the end of the day, like the thing that gets me

out of bed every day to do what I do is the kid

that inherited his grandpa's truck and grandpa never wanted,

you know, I talked to grandpa 15 years ago

when I was at alligator performance

and grandpa called in and I, you know,

I tried selling them a tuner, cold air intake and exhaust.

He's like, well, you know,

a Ford wanted that stuff to be on there.

They'd have put it on there.

I'm like, Ford's never gonna want that stuff on it.

Are you talking about grandpa?

But now his grandkids got that truck

and he's trying to keep up with his buddy

that's got a six, seven power stroke

and he's got an old 97, 73.

I know everything you need to keep up

with that brand new truck.

And I know the good quality parts versus the BS parts.

I know the parts that are gonna work for 10 years

and longer.

And I know the parts that you're gonna install

that are similar, but they're gonna leak fuel

in three months or they're gonna leak oil

in two weeks.

Like I've been there, I've done it

and I've done it not a couple of times.

I've done it hundreds of times.

And so I hope people see this and reach out

and communicate because I'm like you,

I could care less about the money.

I don't make any money doing what I'm doing currently.

You know, I make money helping diesel shops

and diesel manufacturers with marketing

and stuff like that.

The stuff that I do on my own time

is just 100% effort and zero reward.

The reward is the people watching this

not having bad experiences.

That's the reward.

You know, the people calling and asking about a part,

they're just about to click on and buy

and then they shoot me a message.

I'm like, that's garbage, it's junk, don't do it.

Here's what's gonna happen.

Man, thank you so much.

I'm gonna take that money and spend it on this.

Yeah, that's a great part.

So that's what I do and that's why I do it.

It's 0% financially driven.

It's 100% enthusiast driven and helping people.

Like that's all I care about.

I wanna see it grow.

I want more people to be in diesel.

Like imagine if diesel was more popular

and I think the ownership has grown over the years

but like if it was more mainstream

then there's more people to reach.

There's more conversations to have.

There's unique builds.

There's unique stories that can happen.

And some of the most powerful episodes I've ever done

is when somebody gets emotional on the podcast

talking to me about their truck.

Like a grown man because it's a real emotion for him

and a story of how it relates to a truck

and an experience like I never thought that would happen.

As guys, we don't really get emotional.

We definitely don't show it.

But we're talking about a truck

that has meaning to somebody

and who had it, who gave it to them

and how they've resurrected it.

And sometimes I just get like goosebumps

while I'm listening to this story

and I'm like people need to hear this

and it's because someone else out there

is looking to do the same thing.

Restore an old OBS or maybe it's a truck

he uses for work, he's trying to support his family

and he's at that point where I can't buy

a $4,500 injector set and I don't wanna get ripped off.

What do I do?

Who do I contact?

What are some options?

Pull my injector, send him in.

Is that something that's viable to a good shop?

Maybe save a little bit of money

or I can't afford the core charger.

How does all that work?

Which you don't get in really quick little bits

of information or you don't see it on an ad

or something like that.

So I really appreciate you chatting with me today.

I was excited to do this episode.

It's like the age old question

of how to not get ripped off

with spending money on these trucks

which it's easy to spend a lot.

So I appreciate your insights Vinnie.

I appreciate what you're doing with review diesel.

It's really cool to see the information

you're putting out there.

So keep it up big fan

and I'm sure we'll chat later on in the year.

Appreciate it.

What's happened to be on, it's always a good time

and like you just said,

the emotional side of owning a truck

has never really been a thing for me.

I've always just bought what I wanted

and had what I wanted and my truck

that I have sitting in the driveway right now

I bought what was always a dream truck to me

just to find out that it was previously owned

by Charlie Fish who I really look up to a lot.

Casey Turbos, he bought the truck for R&D purposes

and then sold it to a buddy of mine

and then I ended up buying it from him

and I never knew it was Charlie's truck

until after I bought it.

So while it was something that I probably would have bought

and sold and bought something else at one point

is now something that I'll probably keep

for the rest of my life just because

along to a very good friend of mine

that I look up to a lot.

So yeah, that's the important stuff.

Very cool.

Well, thanks again for chatting with me Vinny

and we'll connect here.

I'm sure throughout the year

with some other hot button topics,

some of the cool things that are going on.

So thanks again.

Sounds good brother, I appreciate it.

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Also want to give a shout out

to some of our Patreon supporters,

Robert, TSW Diesel, Brian, John,

all of our other Patreon supporters,

all of you who subscribe on YouTube and podcast apps,

follow us on social media.

We appreciate all your support here

in year nine of the DC podcast

and look forward to bringing you more of the content

that you want to hear in 2025.

Till next time, keep the shiny side up.

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Don’t Get Ripped Off Buying Parts

About this episode

performance parts

2020 Ford F-150 Platinum

OEM parts

Ram

GM

injector

injection pump

torque converter

turbo

diesel performance market

Cummins 5.9

Industrial Injection

horsepower

Air Dog

Fast

water separator

common rail fuel systems

low pressure fuel systems

Cummins Forum

hot shots

DEF tank

oil supply line

Ford F350

Porsche 911

tuning

Power Stroke engine

head gasket

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