Power Driven is a company the speaker works for. The context suggests they do diesel performance work—building or tuning trucks and helping people make more power.
“Dodge Ram” is a pickup truck model line. Diesel guys like them because they’re common and there are lots of parts and tuning options for making more power.
Concept
turn up
“Turn up” means making the engine produce more power. In diesel trucks, that usually comes from tuning the computer and related settings so the engine burns more fuel and makes more boost.
“Mechanical injected” means the diesel fuel is delivered using a mechanical system instead of electronics. That can affect how the truck runs and how people tune it for power.
Two-wheel drive means only one set of wheels gets the engine’s power. That matters because it affects traction—how well the truck can hook up when you’re making power.
Term
NB 4500
“NB 4500” is the name of a specific manual transmission model. Diesel builders mention it because it’s a common swap choice for handling big torque.
“6.7 common rail” is a specific diesel engine (6.7 liters) that uses a high-pressure fuel system. People swap it in because it’s a strong platform for making power and tuning.
The “P pump” is the diesel engine’s fuel pump that controls how much fuel gets injected. If it’s not set up right (or starts acting up), the truck can make the wrong amount of power and can be unreliable.
“800 horse” means the truck is making roughly 800 horsepower. It’s a way to describe how strong the engine is, especially in drag racing where power matters a lot.
A “roller” is basically a rolling chassis. It has wheels and suspension, but it’s missing the full engine and drivetrain so you can build your own setup.
Turbochargers use the engine’s exhaust to spin a fan that pushes more air into the engine. More air usually means more power, especially on diesel engines.
Term
thousand
They’re talking about how much power the trucks make. “A thousand” means around 1,000 horsepower, and the point is that the numbers jumped a lot over a few years.
That’s describing a turbo that failed so violently it broke loose and came out through the hood. It usually happens when the truck is pushed way past what the parts can safely handle.
This is a type of diesel fuel system where the fuel is controlled mechanically instead of by computer commands. People talk about it because it can be set up for big power builds.
Cummins is a well-known diesel engine maker. In this context, they’re saying it’s the basic, common starting point for diesel performance.
Term
AFC live
“AFC live” is a way to control the diesel’s fueling more precisely. More fuel (within safe limits) usually means more power, but it can also increase smoke and stress the engine.
“2000 horsepower” means the truck is making an enormous amount of power. If the engine “blew up” near that level, it usually means the parts couldn’t handle the stress of making that much power.
“Daily” means it’s driven like a normal vehicle, not just raced. If it makes 1200 horsepower and still gets driven around, that suggests the setup was built to be tough and usable, not just fast for a short time.
“Blew up the engine” means the engine failed badly—like a major internal breakdown. On very high-power diesel builds, it often happens when the engine parts can’t survive the heat and stress of the tune and power level.
After an engine failure, the usual fix is replacing the engine and going back to a similar build plan. That means they’re trying to keep the same kind of power, but with a fresh motor so it can survive.
He added heavy weight to the back to help the tires grab when accelerating. It can improve traction, but it’s also risky and can make the truck handle worse.
Preload is how tightly the suspension is set up before the truck even hits bumps or squats. Adjusting it can help the truck sit right and put power to the ground better.
“Stance” is basically how the truck sits—how high or low it is, and whether it squats when you accelerate. The right stance helps the tires grip better.
A “competition vehicle” is a version of the truck that’s built for racing or contests. It’s usually set up to make more power and work better under event stress.
“Power windows” are window regulators driven by an electric motor rather than manual cranks. In a drag/competition context, mentioning them can signal the truck still has creature comforts and street-like convenience even after being built for high-power runs.
Term
10 mile an hour
That “10 mile an hour” detail sounds like a specific rule or condition for the competition. It matters because it determines whether the run qualifies as a record.
Term
Southwest win
They’re talking about wind—specifically wind coming from the southwest. Wind can change how fast a truck runs, so it’s mentioned when arguing about record validity.
Concept
mechanical truck
A “mechanical truck” typically means a diesel setup using mechanical (non-electronic) fuel control—often older-style injection components. Compared with modern common-rail systems, mechanical setups usually have different tuning flexibility and can behave differently under racing conditions.
Fuel injection is how the engine delivers fuel into the cylinders. Different injection systems can change how the diesel burns, which affects power and performance.
Term
tow truck motor
“Tow truck motor” is a colloquial way to describe a diesel engine sourced from or built like one used in heavy-duty towing applications. In this context it implies a robust, torque-focused powerplant used to make high power reliably for competition.
Sled pulling is when a truck tries to drag a heavy sled as far as possible. The challenge is getting enough traction and torque to keep moving under load.
NHRDA is a group that organizes diesel drag racing events. If you hear it in a conversation, it usually means a specific sanctioned race series with set rules.
“Four nineties” is a way racers talk about their quarter-mile time—around 4.90 seconds. It’s basically a target for how quick the truck runs down the strip.
A “dino rig” is basically a specialized setup for testing power on a dyno. The speaker is saying the challenge is making changes fast enough to keep up with the next test or race setup.
Term
solid block
A “solid block” is a stronger engine foundation. The point is that the engine is built to handle extreme stress from high power levels.
Timing is about when the engine injects fuel (and/or starts combustion) during each engine cycle. Changing timing can make the fuel burn better and produce more power. The host is saying you can tune timing to match different conditions, like dyno runs or nitrous use.
Nitrous is a system that adds nitrous oxide to the engine. It brings extra oxygen so the engine can burn more fuel and make more power. But it also forces you to tune things like fuel and timing so the added oxygen doesn’t cause incomplete burning.
Injection pressure is how hard the fuel system sprays fuel into the engine. If it’s too low, the fuel comes out as bigger droplets that don’t burn as quickly. The host is saying that’s a problem when you’re trying to make big power with nitrous.
The bore is the inside diameter of the engine cylinder. The host is saying you want the fuel to burn quickly before the piston moves too far down. If it burns too slowly, the engine doesn’t get the best combustion results.
This is a dyno location in Utah where people bring their cars/trucks to get tested. A dyno measures how much power the vehicle makes so tuners can compare runs.
AFR means the air-to-fuel mix the engine is burning. “50 to one” or “16 to one” describes how rich or lean the mixture is, and tuners watch it to make power safely.
Fuel quantity is how much fuel the engine injects during a run, which directly affects power, exhaust temperature, and AFR. On a dyno, keeping fuel quantity consistent lets tuners compare changes in other variables (like nitrous or boost) more fairly.
This is about being sure the tune will actually produce the target power when the car is under load on the dyno. It’s based on past testing and knowing the engine’s limits.
A billet block is an engine block machined from a solid piece of metal (“billet”) rather than cast. It’s used in high-stress builds because it can offer strength and consistency, but the speaker is saying this wasn’t required for the result being discussed.
They’re talking about adding more fuel to make more power. But if you just add fuel without tuning the rest of the engine, it can overheat or break.
Term
scatter your crap
“Scatter your crap” is a colloquial way to describe mechanical failure under extreme combustion conditions—parts can break and get thrown apart. The context suggests the speaker means that aggressive fueling plus nitrous, without correct tuning, will repeatedly cause failures.
Term
26, 2900 horsepower
The speaker is referencing very high engine output figures in the context of failures—people trying to reach extreme horsepower targets and blowing up their builds. The key takeaway is that chasing power numbers without matching the supporting tuning and hardware strategy leads to reliability problems.
Term
dinopole
“Dinopole” sounds like slang for a dyno run/result. Here it means the dyno pull looked easy because the tune matched what the engine was being asked to do.
Concept
holding secrets
Some racing teams keep their best tricks to themselves so others can’t copy them. The host is saying that sharing what you learn can help the whole scene get better.
“3000 horsepower” is an extreme power goal people chase in racing. The point here is that it used to seem impossible, but now it’s being done more often.
A “cast block” means the engine’s block is made by casting (pouring molten metal into a mold), which is common on production-based engines. The host is arguing that making huge power on a cast block is especially impressive because it’s typically less robust than more exotic, purpose-built bottom-end designs.
Transmission “slip” means the gears/clutches aren’t grabbing as firmly as they should. Instead of transferring power cleanly, parts of the transmission can slip and waste energy as heat.
A “dyno strategy” is how you choose to test the car on a dyno so the results are meaningful. In this case, they were planning around how the transmission would behave under load.
They’re saying the engine speed on the dyno lined up with what the car’s logs showed. If those match, it’s a good sign the dyno test is recreating the same conditions as real driving.
A clutch pack is the part of an automatic transmission that clamps to engage a gear. If the clutch pack is behaving correctly, it means the transmission is grabbing as intended instead of slipping.
Term
48 for, uh, 47, 48 style trans
They’re talking about a particular kind of transmission used in these builds. The idea is they started with a known transmission design and built it up so it can handle the power reliably.
“Aggressor 480s” are a particular turbo setup. Bigger/smaller turbo choices change how quickly the engine makes boost and how much power it can hold during the run.
The Dodge Charger is a car made for performance, usually with a powerful engine. People often modify them to make more power, and that’s why it comes up in tuning discussions. The podcast mention sounds like they’re talking about a particular Charger setup as a starting point.
A “base charger” is the primary turbocharger used as the foundation of the forced-induction system. The “Midwest 110 G 57 base charger” indicates a specific turbo model/size, which determines airflow capability and how the engine’s boost control strategy is tuned.
“Gates” are valves that help control boost pressure from the turbo. The setup here uses multiple gates so the boost behaves the way the driver/tuner wants during the pass.
The “hot pipe” is part of the turbo plumbing where hot, pressurized gases go. Sending a valve/gate to it changes how boost and exhaust pressure are handled.
“Pounds of boost” means how much extra pressure the turbo is pushing into the engine. Higher boost usually means more potential power—if the engine is built and tuned to handle it.
“1500 horse” means about 1500 horsepower. It’s a way of saying the truck is making extremely high power for a drag pass.
Term
gates went wide open
They’re describing a system that opens up multiple passages/valves quickly when the throttle is fully pressed. That helps the car deliver more of what it needs to make power right away.
Term
145 pounds of boots
They’re talking about how much pressure the car is making while accelerating hard. The point is they kept it at a steady target so the car would run consistently.
Intercooler boots are the flexible tubes/couplers that connect the intercooler to the rest of the intake system. They keep the air path sealed so boost pressure doesn’t leak out.
“Eighth mile times” are how fast the car runs from the start to an eighth of a mile. It’s a shorter drag-race distance that highlights how hard the car accelerates early.
Term
hundred PSI
PSI means pressure. When someone says they want “100 PSI,” they’re usually talking about how hard the turbo is pushing air into the engine—very high boost that can stress parts.
A “chassis swap” means moving the drivetrain, turbo setup, and other race hardware onto a different vehicle platform (or swapping the whole vehicle body) between events. In motorsports, that’s often done to reduce downtime, keep the competition car consistent, or react to damage/packaging changes.
A “rule change” means the event organizers update the rules. That often happens when someone finds a way to do something that wasn’t clearly covered before.
“Body on chassis” means the truck’s body is mounted to a separate frame. That frame is what carries a lot of the strength, which can make it easier to build and modify trucks.
Drive shafts are the rotating parts that send power from the gearbox to the rear (or front) axle. If their length or angle is off after a build, the truck can shake or wear parts faster.
Fitment is whether parts physically line up and fit together the way they’re supposed to. “Chassis fitment” means you’re checking that the chassis and mounting points match the truck’s layout before final assembly.
In this context, “axles” are the shafts that transmit drive force to the wheels and are tied to how the suspension and drivetrain are positioned under the truck. The speaker is describing how they determined where the axle locations needed to sit for correct assembly and alignment.
A dyno is a machine that measures how much power your truck makes. “Dyno trim” means the truck is set up in a test-ready configuration for that measurement, which can be different from how it’s built for normal driving or events.
A tow rig is just a specialized truck or setup used to tow a race car or equipment to events. It’s built to move the vehicle safely and reliably, not like a normal daily tow.
“Frame up” means they built the project from the start, using the frame/chassis as the foundation. It implies a custom build rather than a quick modification.
Water injection is when you spray water into the engine’s air intake. It helps keep temperatures down, so you can push the engine harder without it getting dangerously hot.
In a water injection kit, nozzles are the spray tips that meter and atomize the water into fine droplets. Proper nozzle sizing and placement matter because droplet size and spray pattern affect cooling effectiveness and how evenly the mixture is distributed.
“Peak at 1750” means the truck’s strongest pulling power is around 1750 rpm. Tuners try to make the most useful power right where the competition is hardest to pull from.
In this context, “spray” means how much (and how it’s mixed) the injection system puts into the intake. Too much or the wrong mix can make things run hotter instead of cooler.
The “head” is the top part of the engine where the valves and combustion happen. For high-power builds, a stronger head helps the engine survive heat and pressure.
LIVE
All right, everybody, welcome back to the diesel performance podcast.
My name is Anthony Bernini and I'm here with Chris Emke.
Chris, how you doing, dog?
Dude, I'm excited.
Today's going to be a fun one.
We got a winner today.
Yeah, a winner talking to a couple of losers, now I'm joking aside.
A winner talking to some wieners, dude.
It's all about a winner perspective.
I got called a big wiener many times this year.
Well, without further ado, we have Meijer Stomp, Meijer, how you doing, man?
Oh, I'm doing fantastic, how about you guys?
That's good energy.
That's what we need brought in here.
I'm getting like goosebumps with just the energy, like it's being exuded through the
phone.
Oh, yeah.
You guys are getting goosebumps.
I mean, I've been wanting to be on this podcast for a long time.
Josh and I actually have like this addition that every time we go to a diesel event, we
just load up the podcast, binge watch those things, and I was like, dude, I want to be
on the podcast.
I got to the UCC.
And then I didn't get a pre-UCC.
I was like, dang, now I got to win this thing if I'm going to do it.
Well, like it's my only chance.
You should have had a pre-Justin reach out.
Yeah, dude.
Chris Cyril didn't give us any rookies.
Yeah, there was.
I only know Stephen Lucero because I remembered him from DPC 2019, dude.
Yeah, we, in our defense, we did ask Chris Cyril multiple times for competitor lists.
And Justin, Justin was just going through like what he knew from what was being posted.
So I blame Chris Cyril on this personal.
I mean, I think it worked out for the best because if you guys had interviewed me, then
I would like, I was like sitting there like about to load the tune up for the dyno.
I was like, man, if I want on this podcast, I got to do this.
We could have jinxed your win, bro.
Maybe everyone lost because they were on the podcast with us.
Again, you could have went for being a winner, being a winner like us.
Hard challenge, I'm not knowing it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, no.
That's a touche, right?
But everything kind of worked the way it worked.
And now here we are.
So, you know, we appreciate you taking some time to want to talk to us.
So, you know, it's, it's awesome.
Of course.
So, um, I guess, you know, I'd like to start, you know, we'll start from, from the beginning
here.
Um, you, you won the, you know, Amsoil Ultimate Call Out Challenge 2026 rookie year.
You fucking swept, right?
You made it, made it your bitch.
Um, you, you do have some background in diesel, right?
You do work at Power Driven and, and, you know, you kind of, I feel like you, you,
you wear multiple hats there, but for the listeners, right?
Can you give us a little background on how you got to this point?
Um, so, I mean, it started when I was 15, I needed Dodge Ram.
I needed a truck for a little like lunch cart business we had.
My dad told me like, Hey, like, you know, I'm a Dodge fan.
You can buy whatever you want, but if you buy, buy something else, you're
going to have to park it somewhere else.
So I ended up getting a 1997, 1997 tool drive that was like my baby.
It was a, uh, it worked, uh, it had issues.
Um, it was an auto and I knew that the autos are trash.
You know, you can't hold power with an auto.
And so it had issues and in fixing it, I realized how easy they were to turn up.
And so long story short, um, we ended up learning about 12 hours and how much
easier to make power, started messing with those, um, power driven.
I ended up making friends with someone on the forum.
Uh, that person got hired at power driven power driven was looking for
another, uh, mechanic and they reached out to me and said, Hey, like this guy,
kind of, that was for you.
Like, are you interested in like, at this point, like all I've done is farm
and work on 12 hours.
It was like the 12 out company in the entire country is asking me if I want a job.
Yes, absolutely.
So that's where we started.
Josh started slightly after I did both work here and then a year was that
Meyer, that was 2018.
Okay.
So 2018.
20 years old.
Um, and that's when the Hoonan began, you know, like Josh, uh, Josh and I were
playing late nights and just trying anything and everything.
I mean, he, he would, um, just play on the dyno.
We never did much drag racing, but we do a bunch of dynaling stuff.
And then 2020 was the year of carnage for us.
We learned a lot in those years.
And then he ended up to go to, um, you know, you should see a couple of times
the power driven went to you to see a couple of times.
I remember the first time I went to UCC.
So I started in November of 18 and we went to UCC in like May of 19.
And it was a thrash the whole time.
I remember thinking like, holy crap, like this is the elite of the elite.
Like these are such wild builds.
Like I could never do a thing like that.
And then like long story short, kind of went through the years and learned a bunch
and just worked with those guys at will and Todd and obviously Josh and a couple
of other people and, um, Josh won 2025 UCC.
And we got back and I was like, dude, Josh can do it.
Like how hard can it be?
You know, and so that's when we kind of put our sights on it.
Now, for, for some of the listeners, right?
The, the truck that you brought to UCC was impressive in its own right.
But I mean, if, if I recall here a year or two ago, that, that was a
mechanical injected two-wheel drive truck.
Am I wrong?
Ha, so I get that a lot.
I have two different trucks.
Okay.
So I have that truck, which is the shorty.
Okay.
Um, I actually bought that Josh.
It was a mechanical tool drive with the NB 4500.
We swapped a 67 common rail into it.
We put an auto into it.
I actually set it on a Duramax chassis frame.
So it's now four wheel drive and also low.
It's my daily.
Oh, okay.
It makes like, but that's the short bed.
Yep.
That's the short bed.
That's correct.
So this is a separate truck altogether.
Correct.
So this one is scrapped.
It looks very similar.
Now I've wrapped one.
So hopefully we get that.
That's less of an issue, but, um, this one was Popasaurus.
Um, it was originally wills.
We bought it out of some farm field, 440,000 miles.
We blew up all sorts of crap on it.
It was a mechanical, it was a terrible truck.
We built it and it was just a terrible build.
Um, we had issues with the, with the P pump on it.
It just was, it made like 800 horse and it was just, I guess, it
should have made, you know, 1500 and just whatever.
And so under Will's ownership, I was actually the only one to race it
because Will was so scared.
Um, I was like, I don't have a wife or kids.
Like I'll take this thing down the back strip.
Um, I got nothing to lose.
So, so yeah, I could really, very, very little.
Um, which ironically at that point, my wife, which wasn't my wife then asked
if she could have a ride.
I was like, sure.
So I actually did have more to lose than I realized.
Um, but either way, um, it got parked.
We decided to, um, I bought that off of Will, just the roller.
He kept the engine in the trans and then we started putting together
like a race truck, cause at that point I had my sure you, which was a blast,
but it's too old drive and it wasn't really that fun.
Like, I, like, I'd tell people, it's like, you go through the home
people parking lot and you're better than everyone else, but they don't know it.
And you can't prove it unless you go to the trap.
Yeah.
You know, it's like, just, I want to build like street race it or like, you know,
put in four wheel drive and just like absolutely like destroy the, like the
races that I knew that it should be able to destroy with that kind of power.
And so I decided to go four wheel drive that we don't have to deal with
traction all the time.
And I decided instead of going crazy with that one, which was my daily, I
didn't want to take it any further.
I wanted to, um, build a second truck.
So I basically made, um, the shorty 2.0, like same engine configuration, same
trans same kind of same everything, but put a little bit bigger
turbo's onto it and make it more of a, like a dedicated race build.
So now if I'm not mistaken here, the, the Papasaurus that you're in
reference of that, that truck's been on the, the power driven YouTube channel.
Like I've, I've seen that they've done power build recipes with that truck.
Yeah, we sure did.
It was going with the camper shell.
Like I, I, I rocked the camper shell until the tech officials at the drag
ship told me to take it off.
Yeah.
What's your buzz kills?
Yeah.
Right.
Like, fuck them.
That's terrible.
But no, that, I mean, that, I feel like that adds to the story.
Like I said, that truck has a history and I mean, I would have, I would
have never guessed if you had told me it was the same truck, I would have
never, I would have never assumed or, or, or believed it to be honest with you.
Yeah.
A raft, a raft goes a long way.
Yeah.
That's a lot.
That's awesome.
I was like, crap.
Now I got, you know, I got things that are nice, like this sucks.
Yeah.
And something that I kind of had a question on or more or less kind of
as a spectator deal, cause I, until I started working here, granted, you know,
nine, 10 years ago, like I really wasn't big into the diesel scene.
And my first trip down to UCC was in 2019.
And to see like the power and like just take the, yeah, that's, that's where
the caliber of trucks and the power that guys are making in 2019 versus now is
just a massive jump.
Cause I remember it's like, Oh, who's going to be the first one to hit a
thousand and they'll, everybody, you know, daily drivers are at a thousand now.
It's like, okay, well about 2000 or about 3000 and just that massive jump is huge.
Well, I think too, like my art, you mentioned that like, it was like the
2019, 2020, well, 2020 was the era.
You guys broke a lot of stuff and learned a lot.
That was also at the same time that like Josh's O five mega cat or O five
crew cab truck and the power driven dyno and all the videos go in viral of
shooting turbo chargers out of the hood and all of that.
If I'm not mistaken.
Yeah.
Yep.
And we heard a lot of parts.
Oh, the expensive year for job.
So you have this, like you're, you're around diesel, you farm, you get this
opportunity to go work for, you know, in my opinion, power driven is,
like, I mean Cummins 101, but like they definitely have the roots and
mechanical injection, AFC live, all that good stuff, but you get this opportunity.
You're working for this badass shop and then you just get ruined, right?
For the next couple of years, you get exposed to some wild stuff.
At what point are you numb to it?
Because I, I think about it, like, I know when I became more numb to diesel
stuff and like making power and setups.
So like at what point from, from 2020 till now, did you just become numb to it?
Like it's just, Hey, it's just another day.
I mean, I don't know how to answer that question.
I mean, I think, I think I could try to answer it, but I think if I talked to
other people, like when I talked to other people, they're just like, dude, you
don't realize how much, you know, 2000 is, I'm like, ah, freaking blew up.
I didn't hit 2000.
And like, dude, you 2000 is a lot.
Like, yeah, it blew up before 2000 and just like dumb stuff like that.
I don't know.
I think it's a gradual thing.
I mean, I daily, uh, 1200 horsepower truck for a while and I would be like, yeah,
dude, it's a great daily and other people will drive it.
Like that was the shorty dude.
I'd throw the keys at anyone.
Um, I have like long time customers, like, uh, customers of power driven that I
just, they mentioned something.
I was like, dude, like, come on, let's go take it for a ride.
And I think they're a long, I think they're a lifelong customer now.
Cause they're just like, that's ridiculous.
And then I took a break from driving it for like six months while it was broken.
I blew up the engine on it.
I put a new engine in it, kind of similar setup.
And then I drove it again.
I was like, oh my gosh, how did I not die or go to jail?
Like this thing is nuts.
And then I decided on that truck, on that, on that truck, like I'd be on,
like we got 80 mile an hour speed limits out here.
I'd be on, um, going 80 and I'd get into it.
And the rear end would try to come around just an overdrive.
No downshifts, nothing.
And so I actually filled the rear bumper with concrete just for safety reasons.
I have never heard that a day in my life.
Yeah.
What's like, man, what's up with your bumper?
That's got concrete and safety reasons.
What helps the stance out a little bit, a little bit more preload.
Yeah, it helped the hook and everything.
It was, it was the way for sure.
I mean, I think that's another example to, to kind of back into Chris's question,
a little bit of like becoming numb to it, because to a degree like me and you,
Chris were numb to it, but we're not in the pits.
We're not building these trucks.
So like our versions of numb are very different where every year we go,
we see these trucks and like, you know, I go home and talk to whoever, my friends.
I'm like, yeah, you know, this guy was on the dyno, you know, 2000, 3000 horsepower.
And we're like, holy shit.
And I was like, yeah, unless you're making 2000, like you're not even in the picture,
not playing ball with anybody.
And then to hear, you know, just kind of put some perspective like, yeah,
my bumper's full of concrete for safety reasons.
Like, what are you talking about?
My 1200 horse daily driven street, daily driven street truck.
I now have a 3,600 horsepower, you know, competition vehicle with power windows.
Still.
Yeah.
It's, and that's, I would say that's when I realized I was the most numb to it
because we did 3,600 and I was like, man, I hope that works.
I hope that's enough.
That is like, holy shit.
Like a year ago today, that would have been the record.
Yeah.
And we did it at UCC.
So it's not even a question like, Oh, well, that didn't really count.
No, we did it at the place, at the time with, with 10 mile an hour Southwest
win, like it counted in every single way.
And I was sitting there thinking like, I hope this is enough.
So let's back into some of like the team that helped you get here.
You had Sean Shriato, you had Josh McCormick.
Who else was in your, in your camp with this?
Um, so we had four main guys that were in the camp that were like,
um, that were just working on the truck, just anything I needed.
I mean, they were awesome.
So it's John Shriato.
Um, it was Josh McCormick.
Those guys are both previous UCC competitors.
And if I could recommend anything to a rookie, those are like getting
previous competitors on your crew, they were doing crap.
I didn't know you needed to do like it was awesome.
Like I didn't have to ask for anything.
Um, and then we also had Shad, which is a, I'm not even going to try to pronounce
his last name.
Um, he's a previous, uh, Power Jiv employee.
He ended up getting another job somewhere else.
He actually works in Alaska now.
And so he had to schedule off a whole week to be able to go out here with us.
But he's always pick crewed with Josh.
And so he like offered the same offer to me.
And I mean, he's great.
Like, um, super meticulous guy, like the coolest guys you can give any task.
And you know, it won't get messed up.
And then we also had, uh, Dylan Thompson, he's actually, uh, he's like Power
Jivans, um, uh, one of our core suppliers and he, like, I deal with him just
like telling what cores we needed.
And as he had like started getting the diesel world and coming down here and
kind of checking it out, he decided he wanted to start chasing it.
So he's kind of put together a truck last year.
He had some dino circuits and stuff.
And so when I was mentioned that I was going to UCC, he threw his net hat in
the ring and I was like, absolutely, you know, oh, you need, we need people to do
basically everything.
So that were those were the four crew, um, Todd and Will also came out.
Um, they helped were needed, but they were, they're also pretty busy.
You know, shaking babies and kissing hands.
Yeah.
I know the, the, the YouTube celebrities, right?
Like those are the, the mugs and the representation of Power Driven at that point.
I bet, I bet if I were to ask Will and Todd, they were probably happier being
there to support than having their own truck in the ring.
Oh, I would say for sure.
Now that being said, Todd did talk about possibly going next year.
So I don't know what, what that will turn into the problem is like stupid dino
numbers.
I don't know how possible that is on a, on a mechanical truck.
The fuel injection is just, it's a completely different event and it could
be different burn that I don't think nitrous affects it as well.
Do you think that because of your successes this year, you know, Josh McCormick,
one of your closest friends, one last year, do you think that ever, that would
ever convince them to maybe put a common rail and into their old, uh, you know,
race truck?
Oh, there's a lot of talk.
He keeps going back and forth.
I, he's been thinking about putting a common rail in for a while.
I mean, ever since we did our first, like our first test hit with the new
chassis and everything, and we ran five twenties off the trailer with a fricking
tow truck motor.
Oh my God.
Um, he's like, should I go, should I, he's like, should I go common rail?
I was like, here's the problem.
Cause if you go common rail and you run five twenties or even like five
O's, I was like, you're just another slow common rail.
I was like, if you go five O's or even fours with a mechanical truck, you are
the world's fastest mechanical four wheel drive.
How bad is that?
No, no, that's, that's a perspective.
I guess that's, it just depends on how diehard you want to be with, with that
platform, right?
I feel like it's no different than Johnny over at stainless, you know, drag
racing, a VP motor for as many years as he did, you know, he, he took the crown
and that small world that he was in.
And it was very, a very big accomplishment to the people that, that
look at that within that space.
But, you know, again, at, at UCC, you know, it's, it's a common rail world,
the mechanical truck, like, yeah, they might go up and show out, but they're,
they're not going to be, you know, at the, at the top of the winner circle.
I mean, you could be wrong, right?
I could be wrong.
I hope maybe in the future I'm wrong.
Just for the state of the industry, it'd be really cool to see.
But I mean, common rail just continues to dominate.
Yeah.
I mean, I think that on, from a mechanical front, I think sled pulling, I think
we could do pretty good.
Um, I think the drag racing, we could be very competitive.
I mean, if people like Ziegler, I mean, those trucks are like ridiculously fast.
I don't think we're going to compete with them with mechanical or even, I mean,
I don't think we're going to compete with them with anything, but, um, especially
with mechanical, but I think we could do pretty dang good.
I think he can run fours.
We're actually, we have a dino, a drag race event up in Montana for
the NHRDA in like August.
Oh, my goal is to get him into the four nineties and to hopefully run a
power driven final between me and him.
And then I can just take his money after that.
Um, but the hard part for mechanical is going to be the dino.
I don't know.
I mean, you could throw ridiculous stuff at it.
Like if we were bringing like a remake of dedicated dino rig, well, I think
we could make really good power by having something you have to swap
overnight and get it back into the next day's trim.
That's so hard.
I mean, think about it at UCC, we blew up a solid block with 2400 horsepower in
2019, like engine building did not get that much better since then.
What's changed is the tuning and the Nike strategy and everything else.
And trying to, so trying to compete with, you know, the mid 3000s that
people are going to be doing, if not more, that's a lot, that's a lot to ask.
And the mechanical injection vent just, I believe, puts a lot of
cylinder pressure in the engine in order to make the same power.
Yeah, I could see that having the tune ability to kind of ramp in how timing
comes in and then accounting that for nitrous.
I mean, that all goes a really long way.
And people like talk about like whole variable timing as if that's like a big
deal.
I mean, when you're talking about like a street truck where yeah, you can, you
can have it work in all these different situations because you can set the timing
for all the situations for the dyno, it's okay to have a static timing.
It can be timing in one, like one set timing and that'll be fine.
The problem is the injection pressure is super low.
And so you have these big old droplets that can't burn as fast.
And when you're talking big nitrous, like you're trying to get, you're trying
to get as little, that little bit of fuel to burn as quickly as possible.
So that piston hasn't traveled way far down the bore.
And now you're exposing unsupported cylinder wall and just, just everything else.
I mean, I was shocked when I was starting to do the dyno stuff, I was like, oh my
gosh, like we're going to have to put so much fuel in the cylinder in order to
make these big numbers.
And then Josh started doing it.
We're like, dude, my fuel only 1800 horsepower pulls.
I do at these like dyno events here in Utah, like Northwest Dyno circuit.
I'm putting more fuel in the cylinder with that 1800 horsepower pull than Josh is.
And then I did at UCC, that nitrous, the AFR was 50 to one.
Wow.
Oh, wow.
Jesus.
50 to 150 to one.
Yes.
So on our dyno, we did the same fuel quantity and made 25, I don't know,
75 70 or something like that.
And that was about, um, I think it was like 16, 16 and a half to one.
And wills like, dude, are you really going to, you really think you can
spray another 1500 horsepower into it?
And I was like, well, if math be math and yes, and turns out, I mean,
I was questioning myself, but yeah, and that's, yeah, it's just ridiculous.
So what was, I guess I'm going to lean on the, the Josh McCormick piece here.
You know, we're, we're big fans of Josh.
He's a great friend of the, to the, you know, to our podcast and to the
company and you know, all good things to say about him.
But how monumental was him and his knowledge with, you know, his
experience last year for you having the confidence to make the power on
the dyno this year.
Oh, it's huge.
Like if it wasn't for Josh, I don't know if I'd done UCC cause I would've
seen a 3,600 horsepower, 33 or whatever, a hundred horsepower, pull him
to like, there's no way I can do that.
But the fact that he went up and not only did he do it and do it three
times on three different dinos or saying dino the three different times,
yeah, but then Jen survived.
Like, and it wasn't anything super unachievable.
I mean, that's not like some billet block or some crazy special stuff.
Like we do some stuff for longevity, but like to help like bearing
mod or lube mods and stuff, but for like actual holding power, there's
not a lot of special there, but, um, what we did learn was the kind of
like the tuning side of it and what you had to do, like a lot of people, I
think where they went wrong for a long time is they take a motor and they put
as much fuel into it as they can to make as much power as they can feel
lonely, and then they spray it to try to get the power even higher.
You can't do that.
You will scatter your crap every single time.
And I mean, that's why so many people have failed and blown up their stuff at
26, 2900 horsepower trying to hit that three K.
And I mean, ultimately I would say the dinopole we did, it looked effortless
because the timing everything was adjusted to, it is adjusted to work
with that much nitrous that you're putting in there.
I think that goes to show too how important the team is because all these
guys, you know, granted, your, your name's on the truck and you're the
winner, but like you're very adamant on, I wouldn't have been here without these
guys.
No, you're not up there saying this is me.
This is only me because, you know, guys would, you know, you're standing on
the podium and people are in the stands like, Oh, that guy did that.
He won.
No, it's like, it's me and you're shouting everybody out on Facebook,
which, you know, in an industry of, you know, just racing in general,
whether it's gas or diesel, or excuse me, gas or diesel, excuse me, guys want
to hold secrets.
They want to be like, no, I figured this shit out.
I'm not going to tell anybody, but to have a group that will share those
secrets and want to see each other succeed, that's a massive part of winning.
And I love seeing that.
I mean, that's, that's also where growth in the industry comes in, you know,
evolving.
I mean, it wasn't long ago where the 3000 horsepower number was just a
myth and a dream.
And now.
Oh yeah.
Oh yeah.
I remember when Ziegler did it on that UCC was a 2022-ish.
Um, he, I was like, dude, like on a cast block, you know, definitely and all
that, but sure, but like on a cast block, that's like a fluke, like no other
engine will be able to do that.
That's like, he got super lucky and looking back at it, they weren't lucky at
all.
They did a bunch of testing and they knew it was going to take it, or at least
they're definitely hopeless.
Um, but yeah, you know, Josh is a huge part of that.
And not just the engine side, but also on the transmission side, we, I mean, he
made what 30, 100 at UCC.
And then he didn't change any kind of fuel quantities really.
And all we did was mess with the transmission because we kept having
slip issues, um, we mess with the transmission, the power went up again.
We messed with the transmission, power went up again.
And so this year with the time we had to get ready for it, we built a pretty
stout unit, um, for the transmission.
And we actually swapped the transmission in specifically for dynoing because we
knew that slipping was going to, uh, be a real problem.
And so with the dyno strategy I wanted to do, it kind of relied on it, not slipping
in order to work.
And so put a lot, put a lot of faith in that, but it didn't, like the dyno, the
RPM on the dyno matched the RPM on the data log, like basically, perfectly.
And in the transmission, we had a bunch of, um, like a bunch of sensors and stuff.
And it showed that every single, every single, uh, clutch pack held exactly
how I was supposed to do.
Oh my God, that's crazy.
That is absolutely crazy.
I mean, and this is just a standard 48 for, uh, 47, 48 style trans still that
you're doing this with, correct?
Yep.
Just a 48.
Just a 48.
A couple extra clutches, still excess.
Wow.
I mean, you're talking about some of the parts there.
What else did you have like engine, trans, fuel system, you know, whatever,
whatever you've got on the truck, what are some of like the other, uh, components
that you had on the truck to get the success, to make the power, to do as well
as you did on the truck.
I mean, I mean, all of the parts kind of had to work together.
Um, I guess a couple of things that we had to really make decisions on if we were
going to do it or not was one thing was the turbos.
We're running a bit smaller turbo than Josh was.
And I wanted to do that because I didn't want to swap turbos between events.
I want just one turbo system that was going to work for all three.
And so it has one of our aggressor 480s on the manifold.
It's what I've had for the life of the truck.
It's always worked for us.
And I really want to keep it because that's what all my drag race data was off of.
For the atmosphere, we have a Midwest 110 G 57 base charger.
Again, those are considerably smaller than what Josh ran.
And because of that, I knew we needed some gates.
So we got some FIS 50 mil gates.
So I got two 50 mil gates going to the atmosphere and a third 50 mil gate going to the hot pipe.
So that way before the run, I'm getting to the hot pipe.
Like the run started when I floored it, I was making about 90 pounds of boots and 1500 horse.
And then when I floored it, obviously the spray and fuel came in.
But we had a gig going to the hot pipe during all that.
And then the moment I floored it, the other two gates went wide open.
And that's why I was able to maintain like 145 pounds of boots.
Because I knew I had to keep it down for multiple reasons.
One of which was we were using just our PDD intercooler boots.
Like the same things you put on your tow truck.
Like we were running those.
I've never had issues with them.
And so I kind of felt wrong getting rid of them.
So we decided to just stick with them.
They've kept, they've held me through it with us thus far and felt like we'd do it.
So that was one thing.
Hold on, hold on.
You don't have V-bands going on the intercooler pipes.
You have boots still on the intercooler pipes?
No, yep.
Like if you bought a power driven like boot kit for your tow truck, like it's the same.
I think your boot sales are going to go up significantly after this airs.
Holy shit.
I was shocked by how many people were like shocked by that.
I was like, no, they're, they're good.
I was like, I told people, I was like, I wasn't really that worried because like 12
valves in order to go fast, they, they make like 150 pounds of boots as well.
And they're eighth mile times you're like 12 seconds.
So it's pretty much the same as a flood hole.
Every kid with one of these trucks is going to be wanting to make a hundred PSI.
Oh, I don't know why I'm blowing boots.
Like I got you a set of boots too.
Don't worry.
I mean, no, they, they work good.
Another, another thing I just kind of want to throw, throw a little poke, a little fun,
fun at is you said you wanted to go through all three events with the same turbos and
not have to swap them yet.
You changed the chassis.
It was easier.
Yeah.
With the chassis swap, we didn't really have time for other things, you know,
how to like pick your priorities.
I remember walking through the pits, you know, just kind of taking everything in and
I'm like, what, what are they going on over there?
It's like, I'm running, I'm sitting at the booth and I'm just like, oh man,
maybe they brought a back up or something.
I don't know.
And then I saw the swap.
I'm like, you got to be shitting me.
Wow.
I'll be big fan.
I'm not complaining.
I thought it was sick.
I mean, it, it was a functional thing.
I asked Chris Cyril, Cyril for the rule book back in like October and
he sent it to me.
I was like, perfect.
I, I, I looked at that being long and hard and there's absolutely nothing that made
that against the rules.
There's going to be a rule change because of you now.
I think there's some talk about it, but I told them if you want to change it too much,
like just change the name.
You know what I mean?
Like maybe someone like want to go to the mediocre call out challenge instead.
I mean, that's probably going to be the best photo, photos that are captured of that truck
is the, the, the body on that chassis going down.
My Facebook has just been riddled with it and it's awesome.
Every time I Googled, like it looks so sick.
Great.
Cause that's the first time the truck was actually on the chassis.
Because just time crunches.
I thought, you know, every time you try to do some custom crap, you always are pretty
optimistic with what, how long it's going to take you and it's always longer than that.
And so I was planning on setting it on the chassis, driving around, just make sure everything
worked.
But we didn't get that time.
So I just sat there and measured everything and just like drive shafts, everything.
Cause I, I made those drive shafts or I had to, we had the drive shafts already from the
Godfather days, but I had to shorten them.
I changed the links on them a little bit.
So I just like went through and just really double checked everything.
I was like, well, it should work.
So when I was like, when the guys were like sitting down on the chassis, like there's
a couple of live videos and stuff.
I was just sitting back and like, dude, this thing looks so good.
It looks so nasty.
Some of this stuff just doesn't seem like it should.
I mean, it doesn't make sense.
Like, oh, we just got standard.
We got boots on the truck.
You know, we're making X amount of booze.
It's like, would you test the chassis fitment?
No, I just measured it.
It's just like, oh, okay.
It's like, which I, so I have like a, I kind of test fit.
Like I had the chassis kind of done.
I just like slid it under the truck and got some measurements, but I figured out like
where all the, where the axles needed to sit and all that stuff.
And then I had to order the parts to mount them.
And so there was a dyno event that I had, I wanted to make it to, and so I had to
take the chassis back out, put the truck back into dyno trim, and then I never
had enough time to put it all back together again.
So I was pretty confident, but you never really know.
I just think it makes this wind that much cooler and that much better of a story
here in these intricate details.
The three of us in the podcast studio are just jaw drops staring at one another,
like, what am I listening to?
But it's like, it's inspiring.
Like it really is inspiring to be like, Hey, you know what?
Yeah, just, you know, these random boots that we sell through, you know, power driven
for the tow rig.
That's what I made 3600 horsepower and won the biggest competition of the year on.
And, you know, yeah, I fab this, this, you know, frame up in this chassis for sled
pulling.
And I knew it was going to look badass.
And, you know, it's just, I eyed it and it's going to work.
And then yeah, just the day before, we didn't want to swap turbos.
We just wanted to swap this chassis.
And the nonchalant delivery that you have along the way is so genuine.
That shows the numbness, right?
Yeah, that's your numb, dude.
You're numb.
Boots hold up, you know why not?
Well, I mean, yeah, the weekend, like, I mean, you don't really expect everything
to really work.
You just kind of have faith that when issues come up, you'll figure it out.
We didn't have to really figure anything out.
Everything, really everything works.
And as a matter of fact, on the chassis, all we were like packing up and stuff and
wheels, like trying to convince us we should do water injection.
I was like, dang it.
Like water injection is like a 12 valve thing.
But at the same time, like it could also help keep things cooler.
And so we just packed the stuff we needed to put water injection on.
And so we were bored on Saturday night and we decided to just slap the water
injection kit on there as well.
So it's like one of those like shy diesel.
Yeah, not really, but I don't know who needs sleep.
But it was one shy diesel water injection kit.
So like they look like a kind of lift motor or like a dump bed motor.
So you put one of those on there with two nozzles and it worked great.
You get to use peak at 1750 through the pole because that was what was hard is I
didn't feel like I had enough power fuel only to do what I wanted to do.
But if you put start putting spray in it, if you put the wrong combination of spray in,
now you're getting really hot.
And so I was like, you know what, that way I can booth the tune up and we still have
some water in there just keeping everything cool.
But that was one thing cool too is that like Will built the head and he put some,
we've done a lot of research and a lot of learning on valves recently.
There's a lot of competitors that have had valve issues and so we're trying to learn it.
And so we can produce like a head that like hopefully is the head of all heads
that can just take it all.
Not to cut you off, I just saw a video that Will posted and I don't know if it was an
old video that's being, you know, repushed or whatever.
And that he was talking about the heads that at least in the 12 valve aspect of it,
you know, of the different flow, CFM and whatnot, which was really, really intriguing.
Oh, Will, like Will's crazy.
Like some people like get, like decide to, I mean, they have hobbies and they do stamp
collecting or sit down on the couch and watch TV all night.
Like Will gets bored and comes in and pours a head.
You're wild man.
I don't understand it.
But no, like so, like we started doing research on valves and stuff.
That was the main one is two looking valves.
It's a huge problem.
Seat pressures, camera amps, all that stuff.
Like it's a huge problem.
It comes together and causes problems.
Like if you went to a valve manufacturer and said, hey, I want the biggest, baddest valve
you sell, like maybe not quite like that.
You say, I want the super extreme valve.
This is what I'm doing.
They're tempted to sell you the best valve they have for like a gas engine.
A gas, the best of the best for a gas engine isn't even close.
Like that stock valve stuff on a Cummins or on diesels.
The cylinder pressure we're talking about is not enough.
They do like the machining for like the little pocket in the bottom of the valve
for weight savings.
Yeah, you just weaken the valve.
And so Will kind of really dug into that.
We talked with a couple valve manufacturers here in the last, I'll call it four to six months.
And we got some, what I would consider pretty freaking awesome valves.
And so they shouldn't, on paper, they should be able to take a lot of beating.
And so on the drag race, like I was talking to a couple guys in Ziegler and Austin Duage
and they're kind of told me what they're like, oh dude, you're running way too much fuel
and way too little nitrous.
Your engine won't survive like that.
And I'm like, well, actually, like the main concern is to hurt valve train because of the
valves.
And I'm like, yeah, we're going down the track at 2000 degrees.
And I'm like, I don't really care.
Like these valves should be able to take it no problem.
And it did.
I mean, we use so much less nitrous than we really should have.
Like if, which means that it's running hotter than it should have.
And everything took it just fine.
I had so much confidence in that motor and that trans.
It was actually kind of like, probably not right.
I don't know where I got that confidence from, but like just with the testing we've
done in our dyno and the testing done with the trans and stuff, like I was confident.
Now, when you said that you were bored Saturday night doing a chassis swap hanging out,
you added the water injection into the mix.
Did the water injection do much temperature wise being at the sled pull track?
That's 1750, which I do feel like is much cooler than they would have.
I think that tune up would have probably ended up around that 2000 marks.
Okay.
But each of these were 1750.
And like normally after a sled pull, like you get a hot motor, you can hear it just
kind of like it idles different.
It sounds like unhappy and then you let idle for a little bit cools down and it's happy again.
Or it was idling perfectly from the moment I let off.
And so I feel like I think it worked.
We weren't really bored.
Really what happened was there was some talk in the pits about our hitch not being accurate.
And what I didn't, with the whole measuring thing, this is actually where we did get bit.
I, when I measured the hitch, there's rules with the hitch.
And so I followed all those rules.
What I didn't realize is I had the right tires on the chassis.
I didn't have the right pressures in the tires.
And because of that, that moved the centerline of the hitch forward a little bit and it made
it. So it was really close to being illegal.
I mean, it was close enough.
Like even we had some sled pullers come over and be like, dude, you brought this to a track.
There's a really good chance that they would pass this.
Like it's close enough.
It's fine.
And the guys kind of voted like, dude, we're this far.
We've done this much.
Like we're not, not going to chance it.
So we were done swapping the chassis at like six or seven PM by the time they cut the hitch
off and rewelded it on, it was, I mean, we're getting close to, to like three AM.
And that was just kind of watching them work.
And I was like, man, you guys, you guys got this.
I guess I'm going to go do a water injection or something.
I'm still in awe of what I'm hearing.
Like I just, I can't, I, I am, I am so proud.
I am so surprised.
And then I'm not surprised, right?
Because like again, you know, we, we know Josh, Josh is a, I won't sleep.
I'll get it done.
I know your mentality, Meyer, just from watching the YouTube videos that Josh does
over the years and just the, the positive things Josh has always spoke about you.
So like, I'm not surprised with this interview in any way, but at the same time, just
the confidence of like, yeah, I decided I just wanted to, you know, compete this year.
And you know, you've, it's not fair to say that this was your rookie year.
I mean, technically it was because, you know, this is your first year competing personally,
you know, but I had a lot of years of, of experience, the draw from, from people that
definitely wanted to see me succeed.
So like, I mean, Will and Todd were huge in some of the stuff that we learned with them
and like advice there.
And then Josh was huge.
And another one, John Strato, like I, the fastest I had gone up till last year was a 590.
And I told John, I was like, I mean, you know, he's a drag racer.
He drags, he drags a mechanical truck.
So he, he had troubles with his truck not being automated enough.
So that's why I mean, I think he's gone like a 540 or so.
And, but he's like super smart.
He started talking about bar angles and all that stuff.
He makes everything into a science.
And so I told him, I was like, Hey, when do you see next year?
Like, I feel like I have to run a minimum of 540 in order to be able to even have a chance.
Like I can't, like power driven has always gone in there.
And like, whether we knew we were going to suck at drag racing or not, we did.
When we're always like, Oh, I wonder if we can make up points on the dyno,
make up points on the sled pull.
I'm like, if I go, I want to have a decent chance of being able to win any one event.
Like, no, I don't have to.
But as long as I go in there with enough confidence that I can possibly,
then I can have an issue in an event and still possibly, you know, come out on top.
And so I talked to him about it.
And he's like, yeah, 540 is pretty achievable.
And I was like, okay, like to me, it just seemed really, really fast,
like almost unattainably checked fast.
But he's like, dude, you know, you got it.
It's not going to be a problem.
I was like, okay, cool.
Let's do it.
So I did the back half.
I pulled so much knowledge from him for that.
Like, you don't realize how much science goes into just where to put bars and where not to put bars.
He's, I was like, telling him where I want to put bars.
He's like, what force are you trying to fight with that?
And I was like, I don't know.
It just looks like it should be there.
And he's like, well, it's not doing anything.
Like if you want an ornament, cool, you can put it in there.
Otherwise you just add and wait.
And then all the things I was like, Hey, I don't want to,
he's like, you should add a bar from here to here.
And I'm like, I don't know why it's like, look how strong it is.
He's like, dude, look at actual fast cars.
Like actually fast cars are ridiculous with how well they brace the four link.
He's like, and what really like turned it around for me is he said that
he's like, any kind of flex in your chassis is flex.
You cannot tune.
You want the flex and the suspension to do the work.
That way you can use your shock and bar angles to adjust it.
If your chassis is doing the flexing, you can't, you can't tune that.
And then you have to work around it.
I was like, okay, fine.
You win.
And so, and then like even the bar angles and stuff, like I texted him like midnight,
one night, he was at Disneyland with his kids and I was like, Hey, like races tomorrow.
Where do I put these bars?
Because I have no idea.
And so he sent me like the kind of numbers to shoot for and a calculator and how to figure it out.
And I'm not the brightest guy.
So I struggled with that calculator longer than I should have.
I was kind of like, I was like, down it down to 70, the dang where,
tell me what hole to put this in, you know?
But we said it kind of pretty close, got pretty close.
And I haven't made a shock adjustment or bar adjustment since then.
Like everything has just worked.
And I mean, that's, I think that's a huge testament to like John's knowledge of it.
He can just look at a setup, kind of give you a good ballpark.
And sure, as we get better, we will make some bar adjustments that every time I've ever like
sent him a video or you watch the truck, he's like, dude, he's like, we just got to work on
the application of power.
But so far the chassis is still doing great.
Even like Colt Carter was drag racing.
I think he had a, a best of like a 148 or 150, 60 foot.
John went over there, kind of sprinkled his very dust on it.
And then the next pass was a 1260 foot at UCC.
Oh my God.
I'm like, dude, guy, I mean, there's definitely something about having,
you know, people like John and Josh in your quarter, because they figured it out.
They know.
And so if you can pull from that, it's awesome.
Now, where do you go from here?
Like what's the rest of 2026 look like for the truck?
So I want, like I say, I think the next goal is I want, I want to go to Montana with it.
And I want to get Todd into the fours as well.
So we can both run fours side by side in Montana.
So that, that'd be my next goal.
My next personal goal is probably to sleep.
That sounds pretty good.
I'm sure there's some house chores and some chores around the house that need to be done.
Like that's something like, I feel like I can't even say it enough because I mean,
in November, we kind of, we just full-timed this and it's been every single night,
every single day, weekends, just basically trying to make sure we had a chance at actually doing well.
And I always hate how at the end of the, like when you're getting really close,
you're, you're scrambling, you can't do what you want to do.
So I was like, okay, I'm going to hit this early and I want to be bored in May.
Like that was my master plan is I want to get it all planned out.
And I was like, I'm going to be bored in May that I can just take of all,
take care of all the little things.
And that way I'm not scrambling at the last minute.
Well, then everything takes way longer than you expect.
And, you know, I was, I was indeed not bored in May,
but I just hit it pretty hard.
You were more prepared though,
than what you could have been procrastinating and not starting till February March.
Oh, oh, for sure.
And I would have thought, thought like, dude, November, like you got plenty of time.
I mean, but apparently not.
And so anyway, all to say with that is like, you know, my wife, Tessa, she's been,
she's been just man in the house, like taking care of,
I know there's so much yard work that needs to happen.
I mean, she learned how to weed eat and lawn mow.
Like that's the level of dedication that she's been.
And so I feel like I should like take that stuff back over, kind of take care of my forest
in the backyard and probably finish up some, some carpet projects.
So is there a possibility for 2027 to defend the title or what's your plan look like as far as that goes?
I keep going back and forth.
I've been asked that a lot.
There's talk about some rural changes.
So it will depend on what they decide there.
Because I can't, I cannot sled pull my truck without, or I should say I have no interest
in trying to sled pull my truck without a sub chassis.
I don't want to twist it.
My whole goal was that when this is all said and done, I wanted a drag race truck by the end of it.
I don't want to make this truck that's kind of just terrible at everything.
So the next thing I want to do with the truck is I want to put some fort nine inches under it
so we can really get it lower and make it lighter.
Get it closer to that 4,000 pound weight minimum for NHRDA.
And then that will really require a sub chassis and some axle swap.
If they don't ban that, there's a good chance I'll go back since most of the work is done.
But yeah, it'll depend on that.
Two more loaded questions that I have for you.
The first one, we're going to talk horsepower, right?
So 2021, 2022, whatever year, first year of 3,000 horsepower at UCC.
We've seen every year since that number climb.
You took second place, 3,600 horsepower.
Which is, when I understand how ridiculous it is, I got second place for the 3,600.
And I did it to a single 255.
Yep, that was so that's my next thing, right?
Where it's so wrong saying this, but poor boy diesel.
I want to say it was 3,800 horsepower with, in my opinion,
a very unconventional turbo configuration for what we have seen on the dyno prior.
I mean, we're knocking down the door.
The years have been increasing.
Like is next year 4,000 or nothing?
Like what are your thoughts on that?
I think that someone's doing 4,000 at UCC next year.
I don't know if Zeke is going back.
I think if his pass would have worked, he probably would have had 4,000 in it.
He just had some, what's called intercooler issues that just didn't like the boost there.
I think, I don't want to get ahead of myself because who really knows.
I think if I go back next year, we will be shooting for a pretty dang close to that.
Oh, we didn't have, I mean, it's so hard to do test hits for that big power
because you don't want to just do a bunch of, you don't want to wear your engine out
being 3,600 horsepower hits.
You kind of want to make those count.
You don't want to do what you need to.
And so we didn't have a lot of clean data.
Like we had it off Josh's.
And so we took that, we applied it and it worked.
Now that that worked and all the little like stepping stones all like aligned and they happened,
now I feel comfortable.
Like we can start putting more power into the truck.
And I think it's going to take it because before with Josh slipping the trans,
like you throw more fuel or more nitrous at it.
Like, cool, you just slipped your trans harder.
You can grasp like, like what you didn't do anything.
Now that everything, the tire situation, I think it's pretty well figured out
the drive trains figured out, we can actually start getting the engine to make more power
and be able to put it down.
I think, I think we'll probably be close if we went, we'll be close if not there.
And I think we won't be the only one.
Now the next question, could you ever see a world where you're competing side by side with
with McCormick and both trucks are there and both trucks are competing?
So great question.
We actually were talking about that yesterday.
I think, I think it would be freaking sweet.
We're talking like taking like spot one and two and how cool would the duo be to not just
win it back to back and then get second, first and second the next year.
I don't know.
The problem is our pit crew because his pit crew and my crew are kind of the same pit crew.
And so it'd be spreading everyone pretty dang thin or we'd have to find volunteers
that trust to be able to do that crack.
But I don't know.
It's a lot, a lot of time, money.
And ultimately like it almost ruins the event.
Like it's such a cool place to be where, I mean, you can go walk around and see LaVon
and Chase Fleece and Michael Cordova and all, I mean, all these guys and just talk with them
like one on one.
And I guess it's freaking cool.
You're around all this performance.
Like if you're into diesels, it's the where it's the place to be.
And then you're stuck in the pits the whole time as a pit crew.
Instead of actually going out and enjoying it and seeing what there is to see.
So I don't know.
I think we talked about it.
I think it's a cool thing to think about, but realistically, I don't know if we do it
just because it's kind of like being stuck in the pits is not the fun part of UCC.
No.
I mean, it goes, I mean, we've, I've never competed in UCC.
But even still like, you know, going to like work a booth for the weekend,
like you're kind of like limited to the exposure of the event.
And last year, I was lucky enough to go not really work the booth at all and just run
around as a spectator.
And like you said, I mean, it is such a cool event.
There's not many other events in a year or throughout the year that you can go to where
all the biggest names, companies, all the coolest trucks,
everybody's willing to lend a helping hand and communicate and talk.
Like there's, there's only a couple of events a year that are like that.
And I'd say UCC is definitely the pinnacle of.
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
And that was like, that was a super cool part.
I mean, from day one, you know, poor boys beat me on the drag strip on the first pass.
And I went over there and I was like, duty, you're really going to try to,
you're going to beat me with a mega cab on leaf strings.
Really?
Like I can't, if this is how this goes down, I will not be able to sleep at night.
But we jumped around all weekend.
I mean, Ziegler would give him hell, Kenny, Tim Moore.
Like we were just BS and having a good time with all the guys.
Like it was, it was a really cool environment.
Well, I mean, that's the, you know, the camaraderie within the industry, right?
It's not, you know, hey, that guy over there is my competitor.
You know, I hope, you know, he doesn't do well and wish negative and you know, shit on him.
It's like, no, you know what, you hype up the next guy, you pay it forward.
It's, it's a community at the end of the day.
And that's, I don't know, I feel like that's the cool thing about, you know,
the industry and events like this is, it's not, it's, it's not your typical sports team
bashing on the next sports team with the fans wishing negative.
Like it's, it's a celebration and all the good fun.
Yeah. I mean, Josh, after we did the Dyna hit,
Josh went over and told the core boys exactly what we threw at it.
And so they're like, okay, cool, we'll just throw a little bit more at it.
Like, thanks, Josh.
Spilling the beans over there. Jesus.
Yeah. Sure.
What the hell, Josh?
I was like, give it 24 hours.
Well, now you just know that, you know, what they added into theirs.
Now, you know, to add that plus and now you got your 4K and you're done.
Like they, they actually did the R&D for you.
I don't think that, I don't, like, I get it, but math not be mathin' just quite like that.
I don't think it's that simple.
It's a lot of things, but no, I mean, I was, I was shocked.
Like the fact that they kept the GT55 alive for it all and it worked the way it did.
Like, I mean, congrats to them.
Like so unconventional, but they had faith in their program.
I mean, it's like, as another thing too, is like when we were, like,
building the engine and stuff, the fuel system, we got Lenny over there at DDP
to make us a set of injectors that would do the job to try to improve on what Josh had done
last year. We made them, they're a little bit bigger, other 67 bodies
through the run, higher pressure, get that injection window a little bit shorter.
But the other thing was the pumps is I've been running the same CP3 since 2022, 2023.
It's a 12 DD from 12 mil and a extra G 14 mil from like 2019.
And so I was like, dude, I'm gonna need more fuel.
And then I started doing testing and like, that's like when I said, like,
my fuel only stuff was put in more fuel in the cylinder.
And I was like, dude, like, do I really?
And so we did some testing.
I'm like, no, it's doing it.
Like I did like fuel only hits in our dyno with the fuel part I wanted to run.
And I was like, it's holding rail.
So it kind of felt very, very wrong.
But I was like, well, that's not the method.
So like just do it.
And so that's what we, that's what we use.
So I do believe it's probably the only 12 millimeter to make 3000 horsepower
because I'm the only done enough to do it.
Yeah.
But like, you know, like you said, though, you backed into it from an analytical thing
with data, you know, you're not just shooting for the fences and throwing parts in the truck
because that's what the greater masses are telling you to do.
You have an idea and a calculation of how to get there.
So why complicate it?
I mean, to me, as we're going through this, it's you kind of took a little bit
more of a simplistic approach and that simplistic approach of not complicating the situation
paid off clearly.
I mean, I'm sure someone could have put bigger CP3s on it and been fine.
But one advantage to having a small CP3 is it was only, it was barely able to maintain
fuel quality.
And that's the problem that Josh had last year was that the rail overshot and spiked
rail pressure and blew off his relief.
Well, my CP3s can barely do what they're supposed to do.
Like they have no chance of spiking over.
God damn it.
I was like, hey, cool, let's see if this rides.
Well, hey, Meyer, we appreciate you coming on.
I learned a lot.
I just, I'm speechless.
I'm speechless.
Power driven intercooler boots are the goat.
No, it's very cool to hear kind of the background because a lot of, you know,
spectators just see the guy on the podium like, Hey, look who won.
You know, he had this power ran this at the track, but being able to hear the story of
not only how the truck made its way to where it's at, but how you kind of got your start.
The friends you took along for the ride and, you know, the brands that you have worked
with and all the time and everything that you're talking about.
You've got, you know, people supporting you through there.
It's just very cool to see that all come to come together.
And we just, we appreciate you coming on and talking with us about it.
Very cool.
No, this is awesome.
It's definitely something to check off the bucket list.
Well, if any of our listeners want to follow your truck, see, I mean,
do you post a lot of this on social media?
How can any of our listeners kind of follow the truck, see more on the truck as you progress?
So I'm pretty terrible about posting, but eventually one day I'll fix that.
My Instagram is just Cummins Works.
I post, if I'm going to post something, it's generally there.
The best place to see any kind of like actual cool stuff that we're doing would be the just
the power driven YouTube channel.
Whenever we're going out racing or doing some big stuff, we'll generally try to throw a video
together and kind of showcase what it is we're doing.
Awesome.
Well, we appreciate you taking the time.
I hope we get you back on here sooner than later.
Justin, we got to note that maybe do a follow-up mid-summer and just see how,
you know, see how the progression is going.
So, but we appreciate you.
Yeah, that's awesome.
Thanks guys.
Yeah.
A winner talking to a couple of losers.
No, I'm joking aside.
A winner talking to some wieners, dude.
That's all about a winner perspective.
I got called a big wiener many times this year.
About this episode
Josh’s path to the 2026 UCC win is framed as a mix of pressure, progression, and hard-earned tuning. After missing a pre-UCC, he focused on “win this thing” at the event, building from a 1997 Dodge Ram into a Duramax-based, 4WD common-rail setup. The crew compares how UCC power levels have skyrocketed, why reliability and traction matter, and how proper nitrous/timing calibration beats just adding fuel. From dyno AFR targets to boost gates and even concrete ballast, the episode ties setup details to consistent results.
Myer Stump came and conquered the AMSOIL UCC this year. Myer threw down numbers that are so impressive all of us at the podcast had to double take the stats we were reading. Myer ran ran a 4.903 sec drag time, 3,662!!!! horsepower on the dyno, and hooked to the sled and pulled 355 feet to take home the title at this years event. It's the most overall points accumulated at the event and it is insane how amazing he did. We had a a great time talking with Myer and he breaks down how he put the win all together right here!
