The Truck Show Podcast Feb 17, 2026

S3, E77 - Brad Hunt

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87:25

Car

Jeep Gladiator

The Jeep Gladiator is a truck that can handle rough terrains and is also comfortable for city driving. It's designed to be tough and practical, perfect for outdoor adventures.

Term

35s

'35s' means the tires are 35 inches tall. Bigger tires help the Jeep drive over rocks and mud more easily, making it better for off-roading.

Term

Mopar two-inch lift

A Mopar two-inch lift makes the Jeep Gladiator taller, which helps it drive better on rough roads and allows for bigger tires. Mopar is a brand that makes parts for Jeep vehicles.

Term

Bilsteins

Bilsteins are special parts that help make the ride smoother and more comfortable, especially when driving on bumpy or rough roads. They are known for being strong and reliable.

Term

extended wheelbase

The extended wheelbase means the space between the front and back wheels is longer. This can make the vehicle more stable and comfortable to drive, especially for bigger trucks.

Term

re-gear

Re-gearing means changing the gears in a vehicle to match larger tires. This helps the engine run better and saves gas after you change the size of the tires.

Term

first gear

First gear is the lowest setting in a car's transmission. It helps the car start moving and gives it power to go up hills or carry heavy things.

Term

miles per gallon (MPG)

Miles per gallon (MPG) tells you how far a car can go on one gallon of gas. The higher the number, the better the car is at saving fuel.

Car

Jeep Rubicon

The Jeep Rubicon is a special version of the Jeep Wrangler designed for off-road driving. It has features that help it handle tough terrain better than regular models.

Car

Jeep Mojave

The Jeep Mojave is a version of the Jeep Gladiator that is built for driving fast on sandy and rough terrains. It has special features to help it perform well in those conditions.

Part

Mopar Fox shocks

Mopar Fox shocks are special parts that help the vehicle's suspension work better, especially when driving on bumpy or rough roads. They make the ride smoother and improve control.

Term

limited-slip differential

A limited-slip differential is a part of a car that helps the wheels work together better, especially when one wheel is slipping. It makes it easier to drive on slippery roads.

Company

Flated

Flated is a company that makes inflatable accessories for cars, like air toppers that help with carrying things on your vehicle.

Company

Amsoil

Amsoil makes special oils and lubricants for cars and trucks. They are known for their high-quality synthetic oils that help engines run better.

Part

grid heater

A grid heater helps diesel engines start better in cold weather by warming up the air before it enters the engine. This makes it easier for the engine to run smoothly when it's cold outside.

Brand

Cummins

Cummins is a company that makes powerful diesel engines, often found in big trucks and heavy machinery. They're known for making reliable engines that last a long time.

Term

engine replacement

Engine replacement is when a car's old engine is taken out and a new one is put in. This is usually done if the old engine is too damaged to fix.

Term

corrosion

Corrosion is when metal parts in a car start to break down and rust because of exposure to moisture and chemicals. It can cause serious problems if not addressed.

Term

electrolysis

Electrolysis happens when electricity causes metal parts to break down, which can lead to rust and damage. It's something that can happen in cars, especially if they have electrical issues.

Term

Cylinder wall damage happens when the inside of the engine's cylinder gets scratched or worn out. This can cause problems with how the engine runs, and sometimes it's easier to just replace the whole engine instead of fixing it.

Term

replacement engine

A replacement engine is a new engine that you put in a car when the old one is broken or too worn out. Sometimes it's cheaper to just get a new engine instead of fixing the old one.

Term

common rail

Common rail is a modern way of delivering fuel to diesel engines. It helps the engine run better and cleaner by spraying fuel more precisely.

Term

cylinder failure

Cylinder failure happens when one part of the engine stops working right. This can make the car less powerful and can happen for different reasons, like too much heat or wear and tear.

Part

Monster Ram

The Monster Ram is a part that helps diesel engines breathe better, which can make them run more powerfully. It's often used in trucks to improve performance.

Term

insurance

Insurance is a way to protect yourself financially if something happens to your car, like an accident or theft.

Part

coil style heater

A coil style heater is a device that heats up by using a coiled wire. It's often used in cars to warm up air or fluids, helping the engine run better.

Car

Ram 2500

The Ram 2500 is a tough truck designed for heavy work, like towing trailers or carrying heavy loads. It's known for being strong and reliable, especially with its diesel engine option.

Term

million-mile motor

A 'million-mile motor' is an engine that is famous for being able to run for a million miles before it needs major repairs. Cummins engines are often called this because they are so reliable.

Term

Powerstroke

Powerstroke is a type of diesel engine made by Ford, mainly used in their larger trucks. They're built to pull heavy loads.

Term

Duramax

Duramax is a type of diesel engine made by General Motors, used in their trucks. They're known for being powerful and good for towing.

Part

transmission upgrades

Transmission upgrades are changes made to a car's transmission to make it work better or last longer. This can involve adding stronger parts or better cooling systems to prevent overheating.

Car

Audi A5

The Audi A5 is a fancy car that looks really nice and drives smoothly. It's a good choice if you want something stylish and comfortable.

Car

Jeep Grand Cherokee

The Jeep Grand Cherokee is a type of SUV that can handle rough roads and off-road adventures while also being comfortable for everyday driving. It's popular because it offers a mix of ruggedness and luxury.

Car

Honda Civic

The Honda Civic is a small car that many people like because it's dependable and saves on gas. It's a good choice for anyone looking for a practical vehicle that still looks cool.

Car

Ford Mustang

The Ford Mustang is a classic sports car that many people love for its speed and cool design. It's known for being fun to drive and has a long history in American car culture.

Car

Acura Integra

The Acura Integra is a small car that's fun to drive and known for being reliable. It's a good choice if you want something sporty but still practical for everyday use.

Car

Mazda B2000

The Mazda B2000 is a small truck that was popular a long time ago. It's known for being easy to drive and good on gas, making it a classic choice for some people.

Car

Dodge Ram

The Dodge Ram is a big truck that can carry heavy loads and is great for work or towing things. It's popular because it's comfortable to drive and has lots of features.

Car

Ford F350

The Ford F-350 is a super strong truck that can carry really heavy things and tow big trailers. It's perfect for people who need a tough vehicle for work or big projects.

Car

Rolls-Royce Ghost

The Rolls-Royce Ghost is an extremely fancy car that is all about luxury and comfort. It's made for people who want the best of the best when it comes to cars.

Car

Ford Ranger

The Ford Ranger is a smaller truck that can carry things in its bed and is good for driving on rough roads. It's a great option if you need a vehicle for work or outdoor activities.

Car

Dodge Charger

The Dodge Charger is a big car that looks sporty and can go really fast. It's a good choice if you want a car that has room for passengers but still feels exciting to drive.

Car

Ford F150 Lighting

The Ford F-150 Lightning is an electric truck that can do everything a regular truck can do but runs on electricity instead of gas. It's a new option for people who want a powerful truck while being eco-friendly.

LIVE

Welcome back to the pod shed.

Had some fun the last couple of weeks

with the Gladiator that Mopar loaned me.

And I haven't spent time in a Gladiator like this

since my four-wheeler days, so it's been several years.

And the 25 is nice because it's a little bit quieter,

a little bit more refined, love the interior.

Obviously the same as my 392, but the dash is great.

The larger screen that is landscape is great.

And I've just really enjoyed it.

And I've taken it up to the property a few times.

And it just, it does the things I want it to do.

It's rugged enough for off-road

and it is comfortable enough for around town,

especially with that Mopar two-inch lift

and 35s and Bilsteins.

It's really perfect for the kind of do-it-all truck.

I think the 33s are enough on a Gladiator,

but because of the extended wheelbase on those trucks

over the competition, 35s are nice to have

and also looks better on 35s.

Honestly, I think 37s look great,

but totally fine on 35s and you don't have to re-gear

because the transmission has low enough first gear

to make up for it.

And I've been getting on the highway,

somewhere around 17, 18 miles per gallon,

something like that, which is totally fine.

And I wonder, this one's a Rubicon

and I'm thinking, well, I could probably get away

with the Mojave right a little bit better.

And it has the Mopar Fox shocks with the jounce

in the front, which I really enjoy.

I don't necessarily need the front locker,

but then I was looking at the Saharas

with, I believe they have a limited slip in the back

and I'm like, well, that's probably even nicer

for a round town.

So we'll see, this has really warmed my heart

up to Gladiators to be sure.

And I've really enjoyed having it.

And we have a car seat in the back seat

for my eight year old and no problem.

Like she climbs in and buckles herself in

and there's plenty of room and it just,

it does all the things.

So I've really enjoyed it,

but I recently went out to KOH for the day.

And right before I went out there,

I installed the flated air topper

that the guys from Flated sent when they were on the show.

They literally sent it.

Like it was like the next day I had a air topper

sitting on my porch and I was like, all right,

well, I'm gonna put this on the Gladiator

and see how it goes.

And I love those guys.

You know that, you know, from our interview.

I believe in what they're doing.

I think the product is great,

but I've never really had firsthand day to day engagement

or experience living with their product.

And I gotta tell you, I'm more than impressed.

I'm glad that I got it.

So far it's lived up to the promise of being the topper

that doesn't ruin your life.

I was able to install it.

I think the first time is about 45 minutes,

but that included unpacking and putting together

some of the pieces like the windows and screens.

But now I bet I could take it off in five minutes

deflate it in another five and store it in the corner.

I think installation should probably take about 15 minutes

if you were unfolding it from the storage bag,

which is like a backpack.

And it's great.

So here are the things I really like about it.

Number one, I think it makes the truck look better.

Number two, I've had a lot of people going,

hey, what's that?

Is that an inflatable?

Like tell me about the topper.

And it draws attention.

So I've been answering all sorts of questions about it.

The quality is fantastic on it.

There's no noise, no creaking offer.

Like I said, it went up to KOH.

By the way, shout out to the couple of listeners

who grabbed me out there and said hi.

I wish I would have had time to grab a picture with you guys,

but thank you so much.

I always love getting out there and seeing people.

So shout out to you guys.

Anyway, going back to no noise, no cracking.

You don't have to worry about it off-road.

There's actually less wind noise from the Gladiator with it on.

I think because it's cab height,

it smooths that airflow over the back window

so you don't hear it right there.

The fit's fantastic, super sturdy.

Just the ease of use of it.

And it's all Velcro and some zippers.

And it just, it works great.

And then even on the inside,

there's a couple of mesh pockets.

So if you're camping in there,

you can put your wallet or your phone.

You know, that's all there.

There's no degradation in ride quality or payload

because it doesn't weigh anything.

And maybe some drawbacks are a little bit less secure

than a hard lockable topper.

There might be some dust intrusion,

but it would rain for several days

and it held up to the rainstorm just fine

without getting the bed soaked.

And right now there's nothing in the bed.

There's not even a bed liner back there.

It's just a painted bed.

And it was totally fine.

So anyway, those are just a few of my thoughts

after living with it for a few weeks.

And then I just wanted to follow up with you guys

and let you know how great it is.

So to me, it seems like the perfect in-between product

for somebody who occasionally needs a topper

but still wants full use of their bed or vice versa.

But if you want one for yourself,

there's a special link and a discount of 15%

by going on the featured products page

of our website, truckshowpodcast.com.

So if you want something from Flated

and they have a whole line of products,

the other one I really like is the air carrier, right?

It's like that Yakama box,

but inflatable that goes on your roof.

That's another one.

Anyway, you can use our link, get 15% off,

grab yourself something from Flated, support those guys.

I've been really impressed with the product

and would love to keep spreading that word for them.

And they're just a bunch of good dudes.

So anyway, I think you enjoyed the conversation

we had with them.

But today's conversation on this episode,

I think you're really gonna enjoy too.

I'm really excited about it

because it revolves around diesels

and we haven't jumped into diesels for a while.

So this one's kind of special.

Our guest for this show is Brad Hunt

from Protek Diesel in Kamloops, BC.

He was actually in SoCal for business and said,

hey, I'm in town.

I'm like, come to the pod shed.

So he came in studio.

We had this really great, informative conversation

about all things diesel.

I think you'll really enjoy it.

But before we welcome Brad,

we need to of course thank the companies

that make the Truck Show podcast possible.

The Truck Show podcast is proudly brought to you

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the maker of the best synthetics

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They also make some of the finest lubricants,

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We use Amsoil products to protect our rigs

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They have a huge selection of quality knives from EDCs

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Score one for yourself today.

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The Truck Show.

We're gonna show you what we know.

We're gonna answer what the truck,

cause truck rides with the ****.

The Truck Show.

We have the lifted, we have the lowered

and everything in between.

We'll talk about trucks that run on diesel,

electricity in our gasoline.

The Truck Show.

It's the Truck Show with your host, Holman.

That's right, you're back in the pod shed

in lovely Huntington Beach, California.

Although you might be able to hear it's raining

outside right now.

But I think because I have the pod shed

so insulated from outside noises,

hopefully you can't hear it.

So without further ado,

here's the interview I did with Brad Hunt

from Protect Diesel Center in the pod shed.

Please enjoy.

So I'd like to welcome to the pod shed backyard studio,

Brad Hunt from Protect Diesel Center out of BC, Canada.

Yeah, how are you guys doing?

What are you doing down here?

I came down to hang out in beautiful California.

It's nice and warm down here.

Came to spend a little bit of time with Banks Power

and go through some monster ram stuff and some other parts.

So Jay reached out to me and he's like,

dude, Brad's down, you gotta have him on the show.

I'm like, dude, I've got so much.

He's like, dude, he's only gonna be here.

Oh, it's fine.

So you're able to get down here

and we're gonna knock out a podcast.

So I guess your claim to fame would be,

you're the one who really kind of discovered

the grid heater bolt failure with the rams,

with Cummins engine, which everybody thought

was an anomaly until it wasn't.

And you kind of put some stuff out there

and people are like, yeah, that's like,

it'll never, and all of a sudden, boom,

they just started hitting the mileage.

Cylinder six just started to drop

and take the engines with them, right?

Yeah, we knew about the failure for years, actually.

And we had, you know, hundreds of trucks

that we dealt with over the years with the failure

and we were replacing engines.

So you were doing full engine replacements at that point.

So you knew, because sort of the thing that happens is,

there's corrosion or electrolysis

that basically takes the stud

and weakens it to the point where the nut falls off.

It usually falls into cylinder six

and then it gets smushed

and rolls around inside the engine

and that's a $25,000 diesel engine replacement job here

in the States, probably more in Canada, right?

Yeah, in Canada, it's like 30 to 35K, probably.

If you're going complete,

depending on the damage from the bolt,

sometimes the bolt just bends a valve

or hits the center of the piston

and kind of damages the head

where it doesn't do any cylinder wall damage.

And then if you don't have any cylinder wall damage,

you could theoretically pull the engine out

and get it machined and put it all back together

and put a new head on and do it that way,

which would be a little bit less.

But nine times out of 10,

by the time that people get pulled over,

it's already got to the corner of the wall

and it's gouged the wall up and it ends up being,

it's just cheaper to buy a replacement.

And it's not something that you can drive on

for 50 miles to get your diesel shop.

Like it happens, you're done.

Yeah, it's pretty quick.

The only time guys get lucky is if the bolt breaks off

big enough that it's still floating around

on top of the valve stem,

which we've had quite a few of those,

and then they don't require an engine build,

it's basically just head gasket and pull it apart

and put all the top end back together.

So that's definitely a lot easier,

but when we first discovered,

started seeing the failures,

there was really nobody was diagnosing it at the time.

It's guys would just say,

oh, well, it's a common rail Cummins.

It must have a wash cylinder from a bad injector

or something like that.

Guys weren't going down into the cylinders,

looking with bore scopes and finding the broken bolts.

They were just having a cylinder six failure

and just pulling the engine out and putting a new engine in.

And when we first started seeing it,

we were noticing the grid heater bolts were breaking

because we were buying long block engines instead of complete.

So if you buy a complete, you're just out and in

and you know, no big deal, but we were buying long blocks.

Basically saves money because you can reuse

some of the components that aren't worn

off of the engine replacement.

Exactly.

And then we started pulling, you know,

pulling the heater assembly's off the engines

and noticing that everything was missing.

Charred and broken.

You know, but at the time we didn't really have a solution.

So we were putting engines in the trucks

with replacement grid heaters from Cummins.

We didn't know about the Monster Ram in the beginning.

Yeah.

So, you know, so for a few years,

we were just dealing with this problem internally

and replacing them as they came.

And you know, you'd see, you know, where we were,

we would probably see one or two a year,

you know, in the earlier years.

Is it just mileage based or is it if you use your heater

to preheat the engine before you start it,

there's going to be more wear

because the electricity going through it

or is it just again, simply mileage?

There's no, there's actually quite a few different scenarios

with the heater grid failures.

So mileage is definitely a factor for sure,

but that being said, we have customers

that have well over 400,000 miles on their trucks

and the grid heaters are perfectly fine and intact.

So there's really no mileage basis to the failure.

I would more say climate is definitely a thing for sure.

In the colder climates, you know,

your heater grids are going to turn on a lot more often.

So you're going to see more failures.

Also the fact that some of them will loosen up over time

from just hot and cold expansion and vibration.

And once they loosen a little bit,

like even a quarter thread, if they loosen that far,

well, now you've got a loose contact.

So now you've got.

Oh, it's arching as well as moving around in there.

Yeah, you get a ton of extra heat and they'll melt off.

You also have a bunch of relay failures and certain years

there was actually relay upgrades and recalls,

but nobody ever thinks to think about the relay.

And a lot of times the relay will stick on

and then it'll just, it'll just heat that bolt

to the point that it's red hot and just break off, you know,

and then it works its way down the intake runner

and then ends up in cylinder six, you know,

so that's how it all kind of came to be.

And, you know, we ended up,

there were a few years into dealing with these things

and then one day we.

Did you ever reach, I mean,

you're probably dealing more on the higher mileage size.

You probably weren't like seeing a brand new truck

and then reaching out to Cummins saying,

hey, this, you have this issue,

you're probably just thinking, oh, this is kind of wear and tear

or like, what was going through your mind as a shop owner?

Were you like, I've got to raise, you know,

raise the flag on this one.

So somebody realizes that this is really a epidemic

across, you know, this platform.

Yeah, we started seeing more and more and more of them

as the years went on.

But, you know, I would say a lot of guys are like,

oh, mileage related, but, you know, in reality,

we've had trucks at 20,000 miles.

Wow.

Like 50,000 kilometers, 45,000, 50,000 kilometers in Canada,

that's pretty common, you know.

So I would say the majority of the failures

that we've dealt with are between 50,000 and 250,000

and K, you know, kind of in that range, right?

Which is, you know, gets to be, you know,

that 160 to 200,000 mile range is pretty common,

but we have seen them as low as, like I say,

as 20,000 miles and they're failing.

And it's funny because we actually did reach out,

you know, to Cummins and to Chrysler,

and they basically denied that there was an issue.

Sure.

You know, that was kind of, you couldn't get any further

up the ladder on that problem.

And after dealing with it for a few years,

we've actually discovered literature on the internet.

It is out there, you know, basically from Cummins directly

to Chrysler admitting to the issue into,

I have a letter from 2007 and a half.

Oh, wow.

The trucks were, you know, I think it was April or May of 2007,

the letter was dated to Cummins,

or not to Cummins, to Chrysler,

to remove the heater grid assemblies

and use a grinder to grind the bottom threads

to make it so that the nut couldn't back off.

So this was when the trucks were brand new.

And if you pull a heater grid off now

and you flip it upside down and look at it,

you'll actually see that the threads are a little.

So it's like a little bevel basically to keep it

so if they loosen up, it doesn't drop all the way down.

That was the theory.

Yeah.

Yeah, but that again, doesn't fix the problem

because it creates now, if it does loosen up,

it creates an arcing point and they'll break.

So, you know, so in the end, it, you know,

it brought it all to light with getting it blown up

to where people actually saw that there was an issue

because for the first few videos that we put out

on the failure, you get all the keyboard guys on there

and they're all like, oh, it's one in 10,000.

I've never seen one in my career.

It doesn't happen.

It's, you know, it's blown out of proportion and, you know,

and then here I am with, you know,

probably three or four buckets of failed.

Yeah.

Grid heaters laying on my floor and all this.

How are you lucky enough to get the one out of 10,000

and you have 30 of them in the shop

for the past year or something, right?

You know, and that's the thing is like,

I literally did a video of four banks

with a picture of just a table full of failures.

And, you know, and then people are like,

oh, well, only the one bolt breaks,

but the other one inside doesn't.

And it's like, no, they have both, right?

They both fail and they're both a weak point.

You know, so we went through all of that

and we actually got teamed up with banks on this

through a customer.

So we had a customer come in and he had, he was low.

He was like 80,000 kilometers.

So what is that?

That's like 55,000, 60,000 miles.

And he had a complete failure.

He was driving, the bolt went into the piston,

took out the engine,

and he was doing some iDash testing for banks.

So he knew Jay and he called Jay and said,

hey, can you send me a Monster Ram

because I have to put an engine in my truck?

And then he explained to Jay what was going on.

And we didn't even know that the Monster Ram

existed at this point.

We were still using factory grid heaters

because we didn't see any advertising.

And we could back up really quick.

So at that time, Monster Ram was more of an air flow,

you know, performance modification or better efficiency.

But what they did was instead of having

the grid heater attached with a bolt,

they had like a billet grid heater, it's like a plate.

So essentially without knowing about it,

they solved the problem.

And it was never marketed that way until, you know,

we started even talking about it on the show

when that conversation was going on, right?

It was like, hey, there's these failures.

And I didn't, I'm like, really,

I've never heard of that, right?

And now it's this big thing, but Monster Rams have become,

in fact, my uncle just got one for his 24 Ram

because of the insurance.

He's like, it's not that much money to make sure

I don't have to spend 25 grand on engine down the road.

Well, and that's just it.

And yeah, banks built it for performance and fuel economy.

They actually had no idea that they,

that there even was a failure.

They're solving this future massive problem

nobody knows about yet.

Yeah, and we didn't know it exists.

And they didn't know the problem existed.

And it all just kind of came together all at once

on this one particular customer that happened to,

you know, get us in touch with banks.

And then, you know, we talked it out and said,

okay, this is the fix for this problem

because they went to, you know,

they eliminated the grid heater completely in the design.

It's got an open bed plate where it's straight through.

And then they went to a coil style heater

and we were like, well, this is great.

This is going to solve, you know, all the problems.

And then that's when they sent us one.

We put an engine in the truck and we did the first video.

And, you know, in the first video, of course,

took off like wildfire and, you know,

and now it's just been building over a couple years.

And you probably have people who replaced an engine

and went, that's what happened to mine.

But they said that was, this is like probably

all making sense to a lot of people too, right?

Oh, I'm sure, yeah.

And not only that, it gets a lot of people to check the wire.

So because, you know, we did a few videos

just basically showing people how to check at home,

you know, just to keep an eye on it, you know?

And yeah, there's a lot of videos out there now.

There's a lot of guys, you know, pushing the fix.

And there's a lot of companies that build other products

that, you know, really don't fix the problem either.

But they're trying to go through the gold rush

of selling something that's supposed to fix the problem,

but the design acumen isn't there,

or it's not, they don't understand the problem fully.

So their solution isn't exactly a replacement

because they're trying to hit a price point,

not a engineering solution.

That's right.

Where are we at now?

The new 20, 25 Rams with the new upgraded Cummins

don't have that design.

They went back to a glow plug.

So basically that issue is, I guess,

more or less solved from the factory,

but there's an awful lot of engines out there,

an awful lot of people that aren't educated

as what could be a ticking time bomb,

because righteously so,

Cummins has an amazing reputation

for dependability and reliability.

And this has been one of those things

that is a little bit of a black eye

because people were like, well, where'd this come from?

Because these engines, I've seen them at,

I remember Diesel Power Challenge,

we had a guy blow a hole through his freeze plugs,

lose two cylinders, engines on fire,

and he's still finishing the tractor pole,

or the sled pole with four cylinders.

He's just going, dude, you know,

well, what's it gonna take to kill this thing?

And they're obviously really hard to kill,

but this is one of those kind of unforced errors

where there's a component internally

that can sort of self-destruct on itself.

Yeah, that's pretty much how it is.

The Cummins has always been known

as a reliable, durable engine,

right from the 12 valve days.

The 12 valve kind of gave it its reputation

as being the so-called million-mile motor, right?

And as years went on, the 24 valve came out,

and they had some VP44 pump issues,

but for the most part,

that engine was pretty much bulletproof as well,

unless you ended up with the 53 block

where they would crack.

But there was years and years,

you got guys that have millions of miles

on Cummins engines, you know,

and then they came into the common rail,

and the common rail was a game changer

for, you know, for economy and horsepower.

Now you finally had a diesel engine

that, you know, actually put some power to the ground

from the factory without...

Yeah, it didn't feel so industrial.

Now you had something that was a little bit more appropriate

for a light duty truck,

where you could drive it day in and day out,

and it didn't have that medium duty feel to it.

Exactly, it wasn't...

A little bit more refined, smoother, quieter,

better throttle response, all that kind of stuff.

Yeah, exactly, and a little more economy,

and the reliability was still there

other than now you had the common rail injector issues

with guys not running proper fuel filters

and proper maintenance, they would take the injector.

Which is any engine?

That's any engine, that's not a Cummins fault,

that's the maintenance, an owner issue, right,

which causes them not to last as long.

But, you know, the 6.7, unfortunately,

the bolt was kind of the unforeseen failure

that nobody really thought of,

and honestly, I feel like a lot of people

are upset at the fact that they allowed this

to be manufactured, and then once the failure is known

and there's been proven for the last five years

or whatever that we've been doing this,

and other shops that have found this and done videos,

there's tens of thousands of failures,

I'm sure, North America-wide, if not more,

and everybody's like, well, why is Cummins not doing a recall?

If you go on any forums or anything online,

it's every third or fourth comment is it should be a recall,

Cummins, why aren't they, and nothing has ever been done.

It's just kind of been pushed under the rug,

and we'll just pretend this problem goes away.

And then now with the 2025,

they've redesigned it completely,

so now you have an engine that has a side-draft intake,

you have gold plugs, you have external injectors,

they're not internal anymore,

so they've redesigned that whole engine.

So now they went back to a gray iron block

because the previous generation

had the compacted graphite iron block, right?

Is it evolution, or is it an acknowledgement

of some of the shortcomings of the previous gen?

I guess you never know unless you're in the walls,

but by all accounts, and I've driven them,

the 25 engine is great, especially with the new eight-speed

power-torque ZF transmission, it's phenomenal.

Yeah, I haven't had the opportunity

to even see one in person yet,

but I can't wait till we get to get one in

and get a look at it and take a drive.

The transmission's the best part about it

because the first gear's so low,

and so I think they're all 342 gears,

and there's not a big 321 to 410 gear spread

like there used to be, so you get the economy

on the top end because eighth is deep

and then one is low, so it's a pleasure to drive

and unlike some of the transmissions in the past

where it didn't feel like the communication

between the engine and the transmission were quite perfect

or you'd kind of get that roughness in between,

this tranny is completely smooth

and it always feels like it's in the right gear.

I was really impressed.

Toad with it, I think I towed 18,000 pounds,

something like that.

That's pretty good.

Did Davis Dam, did Empty, did Loaded with Payload,

drove one about 1,000 miles just as a test around here,

that took it up to Central California

and I mean, it was really, really impressive,

so now we know about the great heater bolt failure.

What are some of the other things to look out for

on Cummins and then let's get into Powerstroke and Duramax

and I mean, you see it all coming through your shop

and I would imagine you probably have a lot of customers

who really use their trucks too.

Yeah, we're in an industry kind of area,

so where we're at, we're all four to 6% grades

are better for hills, we're in the mountains.

Our temperatures in the summer range,

80 to 100 degrees, so it's very hot

and there's a lot of hills.

Everybody, they're either in the drilling industry

or they're in construction or mining

or you know, and they're all driving one ton trucks,

so you come to Cam Loops and pretty much,

I would say every second or third house has a diesel truck

and they're not, dailies, they're all work trucks.

They use them for everything.

They're pulling big weight all the time

and they're running them hard and...

So you get to see real world...

Real world failures and for the commons generations,

we don't really see a lot of the older 12 valves anymore

because the guys that own them are working on them themselves.

They look up videos, they figure out how to do it.

They're pretty simple.

They're hanging out with their buddies, having a beer

and they're just working on their trucks, right?

So we don't see a ton of those.

The VP44 trucks are kind of the same kind of deal.

We still see injection pumps once in a while,

but for the most part, it's all common rail stuff

that comes through the shop.

And it's basically the same few jobs, you know?

We're dealing with injector failures from lack of maintenance

or like the five, nine common rails.

You get to that 220 to 250,000 mile range

and the injectors are pretty much wore out

if they haven't been maintaining them.

It's whole like running good fuel conditioners

because nobody seems to run fuel conditioner.

I don't know why, but all of our fuel where we are

and where you are is so dry, you know?

Everybody should be running a fuel conditioner,

you know, all the time.

So we do a ton of injection stuff for fuel systems,

you know, on the five, nine for sure.

We've noticed the six, seven, the injectors are a lot tougher.

We don't do quite as many sets of injectors in those,

but the trade-off for the six, seven is that now we're doing

68 RFE transmissions all the time because they can't,

they run too hot and people are way overloading them

and they're just, they're smoking them.

And, you know, so we're constantly doing

transmission upgrades and cooling upgrades

for the transmissions.

So coolers and clutch packs and things like that.

Yeah, we'll generally order in a built tranny

and put them in and then added coolers

because they're just, you know,

for what guys are doing with them,

they need the extra cooling, you know,

and then head gaskets.

We do a ton of head gaskets on six, sevens.

Yeah, but that's, those are kind of the main,

main kind of failures that, you know,

that guys are looking for.

But if, again, you're, if you're living somewhere

where it's all flat and you're just towing on flat ground,

well, you probably don't see the, you know,

the head gasket failures and you might not see

as many transmission failures either.

Yeah, cause you're not pushing it with the heat

for extended loads up a, you know,

hill or something or down shifting

and holding the entire truck and load back, right?

Yeah. Well, the, you know, the,

I think the biggest downfall to all of these trucks,

you know, whether it be Ford Dodge or Chevy,

it doesn't really matter,

but I think the biggest downfall is that since common rail,

they all build too much power for their own good.

And I know everybody wants as much power as possible,

but the reality is when you can hook on to 10 or 15,000 pounds

and you can take a 6% grade for, you know,

five, five to eight miles on cruise at a hundred and,

you know, say a hundred mile an hour, which they'll do.

Yeah. There's something not right with that.

Like you're towing that much weight.

And then you got the VGT turbos and, you know,

you don't have a traditional exhaust breaks.

They just adjust the veins.

So to help with, you know, hauling those loads down

and that's got to be at least a little bit stressful

on the, on the engine, I would imagine.

There's a lot, there's a lot going on.

There's a lot of back pressure. There's a lot of heat,

you know, and that's, I think of a lot of people

don't really think about that, you know,

enthusiasts and guys that work on their own trucks.

They, a lot of them have gauge packs and EGT.

I love the iDash for that.

Cause even on, you know, like my 392 in the driveway,

you know, the iDash is great for monitoring temps, you know,

all that kind of stuff, you know,

Jeep has a big engine, a small engine, big compartment.

So you got to watch that kind of stuff, right?

Just like if you were towing.

Yeah. So on a, let's go to Duramax platform.

What are sort of the common jobs,

maybe the top three or four things that you see of guys

coming through the shop with a Duramax issue?

Mostly the Duramaxes are all around.

They're actually a pretty good, pretty good platform.

You know, the Allison, the Allison transmissions

hold up really, really well.

Again, they, they do lack in cooling just like a lot

of the other trucks do.

So we do see some issues with transmissions running hot

and over temp on, on the Allison's

because the factory coolers aren't big enough.

So we see a lot of that.

There's, and you know, the early LB7s,

you would see a ton of injectors there.

You know, everybody knows there was a recall

on those injectors right from GM.

If they failed, they were getting replaced under a warranty,

you know, and as the years go on,

it tends to seem that most people get about, you know,

150 to 200,000 miles out of a set of, you know,

LB7 injectors.

So we do a ton of injectors in LB7s,

even still to this day, because that's something

a lot of guys don't do at home,

just because of how in depth it is to do under valve cover

injectors in those trucks.

You're talking about any type of contamination

on your workbench is game over and you've gone

through all that work and there's a reason injectors

are expensive because the amount of precision

into the machining, into the part itself is,

is mind blowing to see how precise they have to be

to meter that fuel just right.

Well, exactly.

And the, and the other big problem with the LB7 platform

is they're under valve cover injectors.

So the fuel lines go through the valve cover

into the top of the injector,

but what happens is all the years of condensation

and dirt and rust and grime,

everything falls into the top of the line

and there's nothing you can do to get in there

and deal with it.

And the second you crack that line loose,

all of that debris falls right into the top

of the injector.

For that reason, 90% of shops won't even

put a used injector back in.

So if a customer has one injector failed

and they have to pull that side apart.

You just do four injectors.

You do the whole bank because it's not worth the risk

of trying to deal with a contamination problem

because it's a 13 hour job to do a set of injectors

on LB7.

So, you know, so guys don't want to do that.

You know, and then we ask-

Or they do and the customer doesn't.

Yeah, exactly.

We always ask to dip the lines where we are,

but nowadays the lines are getting so old

that some of them have been done a couple of times.

So we're starting to replace them now with the injectors

and just doing a whole set of lines.

Well, you do the injectors and then you just don't have

any chance of comebacks or warranty problems.

And then you get into the LLY variation

of the Duramax family and they were,

overall the LLY is actually pretty reliable

other than they had a head gasket issues.

Right from the factory, the gasket was,

you know, they had a fire ring on the inside

of the early gaskets that the updated gaskets

don't have a ring.

But what we would find with the fire ring

is that when the head gaskets were installed

and the heads were torqued down,

it would actually over squish that fire ring

and it would put hairline cracks in it.

And just over time and years of driving,

you know, those cracks would expand.

And just the heat cycles start pulling the material apart.

Yeah, yeah.

And then we've had trucks where they've actually got grooves

in the corner of the pistons from that fire ring

moving over into the cylinder.

It just kind of walk over and the piston just touches it.

And like the fire ring's soft metal,

so it's not like it's a big chunk

that's gonna put a hole in it or anything,

but it's enough that it'll create wear.

So, you know, a lot of those trucks,

they would overpressure and push coolant

out of the, you know, the coolant reservoirs.

And so we do head gaskets and studs on those.

And other than that issue, there's not really a whole lot,

you know, that goes wrong with that variation, you know.

So, and then of course the LBZ, everybody,

everybody wants to get their hands on LBZ.

It's like the Holy Grail.

It's a great engine.

It's kind of eliminated the problems

of both generations before.

And then they've matched it with a six-speed Allyson,

which is a really strong, you know,

change.

A real Allyson, not just the one that was marketed

as Allyson, right?

That's right.

Yeah, it's the real deal.

And, you know, and it will put up with a lot.

It still had some heating issues

and, you know, with the transmission temps and stuff,

just like the rest of them, but overall,

it's very rare that you were doing any, you know,

any head gaskets or anything like that on that truck.

Like somebody would have to really work it hard

because it had the updated gaskets put in it, you know,

so we didn't see a whole lot of failures with that,

with that generation, you know,

but then you start getting into, you know,

the next generation up, I would say, you know,

like your seven and a half to 10

was a pretty reliable platform, you know,

still around the CP3 pump, everything,

everything was still pretty tough,

still had the Allyson, didn't really get a whole lot

of stuff happening there,

other than now you've got your DPF to deal with.

So now you've gone from having the LBZ,

which, you know, only had an EGR on it

to getting into the next generation

where now you're dealing with the DPF and emissions and...

All that fun stuff.

All the fun stuff plugging up, right?

Especially for the, you know, the people

that just kind of drive around town

and don't really get out and get the heat

to get that system clean.

That's when somebody's out looking for a new truck

and they go, oh, it's that one.

Ooh!

Right?

Yeah, exactly.

Okay, send me back to the LBZ.

Yeah, well, that kind of happened, right?

And then, yeah, and then everybody kind of jumped up

from there, you know, getting it,

getting into all the newer generations.

And once, you know, once you switched over to that 2012,

now you're dealing with a CP4 pump failure.

Yeah, and then that's a industry-wide thing, really.

I mean, there's all sorts of,

and we've talked about that on the show

and there's a bunch of different theories and fixes

and, you know, Bosch has had their recalls

and it's just, ah, that's a whole,

that's a whole other like five podcasts.

Well, yeah, you know, that pump was definitely

a major issue, as everybody knows, you know.

My, you know, other than obviously the design flaws

with the pump and why it blows up, you know,

I am a firm believer just from what we see,

where we are, that the majority of the CP4 pump failures

are Duramax and over the forward.

And our perspective on that is actually,

you know, fuel supply because the Duramax is until 2017

until they went into the L5Ps,

they don't have a factory lift pump.

And everybody assumes, you know,

that they have a lift pump in the tank.

They just assume that it does

because everything pretty much does.

Well, the Duramax Vans came with a factory lift pump

on the frame and a spin on filter,

but the pickups don't.

So, all the fuel supply is being pulled

from the pump forward, which is adding strain to that pump,

you know, whether people want to believe it or not,

you know, they'll say, oh, well, it's engineered that way

and, you know, it's okay.

Well, engineered that way doesn't always,

because sometimes you engineer for a price point too.

That's right.

And you may have the best dam pump in the world

to meet whatever that price point is

that the bean counters gave you.

And there's a lot of engineers at OEs

who left stuff on the table

because they couldn't get it financed

through the program budget.

I'm sure that has a lot to do with it.

Yeah, when you get to the bean counters,

things all of a sudden change, right?

Every half a cent makes a difference.

It makes a difference when you're building

hundreds of thousands of these things a year.

Yeah, because, you know, we see a ton of Duramax CP4 failures

and we do a ton of CP3 conversions,

but the Fords are, we see very little.

We do get them just like anything, but it's very rare.

And I do believe that that is because the Ford

has a decent quality fuel supply on the frame

and a secondary filter.

So, you know, whereas the Duramax just has

the one spin-on filter, that's it.

And then they have no lift pumps.

So I think that plays a lot into that, you know,

helping that poor design pump fail catastrophically

is just, you know, because it has no fuel supply.

And then again, back to you're not running

any kind of conditioner.

Yeah, well, and we already talked about it on the show,

like our lubricity is a lot worse here

than in Europe on our diesel fuel.

If you've got to work the pump harder

and there's less lubrication in the fuel for the pump,

that's not going to be a good thing.

No, and, you know, a lot of people are, they buy a truck,

they don't know a whole lot about it.

They just need it for work and they need the weight

capacities and, you know, and they want the reliability

of having a diesel truck, but they read the owner's manual

or they talk to their dealer and the dealer

and the owner's manual say that, you know,

the lubricity and additives are not required.

It's stated, you know, in all the literature out there

that you don't need it.

So people are like, oh, well, you're, you know,

selling snake oil, I don't need this stuff.

But the reality is that you do need lubrication.

It's like going back to like on a gasoline engine

where something can run on 87 octane turbo engine,

but it's like optimized for premium.

And my wife had a Audi A5 2.0 turbo.

She put the cheap gas in and I, like, what are you doing?

She goes, oh, it's cheap.

I go, it's, you're saving $2.

I go, put premium in and I guarantee you

at the end of this tank, you'll have more range

and it'll be more fun to drive.

And she did and the cost was offset

because she got more fuel economy

because it was optimized for, you know, 91 here in California.

And she's like, you're right, I got more range

and then this thing's so much more fun to drive.

But it's the same thing as it's like,

even though the manufacturer says it doesn't need it,

sometimes that's the bare minimum standard.

And by layering on something else,

you get to a better standard.

And, you know, obviously they're gonna protect

their warranties and things like that.

But at the same time, I think you have to use

a little bit of common sense and knowledge to figure out

like what makes sense in this application,

whether it's gas, whether it's diesel,

do additives make sense?

I mean, you may go to the cheap gas station

and it doesn't have any detergents in it, right?

And you get a, coked up valves and things like that.

And then somebody goes to auto zone

and pours a bottle of Tecron in their tank.

You know, and it's like, you could be doing that

with every, you know, gas station visit.

Same thing, you know, with an additive for diesel.

So there's, it's, I say it as like,

people are cheap about the wrong thing.

A lot of times I think, I think they are for sure.

Yeah, or just uneducated.

Yeah.

You know, sometimes it's not about money,

it's about convenience and not knowing as well, right?

But it's, it's definitely something

that is highly overlooked in the diesel world

is running a good conditioner.

And like you said, with gas vehicles, you know,

people are looking at the price at the pump

and they're going, okay, well, it's, you know,

whatever 10, 15 cents, you know, cheaper for, you know,

89 octane versus, you know, like 92 or 94.

And yeah, you're right.

If you run the 94, you're, you're going to get better mileage

and you're going to get better drivability.

It's a better quality fuel.

Yeah.

But that being said again, I feel like our gas is

a lot worse quality than what it used to be.

Oh, for sure.

You know, like if you, if you go to the gas station

and fill, you know, fill a Jerry can and dump it out

on the ground, like we, we've had gas that,

the low octane stuff that won't even barely light.

It's like lighting a candle.

All right.

You know, the stuff's just junk.

Yeah.

So it's, it's nothing like it used to be.

Yeah.

So let's go to the Ford six, seven platform.

What, what are some of the things, as far as I know,

and I don't live in your world, but it seems like the six,

seven for the most part has been a really reliable

platform for them.

Obviously six liters had seven, three is like the old

mechanical horse, holy grail.

Six liter is a really decent engine.

Once you fix everything they went cheap on,

they sort of did that with the six, four and kind of

redeem themselves a little bit, but it seems like the seven,

three platform has been like really well designed.

Yeah.

Well, you know, if we're talking about Ford in general,

I would say the seven, three is a really, really strong

engine overall.

It did have the weak link of the Huey injection.

Yeah.

You know, because again maintenance, it all comes down

to maintenance really.

You can't really blame the Huey system because the Huey

system actually does function.

And it works great when it's not clogged up with old oil.

Exactly.

You know, and they've run it in medium duty trucks for years.

A lot of the internationals and the old catapillars,

like those things would go forever on Huey injection.

And the seven threes are the same way, but nobody wants

to change the oil in them.

So then you get addiction issues, you know, and the six

liter is kind of the same way.

It's yeah, it had head gasket issues and EGR and EGR

coolers, rupturing, and, you know, and it had issues

with addiction on the injectors and FICUM main power boards.

And, you know, basically you had to take a six liter

power stroke brand new off the lot and had to put

$15,000.

Immediately.

Because even the stuff brand new wasn't great

on those trucks.

No, and there was like three or four revisions, you know,

through the years.

And I feel like when the six, seven came out, I feel like

Ford had to atone for the six, four, six liter issues.

And they really had to do something special for the six,

seven in order for people to trust Ford with diesels again.

Yeah, it kind of went, you know, kind of downhill

because, you know, back to the seven, three, I remember

guys, you know, they hated them because they had

injection problems.

But at the time it was like $500 for an injector times eight

plus having to put them in the truck.

So when the six liter came out, everybody jumped ship

from the seven, three, we were buying mint seven threes

for $2,000, $2,500 because they were worthless.

Everybody was getting into the six liters and then

have you got to bring a trailer lately to see what

seven threes go for?

I know it's crazy.

I'm like $50,000 for a truck with a hundred thousand

miles that's clean and you're going, what?

Yeah, it's insanity.

Yeah.

So everybody would jump over and then they, and then the

six liter started having all their problems.

So now everybody wanted the seven threes and then the

market started to go up, you know?

And then the guys that didn't do that, you know, they all

jumped onto the six four when the six four came out, no

seven and a half.

And the six four was a whole different animal.

It drive ability.

The truck honestly drives absolutely fantastic.

Fantastic.

I remember the first time that I had a six four truck from

the media fleet from four that we were testing and it may

have been four wheeler at the time.

And I remember I had that truck for a good while and I

couldn't believe how what a great daily it was.

It was comfortable, throttle tip in was great.

The engine was super flexible at that time.

Very quiet.

The cab built around it was fun.

Like I was like, this thing is awesome.

Yeah.

They, they, they really did knock it out of the park on

that engine, going to that twin turbo setup for just, you

know, daily drive ability.

Um, your power to weight on that truck was dialed.

Like they, they had her great.

It was sturdy on the road.

Those were a good truck too.

I mean, if from a standpoint, uh, you know, as far as looking

at, um, you know, frame strength and durability, like that,

that truck was fairly overbuilt, I think, for what the numbers

were on it.

Like it's been a good truck that generation.

It was a hundred percent.

The, the issue that it had though is it wasn't very long

where they started failing, um, you know, because the block

design was terrible.

They cracked the piston design was even worse than the block

design and they were constantly cracking pistons.

They were constantly, uh, blowing head gaskets because they

built so much boost.

Uh, and then you had the common rail fuel system where, you

know, the injectors had a, uh, would hang open, uh, because

of dirty fuel most of the time and lack of maintenance.

Uh, and now you're driving down the highway, you know, and

your cylinder temperature is low and now all of a sudden you

get something stuck in one of the injectors and, and it's

holding wide open.

It blown smoke and it started to run right through the piston.

And, you know, before you can even get pulled over to the

side of the highway, it's done, it's burnt through the piston

and right into the block.

So the problem with the six four really is that no matter what

you do, it's not ever going to be reliable.

Like the six liter had its flaws, but everybody could, but

it felt like this flaws of the six liter where all the

accessories and things hanging off the engine, whereas the

flaw to the six four was the engine itself.

Exactly.

So the six liter, you could bulletproof as they call it and

drive it into the ground and really the only thing.

The Neil brothers made a good business off of, uh, fixing those

things.

Yeah.

Everybody, I think, made their money on the six liter.

And, you know, once you fixed it, the only thing you had to

worry about now was the fact that everything was sealed by

rubber.

So you still, you know, if you're running cheap synthetics,

the synthetics swallow up the rubber and they eat them.

And then you blow on, you know, injector o-rings and

tube o-rings and all this stuff all the time.

So every few years you're doing o-rings and a six liter for

life.

That's, there's nothing you can do about that, but the six four

once, you know, once you cracked a piston or a head gasket

or, you know, the heads cracked all the time, um, you know, the

heads actually came cracked right from Ford, which is quite

funny.

If you, if you buy a brand new set of heads from Ford and you

flip them upside down and look at them, they, a lot of them

actually have hairline cracks in between the valves right, like

right out of the, right out of the box.

So it was just a terribly designed engine.

I feel like it was rushed by Navistar when they put that

engine together.

To fix the six liter issues, you know, or to say we have

something new that's, you know, we can walk away from the six

liter rather than just fixing those problems.

Exactly.

And then you have to factor in the fact that for the

international platform, because they ran the same engine in

the international medium duty trucks, but it was derated.

Yeah.

So, you know, it was, it was considerable.

I don't know the exact number, but I think it was somewhere

around 80 or 100 horsepower less in, in the commercial

application.

Yeah.

And then Ford took it and put it in their chassis and

bumped up the horsepower because it was a race with

Cummins over.

Well, a lot of people don't realize that the medium

duty trucks, why they're derated is for durability.

Yeah.

And to your point, at that period of time, you had

Cummins going, Hey, we're going from five, nine to six,

seven, you have GM introducing a six, six Duramax.

Well, Ford went backwards.

They went from a seven, three to a six liter and now they've

got to be that six and a half liter game with everybody

else.

So they come up with a 6.4.

Yeah.

And so there was a, I mean, that was like a interesting time

for the diesel engine wars because everybody, there wasn't

necessarily a clear winner lines were being drawn and

manufacturers were thrown down.

And I mean, obviously the horsepower wars on that

continue today, but that period of time was interesting

because you go to common rail, you get displacement

changes, you go to better transmissions, you know, you go

to VGT turbos, you go to common rail.

Like there was all DP, you know, DPFs, you're going, I mean,

think of all that technology and like, what, a five, six

year span or something like that that touched everybody.

It was pretty amazing time when all that was going on.

Everybody hit it all at once, you know, and they all had

their individual issues trying to get through it, you

know, and they, you know, and then when they went to the

six, seven power stroke, the first generation six, seven

was, it started out really, really well, but there was a

certain amount mainly in the cabin chassis, I would say

over the pickups, but there was a certain amount of the six,

seven power strokes that had crank issues kind of right off

the bat. So they were breaking cranks pretty early on and it

was kind of held under the rug pretty good for, for a while,

but we, we would see quite a few of them come in and then,

but it was almost always on cabin chassis and, you know,

and that could just be because of the severe duty of what

they were doing, you know, because there really isn't that

many differences between the cabin chassis engine and the

pickup, like the turbos are a little different and, and

they're derated a little bit, but other than that, the base

engine platform is pretty much identical and then guys running

in really cold climates, they were spinning bearings on

cold starts. So you'd have a lot of guys with spun bearings

in a truck with, you know, 50,000 miles, but that was

basically like your 1112 kind of first gen truck. Once they

got into, you know, the 13 and up, they started doing some

redesigns and upgrades and, and that eliminated a lot of that

issue. And then now they're just kind of fighting their

turbocharger issues, you know, that the scorpion turbo, I

don't know whose idea that was to come out, but, you know,

it's just, you got a turbo that really isn't balanced

properly from the factory. It's got a dual wheel on it. So,

you know, it's kind of front heavy and just not really, not

really an efficient design. And there was a ton of guys that,

you know, those turbos were failing and then they'd put

another one on and it would fail in another 20 or 30,000

miles. And, you know, a few years in, you got to the 2015, I

think is where they switched over to, you know, got rid of

the scorpion turbo and went into their new redesigned

turbo, which had almost no problems at all. And then now

the truck came with a factory exhaust break as well. So,

now, now you had something with a good transmission,

really good horsepower and good torque and you had a

reliable turbo that wasn't going to blow up and you

weren't breaking cranks. So, you know, the 15, 16 generation,

I think is where they really started to dial in and get

reliable where a guy could buy it and literally just change

the oil and fuel filters and put fuel in it and enjoy it and

enjoy it other than emissions issues. Sure.

You know, we touch on any of these trucks once we start

talking about emissions, they all equally have the same

weak points, right? So, they're all, you know, DEF failures

and O2 sensor failures and the DPF's plugging up because

they don't get driven properly. Well, we talk about that on

the podcast like diesel inappropriateness and that's

like if you are driving your kids to school and it's a two

mile round trip, your engine's not warm when you get home.

No. And I've had a friend of mine who had a diesel

grand Cherokee and she calls me and she's like, hey, this

thing's telling me I have to drive 50 miles or something.

Minimal. Yeah, because your your DPF is clogged because you

do all these short trips, you're not doing a diesel duty

cycle, you're doing a gas duty cycle and the after

treatment doesn't have a chance to burn itself off or to do

regen or any of that and so yeah, you have to go drive up,

you know, 50 miles down and 50 miles back and either do it

at freeway speeds or under load or something because you

got to give the car time to, you know, burn all that out of

the system and that's it. I tell most people today, if they

ask me for advice on a truck, I'm like, what's your use case?

How much do you tow? Oh, you don't tow. Okay, how much do you

haul? Oh, you don't haul. Okay, then go get the gas engine.

Well, I know my friends in the diesel like that's great, but

here's the thing is you're gonna spend 12 to $15,000 more

for that diesel. You now have a more expensive maintenance

schedule, more expensive fluids and filters. You now have an

additional fluid with DEF where that 12 or $15,000 difference,

you have a gas engine that you put gas in all the time. What's

the the the drawback? Well, if you get a seven three gas,

it's not much because the towing is almost as good as the

diesel, especially up to let's say 15,000 pounds or something

like that. Anything under that, it's they're fine, you know,

like it's got plenty, plenty of grant and fuel economy. Okay,

well, guess how much gas you can buy for those, you know,

thousands and thousands of dollars and and your maintenance

is easier and oil change is cheaper. So, I know people love

the allure of diesel and those of us who've been diesel

enthusiasts or are diesel enthusiasts is really hard not

to go but the way they're designed today, you really do

have to have a diesel appropriateness in terms of

your use case and duty cycle to make sure that you get a

long life because you see a lot of the guys that are hot

shots and they're pulling trailers around the country and

they're doing good but that's because they're working it and

they're doing regular maintenance and there's always a

load but the you know, the guy down the street who's driving

his crew cab four by four, six, seven, you know, FX four

around that that guy is going to be at the dealer and the

next, you know, 15,000 miles probably. Well, and that's

exactly what happens. It's it's the the case of you know,

buying a diesel truck because their neighbor has one, you

know, and it's like the diesel trucks nowadays, you know, I

had this talk the other day actually with my wife because

we kind of laughed because the teenagers now are are really

into them and it's like, you know, in our generation, it was

you know, the Honda Civics and the five liter Fox body

Mustang. Yeah, totally. Like that's what everybody wanted

to have, right? And you know, and if you had that really nice

notch back. Civic SI or you had an Integra with a B16 or B18 in

it with the you know, Comtec Icebox or DC four to two into

one headers or your buddy had a Fox body five liter Mustang

and it was that was it or maybe or maybe a mini truck like

that was kind of like that was sort of the scene, right?

Like a little Mazda B2000 or something, you know, a little

S10, you know, and that's where it was at and now all the all

the kids now are all buying diesel trucks. So they're all

buying, you know, the early common rail, the second gen

dodges, they're buying the, you know, the LBZs and the LB7s

or you know, they're getting the early six liters, you know,

and that's kind of the new kid scene is going after diesels

and then you've got they can't afford maintenance or anything.

So they're just trying to patch them together with whatever

they have and you know, they're on YouTube figuring out how

to fix them, you know, and then you got like I say, you get

the guy that, you know, he literally just drives it to

town to go to the grocery store to pick his kids up from

school and you know, but his neighbor has a really nice

Dodge Ram in the driveway. So he wants a ram just like his

neighbor and you know, and that truck just sits there and

literally idols around zero load. It's not getting worked at

all. And then he wonders why it's in the shop all the time

because everything's plugged up and you know, nothing gets a

chance to work and clean and you know, in my opinion, it

should actually be explained to people when they're buying

these trucks. But of course, a dealership, they're there to

sell you a product and they're commission based most of them.

So they make money off of what they're selling you. So

they're not going to sit you down at a desk and say, oh, by the

way, do you really need a diesel? Yeah, they're not going to

say, do you really need this truck? And oh, do you realize

that plus the service department likes customers too,

right? They love customers, you know, and it's like, you're

not going to sit there and explain to the guy that, yeah,

if you buy the gas truck here, $75 to do an oil change in

service. And if you buy the diesel truck here, you know,

$350 to do a full service. So it's like, and that's just

your, your maintenance every five to six thousand. And then

you go off of the book and, you know, the book's telling you,

you know, that you're supposed to go 10, 12,000 miles on oil

changes with emissions. It's like, people have no idea how

detrimental that is to the engine. Like it's, you're

literally taking all of that soot load out of the EGR, you're

forcing it through into your intake systems, you're driving

down the road. So basically your truck is breathing full time

exhaust and soot. And it literally makes the oil gritty.

Yeah. You feel it, you know, in your, in your fingers.

Yeah. It's essentially like anybody that has any experience,

you know, like I always tell people it's like valve grind

compound. If anybody's ever worked with it, it's like a

really fine, sandy for lapping valves in the old days when

guys used to do it. It's kind of like that's what your

oil does is all that soot goes into your oil.

And that's why a really good synthetic oil makes a

difference, you know, and also good filtration, but even

good filtration isn't going to get down some of that stuff.

And even like for me, you know, I use Amazon oil in my

stuff, but I still do 5,000 mile oil changes, even though

I get oil that can go 20,000 miles, no way. I'll spend the

money and I'll change it every five because I know that I'm

never going to have a problem. Then you don't have issues,

but the majority of people don't do that because there's a

lot of oil going into it for starters, you know, and Amazon

oil is a good quality oil and it's not cheap. You know, so

when it says 20,000 kilometers or 20,000 miles on the

bottle, people are going to go further than that almost, you

know, because they were like, well, we got this really good

oil and it's going to last for a long time and, you know, so

we'll go 20,000. And I think that's where a lot of people

had problems with, you know, the newer Dodge 5th Gens, right,

which we didn't even get to those yet, you know, because

all of the new Dodge 5th Gens have early camshaft

failures because the lifters fail. We started seeing the

5th Gen failures three years ago. They were coming in like

literally 10, 15,000 miles, these trucks were showing up

ticking cold until they warmed up. And that, you know, the

first couple we saw were running on three cylinders cold.

Oh, wow. They were just chugging and bucking and

fenders were jumping half an inch up and down and they were

just running like complete trash. Yeah. Until they warmed up.

And I was like, well, this is like a stickion issue. Yeah,

right. That's how it's acting. Yeah, the viscosity is keeping

those parts from, you know, moving in the ways they need

to. Yeah, and basically the lifters don't pump up. They

get all gummed up and sticky from lack of oil changes. And

then when the lifter starts to fail, it slaps on the cam

low, but it takes the camshaft up. Oh, okay. And it's a big

thing. Like there's as many fifth gen camshaft failures out

there as probably grid heater failures. I believe, I mean, if

you're looking at it and you go, oh, oil change for my diesel

trucks, you know, $350, $400. And there's a severe duty

schedule and there's a, you know, normal schedule. Well, I'll

just go the normal schedule because it's expensive and they

don't do, they don't abide by the severe duty, but let's be

honest. Unless you're doing all highway unloaded, you're

severe. If you're ever towing, if you're ever hauling, if

you're ever off road, and if you're ever in the city stop and

go, you're automatically severe duty right there. A lot of

people think, oh, well, I don't really do, I'm just driving

around town. That's severe duty. And they think, oh, no, I'm

normal duty because I'm doing normal things. I'm not hauling

until that's not it. It's the stop and go. It's the speed

differential. It's the acceleration, the engine

braking, like all that matters. Oh, for sure. You get a lot of

carbon buildup that way by not having anything under

load. So oil changes in maintenance is a big thing that

gets overlooked by, I think, the majority of, especially diesel

truck owners, but I'm sure it's the same in the gas world.

Sure. Right? I'm sure it's no different, but in my world, we

only work on diesel pickups. So I can't really say.

That's your point of reference. That's my point of

reference. I can't really say what the gas world is doing,

but if they don't change the oil in their commons, they're

not going to change it in their Honda. It's the same

mentality, right? But these trucks have to have clean oil

and they have to have clean fuel filters and they have to

have clean air filters. You wouldn't believe how many

trucks we have come in that have been driving around for

months with a dead mouse in the air box. Well, not even a

mouse. The filters are just literally sucked into the

into the tube of the air box and they're just sucking in

straight dirt. Everything. Yeah. You know, and the guy's

like, I just changed it like last just a year ago and it's

like, it's like, dude, you're driving in the fires and the

smoke and you drive, you know, you're driving in dusty

climates. It's like, you need to change your air filter two,

three times a year, you know, just to keep, you know, air

movement and maintenance is a huge thing that gets overlooked

on on anything and any vehicle. And I think it's

because people don't want to spend money if they don't

have to partly, you know, but it ends up costing them more

money in the long run by not doing it. I totally agree.

It's a hard one to push though. Yeah, right. Well, especially

if you're the shop owner, right? Oh, you're just trying to

make money off me. No, I'm trying to believe it or not. I'm

trying to see you less, right? But they everybody thinks

automatically that you're going to try to sell them. Yeah.

You know, and it's funny because our shop, it's uh we're

a pretty small outfit. I've been around for a long time and

we've been working on trucks for a long time and really well

known for what I do and I run a really straightforward uh

approach with customers to where even if they don't like

what I'm going to say, I'm going to say it anyway. Yeah. And

I would rather, I would rather tell them straight and lose

their business than try and take them for a ride and offer

them things they don't need. So like our shop does not

upsell and we're small. We're only a three bay shop and I

leave it that way because that way we can stay on top. Well,

it's more personal and we can stay on top of quality

control. Yeah. You know, so when you start getting a lot of

my friends have 10, 12, 15 bay shops. Yeah. How do you know

every one of those taxes up to your standard? You don't. You

don't and and that you're constantly hiring and and and

the you know, the people that because you're trying to fill

if you're going to have the lift, you don't want it empty. So

you need to fill somebody to be making money off that lift,

right? Exactly. Now you can't pay attention to what he's

doing and now you have quality control issues and you have

comebacks and then you have pissed off customers. So we have

built our reputation off of we are not the cheap shop in

town. We're actually probably the most expensive. We're uh you

know, we're in line with dealership pricing uh because we

run all the dealership tools. We run all the dealership uh

scan equipment. We have all of we we do our own keys in

house. We do everything we do the dealer can do and I make

sure that we buy all of that equipment so that we are ahead

of the curve but we're 40 to 60 trucks deep 12 months out of

the year. Three bay shop. Yeah. So, I'm not going to sit

there and you know, tell the guy that he needs stuff he

doesn't need. You know, because we don't for one, we don't

have time to yeah. Even do the upsell work let alone, you

know, you're trying to get him out off the racks to get the

next guy. We we just want him reliable. So, like if he comes

into the shop, we're going to fix him with the best parts

possible and get him going. Well, that trust means he's you

know, I guarantee you because I've worked in shops before

with these customers. Once you build that rapport, they will

drop it in the night box. The keys in the night box, leave

the truck out front. They go, just do whatever it needs.

Yeah, exactly. And they let you do it. You do it. They're

happy. You know, and they send all their friends. Yeah. You

know, that's the best marketing, right? Is that

real marketing from a happy customer? I think so. It's

uh, there's not a lot of handshake deal companies out

there anymore though. It's uh, and it's a hard racket

because honestly, you don't make as much profit margins as

people think. Yeah. People, you know, they're looking at a

$10,000, $12,000 bill and they basically think you just

put your kid through college. Yeah, you wish. But but really

like parts are through the roof. You're really how do you

put, you know, 40% markup on an $800 injector that you just

you don't can't do it. You can't do it. You can't put that

onto the customer. So you're and your your staff need a

living wage. So, you know, costs are through the roof. So

I think a lot of shops, you know, upsell to survive. Yeah.

I would agree with that. You know, yeah. And I think part of

it too is people often complain about labor rates, but the

reality is like, I remember there's that kind of story where

the guy goes into a dealership or a shop and says, I need

this thing done. It's like an hour of labor is $150 an hour

or whatever. Yeah. Okay. And the guy comes out and does it

in five minutes. Well, you only took five minutes to do

because what you didn't pay me to do, you paid for my

knowledge of how to do it quickly, right? And yeah. And

that's why a shop with a high labor rate and a quality staff

matters is because they have the wisdom and the knowledge to

get the thing done right and the equipment and the equipment

and and if you agree upfront to what the shop hourly rate is

most more minimum an hour and most jobs have a book rate

that you might go to. If you happen to be more efficient to

getting the job done, well, you get paid a little bit more and

that's okay because you're a business, you know, it's not a

charity case. No, it's no different than than the people

you're dealing with. It's for for whatever reason, if

somebody's, you know, doing a say they're doing a kitchen

renovation on their house, you know, and they're spending a

couple hundred thousand dollars doing a kitchen rental, you

know, they're okay with that and they're happy every time

they walk into their house and I look at their new kitchen and

they're like, yeah, it was two hundred grand, but I got a

wolf. We love it. We love it. We got red knobs on my 48 inch

stove. Exactly, but you know, but then you tell them they

got to spend ten thousand dollars on their motor

transportation to get them to work and make some more money

and it's like you're pulling teeth like it's the end of the

world and it's like for whatever reason, people do not

like putting money into a depreciating asset even though

that depreciating asset is what makes their money for the

other assets that are investment. Yeah, and then

furthermore, if you were to flip the coin and they were in

your shoes, they go to work for a paycheck every day and

they want to make good benefits and they want to make, you

know, a good annual salary, but they don't want you to make

money off of them, right? You know, so it's a pretty big mix,

you know, mixed up conception over what, you know, what the

reality of it is because people all need to eat and they all

need to have a house and everybody needs to get paid

and everything costs money. So everybody's in the same boat,

but the automotive industry, I feel like is a very judged

industry. 100%. I got word that you just ordered yourself a

26 F350 high output. I did, yeah. So let's talk about that for

a second. Yeah, so I actually just ordered it last month,

a 2026 F350 duly high output full load platinum and it took a

long time to do it because they're a lot of money. They're

not cheap. So, but we decided that, you know, my old truck's a

2017 and it's got about 350,000 miles on it. So we've run

her pretty good and it's actually never cost us anything,

to be honest. The thing has been really, really, really

reliable, but we're starting to do more traveling, you know,

just going to events and we're getting our e-commerce website

going and doing all that kind of stuff. So we're going to

meet and greet and people and, you know, so I figured, well,

if we're going to tow around a trailer, we're going to go to

these events, you know, we're going to want it something

decent to do it in. So yeah, so we went and ordered this

truck and what color is it? It's their new Argon blue.

Oh, that's a pretty color. Yeah. So we're going to do ghost

tackles on it. They do tells and and then we're going to do,

we're going to bolt pretty much every bank's part you can buy

on it for bolt on stuff and we'll do a lift and tires and

we'll do a little mini series video as we go just kind of

showing the whole build process. Right on. All right,

before I let you go, I have to know what's up with the

helicopter? Because there's a story with the helicopter.

We have a 1974 Bell 206 jet ranger. A lot of people are

like, well, why does the diesel shop have a have a

helicopter? You know, some guys are you know, some guys

are like, oh, well, everybody in the diesel industry

nowadays seems to have a helicopter because it seems

like every every YouTuber and you know, guy out there

seems to own one. Well, some of those guys went to jail

recently. You know, but in our case, a really good friend

of mine. Well, let me say this. Okay, so if you're

thinking a bell 206, you may think of like, oh, I don't

know. Vietnam era helicopter from Rambo first blood. And

then you go, well, it's that exact helicopter. It is. Yes.

Hold on. Yeah, so it is it is. So we bought this from a

helicopter company and they were actually parting it out.

So it was in their hangar in pieces hadn't been flown in

five or six years. And they're a really good client of ours

and we do a ton of work for them on their diesel pickups.

And I wanted to get my pilot's license and I started out

actually with a road away exec experimental helicopter.

They're a little two seater fiberglass. They were made in

Arizona. But in Canada, you can't train in them.

In the US, you can. So here you can get an instructor and you

can get a rating in an experimental aircraft. Well,

in Canada, you can't because they won't sell you insurance.

Oh, got you. And the certified world helicopters

are very expensive. Yeah. So I couldn't afford to get in that

way. So I went like 10 or 12 years not doing it. And then I

talked to these clients of mine and they're like, oh, yeah,

well, we have this old helicopter that we're thinking

about selling. We kind of acquired it and started

parting it out. You know, so I was like, oh, that's pretty

cool. So I went and took a look at it and, you know, we

agreed on a price and everything. And they're like,

oh, by the way, it's the original helicopter from

Rambo first blood. It's so cool. And I was like, well,

what do you mean? Like it's the same year, the same kind.

And they're like, no, it is the helicopter that was in the

movie. It's and sure enough, you Google it. So if you if you

go on Google and you put in C dash Golf Tangle Papa Hotel,

which is the call sign, you know, for the Canadian

registration, you know, you scroll down on Google about

three three paragraphs down and boom, there it is Scott

Hardy, a whole list of Rambo first blood and it shows

you all of the scenes it was in. It shows you pictures of

the helicopter at the time. It shows the sheriff hanging

out, shooting it around. So so it was in that whole scene

where the sheriff was shooting at him when he's falling

off of the jumps off. So that is the helicopter from

the movie. So so we took me seven years to get a hold

of it and about two years to get it flying and it's

flying now. That's so rad. So that's that's kind of

the story with the helicopter. So now we're going to use it

for hopefully events and things like that. You're going to

shoot people from it or anything? No, no, that's not

that's not the plan, but we we would like to, you know, get

to a point where maybe we can bring it down to the states

and try and get a sign by Sylvester Stallone. That would

be awesome. Well, you know, he listens to this podcast,

don't you? No, I had no idea. Neither did I. So and but if he

does, if he does, structure a podcast at gmail.com or if

you're out there and you have a way to get a hold of Mr.

Stallone, hit me up and I'll make sure Brad gets the

contact info because we have a lot of people listen and you

never know. You never know. There's some weird connection

where it's like, oh, it's my uncle. I'll have him sign it,

right? It's it's it's a pretty cool piece of you know,

movie history. Yeah. And honestly, I can't believe that

the aviation industry would part it out in the first place.

You'd think that they would have sold it to a collector or

something or something. Well, they did you. Well, they did

me. Yeah. So, so I saw the dream and I resurrected it and we

will, you know, do our best to keep it going for as long as

possible. Awesome. We actually plan on bringing it to the

45th Rambo anniversary in Hope. So, it was filmed in Hope

BC. Okay. So, I do plan on bringing it to there and then

we'll just kind of see where it goes. Cool, man. Well,

a little applause there for for Brad Hunt, owner of Protek

and dude, thanks for coming over. I know you kind of drove

down from okay, that guy in the back, he's going to hoot

and holler here in a second. Man, we love you. They do. They

must love Protek Diesel Centers. All right. So, if you want

to follow Brad and the company, so it's just Protek Diesel

Center that's on Facebook, on Instagram, on TikTok. You have

your YouTube channel as well. Yeah. There's so much to talk

about. I mean, I still want to hit kind of the diesel scene

and Canada at some point, maybe get into kind of the

deletes and the emissions stuff going on up there and

getting to maybe like tuning good versus bad. I mean, we

didn't touch on that. So, you're going to have to come

back on but fortunately, we can do this over the phone

too. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, we'll definitely we'll have to

do this again. I've I've got lots of insight into all of

those topics. So, we deal with it every day. Well, you are now

our resident Canadian diesel expert. So, we will we'll tap

you from time to time and get you back but really

appreciate you coming down and hanging out in the pod

shed. By the way, what do you think of the pod shed? I think

it's pretty good. It's cool, right? Yeah, it's a wicked

setup. I like it. Yeah, I always tell the story because

lighting Jay, he's like, we can't just have a studio in

your backyard. Then you have people walking in your

backyard and like, then how surprised are they going to be

when they realize it's cool? Right? It's a pretty cool

setup in here. Appreciate that. You know, the only thing

you're missing is a beer cooler in the corner but

yeah, I mean, I got the Dr Pepper fridge over there and

there is cold beer in there but you know, we can always do

that. Yeah, it's looking pretty good. It's well built.

Thank you. Yeah, so this is this is where the magic happens

and we're glad to share it with our friends. So,

thanks for coming on and again, Brad Hunt owner of

Protect Diesel Centers and up in Camloops, B.C. and if

you guys have any questions for Brad, you could reach out

to me again, truckshowpodcast at gmail.com and

look forward to having you on again soon. Yeah, for sure.

Anytime man. It was a blast. It's good to be here. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Thanks again, Brad Hunt for coming to the

pod shed all the way down from Camloops, B.C. in the

Protect Diesel Centers. It's been a while since we got into

diesel stuff. So, uh, I'm glad we had him on the show but

the other thing it's been a while since we got into is

well emails.

Come on. Who doesn't love this?

Love this jingle. It's been far too long. So, I've got a

few emails here. The first one from Rob Kaiser says

questions about the dealer relationship discussion on

the podcast. Hey, Sean, Rob Kaiser here. I was

listening to your recent podcast, Lightning had a

question about dealer relationships, especially as

they relate to maintenance and potential warranty leeway

down the road. I've had my regular just over a year and

absolutely love it. It has about 10,500 miles on it. I

took it to the dealer I purchased it from for one of

the initial 7500 Jeep Wave Oil Change entire rotation

services after they had been encouraging me for months to

come in. Experience raised some concerns. I wasn't

given any kind of vehicle inspection report when I

picked it up. I've done some off-roading and expected at

least a basic once over. I'm running larger AEV wheels

and tires. After the rotation, the balance weights

were rubbing on the calipers. I noticed this

immediately turned around and they reversed the

rotation but told me to take the vehicle back to the

shop that installed and balance the tires rather

than addressing it themselves. The dealer inflated

the tires to 40 psi, the max, despite my shop

recommending closer to 32 given the vehicle's lighter

weight. A week later, I received a notice saying I

declined a recommended service air filter which was

never discussed with me. Now they're hounding me

again to come in even though I'm not due for service

until around 15,000 miles. I expected to build a solid

long-term relationship with the dealer but this

doesn't feel right. My questions are, should I

consider switching dealers? Is this an issue with

this dealer or fairly typical of Jeep dealers in

general? Would it make sense to rely more on an

independent shop for routine maintenance, especially

given that the dealer already redirected me

there? I mean, North Orange County would prefer

not to travel too far if I can avoid it. Appreciate

any perspective you can share. So essentially

that's a bit of a loaded question but I would give

the dealer one more opportunity and raise your

concerns. Sometimes there's a new person working,

for example, that if you've got a kid blowing up

tires and is doing it wrong, they deserve the

chance to make it right and correct that employee

that's reading the label on the side of the tire

and not the door jam, for example. The dealer

he mentions, I haven't heard great things about

but sometimes a dealer can be a crapshoot. I

take mine to a different dealer but I also have

a good service advisor. Having a relationship

with your service advisor means a ton and

sometimes you have to drive for a good dealer

experience, especially if it's only once a year.

You might want to drive out of your area for a

dealer that is pro aftermarket, for example, and

warranty friendly. Most Jeep dealers above and

beyond are way friendly to lift in and warranty

Jeeps because A, they sell them and B, that's

their customer base. My experience has been

with all Jeep dealers versus the other dealers

out there are super friendly to aftermarket.

I can't believe they didn't give you an inspection

report. You should always get that. That should

be standard, especially when you're doing a service.

Questions about the weights rubbing on the

caliper because the fitment should be the same

no matter how the tires fit on there. I'd be

curious if maybe they rotated your spare that

had the weights in a different spot, for

example. And I would say there's a computer

system that is probably set for every 3,000

miles. That's basically guessing your mileage

and sending you all sorts of service stuff.

You can ignore that stuff. Not a big issue.

And the air filter, if you're not due, you're not

due, but that's a call to the service manager

saying, Hey, it says I declined this. I was

never given an option. Again, that's something

to follow up with the employees to make sure

that their processes are right. I know you're

not doing, you shouldn't be doing their job for

them, but at the same time as a customer, I

think you owe the business a chance to

correct it and make you a happy customer.

And if they don't, then switching your service

dealers a priority. You can also make a ticket

with Jeep Cares, which is a group through Jeep

that will follow up on any of those types of

concerns. My opinion is always going to be

the same regardless of brand. And that's get

your services done by the dealer throughout

the warranty period. Because if something

comes up, they're going to look and see that

you have a history with them. They're going

to go, Oh, we'll take care of this customer,

especially if it's on the cusp or just outside

of warranty, they'll goodwill it for you.

Otherwise they'll say, No, this person has

never been here. Who cares? Those are sort of

my thoughts and dealers are always sending

out the, Hey, if we didn't earn our five

stars for the survey, let us know because

those five star surveys hit them hard. And if

you gave them a three, that's a big deal. So

you can always have some recourse there as

well. Got the next one here from Brent

Racine says lightning lightning lightning

lightning lightning lightning lightning.

He says, I just listened to your episode with

lightning. I do miss you guys being

together. You're a lying sack of nobody

likes us. We were terrible. Every time we

did a show, this is the worst show we've

ever done. And I don't know how it was

always the worst, but it was, you can hear

it sucking every single time. That was

awful. I mean, that was, that was awful.

But I do miss having lightning on the show

and having it back in studio was a lot of

fun. He says, you guys are like a morning

show. You guys play off each other so good.

You should try to bring back lightning a

little more often and five stars.

Congratulations. You have earned five

stars. Well, that's not up to me. That's

up to lightning. He's a very busy boy. So

just in case anybody was wondering,

lightning's not on the show because like

we went to fisticuffs one day and we

split apart. Lighting's not on the show

because lightning had other priorities

and other things that were taking or in

need of his time. And the podcast was

one of those things that was sucking up

a lot of his time. So he had to kind of

make a decision. So that's why he's not

on the show. He's welcome back any time.

And if there's an issue, I wouldn't have

him back with. That's not the case. I

miss him.

All right. This one is from Dennis

Durrell. Dr. Pepper now number two.

He says, this is from AI. So take it for

what it is. But I figured you'd like that

Dr. Pepper is now the number two of the

nation. And what's up with Fanta? So

continuing with the letter, it says

number one, the Pepsi belt is shrinking.

Pepsi's dominance is increasingly

localized to the Northeast, New York,

Pennsylvania, and Ohio. If your map shows

Pepsi winning the south or west, it's

very likely outdated. I don't like Pepsi.

I'll be honest with you. I just, I just

don't like it. I don't know why.

Number two, the Dr. Pepper surge. Dr.

Pepper is now known as the official

number two soda in the United States by

volume.

I got a winner! Well, at least second

place. They're the second winner.

Says, any map that doesn't show Dr.

Pepper winning states like Oklahoma,

Kansas is missing current market

realities. Of course. Number three, the

Coke generic in Georgia and much of the

south. Coke isn't just a brand. It's the

word for all soda. While Coke wins the

sales battle there, survey data can be

skewed because residents might say they

want to Coke, but then order a Dr.

Pepper. What's wrong with you? Just say

you want a Dr. Pepper so this data can

get organized the right way. Anyway, and

number four, flavor diversity. You'll

notice brands like Fanta in California

and Oregon and Canada Drive, Massachusetts

and Vermont appearing as quote-unquote

favorites in recent Google Trends data,

reflecting a shift away from traditional

colas toward fruit and ginger flavors.

All right, let's say you guys, I have seen

a major push in Dr. Pepper availability

and people wanting it for, I don't know,

maybe the last three to five years. I

remember Taco Bell, which was

exclusively a Pepsi place. They used to

have Dr. Pepper. They took it away for a

while in like within months, maybe six

months. I stopped going. I'm like, well,

I'm not having your crappy Taco Bell if

I can't wash it down with some delicious

Dr. Pepper. On a whim, I had gone back

there not too long after that. They're

like, oh yeah, we're back. Dr. Pepper's

back. We had a lot of people asking for it.

All right, and one last email here from

our friend RB and he says, hello, Sean.

I love the podcast with Borla. Very

interesting and informative and David

Borla is such a forthright down-to-earth

person. It was a great podcast. Thank you,

Ray. I was surprised there was no

discussion on the Fratsonic exhaust

sounds from the Charger EV. Some of the

sounds David demonstrated to you in the

F-150 Lighting sounded to my ear

slightly reminiscent of the Charger's

Fratsonic chamber shrieking sounds,

reminding me of an electronic rendition

of a cougar screaming. The animal, not the

car or that type of woman, not that I

know anything about the last one. Sure,

Ray. So, you know, I didn't even think

about the Fratsonic exhaust just because

I haven't seen one in person and the

way it's described is like it has a

sound chamber like a muffler that is

taking noise but I've heard some of it's

electronic. I just don't know enough

about it and I probably should have

asked David about it. I may send him an

email and if he writes back or I get

some info on that, I'll read it on the

show. Ray also says, I love the

Flated Podcast. Just got around to

listening to that one. I did go to their

website and bought a couple of pieces

of the furniture and the hand pump

using the Truck Show Podcast 15%

discount. Thanks for that, of course.

I don't do any camping anymore but I

figured when the ex-wife comes to get

more of the furniture, the Flated

Furniture will come in handy and be

perfect for my needs. Simple, rugged,

practical, easily cleaned and easily

moved. It's all those things that, by

the way, the Flated Furniture is rad.

We've had it camping. We've had it at

trade shows in our booth at OVR. It's

fantastic. He also says, when you had

Jay back a few podcasts ago, he also

commented that no one sends you emails

anymore for the record. I've sent a few

now and then all along but in particular

back in November 9th, he emailed the

promised follow-up report of my friend

Dave's new RHO replacing his old rebel.

Yes, Ray, I did see that and you are

always sending good emails. I didn't

have other emails to read. I don't like

to read one at a time. I usually like to

do three to four and until I have three

to four, it doesn't make sense to read

one email on the air and so that's kind

of what I've been waiting for and I

forgot about it. I'll read that on the

next show because it'll be a good

follow-up for people who are curious.

He says, anyway, keep up the great work.

We TSP listeners are grateful for

everything you do. I really appreciate

you guys. Thank you so much for staying

with me and listening to the show and

I'm still working hard to get caught up

on episodes but we'll get there.

It's a lot of work but it's

definitely worth it. I still enjoy it

and I enjoy all of you immensely.

All right, send me your thoughts by emailing

the show, just like I said, at

truckshowpodcast at gmail.com or follow

us on social at truckshowpodcast or at

shampieholman.

And now that you guys have listened to

my pleas for emails, please keep

sending those but also we need some at

the five-star hotline. It's been so

neglected that Google sent me a thing

saying, like, if I didn't send some text

messages and start making calls with

that, within 30 days they're going to

yank it from me and that'd suck if we had

eight years of the Truck Show podcast.

By the way, next month is eight years, I think.

Anyway, if we had eight years of Truck Show

podcast, 657-205-6105,

suddenly vaporize would be horrible.

So I think I only have one voicemail

right now, so please take a few minutes,

send a voicemail. I want to hear you guys,

want to hear your voices, I want to put

you on the air. Again, five-star hotline,

657-205-6105. Of course, you can join the

Facebook group, the PodShed Insiders,

which I think is a great idea, except for

I think it robbed some of you guys from

sending in emails because you can hop

on that group and then everybody gives

you feedback, I give you feedback, we all

talk about it and then I don't have

anything for the show, so I may have to

steal some stuff from there.

All right, got to take our sponsors

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87:25

S3, E77 - Brad Hunt

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