Why Your Diesel Tows Like Garbage (And How To Fix It)

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Power Driven podcast.

Today we're talking about towing and wire truck drives awesome, empty and sucks

when it's hooked to a trailer. It happens a lot.

I mean, I guess I'll start this off when I was building my tow truck.

I towed some light trailers, whatnot.

I had other people tow with it. Actually, you towed with it.

I had another coworker tow with it.

I'd never even towed with the truck and multiple other people had.

And I was I was really proud of that, but airbags did all this stuff.

I was like, oh man, it's going to be the beast.

I bought a, my trailer, my 40 foot gooseneck empty.

And so I went, I grabbed it and on the way back, I'm like, dude, this is terrible.

Like the, I mean, the engine, everything did well,

but the shift strategy was so far off.

I had no idea, like empty.

You go through the gears fast enough and it loads you down, but it you're empty.

You don't have a lot of weight there. You can pull through it. No problem.

When you got trailer on it, like not only was the shift strategy terrible,

but it's a, it's a 2010.

And so I didn't have back then the ability to really change a lot of the lockup

strategy and the lockup characteristics and how firm it locked.

And so I had it lock in and second, it felt great,

unloaded, but the moment you went to with a trailer,

it was like, I don't know how to explain it to someone that hasn't dynoed,

but you like, you try to like do a lock shift on the dyno and it bucks you so hard.

Your options are to let out or floor it. Oh, that's it. You can't pedal.

You think you're good enough, you know, pedal through it.

You can't. And that's how my truck was trying to drive.

And so every time I just like would sit there like, please don't, please don't.

So there's a little give and take we found between street trucks and tow trucks.

I remember years ago, Josh McCormick, when he worked here,

he had a brand new like 2021, I'm guessing,

and he got this 3,500 Dooley with the Azen transmission.

And I remember running around empty. The shifts felt clunky.

They were so bad and late and terrible.

And I was like, how is a brand new $100,000 truck drive this terribly empty?

Flip that around. And remember that had the Azen six speed.

Josh then had a six speed 68 RFE.

He ended up getting a single rear wheel one and that trans shifted great empty.

Like I was like, this is a way better mall crawler, hot rod street truck.

Not really hot rod. I mean, it's still just a factory Cummins, but it felt great.

Flip that around though. When you put a trailer behind both that Azen transmission,

the shifts were perfect. It felt solid. It felt planted.

The 68 RFE was OK, but not as good as the Azen.

And so even the factory struggles a little bit with ideally set up for towing

versus ideally for street.

I think the factory, when they had that Azen transmission versus the 68 RFE

or a Dooley versus the single rear wheel,

they they kind of favored one over the other because that's the intended use.

Oh, yeah, you drive an Azen truck empty and it's the clunkiest, slowest.

Like, I mean, it defuels like per calendar year, like for the show.

Like it is terrible, but you hook it behind or like put a trailer behind it.

It just makes sense. And I mean, there's definitely some room.

I'm not saying like it's the be all end all.

There's definitely some room for improvement with shift timing

and trying to hunt for gears while towing, but the actual shifts themselves

coming from a stop sign or get on on ramp, whatever, it feels good.

It feels like money and that's just, yeah, I'd loaded versus unloaded.

One feels great. I loaded one feels great.

Unloaded, you know, we get these trucks and we love them.

And they're perfect for hot rotting because the power is easy.

And sometimes you make the wrong decision.

If you're going to tow with it, I'll tell you a story about long time ago.

My only concern was power.

So I hadn't my five years.

And I think it changed.

Like really wasn't even a long time ago.

So back in the day, like, whatever 10 minutes ago, power driven,

this is before power. This is pretty.

All right, so in the beginning of my journey of only thinking about power,

making terrible decisions in the name of power. Continue.

I built a 12 valve, five, nine.

And I put on a 13 mil pump because that's what you did.

If you don't get power, you need a 13 mil pump, big injectors.

And I put on an Aurora 5000, which was the it's a Borg Warner K 31.

So it's a small, it's just like a 71 millimeter compressor.

Yeah, it's not a very big turbine wheel.

It just wasn't great. They surged and they break and they're awful.

But the five had a five speed and I had to tow a trailer with this thing.

So so if you ever had a 13 mil pump, a big pump, this this

can you describe like a lock up shift on the dyno?

That just happens with the wrong throttle input.

And if you take all the throttle return springs off your second gin, your 12 valve,

it's where it's like the pedals really light.

Sometimes you can replicate it too where you just like that you have two options.

You got to floor it or not or just let off.

Because there's no, you think you can get it. You don't know.

And my funny part about your story here, and I just, I don't know this story,

but I feel like I know that the facts behind it is you have this truck.

I'm sure you got it with, and you told your wife that you're going to tow with it.

with it. And so when it came to toe with your setup, you were trying to convince her that

this is going to work. This is going to be all kinds of power. You're going to like

go amazing. I got a 13 mil pump. I can tell the world. So was she in the truck? No, thankfully

not.

You said you idiot power driven point never started. Sell this piece of crap. We came

in driving. It's so, so rough and violent. I mean, I literally had to floor it often.

So I was rolling call like crazy, just like a go and get the ones that turbo come on.

That was okay, but it was just awful. The five speed made it. So it was like, I could

do it because I could keep the RPMs there, you know, but it just towed just like garbage.

It was as fast and it was fun until you put a trailer on it. And there's like, this isn't

even a truck like literally a half ton truck could do better than my diesel like a ranger.

A ranger could, I mean, it did pull a decent load. I'm not going to say that, but it was,

it was awful to estimate the ranger. But long story short is the 13 mil P pump in a large

single. It's not a good recipe for a tow truck. Oh my gosh. This is bad idea. So I mean, we've

said that in the past, but 13 mil on a street, like you have to have a, I would say a very,

very unreasonably hot street truck to warrant a 13 mil. Like to me, that's a competition

pump just because they don't drive that good. And we have better options now.

Yes. And I, and the, and the reality is it's, I was at a power level far below what we're

doing with 12 mil pumps. Now it's just 13 mil pump. It was cool. Yeah. Like that's what

you need for fuel. You needed it. And it was definitely the wrong call. So yeah, we definitely,

a 12 mil pump, I mean, hundreds of horsepower higher than I was with that truck.

Oh yeah. So I mean, you have 71 on the map.

Exactly. Yes. It was not, it was not in the world on fire. I thought it's on the world

on fire. By today's standards, it was not still on fire. I mean, 15 years ago, it was

probably pretty cool. It was. It was very cool. And then I had blown up that turbo sent

it to the route to the moon and I blew up the transmission, broke that. And here we

are. I have much better trucks now, but yes, you can definitely set up a truck for fun

and put a trailer right on and find out you have made a mistake.

Now Will, I know you have a strong opinion on this as well, as far as having a truck

that does that drives fine. You hook a trailer to it and it's terrible. Like I remember specifically

getting a call from you when you're toying up to Idaho, saying, like, if this, the truck

will make it, I'm going to burn it down.

I remember that.

Like I mean, it's like you told me you were checking how close the nearest dealers were.

Like I'm going to trade it in. Like if it melts down, it's getting traded in.

If you need a tow with your truck, it sucks. You will hate it. I don't care how good it

is. When it's not hooked on a trailer, you will hate your truck if you need to tow with

it and it sucks. And so what my problem was, I had an 08 Dodge and it had, so in the era

when tuning became available for 07 08 Dodges with the six, seven Cummins, they had, that's

the first year of emissions and diesel particulate filters. And back then the strategy already

had was to delete them. You just delete them, get rid of it, go back to an older style tune.

And so tuning for emission compliant tuning for those years was way lagging behind. And

to be honest with you, the factory emissions stuff wasn't very reliable. It's kind of like,

it's kind of like they just threw a filter on there and Dodge was like, ah, wait, we hope

this gets through our warranty period. Good luck. And you get a guy like me with one with

a couple hundred thousand miles and the DPF is rejenning every like 50 miles, just getting

like eight miles to the gallon. The oil is getting diluted with fuel. And so it was a

disaster besides that. Well, anyway, because tuning for that wasn't very good. I'm sitting

here trying to tow with this truck and it was, it was horrible. The shifts were horrible

that and it made that 08 like the most it was like, yeah, I wanted to trade it in. I've

never even bought any truck at the dealer and I was this close.

I mean, yeah, I remember towing behind you and just every hill, like, sorry, of every hill,

because your, your, your tap shift wouldn't work. And so you couldn't even like override

anything. And then so you just have to like floor it and your tuning was terrible to where

it was. Yeah, it was just, yeah, had a weird electoral gremlin. Yeah, where the tap shift

wouldn't work. And sometimes it worked. Sometimes it wouldn't. And if you can't tap shift and

force a downshift and you can't downshift unless you floor it and the tuning is weird and

controlling the turbo, right? The transmission shifting is like way off. Like it was just

like, yeah, it was the worst collaboration. I would have rather towed with the Ford Ranger.

All right, so let's let's talk.

Ford Ranger coming to the spot.

You're welcome.

I just figured a Ford Ranger would have been better.

I've seen Ford Rangers pull 20.

Oh, I've seen some Ford do some stuff, man, like back in the backwoods of Missouri. Absolutely.

Oh my gosh, I do want to talk about, okay, things we people should consider because you're

going to be modding your truck, right? People. I mean, you can make your tow truck way better

telling like our tow trucks are awesome now. So let's talk about some strategies you should

think about. Okay, I'm going to tune my truck. I need to think about this. I'm going to upgrade

my transmission. I want to think about this. What are the things people need to think about to?

Hey, I want to have a fun street truck that is nice, empty, but still works when I need it to

work. Let's start with tuning. So actually, I'll start with the decision making.

Like you said, a fun street truck that can tow, that's the distinction you have to make.

Is it a fun street truck that you can tow with? Because that's way different than your tow truck.

If you have a tow truck, you tow often and you need to be able to tow often, you go across

countries, cross state lines, you want something you can rely on. That's where you have to be really

like realistic with what you're doing. Like I know, and we've talked about my tow truck before,

and it does really good, but I know one day I'm going to regret all my decisions when I'm in the

middle of Colorado with a hot rod hanging out the block or something stupid. And that day will come

and when that happens, I'll probably decide I've been dumb this whole time, which I know I've been

dumb, but I'm going to have either put a more stock engine back into it, turn it down, do something.

Like it's having a truck that makes 11 whatever 100 horsepower, and then you just rely on it to

go across country. Like it's awesome. It's been great. I know one day that decision is going to

bite me. And so I'm kind of waiting until that actually happens. And then I'll be like, okay,

because like my goal with a tow truck was I wanted, I didn't want just a fun,

fast tow truck. I wanted to be able to tow a trailer to a dyno event and then win the small

compound class, load up everything with your tow truck, with the tow truck, and then load

everything back up. I was like, I should be a fun goal to do that. And so that's so just

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clarify his goal to take two trucks on the trailer. Yep, with his tow truck. Yep,

win all three classes with the different vehicles. Yep, load them back up and go home.

It's never happened. I've always had one truck that didn't quite that day. He's on two, two,

he's one, two of the three. What was that word they're calling you a purse bandit or something?

A purse poacher. A purse poacher. You are a purse poacher. Honestly, it's just a fun

it's a fun thing to do. I don't know why I don't necessarily care about it as much anymore. And

that's why it's just gonna it's probably gonna go to the wayside. But anyway, yeah, I definitely

could see that. You definitely were a purse poacher in the Dino circuit. But I mean,

I don't need 1100 horsepower to have a fun street truck that can tow well.

Like, so first thing is to be realistic with what you're actually trying to do. Is this a tow

truck? If it is, you don't need more than six. I mean, 650, like even on a very capable, like

compound fortune where you got big raiders, all that stuff, like you can keep it cool.

You don't need more than 650. Like that's super, super confident, competent, and then you can

keep your injector size smaller. Horsepower 650 horsepower to the tire to the tire. Yep. So

it's not your 650 horse, you know, and that 15 cat. Oh, we're talking to the tire 650 horse

and much less. And like that sounds like a lot, but like realize my tow trucks double that and

yours trucks is way more than that. It's like, you have to put a big enough injector in there.

You have to have a higher rail pressure, which higher rail pressure can hurt lines. You're just

like, everything's doing it and everything like it's what's awesome is the parts that they can

do all these things. But you know, you're putting more stress on everything to do that. You have

to have a transmission that is capable of that, which is fine, but you're putting that much load

on it all the time. And then you're expecting it to then take you cross country and never have an

issue. But if somebody was doing this, just like you did, where they have a hot rod tow truck

that they can maybe win a dyno contest with, but it still has to get other vehicles to the event,

the one key of all this is you have more than one tuning level. So I think first and foremost,

if you're going to tune your truck and have a hot tow truck, street truck, you need the

ability to have more than one tune level for it because you're not towing on the 1100 horsepower

tune often. If I want to cruise control or put anyone else in the seat, I'll put the smaller

tune in it. But otherwise, yeah, I'm generally the big tune just because I just pedal, you know,

my way to success. But but then you don't have to run as much pressure. Yeah. If it's changing shift

strategy and the transmission lockup strategies, whatever it doesn't do that in because different

tune levels can't affect the more than one more than one tune is like, if you have a newer truck

and you can only get a single tune, you don't want the race max effort tune. You want to be able to

try to control with it and not like, yeah, I've accidentally, I didn't realize I was in the hot

tune and I hit cruise control and 100% did a full fuel at 2000 RPM or whatever. Well,

I start doing a rolling burnout with the train. Oh, it didn't. I was pretty heavy. So no, it did

not, but it definitely was like grunting and like something was flexing over hitting something. It

that's another thing with the trans like it's a it's a 68. And so it has a real it has a learning

strategy where it learns it when you have such a huge RPM swing, it struggles to learn. It's

trying to learn what to do with the shifts at 1100 horsepower. And then you do you tow with it at 650

and it's got to like learn that Oh, no, Florida is no longer, you know, we have to shift differently

now. And then you put it back in the big tune and it freaks it out again. It's just it's not great.

It's not it's it works and it's working well. But it's unrealistic to ask it to do that forever.

So you're saying so much torque that the train in case it's a frame rail.

Up the grade.

Yeah, anyway, that's when the air is all the grade.

I don't think we're quite there. But yeah. But I remember we got that. So I guess we were talking

about like the tuning side of it. Well, tuning is like a common rail side, you can, you can like

with all your different like five position switches and all that stuff, you can make a good

tow tune and a good big power tune like that's not a problem. But if you don't have five tuning

levels, you are going to have to be more conservative on your tune because you don't want to if this

is just a stock truck and you're just adding you don't want the 150 horsepower tune if you need to

tow regularly with it. But if it's mostly of a hot street truck, you'd also don't want the 20

horse tow tune because you're like man, I want more power than 20 or 40 horsepower. And that's

something I've learned in, in the tuning side, like to make a truck that tows well or whatever

is, you know, as a coming from a 12 valve owner, where you're like, Oh, I can just, I can just

pedal it. I can, I can just not floor it. Like I have full control of my foot. It's true. But when

you have an automatic transmission in that, in that game, sometimes you're like, let's just say

it's at 1400 RPM. If I floored it, it would go to full fuel. And I don't want that truck trying to

make peak torque at 1400 RPM. I mean, like, or like 12 valve depending on your turbo is like,

you have ultimate towing compounds on there. Explain that there's people, there's obviously

listeners that why don't you want, why don't you work for power 1400 RPM. So if you were to,

there's a lot. So if you were to look at the back of the crank, when you're, when that engine's making

power and it's spinning, you would think it's just sitting there spinning, you watch it with a slow

motion camera, you can just see it slowly going, turning around and around. When you actually do

that and you start making power, the compression events and all those events, it'll stop the crank

and then go again and then stop the crank and then go again. And so the higher the RPM

means that your centrifugal force of all your fly whales and flex plates and damper and all that

stuff are able to work better and they can keep that crank moving spin smoothly. At low RPM,

you have, first of all, the most capability of the most torque you can make. And second,

you have less rotating, you know, centrifugal mass or not mass, but like the force or whatever

momentum to where it'll stop the crank, start, stop, start, stop, and it just shakes the crap

out of everything. And you'll, I mean, you'll rattle bolts loose and you'll feel it. Oh, yeah.

And then you just beat the crap out of your bottom end. You're making so much low end torque, like

it's just not good for the transmission. It's not good for a driveline. It's not good for diffs.

I mean, you're sitting there banging the gears and all that stuff, just you're beating the crap out

of it. And so, I mean, I'll tow it 1400 if I'm doing a slight grade or something, but I don't want

too much power there. And so that's like trying to figure out your transmission shifting strategy

to get it to not make power there. Like if it tries to make too much, it get it to downshift.

That's really tricky. So rather than making 2000 foot pounds of torque at 1400 RPM to the wheel,

you'd rather it downshifted, got up to 2000 RPM and made 1000 foot pounds or something. And we've

all seen the Facebook forums where people are like, Oh, is it true I shouldn't tow in six, then you get

a wide range of answers of like, Oh, dude, I've been toying in six for less 400,000 miles. I'm on

the original transmission. And the next guy like, Oh yeah, absolutely. I towed with six once and it

blew my truck up. And so it's like, I'm gonna say there's a right answer. I 100% tow in six,

like I have a built transmission. So I'm very competent in the transmission. But at the same

time, like, I know the risks, like I know I'm beating up that, that gear train. And so with

anyone with a stock truck or stock ish truck asked me like, Hey, like, how should I be toying with

this thing? What's the strategy? We can downshift. If you're pulling a grade, you have no business

under 2000 RPM, you're under 2000. As like, there's not only are you beating the crap out of your

drive train with that, that, that the jerking of the crankshaft with, you know, you're all your

gear set, the driveshafts, the everything, but the lower the RPM, the less fluid that the pump's

flowing, which less fluid in the pump, the pump is flowing means less fluid to the coolers,

you're more likely to overheat your trans, you're making more torque to pull the same grade. There's

so many things that come together. Like, if you're trying to be nice and you want to make sure you

make it to your, your destination, just downshift, you're going to lose maybe a gallon worth of

diesel, $3, whatever, like, or do what I do, just go faster. That's an option to

go faster and being top gear the whole time. But yeah, so like, I mean, we'll

you'll get a lot of different opinions there, but just downshift. But what I was going to say was

within the tuning side and something that's huge is when I first started playing with it,

I was trying to get the transmission to shift at the right time. And, you know, maybe 20%,

like at 20% throttle at 1,400 RPM, that would be too early and 30 to be too late or whatever,

it's just like trying to get to nail down. What I realized is in the tuning, you don't need to tune,

don't deal with the transmission, like the transmission just put generic downshift tables

in there, set the engine fueling to where it won't do what it is you don't want it to do at 1,400 RPM.

If all I want to make is call it 500 horse, cap it at 500 at a past 500, you can push that throttle

as far as you want. It won't do anymore. Well, when you do that, now you're pushing that throttle

extra. It doesn't matter if your downshift points at 40% or 60%, it'll downshift. If you keep asking

for more, eventually it'll downshift and it'll give you what you want. And so that is a big part in

the trans like for tuning tuning for that, for towing specifically, just tuning the engine to

what you actually want it to do. And like when you're unloaded, it'll downshift or it'll be at

1,400 and you'll pull through that so fast, like by the time you actually start making 500 horse,

you're at 1,800 RPM. There's not a problem there. You can pull through that and it'll be fine.

But when you're towing, you're stuck at that RPM and you have the load to be able to keep it at 1,400

that whole time. Yeah, playing, doing the engine tuning well to where you just don't allow it to

not, don't allow it to do the things you don't want to do. Don't try to like use the transmission

shifting to mask it. Yeah. That's what's nice for the communal stuff is you can do that stuff.

Obviously older stuff, you gotta be a little smarter. Yeah. And it's like, it's the same

thing with, I mean, you can still do like on your VP stuff, you can map your pedal table

to make it more aggressive. Well, you have a mechanically actuated TV cable on your transmission

that's helping decide when to downshift. If you map your table differently in the tuning

to make it really feel really peppy, well, now you've, you're making the same power or more

power at the same throttle percentage, you're not going to downshift as early. So let's let's

back up a little bit of mechanically activated TV. This is something people talk about. You're

talking over our heads. Sorry. So for TV, that's like your throttle valve on your, on your transmission

that as you push your pedal down further, it literally has like a wire. Yeah. That's connected

to a something on your transmission that pulls this motor and it says, okay, we give you a full

on throttle cable. Yes, as a cable, literally cable. It's basically in the transmission,

the way for the transmission to know how much throttle you're giving it. So we can up the

line pressure accordingly. It'll up the line pressure, but also encourage, it creates TV,

what we call throttle or TV pressure in the valve body. And that, that pressure goes everywhere

and helps decide a bunch of things. One thing it does is increase your line pressure. It directly

actuates on the PR valve and increases and what pressure you want to increase the line pressure.

You need more clutch holding capacity. At light throttle, you don't want to make

in max pressure all the time. You're putting the air on stuff that you don't need. You make heat

and you have less extra fluid to go through the cooler. So at light throttle, when you don't need

that pressure, it, when you don't have much TV pressure, you don't have much throttle percentage,

it'll make a very little TV pressure, make less line pressure and it will have make lower line

pressure and be able to send more off to the cooler. Everything's happy. But on the shifting

side of it, that TV pressure holds back the valve that's trying to upshift. So the more TV

pressure you have, the more it tries to prevent that upshift from happening that delays your shifts.

And that's why at light throttle, it'll go through the gears quickly, but at full throttle,

it's going to hang them out a little bit further. And that's what you want. Well,

if you start mapping your, your pedaling differently in like either VP tuning or even

common rail or your early common rails or sending the 12 valve, if you make the, you can adjust

all set up aggressive so that you get more fuel or the linkage between, because if you adjust the

cable, it doesn't matter, but if you adjust the linkage between the bell crank and the pump itself,

you mess with that. The transmission now doesn't actually know what the pump's doing. It's, it's

offset and you can use it to fix a problem or also create a problem. And now, yeah, you're

making more power than the transmission's ready for, which could either cause a slippage or just

honestly just cause it to not shift like you'd want it to shift. So just for some clarification,

we're talking about pedal mapping and adjusting the arms. What this basically means is I want

all of my power, but I want to do it in 10% of my throttle. I have 100% of throw of my,

of my foot. Like I can push it 100% to the floor, but I want all my power to come in,

but I push it 10% or 20% or yeah, 40% like half and metal is full throttle.

You can make this and it feels nice. Like they even have like, they have like boxes you could

do like pedal intensifiers. Yeah. Banks has like a pedal monster, whatever. And they all

just making it so the pedal feels more aggressive and it does. It makes it drive a little bit

nicer, makes it feel more happy cause it makes it feel all the time. Yeah. You just put a little

bit and the truck tries to take off on you. It doesn't add power, but that perception is when

you play and you're like, man, I'm only at a quarter throttle and it feels so good. It makes

you feel like the vehicle and that was in Ford. Yeah. And the reason this exists is when these

0708 cars and trucks came out diesels, it's like the, it was delayed. It's like you'd,

you'd give it throttle and it wouldn't. And it's like the opposite effect. And so you go drive

like a 2007 Jeep Grand Cherokee diesel. I don't know. There's many out there. You like go to go

through an intersection and give it throttle. You're like, what the heck? I'm going to get hit.

And so you give it more and then all of a sudden it kicks in and you bark all four tires,

full-time four wheel drive and you're like, what the heck? And it's like, but it makes you feel

like the vehicle is slow. So the opposite effect after market has found, man, you make that pedal

intense. It makes people feel like this is a problem because now you're giving it full power

of the engine, but your transmission thinks you're at light throttle. And so like on the older stuff

where you have, where has a mechanical cable that's attached now with a newer truck like that,

like ultimately you're hitting it 25% and your computer thinks it's, you're hitting it 50%. So

it's going to do all this stuff as if you were, so the transmission, all that stuff's fine. You're

not hurting your newer truck, but with this, but the older stuff where it's a electronic computer

that you're tuning that isn't affecting your transmission pressure because of the

transmissions on a cable, that's where you want to, you know, set it up. Keep that in mind.

Like say a lot of people like a very sensitive pedal and they don't realize what they're creating,

the problem they're creating in the transmission and it hurt their downshift ability and all that.

And one way people change their throttle map without even knowing it, you get like a VP44,

so like a 98 to 2002 Dodge, you put bigger injectors in there. It makes more power with

the same throttle percentage. So you haven't remapped the throttle, but you've given a quarter

throttle. It now has enough power to one, hurt the trans because it's making more power with

that throttle. And two, the shifting won't seem right. Cause you're like, it just, it feels like

you're like, man, why did this grab the next gear? It was just starting to get good there. Well,

because you're making more puddle, make used to more, you're making more power at the same

throttle percentage, which on that, the general solution is cause you're just made more power

anyway. If you buy a built transmission or build your transmission, now that transmission is making

the more line pressure at lower throttle and it kind of more matches the, the bigger injectors

and bigger injectors and everything else where you can on a stock, you can adjust the throttle

cable a little shorter as long as it doesn't run out of throw and you can make it, you know,

so there's little things you can do there, but a lot of people, once again, why is my hot rod

street truck toe like crap? Well, all these little issues start coming in there when you start

towing and cause you're not, a lot of guys don't floor it when they're towing. They don't want

to break the rear end or break an axle on a shift when they're, they're trying to get to

their destination safely. Now, if you're racing your buddy at the mountain, that's different.

It's that old to the floor. EGT's are just a number and the boost gauge, you don't even look

at it. Yeah. It's like, am I going faster than Todd or am I not? I remember. Okay.

That's, that's true. I remember trailer racing, like Josh and I went down to New Mexico and we

raced and we both did terribly. And so we were driving back and of course, like you went,

you raced and you did terrible. Like you're going to race the tow trucks on the way back.

We're pulling black ridge and we're like, we're going a little faster than we probably should

have been. And we're like neck and neck and finally Josh calls me and he's like, Hey dude,

I think we're being unreasonable. I was like, I know you're about to overheat.

Like it's the middle of summer and I have the heater on. When I was open, I was like,

Nope. I know you're just trying to let out because you're overheating. Are you?

Heater on high full blast and kind of get that a little extra cooling, man.

So you can stay in it longer because like, because when we were towing, like

generally we kind of figured out that I had a little bit more cooling capacity.

Not, I had a smaller trailer and that's really what it was. And I had good compounds on my

second gen and everything else. And so I knew I had more cooling capacity and I was just like,

dude, how the hell is he doing this? Like, I'm a heater core, like heater on windows open,

full blast. And I'm like, he's gotta be close. He calls me. He's like, I think we're being unsafe.

Anyway, unrelated. Another thing, you know, getting away from transmission,

there's more things to think about, you know, if you're going to be modifying your truck,

you need to think about what your part selection is going to be because you could get the wrong

parts. Like I got a 13 mil pump and a big turbo, which was just stupid for towing.

And so you really made, if you're, if you're talking to shops or turbo suppliers or anything,

make sure you're getting something that's going to work for your level. We talk about this

all the time. Don't get oversized turbos for towing. And like obviously power driven,

we've kind of like our tow series turbos. If it says tow series on that, it's going to work great

at towing, which is not going to be the hottest thing on the planet earth, but it's going to

tow really well because you can really screw up your tow manners with the wrong turbo. We had

that one customer you talked about who came in and thought he needed a whole new transmission.

Yeah, he had a transmission from us and he was, he was thought it was shifting at the wrong times

or whatever. And it was a 95 and that's what sucks is like, if it was a newer truck, we probably

could have done a little bit something in like in the tuning side to make it shift a little different.

So this was a 95 12 valve Cummins. Yep. But it was 95. So you and his problem was the overdrive

shift. I'm like, there's not a lot I can do there. Like it tells it to shift and it shifts.

So he drove it and I was like, wait, let's just go drive it, whatever he has trailer on there,

drove it. And I'm like, I was like, honestly, the transmission is acting exactly like I'd

expect it to ask, but you don't have any power below 2000. Like that's your problem is you don't

like your turbo. So when it would shift overdrive, it would pull it below 2000 and then it couldn't

keep the turbo. And I showed him the overdrive, you know, lock out like overdrive off and that

helped a little bit, but still it wasn't great. Cause again, once it locked that converter,

it brought it below 2000 and it just was, it's just nothing. He's like, well, my turbo went out.

So I bought this other turbo, the shop said it'd be better because it's a little bit bigger and

better for towing, you know, it'll help move more air and keep things cooler. And I'm like,

not true. I was like, I was like, he came up expecting to like pay for us to like maybe get

him a different valve body, do something to fix. And I was like, Hey, like I'm not trying to like

take your money, but instead of paying me to fix your trans because your trans is fine,

like just buy this turbo, I'll make a sweet deal on it. Like basically cost and what we will

just put that on there and see what you think. And he did it. He's like, dude, this is great.

This is awesome. Like this is so much better than it's ever been. And like we're up here in Cedar,

like at high elevation, he's out in Cali. Like it's probably even way better down there. And so

yeah, it was just huge. And like it's not like they put a bit massive turbo in it. They had just a,

I think it was a, it was a drop in like HX 35, but it was a 63 millimeter,

but it was one of those companies that I mean, reputable company, but they put a lot of clearance

in the wheel and both turbine and the compressor side, which is great for like warranties because

and workstock sled pulling when you're going to run it balls to the wall. When you're, yeah,

when you're going to run it like that or like for warranty purposes, because that turbo can

start to wear out and won't contact because the moment the wheel contacts the cover,

it's downhill from there. Well, you just open your clearances up. That turbo can last a lot

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But just, just people know clearances. There's distance between your compressor wheel and your

compressor housing. And when he says that compressor wheel hits the housing, yep, the wheel will

start to get unbalanced. You'll have a movement of material from one to another.

So you have an aluminum compressor wheel spinning and aluminum cover and the tightness of that

affects the characteristics of how it flows air. So if you have it loose, it can move around more.

I mean, nothing's perfect. It moves on a little bit and it won't hit. The problem is,

is the bigger the gap is between the wheel and the cover, the less efficient the turbo is.

It's like a bleed. And we've noticed a huge difference on that when we, you know, did some

dyno testing with just different turbos, ours and a couple others. Like turbos that should have

made basically the same power like ours were considerably ahead and they spooled. Actually,

they weren't considerably ahead. They were, they were close. Like ours, I think ours did do better,

but the main thing I noticed was the spool up. Like that's like S three 62, like it's a good

turbo, but it's slower spooling. It was spooling faster than these drop ins with a 63 millimeter

excessive clearance. Like it was like huge to us and kind of like helped us decide what we wanted

to do because if you have a tow series turbo, like you, it needs to respond well. You having slow

spool up is like the, probably the biggest complete complaint of like a hot tow truck.

And if your customer base is primarily in the Midwest or lower elevation,

they can get away with less efficiency than we could. So in testing here,

it was just very blatantly obvious that this is way too loose of cover because it ran so poorly

here. And down at sea level, ours runs better, but the difference between theirs and ours might

not be as great as we're seeing here. And so that's, you could say one of the advantages of

living high altitude is it really, you know, forces you to really, yeah, we have worse stuff.

I mean, we don't have worst case scenario because there's people that live higher than us, but like

we have pretty close to worst case scenario. And so having a turbo that works well here,

means it's going to work well pretty much everywhere. I was talking to someone and they're

asking, they had a drop in VGT in their truck and they were asking about going to one of ours.

And they're like, what do you think this, like for towing, do you think the spool up whatever

would be better? And I was like, dude, I was like, first of all, let's make sure we're all clear

here. If you were, if you talk to someone that lived in the Midwest, they'd be laughing at you

right now. You have a drop in VGT on your six, seven truck. It probably spools just fine. I was

like, however, you and I both know because he also lives at high altitude. Like at the higher

elevation, it, yes, I do think there's a decent difference because a lot of other competitors

are using like a 67 mil turbine, which I don't want to get too much into that. We went with a 64

because it did a really good job of opening up the turbine wheel and getting more flow out

of the motor without hurting the spool up that much. You could probably make a little bit more

power on that 67. Cool. It just comes to the panel. It comes to the panel. We didn't like,

and so for a good replacement tow tow truck turbo, that's why we went with what we did.

Yeah. And it's, we've had just great results from it. And because again, right, we designed

it for towing like your six, seven drop in stuff should be a tow vehicle. You add a,

you add a compounds to it and you have 11 and a horsepower tow vehicle. Pretty great.

Yeah. I remember like when I was messing with Will's truck, like we had put that turbo on,

we messed with it, whatever. And then I was messing with like the calibration side of it.

And we, I like, I did it with my thing. I drove it and I popped the hood. I was like,

does it still have that stick like our turbo on the manifold? Cause I was like,

maybe we left off with a stock turbo in our testing. I couldn't remember what we ended on.

I opened it. I was like, sure, sure. Like there it is. There it is. Like, dang, this thing works

really well. Like I drove your truck and I was like, nah, it's got to be stock. Like it's driving,

it drives super peppy, like super fast. It feels great. Like you would not guess it's an

aftermarket charger. It does. It works. The people want to know my tow truck is great now.

Yes. He does not look for dealerships along the road as he's towing. Yeah.

Now when things break like an alternator, I'm like, well, I had 300,000 on it. Let's put

a new alternator on it before he's like grills rolling off. Maybe, maybe we'll put a new grill

on it someday. I don't know headlights. Yeah, we'll put headlights in it. Never keep me to the nearest

cliff. It's like honey bump this insurance. So another thing I've seen a lot of guys,

they do on street trucks that are great for hot street trucks, terrible for your towing

is changing the wheels and tire combination. Oh my gosh, here we go again.

My first experience with this was I had a Dodge with some 265 Michelin GTX super good

fuel efficient on my 99 Dodge Ram VP 44 truck. You're talking about your Michelin and I put

265 and I put 315 buckshot mutters on there. So basically like a 35 inch mud tire, brother.

And I will say off road, the mud tires were better in the mud, but towing it changed the gear ratio

so much that that tall tire, it made the truck tow worse than it did. Now factory, that truck

had a 245 so the 265 they went a little bit taller had about a 32 inch tall tire where stock was,

you know, right there about 31 inches going to this 34 and a half inch tire. It and this was a

5C manual it did not like I used to always take off in second gear with that 315 with the trailer,

you always had to take off and first when I had the 265s, I take off from a stoplight in second

gear with a light trailer. No problem when I was on the hills. Sometimes I didn't really like the

fourth fifth gear. It didn't turn as much RPM. It seemed like it didn't cool as bit well because

the truck was taller like those three 15s hurt the towing performance of my truck. Now you could

have gone back to your grandpa tires or you could have regeared that would have helped a lot too.

And that's that's definitely something is like you put these big wheels on it. And like we we

towed with a truck. I was a couple years ago now and he has, you know, 35s or whatever on it,

no gear, nothing. And I'm not regeared, but I guess I have enough power to kind of work through the

problems. He did not. And so sixth gear was terrible. And the tune like the it drives empty great,

but you would towing you really had to sit there and manually shift this thing in order to get to

do what it want. Because yeah, the gear ratio was just too high with those tires on it. And so

that's a that's definitely a big thing. And this is a truck. You want to be stancy, you want to have

big wheels, go for it. Just make sure you consider a wee gear. If this is actually like you're a

legit tow truck. No, another aspect that we've seen with wheels and tires, and I'm going to talk

about your truck Ruby, Todd put some, you know, stancy boy street tires and some Nitto 420s on

there. And his steering was having trouble. And it wasn't. And what we found out was the load

capacity on the street tires, which hooked up great, great traction on the street. It did not

handle the loads. The sway and stuff was, was worse. And so sometimes you get your nice looking

street tires on there. They make G rated ones. And so they've Nitto is fix that. But, but like I said,

the, the weight capacity of your tires, a big deal, especially if you're towing heavy.

Not towing that thing. If I wasn't moving, I couldn't turn the wheels. Like if I parked it and

you turn wheels, why wasn't moving? I couldn't like because I couldn't put your truck. We replaced

everything. Yeah. Cause you changed the steering box, tie rods, all joints,

friends. The only thing that fixed it was putting the G rated tires on that can put more

pressure in. Now it's fine. So anyway, yeah. So that big contact patch with that sticky street

tire that did not like it. That's your moving. Yeah. It was really rough. And so with trailers,

it wasn't a stable, the sidewall flex. And so that's one other thing that people do on their

street trucks that hurts them for towing is not putting. Now a lot of tire shops won't even let

you put the not, you know, they have laws against putting the wrong, the wrong load rated tire on

your truck. But you know, there's all these shops, you give them 50 bucks and they'll put the cheap

Nitto's on the rims and don't bring the rims. These are a look. I don't worry. This is my,

this is my Ford Ranger.

Dude, it's so fitting. We're talking about towing in a Ford Ranger.

Like it's just the, it's perfect. That's true. But it doesn't mean tires do make a big difference.

I even especially noticed it's a lot on my wife's excursion by the six liters. Those things kind of

like RPM. And so if you, if you go fast, like it was really happy at 2,300 below 2,300 just wasn't

happy in that particular setup I had. And so I kept the tire small because that was kind of

telling it a pretty fast speed. Like I don't want to tow faster than this really with this

excursion. I think a bigger tires, I'll be in, I'll have to be shifting back and forth all the time.

So if you have big tires, you might find yourself going back and forth from overdrive

to fifth or fifth, you know, if you're four speeds, even worse, four to thirds, a big drop.

And so it's like, yeah, tire selection can really make a big difference on how your truck toes,

because that overall gear range, gear ratios, like you say, if you're a gear, fine, but it's

hard to do switch four. Oh yeah. It's not cheap and it's not easy. A lot of people don't want to

take that. They just want to put the big tires on and hope it works. And then they have, they

have transmissions that are smoked because the load and your tongue kind of sucks. So

it's a real problem. Another thing we talk about all the time is, is the fuel. Like we are big

believers in modifying trucks and you can make your tow truck awesome for sure. But if you're

going to put these massive fuel injectors in there, you're going to have some issues.

Which I want to clarify that a little bit. Like, technology has come such a long way.

They used to be a 200% over, you know, five years ago, wasn't great. Very true. Especially

that was five years ago. Talk about 10 years ago. Terrible. Now like we're running 200%

overs and you're clean. Like you're good. They've been awesome. Like DDP is who we do most like

all of our common rail stuff, like all of our common rail stuff and their technology, like it's

awesome. Like I really can't have any complaints. However, there's always going to be a side effect

to a bigger injector. And so, you know, you, they do a lot of work in there and it's great. However,

a 100% over will never run as clean as like a 15% over or 30% over stock. Like,

and maybe one day that will change. But as of right now, like, yeah, you put 100% over on,

you can make it run clean, but you've got to sit there and dial the tune a little bit better.

And you've got to, you can't get the same spool up performance out of it. It's just

the way the burn and everything happens in the cylinder, it's smaller injector,

can get that higher pressure fuel in there and like mix it better before the burn actually

happens. Like I think that when you start talking about a very short burn, a very short injection

event of a big injector, even if it's atomizing well, it's just if you're not spraying long enough

to really mix it. And so, and then you can drop the pressure to try to get it to spray longer,

but now you're losing animization and whatever else. So like definitely injector quality has

gone up a lot in the last however long, but you're always still going to have a trade off there.

Like I talked to people like, Oh, you tow with 100s, like, should I put 100s in mine? It's like,

no, you should be realistic with what you're trying to do. And if this is your tow truck,

no. One thing to think about if you're a real tow truck is like, I mean,

CP threes have come a long way with how much they can handle with one, but if you're going to have

a dedicated tow truck, twin CP threes, it's problematic. That's been all of my problems.

I've left these straight on the side of the road or broken lines from my twin CP three kids.

No, okay, easy there. So quite a few, more than once, more than once I've been stranded.

I now have spare parts in the truck with me at all times to replace that line.

And the thought back in the day was dual stock CP threes. If one breaks, you can buy one on the

roadside at auto zone or the Dodge dealer. It's really easy to stock replacement, but we found

didn't fail the lines. I do think there is, there are better way to do three kids than what you had

on there. Like I think you're, you can be, but you got to get that one. You got to know which one

you're getting. Like you can very easily get one that's going to break as I have done. It's very

common. Yep. And so it's like, you can handle a lot with a single CP three. And I think a dedicated

tow truck. If I could keep things, keeping things simple, a single 12 mil is so capable.

And they've been awesome. Like maybe 10 years ago, a single 12 mil was unreliable. You get 220,000

miles out of it and you're done. No, I would, I've had that on my 12 mil on my truck free.

They've been, they're awesome now. Yeah. And then I'll handle enough power for what we're

talking about for towing. Yes. Plenty of power for towing. So, so keep your, don't be getting

these big multiple kids if this is a dedicated tow truck. Now a hot street truck that you're on

tow with Ruby's like Ruby is that and I need twin pumps for what I'm doing. I mean, I don't want

to put a 14. I mean, it's about a minus. Really don't want to test the longevity of a 14 because

one would probably be close. So it'd be enough. I'm sure I think the longevity of like a mild

14 would be fine. The problem is the pedal because it's just because they're having them

poured everything in there, do a hard FCA and all that crap to where it's hard to prevent

rail surge, which it's very drivable, but on your dedicated tow truck, not something you

won't have to worry about from every stop and every grade and everything else. You just want

it to work. And that's the one thing that's about duals is that duals, basically the top

pump or your second pump just never gets activated until higher throttle. So you're

basically your control, all that stuff is on a single pump. It's easy. It's smooth. And then

only the second pump only comes to effect when you really need it. So it was nice. So we haven't

talked at all about exhaust. So hot street truck, a hood stack is awesome. Seeing that flame and

smoke coming out there once in a while just gives you that like, it lets you know what's going on

with the engine a little bit. You know, you see a bunch of white smoke coming out of there. You're

like, ah, we might need it. When you pull over, there's a problem, you know, so awesome on hot

street truck. Hood stack is terrible on your tow truck. Anything but a full exhaust is terrible

on your tow truck. Now in the realm of full exhaust, a five inch straight pipe drone monster,

it's going to give you a headache. You're going to hate it on your tow truck. Street truck,

man, hearing that exhaust, reverberate off everybody's house and people's teeth out of

their face. Pretty cool. Tell me to go through and go under an overpass.

Yup. I mean, you can run a five inch, but I would say you like comp, I would only run a

five inch if I had compounds because the compounds can quiet off. I'd still put a muffler on it

and then make sure you have a bunch of hangers and perches and your tip extends past your bedside.

So it doesn't sit there and reverberate off the edge of the bedside, but yes.

But if you want your neighbors to know that you're a man, daddy's home,

five inch straight pipe, absolutely. You want your neighbors to know daddy's home? Oh my gosh.

Cold start, absolutely. If it goes into that three cylinder cold starts, it's really cold

that bop, bop, bop with a five inch. Man, your neighbors will love you.

Perfect. But it is true. Like, I mean, when you're towing a long distance, if you have a

exhaust at drones, it's, it's, oh, it gets old. It's awful. Absolutely. And so getting, even like

the silence ring, you guys, everybody wants to remove their silence ring from their old turbos

and then you put an aftermarket intake on and then you have this crazy whistle. It's like,

dude, it sounds fun, but now it's driving me crazy. Yeah, put it back in. Yeah. I mean,

if you have a dedicated tow truck, that's another thing I would do. Like you got the time, it's not

that it's not very expensive. Freaking sound mat, the whole underside of the truck or inside the

cab, whatever you just do some like that kill mat or whatever else is a couple of different

products out there. It's nice. But a hot street truck that's added weight. Why would you put

kill mat on there? My shorty has kill mat. Okay. So quite a cab's nice on both. So that is a cross

of her piece. Sound mat or kill mat or whatever. No, scratch does not. That's that you got to,

you got to cut your pounds where you can. But I mean, I think Meyer's original point is the

correct one. Like you've got to decide what this truck's purpose really is. Is this a dedicated

tow vehicle? Or is it a street truck that needs a tow? Well, because they're kind of different

things. Yeah, you can tow with a pretty outrage. Like you'd have to be pretty crazy before I'd

say, yeah, you can't tow with that setup. Like, honestly, like you're having some tow truck

problems in Arizona. I was like thinking about like, hmm, I bet I could tow a scrap.

It's like tow truck motor. It is a tow truck motor. The trans like there's no reason it can't go,

you know, however many hundred miles like trans cool is capable. I was like, I could do it.

Got to figure out a hitch. And so yeah, you can, you can make him have a drunker. I was like,

I was like, it's kind of a bumper where you probably put a hitch on there and pull the

junker, which would be legendary. That would be great. Hey, when you're thinking about maybe

getting broken out on the side of the road, you start thinking about your options and it's like,

okay, Junker caught on fire. Does it still run? Maybe mostly it's got a rod knock that probably

probably can't tow with that one. I mean, I, yeah, I was like, I could street drive scrap.

I really think I could. It wouldn't be great. It'd be loud. It'd be terrible. Like with one

inch of suspension, but it do it would do it. Airbag kit for that thing. But there are definitely

things like I would, I would modify a dedicated tow truck. I tell you what, I would, there's

lots of things I would do. Like there's like a ported head. Awesome. Oh yeah. A good camshaft.

Like a nice coal has a good ramp and a red cam. I don't think there's any downside on a ported

head. We've seen on any truck like anything. I think the ports are so restrictive on these.

It's not like in the gas road, we put a big ported head and the, the, the, the throttle response

is lazy. We're just, there's just not enough head there to get to that point. So I mean,

and you know these things, but just to clarify, like you want to be a little bit mild. Like we

say you shouldn't put a stage two on your tow truck because you're getting rid of meat. That's

what all of us have. Like, let's be real. We want to test it. And so like Willard's going to get a

stage two VP head. We're not going to put the tow head on it. We should, but at the same time,

we haven't like the tow head is great. And it is the most reliable, but we've never,

we've never had reliability, reliability issues with our stage twos. No. And so, but that, but

this, the tow port, we, we did design for ultimate reliability because we don't really

know how long these things are going to last, but years, so far, years, cracks on stock heads

before. So I know those thin areas are more prone to cracking. So it's like, we're not dumb. We're

like, we're trying to leave meat where I've seen problems, but just like with anything, I mean,

with a head like that, you know, 90% or 80% of the gain comes from 20% of the work.

And so we can get it in and out of the machine really quick and keep the cost down,

but get you a lot of the benefits.

That's so heads, not 80% as good as the other part is that you have to like,

we're saying like a stage two head flows, like works great and works great on tow trucks.

Well, that's because our stage two heads still has a bunch of swirl. I'm sure some people's,

you know, higher performance heads, they start getting rid of swirl at that higher flow because

whether it's intentional or not, you have that head on your tow truck.

Yeah, it's going to be hazy all the time. It's not going to be great.

And so you got to be a little bit mindful of that stuff, but yeah, absolutely.

Like a cylinder head is great on a, on a truck.

Back in the day, people used to complain that those, those low swirl Hamilton heads,

they would say they kind of hazed. And so I guess at some point you can get that.

I mean, they don't even make that head anymore. So it's kind of like not even

relative to the discussion now, but they, they definitely didn't have good float,

low lift numbers. And I don't remember what the swirl numbers were on those, but

I mean, they had like no ramp. I can't imagine it was anything.

Yeah. And so I guess there is a point where it seems like we've seen in the past with 12

valves. So you've got not as good of injection as some of these other trucks,

you know, that, that you could get in that point, but also we don't tell people to put

our stage three 12 I've had on their tow truck either. I mean, because now you get big valves,

we are losing swirl there are thinning up areas, thinning up areas like where I wouldn't be

surprised if it cracked after a hundred thousand miles. We're trying to get the most flow we can

out of there. We're not going, Oh my gosh, I hope this makes it to a million miles on somebody's

tow truck. No, definitely not. But I do, like I said, I do think the proper mods in a tow truck

will make it better. It will be, but you will enjoy it more. It'll tow better.

You have way more fun towing your trailers when you have, when you have power,

towing trailers is fun. It is. It really is. I mean, without power, it's super frustrating.

Yeah. You're having to like plan and like watch someone coming up and you're like, Oh crap,

I'm going to have to get slowed down and be stuck here. And you're like, you're having to like

watch the road more and watch what you're, everyone's doing so you can plan how you're

going to slow down safely or whatever, get bogged down. Like, Oh, maybe this hill will

have to bog me down, whatever. When you're going to have power, you just pick like any

Mazda or anything goes to go behind it. Hope they don't slow you down.

You just like getting there and just say you need a push.

We used to have this Ford Aero Max semi that we affectionately called the Mac.

And even though it wasn't a Mac, I worked here way too long before I realized it wasn't actually a

Mac. I'm not going to lie to you. I was like, wait, what? So we had this Ford Aero Max and

because I quickly, I took my two kids to pick it up when I flew Minnesota and every semi truck

to them was the Mac from the movie, the cars. We're going to go with the Mac. Yes, we're going

to get the Mac. You told that story to someone and I was like, Oh, what? It's not a Mac.

It's a Ford. So we had this. So we had this Ford Aero Max had an eight five five Cummins

that won't know had an N 14 Cummins, but it had a PT pump from an eight five five Cummins.

So somebody had mechanical swapped it before we bought it and it was grossly underpowered

and it had a 10 speed transmission in there and I have no experience driving 10 speeds or

anything. And I was terrified to drive this because I would miss the gears sometimes and it

didn't have enough power where I could like stay in a gear and if I was like, so I'd miss two or

three gears and one time I got clear to like low second gear before I one time I'm like,

you've got to pull off the freeway. You can't you're going to stop in the middle like I was

almost on my team. We're almost stopped. We'll get off the freeway. Pull over. We'll start over.

Anyway, and that once we added more power to that vehicle and I learned that if you leave

the clutch out, you can actually feel from the grind that it's about to like go into the next

year. Do not use the clutch or running anyway that power made that much less stressful for

me to drive. So I would say that that's true on almost any tow vehicle I've experienced.

More power makes it less stressful to operate. Absolutely. Because you have it if you need it.

You can you can pass safely. You can pull the grade and not be like, oh man, I need to floor it

five minutes before this hill. Oh man, I got to make sure that I'm in the fast lane so I can get

a run at this hill so I don't have to get into second gear and overheat my transmission because

it can't lock the converter or whatever. Power fixes a lot of that stress.

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Yeah, it really does. So I'm a big fan of modifying anything, whether it be a street

truck or a dedicated tow truck. There are gains to be had either way, but just be smart with what

you're doing. Of course, we love it. Call us. We're happy to help and we want to give you good

advice to make sure you get the parts that are right for your vehicle and your application

because you can only screw this one up. If you want to get a dedicated tow rig and you build it

with a 13 mil P pump, you're not going to like it. It's a bad idea. So anyway, guys, well, I think

that's about our time for this one, guys. I do want to just do one more quick thing because I've

actually had this question a couple of times. I've talked about my tow truck plenty probably,

but it's one of our VGTs with a 480, like a Gressor 480 on the atmosphere and a lot of people

are like, oh, like you say it tows really good, but like they couldn't keep their boots alive.

Like that was one specific guy was like, yeah, he's like, I have a similar setup, but it's

making 60 pounds of boots, pulling upgrades. Like the boots won't survive and they keep blowing

boots and stuff. And so they can't really tow with the power. It's like stupid. And then there's

multiple people have said similar things about like a set of compounds and toeings. Like, oh,

they're great and all, but like that hot rod, you just can't keep boots alive.

They don't have a ported head. They don't have a cam. Like when I'm towing at 700 horse, that's

38 pounds of boost. I'm not making like stock turbos will make that. And I have good boots on

it. So I've never literally never had a boot issue on that truck, never blown off ever. But

like that's a big part is keeping your boost down. Like you can't, like it's great to have a 700

horse tow truck. And maybe you have great EGT control at 60 pounds. Your rest of your system

cannot maintain 60 pounds of boost pulling grades. How much heat get in prison? I mean,

I've been floored for 30 minutes on, in that toe tune, like pulling, if you ever came out of

prompt Nevada, it's just like a constant grade. And I'd lose speed at basically the same rate as

the speed limit was dropping. So I was basically floored for, I mean, at least 20 minutes and

cool intents like 230, just like the whole time. And it's great. It did it and never had problems.

But because that's because of the boost is low. And that's part of that is your VGT tuning or

if you don't have a VGT, your turbo selection, but also the head, the cam, it all works together

and it works really well. So that's definitely a big deal is be able to, if you want to be able to

add that big power for a long period of time, get yourself a turbo setup,

airflow setup, cam, all that stuff that will make that power at a low enough boost that

it won't heat soak the crap out of everything. So that's a hot street thing that also helps

with the towing reliability that that is one difference. Why you're able to get away with

this hot rod tow truck as are you and some of these other people aren't is there crazy boost

that these power levels needed for towing? It'll make crazy boost. You know, Ruby surely will,

but I'm towing pretty pretty radical. Yeah. And you've got, I mean, I have pretty open flowing

with the VGT. Like basically, if I'm at power, VGT is open, just wide open. Like if you're

tighter than I would say 40%, your tuning probably should be adjusted. Yours here are 467 GT55,

nothing but turbine flow. Let's go. And it works. Yeah, it works great. So anyway,

I just wanted to interject that because that's something I've gotten from a couple of different

people. Yeah, good point. Good point. So anyway, guys, build your truck for your application,

we say it over and over again, get the right parts we want to do. And you can have, you know,

your cake and do that rhymes. You do that. That's awesome. Anyway, guys, that's for the

power driven podcast. We'll see you next time. Thanks a lot. Two good and co coffee creamers

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