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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
longer even though it's still failing slowly. It'll last a lot longer and get through the warranty
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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
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About this episode
The hosts dig into why diesel trucks can feel great empty but “tow like garbage” once a trailer is hooked up. Real-world stories highlight bad shift/lockup behavior, especially when transmission strategy and torque delivery don’t match towing loads. They compare Aisin vs 68RFE behavior, explain how wrong throttle mapping and fueling can force harsh “dyno-style” bucking, and caution against oversized power setups (like a 13mm pump + big single) that make towing violent and unreliable. Key fixes include proper tow tunes, multiple tune levels, correct turbo/boost targets, and tow-appropriate tires/gearing.
Original notes
Every diesel guy has been there. The truck feels great empty, pulls hard, and you love it right up until you hook a trailer to it. Todd, Will, and Myer dig into exactly why that happens and what you can actually do about it.
The conversation starts with a real story about building a 12 valve for power without thinking about what it would have to do. Big pump, big single turbo, five speed, and a trailer to tow. The result was exactly what you would expect from a setup built for the strip and not the highway. It towed, but it was miserable, and that experience sets up everything else in the episode.
From there the guys get into tuning strategy for trucks that need to work. Pedal mapping and throttle input are a bigger deal than most people think, especially when your transmission is mechanically activated and does not know your engine is making twice the power it was designed around. If your transmission thinks you are at light throttle while your engine is at full pull, you are going to have a bad time. Getting the tune and the transmission working together is step one.
Turbo selection comes up as one of the biggest places guys go wrong when building a tow truck. Oversized turbos that are great for making peak power numbers are often terrible for towing because they surge, they come on hard, and they kill drive manners under load. Compressor wheel clearances also factor into efficiency and reliability in ways most people do not think about. The right turbo for towing is not the biggest one you can bolt on.
Fuel system choices matter too. Massive injectors and multi-pump setups introduce complexity and reliability concerns that become a real problem when you are stranded on the side of the road a long way from home. For a dedicated tow truck, simple and reliable beats flashy every time. Carrying spare parts because you know your setup is likely to break is not a strategy.
Tires are another thing that can quietly kill your tow truck. Load ratings, tire size, and how they affect your effective gear ratio all play into how your truck behaves under a load. Going up in tire size without accounting for everything downstream can smoke a transmission and make towing miserable regardless of what else you have done to the truck.
The core takeaway is something the guys come back to repeatedly. You have to decide what your truck actually is before you build it. A dedicated tow truck and a street truck that occasionally tows are two completely different builds. You can have a modified truck that tows great, but the parts and strategy have to match the application.
If you are building a diesel and towing is part of the plan, this episode is worth your time. Subscribe on YouTube and follow the Power Driven Podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
Everything discussed in this episode is available at PowerDriven.com. If you are building a tow truck or a street truck that needs to work, the team can point you toward the right parts for your application.
Shop Power Driven Diesel: https://www.powerdriven.com
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