It All Started With A Chip
"I started by putting a single chip in it to increase power and fuel mileage," Mike recalls. "I really hadn't been bitten by the diesel bug at this point, but that didn't take long. Just for fun, I stacked another chip on top and saw quite a difference. This was the start. I had been bitten-and bit hard!"
School Of Hard Knocks
The truck was making good horsepower, especially when he decided to put on a 66mm turbo and 100hp injectors. Unfortunately, he ended up blowing the stock transmission, not once, but six times in all. As any diesel performance enthusiast already knows, getting things covered by warranty can be a tricky thing once you start playing around with the engine output. Knowing that a stock transmission wasn't going to hold up to the increased horsepower, he experimented with an aftermarket unit.
Mike still had to attend some other classes in the school of hard knocks as well. "I also blew up the original motor when I started monkeying around with propane," Mike admitted. "Thankfully, my wife Charr is behind me 100 percent and has often told me to do whatever it takes to make this truck one of the fastest diesel trucks out there." (We can imagine that a lot of unattached diesel guys are wondering if she has a sister.)
With family felicity still intact, Mike forged ahead despite encountering even more problems. "We had the truck running pretty hard all by ourselves, but we were breaking lots of parts," Mike said. "Instead of having the truck setup and dialed in correctly, we were just running it off of feel."