Elk Grove is the fastest growing city in the United States, and it's no wonder with a work truck like this hitting the construction sites of this young Northern California city. Rick Newland has lived in this boom town of 112,000 since long before it declared independence from Sacramento six years ago and started growing by more than 11 percent each year. He owns Newland Drilling, and every day he's towing earth-moving equipment and trailers that add up to more than 30,000 pounds. After a few years of wearing out 1-ton "civilian" trucks, he decided to step up to an '06 Ford F-550 Super Duty 4x4-but that wasn't enough.
After traveling halfway across the country to buy the one truck he could find with the options he desired (including the XLT interior and a manual transmission), he took it all the way to Auto World in Great Falls, Montana. Rick had no desire to tow with the 6.0L Power Stroke that came with the truck and wanted to swap in a Cummins 24-valve engine and Dodge NV5600 six-speed manual transmission. Auto World performed a flawless swap that makes the Cummins look like a factory option, managing to mate the Dodge drivetrain to a US Gear overdrive splitter box before the Ford NV271 transfer case-but that wasn't enough.
Elk Grove resident and owner of Diesel Nut Motorsports, Jason Kolker helped Rick upgrade the 5.9L ISB with a twin-turbo setup from Ponci's Diesel Center that uses a Borg Warner Air Werks S300 turbo up top and a Borg Warner K31 on the bottom. Brad Ponci managed to make the dual-spool setup fit in the cramped Ford engine compartment and even built a giant custom free-flowing intake tube. Hometown pal Kolker then helped pick out bigger Don M 3.8 injectors, a FASS fuel system to feed them, a Banks intercooler upgrade, an Edge Comp tuner, and a South Bend Con FE clutch to deal with the extra power-but that wasn't enough.