Department of Corrections
On page 100 of the “Morgan Wildman’s Charity Dyno Event” article (April ’12), we listed Chad Lipari as the owner of the ’97 Ford F-350 dualie. We got that wrong. The real owner is Trenton Whitman, and he’s modified his two-wheel-drive dualie with a Superchips Max Micro tuner, a homemade intake, and a homemade water-methanol injection system. The manual-transmission-equipped truck put down 316 hp and 520 lb-ft of torque at the dyno day through a pair of massive 8-inch-diameter stacks.

Those of you interested in space travel may know the name Dr. Robert Zubrin. He’s an aerospace engineer who’s written detailed books about how humans can settle the planet Mars. As president of Pioneer Astronautics, his company develops projects like the Gas Hopper Airplane. This self-sustaining research vehicle uses solar panels to compress CO2 (which makes up 95 percent of the atmosphere on Mars) and then stores it in liquid form. It is then sprayed over a pre-heated pellet bed, which increases the gas pressure to the point it can provide thrust. You can watch a video of it in action (flying on Earth) at http://www.pioneerastro.com/projects.html. Dr. Zubrin’s other inventions include Alternate Propellant Thermal Rockets (APTR), which are powered by either a nuclear thermal reactor or a solar thermal engine used to heat a storable propellant. Dr. Zubrin also worked for Lockheed Martin as a senior engineer.

I almost crashed when I saw this Shell station was trying to sell diesel for $5.99 a gallon. I know the price of fuel has gone up, but $5.99? That’s insane. Nobody wants to pay that much for diesel.

I was reading a magazine yesterday featuring hot-rodded gasoline stuff, and something odd struck me: It just wasn’t as interesting as it used to be. The idea of building a 400hp 350ci Chevy on a $3,000 budget just isn’t fascinating anymore—not when I could buy a complete ’89 to ’93 Dodge for $2,000 and spend $1,000 more to get the same type of power level. A ’94 to ’98 Dodge with the P7100-pump 5.9L Cummins engine (the small-block Chevy of diesels) is capable of even more power on a budget. With the $1,300 Garmon Power package (don’t ask what it is, just buy it), I saw my otherwise stock Dodge spit out 430 hp—at the rear wheels! That’s an easy 550 hp at the crankshaft for a very minimal expenditure. My 200,000-mile engine didn’t need a rebuild either, just a head gasket. Diesel wins, easily.

How many times have you hopped into your truck and found the fuel gauge needle sitting on empty? Maybe the last person who drove it was too lazy to fuel it up, maybe you’re in an unfamiliar part of town, or maybe you’re on a cross-country road trip and you’re praying there’s diesel off the next exit ramp. None of that matters anymore, because searching for diesel fuel stations just became obsolete!

Right now, I’m reading the instruction manuals for the Fairbanks Morse Type 32, two-cycle, 32E12 and 32E14 diesel engines. I found this powerplant (shown) at an old dude ranch (now a State Park) northwest of Las Vegas called Floyd Lamb Park at Tule Springs. According to an informational pamphlet I found, Mr. Goumond created the ranch around 1941. At this time, Nevada relaxed its divorce laws so people started coming to this Wild West oasis to gain Nevada citizenship and thereby obtain a legal split.

Everyone reading this magazine has something in common: We all want better. Just by owning a diesel-powered vehicle, each of us has made a conscious effort to strive for more than the status quo. The cheap gasoline engines powering the rest of the world aren’t efficient, strong, powerful, green, or durable enough for our needs—and we’re willing to work harder to get something better. That’s the diesel way.

S.S. Admiral’s Caterpillar Engines
I just received the March ’12 issue and read the “Mississippi River Monument” Baselines article. My grandfather, Henry Peterson, was a diesel salesman for a local Cat dealership in St. Louis named Fabick. He traveled up and down the Mississippi selling diesels to different barge companies, and family lore has it that he sold the engines used in the Admiral. My wife and I keep the family’s diesel tradition alive with our ’09 LMM Silverado 3500 dualie. Thanks for making Diesel Power what it is, I truly cannot wait to get my next issue.
Matt Peterson
Via email

New Model: Laramie Limited
Are you still one of those people who assumes the words pickup and luxury can’t go hand in hand? Get over it. And to help further convince you to do so, Ram is introducing the top-o’-the-line Laramie Limited. We still aren’t sure why Chrysler brands go with the label of Limited, because it sure seems those branded with it are anything but. This truck will include full-leather seating, a leather-wrapped steering wheel, as-expected chrome, 17-inch polished-aluminum rims on the HDs, navigation, backup camera, remote start, and heated seats and steering wheel. The biggest shocker? The Cummins badge will be absent; Ram is going for a clean “street truck” look. Those are Chrysler’s words, not ours. You can rectify that mistake by ordering your own Cummins badge at the dealership—PN: 55078116AA.

I was born in San Diego, California, but our family only stayed there for a year. My parents, Bill and Cathy, soon moved us up to Oroville, California, to a happy home up in the hills, where I was oblivious to the city’s unemployment and drug problems. I was a little kid (about five or six) when I first got into diesels—specifically in the form of tractor pulling. I was fascinated by the fact that these smoke-belching monsters with low factory horsepower ratings could keep up with blown gas engines and was determined to see what made them tick. Around the age of 12, I got the book Turbochargers by Hugh MacInnes and read it about a billion times, cover to cover. I soon started to get into drag racing, however, and the diesel bug went into hibernation for more than a decade.

It seems there is a considerable amount of disappointment in the lack of diesel options offered in North America. What seems to work so well (and be the norm) in Europe has somehow been neglected or left off the drawing board in the States. Well, the coming months (and year) could help alleviate some of this frustration.

Although many people believe IDI diesel engines are obsolete, I think about building them more than any other diesel. The only thing I ponder more is tomorrow’s high-tech diesels and drive systems—powered by renewable fuels. By going back and forth between my two polar-opposite diesel passions, my intention is to bring you, the reader, the best of what’s overlooked (but available right now) and the best of what’s on the way (but just outside the mainstream’s reach).

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve loved to build stuff. The mechanical process of assembling things has always appealed to me. My parents may remember it differently, but I was never the kind of kid who took everything in the house apart just to see how it worked—I read magazines to learn that stuff.

Triple-Digit Towing
I just opened my new Diesel Power magazine and read your Direct Injection column (“Triple-Digit Towing,” Feb. ’12) about making a Guinness Book of World Records attempt. To me, you are totally out of touch with what your readers want. I would much rather read a story about what the readers tow than a story about triple-digit towing. Just my $0.02.
Bill Ketchum
Flagstaff, Arizona

If you couldn’t already tell by the kind of stories I typically write, I’m the magazine’s Ford guy. Not because the trucks have an engine with a catchy name, or because the manufacturer says they’re “built tough,” but because I grew up with them. I learned firsthand what they could do and saw how long they could last. I guess seeing something work for so long makes you a believer.

Talking to people who are in their teens or even 20s can be quite scary. Mention that a truck has a standard transmission, and they are very likely to give you a blank look. Even saying it’s a manual can inspire confusing questions like: “You mean it has paddle shifters?” While certain technologies have gone by the wayside for good reasons, I see no reason for things like manual transmissions to disappear—but they are. For those who are still confused, a manual transmission requires the driver to shift his own gears and push in his own clutch pedal. The driver has full control of the transmission, which is a beautiful and wonderful thing. Yet as cars and trucks get more and more advanced, the trend is to take more and more control away from the driver.

Warning: The following article is full of speculation, wishful thinking, and shameless self-promotion of diesel power. There is, however, so much buzz about ½-ton diesels being just around the corner it’s time to fill you in on what we’ve seen, what we know, and what we believe is coming.

GMC Celebrated its 60Th Birthday in 2012
Last year marked Chevrolet’s 100th anniversary, and GM gave us endless lists and figures to back up the milestone. Not that we’re complaining—we love the trifecta of history, Chevrolet, and old people. But guess what? GMC hits the centennial in 2012, so away we go again with fun facts! Did you know that in 1909 the Rapid F-406-B (GM calls it a GMC predecessor) was the first truck to tap the 14,110-foot summit of Pikes Peak? Or that GMC built electric vehicles from 1912 to 1917? Or that during WWII, GMC manufactured somewhere in the ballpark of 584,000 military vehicles, such as the CCKW-353 Deuce and a Half and the amphibious Duck? What about that GMC-made motorhomes in 23- and 26-foot configurations from 1973 to 1978?

Don’t you wish you could get back all that energy you wasted grinding up brake pads?

Apocalypse-Proof Transmission
In regard to your Doomsday Diesel (Jan. ’12) ’91 Suburban, the project has one Achilles Heel that hasn’t been taken into account. There’s an electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) that generally occurs when someone detonates a megaton-class thermonuclear device (atomic bomb) in the atmosphere. The resultant inductive pulse will fry any semiconductor (read: transistor) circuitry that isn’t shielded (usually by being stored inside a faraday cage with an earth ground).

You know those T-shirts you see gray-haired guys wearing at car shows, races, and the beach—the ones that say “Old Guys Rule”? I’m now at the age where I can appreciate those. Not because I’m old (at least, I don’t think I am), but because I’ve finally come to understand just how much old guys have taught me.

Never-Ending GM 100th Anniversary: Truck Edition
Seriously, if we dragged out our birthday this long, you’d have all unfriended us on Facebook. But Chevy continues to milk its centennial— and we kinda don’t mind when it results in cool collections of flashbacks, like how trucks built the General’s empire. GM started in 1911, but it produced nothing but cars until 1917. The following year is when trucks were introduced, and the ball got rolling with the ’18 490 1⁄2-ton light delivery cowl chassis. The truck offered two four-cylinder models and was basically a 490 car without the body. The 1⁄2-ton was $595.

Back in 2008, when I first arrived at Diesel Power, I was able to attend the Diesel Engine-Efficiency and Emissions Research (DEER) conference held in Detroit. In order to read this article, you need to Google: “Exclusive Coverage of DOE’s Diesel ThinkTank.” (As a side note, this roundabout way of finding past Diesel Power articles is about to change, thanks to a powerful new search engine our company is working on.)

I’ve always been intrigued by numbers, statistics, and data—and I know a lot of you are the same way. There are times when we want to see low numbers, but for the most part we spend our time looking at maximum values. Things like how much we can tow, what kind of mileage we see on the highway, or how much horsepower and torque we have on tap are all part of what the average diesel owner wants to know.

I’m looking at buying my first diesel vehicle that could be considered part of the modern era—one equipped with a common-rail engine. In the past, I’ve referred to vehicles with high-pressure, common-rail-injected engines as “common-fails” due to their complexity, cost of replacement parts, and inability to be abused. Case in point: The ’02 Duramax-powered Chevy I am considering purchasing for $3,000 is on its fifth set of injectors.