Time, it's the biggest enemy a diesel enthusiast has. Each of us spends at least 40 hours a week at work, 56 hours sleeping (if you're lucky), and what seems like years doing chores around the house. Most of us only get a few hours of the day to even enjoy driving our diesels. So where does that leave time for actually working on them? The answer is-it doesn't.
When we want to modify our diesels, we practically have to schedule it like we would a vacation. We have to set aside some time that we can wrench, wire, and customize our machines to make them our own. Otherwise it seems like our trucks just end up being stock forever.
Here at Diesel Power we believe that the best way to tackle a truck project is to set it up ahead of time, get all the parts in one place, and do all of the work at once. To test this theory, we enlisted our friend Mark Lankhorst's new 6.7L '08 Dodge Ram 2500 and gathered enough parts to lift it, add some power, and give it a truly unique look.
Mark Lankhorst and Bryan Kinney, owner of KC Customs in Santa Rosa, California, are good friends, so when it came time for Lankhorst to tear into his '08 Dodge Ram, Kinney offered up his shop for our weekend photo shoot.
 Time, it's the biggest enemy...  Time, it's the biggest enemy a diesel enthusiast has. Each of us spends at least 40 hours a week at work, 56 hours sleeping (if you're lucky), and what seems like years doing chores around the house. Most of us only get a few hours of the day to even enjoy driving our diesels. So where does that leave time for actually working on them? The answer is-it doesn't.When we want to modify our diesels, we practically have to schedule it like we would a vacation. We have to set aside some time that we can wrench, wire, and customize our machines to make them our own. Otherwise it seems like our trucks just end up being stock forever.Here at Diesel Power we believe that the best way to tackle a truck project is to set it up ahead of time, get all the parts in one place, and do all of the work at once. To test this theory, we enlisted our friend Mark Lankhorst's new 6.7L '08 Dodge Ram 2500 and gathered enough parts to lift it, add some power, and give it a truly unique look.Mark Lankhorst and Bryan Kinney, owner of KC Customs in Santa Rosa, California, are good friends, so when it came time for Lankhorst to tear into his '08 Dodge Ram, Kinney offered up his shop for our weekend photo shoot. |  The new Trailmaster 4-inch...  The new Trailmaster 4-inch lift kit came with longer tubular steel suspension links and urethane bushing that had to be installed. Lankhorst found that the steel sleeves that pressed into the bushings (arrow) were too wide to fit into the brackets on the axle, so Spriggs took them to a local machine shop to have them narrowed. |  Trailmaster provided a new...  Trailmaster provided a new pitman to compensate for the increased lift height. In order to install it, Lankhorst had to remove the factory pitman arm, which turned out to be the biggest challenge of the whole project. There just wasn't enough room between the stock arm and the steering box to use a conventional pitman arm puller (arrow). Lankhorst considered cutting off the old arm, heating it with a torch, and even flagged down the local Snap-On guy to see if there was a special puller he could buy. |