Narrator:

The Diesel Performance podcast contains explicit language.

Paul Wilson:

Thank you for joining us again. This is Paul Wilson.

Danny Voss:

I'm Danny Voss.

Nick Priegnitz:

Nick Priegnitz.

Paul Wilson:

And you're listening to the Diesel Performance Podcast. Great opportunity here guys. We all got a chance to come in the studio together.

Nick Priegnitz:

Got a trifecta here today, Paul.

Paul Wilson:

Obviously, Danny, Nick and I, we all work together at Duramax Tuner, and we don't generally have a lot of opportunities to come down and talk, but we did think that this was a special set of circumstances. We recently published a video on the Duramax Tuner Facebook page and YouTube channel and other social media outlets about the Clean Sweep.

Nick Priegnitz:

A very high cetane video. Controversial and dramatic, yes.

Paul Wilson:

Absolutely. It's been really crazy how fast that video blew up on all the social media outlets. Just a ton of comments, a lot of questions, a lot of myths, and we thought that maybe we would get together and talk about it all together in general.

Danny Voss:

I get the goose bumps every time I see the video and I have watched it a hundred times.

Paul Wilson:

Absolutely.

Danny Voss:

Also something that happened to us this weekend as far as business, we were mentioned in the New York Times. They were talking about a lot of things as far as blowing smoke, and the bad things in the industry. At the very bottom of the article, they talk about Calibrated Power and the Clean Sweep, and how we're one of the only companies that have emissions-intact tuning available out there.

Nick Priegnitz:

They sneak that in and it was nice.

Paul Wilson:

It was a crazy article to be on and totally agree there. The title of the article is "Rolling Coal in Diesel Trucks to Rebel and Provoke". It is published in the New York Times online version. I'm sure it'll be in some of their print articles as well. We're going to dive into a little bit of that, I think, here at the end of this.

Nick Priegnitz:

What an opportunity there.

Danny Voss:

That video led us into that.

Paul Wilson:

It did, it did. It really all compiled at once and we thought this would be a great time to just reach out and give our listeners as much insight as we can. To kick it off, the first thing I wanted to read to you guys is one of the posts, I think one of the most popular posts on the video ... Bear with me, I'm going to do a little bit of paraphrasing here as I'm reading.

Nick Priegnitz:

Yeah, so you're going to read what was written on our Facebook page and we're going to have an opportunity to respond to it.

Paul Wilson:

You got it.

Nick Priegnitz:

Is what you're telling me.

Paul Wilson:

That's it.

Danny Voss:

A Q&A session with Paul Wilson.

Paul Wilson:

All right, DPF-equipped trucks are not as fuel efficient as deleted trucks, I mean factor versus deleted. The world is consuming more diesel, how is having to produce more diesel better for the environment? Unless I'm missing something.

Nick Priegnitz:

Yeah, okay, so I'll take that one. It's important to address first the ... Let's break it down into pieces. Let's talk about fuel consumption. Fuel consumption, a difference DPF-on versus DPF-off, and we're talking a mile per gallon on a tuned truck versus a tuned truck, if you talk about a DPF-off stock truck versus a DPF-on stock truck. Again, that difference, I'm going to put it a mile, mile and a half, maybe. Then we talk about how much money and time it takes to take emissions equipment off the trucks, so there's expense, right?

Paul Wilson:

Right.

Nick Priegnitz:

If you're an owner of a truck you know all about expenses. You should anyway, you have a pretty large payment to make. It's important to consider the expenses that you're going to incur. They're moving the diesel particulate filter and how much fuel you're going to have to burn to bring that back. Then what other expenses you may incur, so potentially fines, difficulty selling the truck, warranty issues. If you are going to try and get a warranty claim on your truck your first going to have to reinstall the exhaust, put the truck back to stock, pray that your connectors aren't all fucked up like they were on the Clean Sweep when you put it back to stock. There's other things to take inconsideration there.

As far as what's best for the environment, I don't know all the details and data on that. If you want to read on environment consumption of diesel fuel and form your own opinion on that you're more than welcome to. What we're focused on as a company is what's best for our customer and what's best for our customer is the best running truck they can have and the best value.

Paul Wilson:

I wholeheartedly agree there and I think one of the key points we had a lot of people miss and we'll see this as a reoccurring theme through most of these questions, they compare a truck off of the showroom floor to their already deleted and tuned vehicle. There seems to be a disconnect between understanding that if you would tune that vehicle emissions-equipped and not deleted-

Nick Priegnitz:

There's a mileage game there too, as well.

Paul Wilson:

There was something to be said and that would be a more fair comparison.

Nick Priegnitz:

For sure.

Paul Wilson:

I think we have to start the conversation there is letting people know there is an option to tune with the emissions intact and that is a viable option. Then we can start comparing that to a deleted vehicle.

Nick Priegnitz:

Perhaps we should ... We have a spreadsheet built for that so if our listeners want to fill in the dots on that and press equals, maybe we should attach that to the podcast episode?

Paul Wilson:

Yeah, that'll be available through Diesel Tuners blog and so if you go to dieseltunersblog.com we'll have an article about this podcast episode and you'll be able to download the actual workbook which is just a simple Excel sheet so you can do the math like you said.

Nick Priegnitz:

Sure.

Paul Wilson:

Which was really cool. We ruled that out for LMMs back in the day.

Nick Priegnitz:

Yeah, put that up a few places, it always gets a lot of attention. It's just neat to see, I guess if you want to see the money.

Paul Wilson:

Yeah, we always say, "Let's see the math."

Nick Priegnitz:

Yep.

Paul Wilson:

All right, guys claiming to get 5 to 7 miles better per gallon deleted. They're also cooler and more efficient overall. Maybe the point here since we just hit on fuel mileage is EGT management.

Nick Priegnitz:

Yeah, that's another lowered one, so anybody claiming to get 5 to 7 miles to gallon more, deleted-

Danny Voss:

They're on Mars.

Nick Priegnitz:

That or they're comparing it to an emissions-equipped truck that's having a problem so the EGR is stuck open, the DPF is plugged or you got something else going on. The difference simply is not 5 to 7 miles per gallon. I don't care who you're talking to or what you read on the Internet, that's bogus.

Paul Wilson:

It's funny because we hit a thread here later on in the comments where somebody claims to be getting 28 and I will say I do love all of the positive feedback out there that we got from our already established fans who-

Nick Priegnitz:

Of course, yeah.

Paul Wilson:

They really kind of grilled on, "Tell me how to get 28, Bud." It did not come up with any math.

Nick Priegnitz:

Let's get back on the efficiency part and the high EGTs. If you're running a missions-equipped truck your EGTs are going to run hotter and that's a matter of emissions-equipped tuning strategy. Those catalyst and the exhaust only have an opportunity to do their job when they're at temperature and that temperature is 5 to 600 degrees or higher, depending on what state their in. In order to achieve that temperature, the EGTs and the exhaust manifolds have to run hotter, so you're talking instead of cruise at 550, 600, or 650, you're going to see cruise in the 800 to 950 range. That's just a function of strategy. As far as efficiency, what is you efficiency of what?

Paul Wilson:

I think the idea here is longevity. Operating my truck 400 degrees hotter across the band, so that's going to fluctuate some, right?

Nick Priegnitz:

Yeah, yeah.

Paul Wilson:

How does that affect the longevity, I think, was the right word that they were looking for there.

Nick Priegnitz:

I think the disconnect here is that people are assuming that there's a linear difference in parts wear as temperature goes up so the parts wear very low or very ... The least amount at 500 degrees and they wear a lot at 1,400 degrees exhaust gas temperatures. Well, that's not the case. Gasoline engines, for instance, run very high EGTs, 1,300 to 1,600 degrees, it's not uncommon. For your diesel truck to be running at 800 or 950 down the road, nothing at all is being worked at that level, it's just a non-issue. You should not be afraid of 800 or 900 degree exhaust gas temp. You should not be afraid of 1,100 degree exhaust gas temps.

Once you see things starting to crest the 1,300 mark and head towards 1,400, that's when your ears should perk up and really by the time your emissions-equipped truck is doing that, your DPF deleted truck would be within 100 degrees of that. The slope right is, there's a consistency between those 2 trucks at that point and that's really where I would encourage our listeners to focus is under load, heavy load, are you really seeing that much of a difference in exhaust gas temperatures and is more than 100 degrees?

Paul Wilson:

Right, and I think that is the really strong point there is that there's not a linear [wears-par 00:08:56] to temperature ratio, right?

Nick Priegnitz:

Right.

Paul Wilson:

A lot of guys get stuck into this idea, they call in, they want to know, "Well, how can I drop EGTs?" "Well, why are you looking to drop EGTs?"

Nick Priegnitz:

Yeah, they're nervous about 1,000 degrees. They're nervous about 900 degrees and really if the truck is in good mechanical shape and there's nothing else going on wrong with it, that's nothing to be concerned about ... At all. Nothing.

Paul Wilson:

With the emissions equipment the goal here, is my understanding, is we're trying to find a passive re-gen, so we're trying to get the truck to burn off some soot without having to dose fuels, so operating at a higher temperature-

Nick Priegnitz:

In general is good for the emissions equipment.

Paul Wilson:

There's really no drawback here in the EGTs as long as we're not cresting, like you said, that danger zone. I also think it's interesting to know, if you notice that after all of the years diesel, I mean all the way back to the '90s when they first started putting them really together in a mass production-wise, all the way till now we've never seen an EGT probe at the manifold from the OEM.

Nick Priegnitz:

There's reliability issue there.

Paul Wilson:

Right?

Nick Priegnitz:

Right.

Paul Wilson:

They don't put a probe in there because it would seem that the probes don't last and we see this in competition trucks.

Nick Priegnitz:

Right, the probes don't last, not in an OEM speck level. There's other issues there but what it boils down to is that the manufacturers can predict exhaust gas temperatures really accurately by understanding how much airflow is coming from the mass airflow sensor, what the barometric pressure is, what the pressure in the manifold is, what the engine RPM is, so once you know those things, you can predict ... You can build an EGT model so they really don't need an EGT probe in the manifold and a lot of the manufacturers now are going to EGT-protected systems so they understand what the EGT is in the manifold and they can de-rate the truck or back fuel down as EGT comes into what they would consider a dangerous zone for their parts.

Paul Wilson:

That's so cool, I think it's so interesting to think about it in that scale of, "Well, maybe that EGT probe is not the most accurate, maybe that's not the best way to measure stress on the engine."

Nick Priegnitz:

It's one element.

Paul Wilson:

Right, exactly.

Nick Priegnitz:

One element.

Paul Wilson:

Exactly. Danny, this is a question I got on the page for you. Tell me about the suspension setup in Clean Sweep.

Danny Voss:

The suspensions setup, well if you reference back to the Dirty Hooker episode everybody knows that we're running the Dirty Hooker suspension stops and also we're running the big hitch that you can buy from them. It's just they're solid parts. We run hoops, we run a lot of safety equipment. That way since we've hooked almost 20 times this year with it we just wanted make sure that if one of the spectators we're watching, God forbid, would throw a U-joint or something, they'd be safe. We set up the truck to be safe first and then second, we wanted to be able to compete with these guys that are running 8, 9,000 horsepower on a track, you know, stock class, air quotes, stock class here.

Paul Wilson:

It's a basic setup, man, right?

Danny Voss:

Mm-hm (affirmative).

Paul Wilson:

What do you do with the torsion bars?

Danny Voss:

We drop them down. We're not reinventing the wheel here, these are things that have been done before. We're running our basic setup. We're running basically almost like a budget [bill 00:12:01]. There's not much you had to do to it. We run tie rod sleeves on the front end, drop the front end down, we raise our hitch height to 26 inches and it's got that kind of rear-end high angle that brake to it so that way we don't get into a hop. Adjust tire pressure properly and make sure everything is good, but we need that solid setup to compete with those big dogs.

Nick Priegnitz:

The truck has stuck to the ground really well. It's basic but it works.

Paul Wilson:

The [inaudible 00:12:25] A-arms and the tie rods up front I think were probably one of the most hit questions that guys were looking for like, "What do you do to the front end other than [crosstalk 00:12:31]-

Nick Priegnitz:

Sure, as long you maintain those good CV angles, and you can see in the videos the truck going on the track. It just starts with a good rake but it goes onto the track, goes down the track very evenly and we've had a few hop situations but for the most part the truck has a very aggressive grip on the track and it snuffs itself out at the end almost every time.

Danny Voss:

It makes it look like it's too easy almost when you watch the videos. People say, "Oh, it didn't look like it was doing anything. That was the point of it, it's effortlessly working here to try to get to 300 plus feet. One of the biggest things though that really kind of irked me, one guy, he was a little uneducated. He asked me, "Because you have all of your emissions equipment on does that give you a benefit over these guys that are deleted, because you're beating these guys?" It really made me, at first I chuckled, and I'm like ... Then I thought about it, "Well, we're winning versus these deleted guys, they're wondering why we're winning, because are we cheating with our emissions equipment? Is that possible?"

Nick Priegnitz:

I wish that was possible.

Paul Wilson:

I think that leads me right into my very next question, Danny, so thank you. That was the perfect transition. The next guy, "DPFs and DEF choke trucks out ... Plain and simple." That's the whole quote there. I would have thought the video proved the exact opposite of this.

Nick Priegnitz:

It's again that maybe he's seen a truck that had a failed DPF and that choked the truck but we have the ability to look at pressure differential across the DPF as the truck is going down the track so we know what the choke is, right?

Paul Wilson:

Right.

Nick Priegnitz:

Is it more than a DPF-deleted truck? Yes, there is a higher pressure differential. You're seeing 2 PSI pressure across the DPF going down the track or maybe more depending on RPM. It really depends on RPM, but if you get the truck at the power level that you want and you get it set up at the right RPM. If you're not running 4,500 RPM down the track and you're still within the operating range of the DPF, it's not a huge choke point and that should be evidenced by it's performance.

Paul Wilson:

I would tend to agree with you on this one. I thought like Danny said, "With us beating deleted trucks, wouldn't it be obviously?" The DPF and the DEF are not a choking point, that was an old theory. That was what we all thought back in the day.

Nick Priegnitz:

Not at this power level, I don't think it's a major issue.

Paul Wilson:

All right. Just imagine what a dude deleted.

Nick Priegnitz:

Imagine, right?

Danny Voss:

I would imagine that but I'll tell you we've beat trucks that were deleted with similar horsepower and even maybe less or more horsepower and we still beat them so that's really invalid to me.

Nick Priegnitz:

I think this plays into the question of would you estimate the truck to make a significant amount of more horsepower at this power level. In other words if you took Clean Sweep and deleted it today, what's the dif- what would the gains be.

Paul Wilson:

That's really what this question is driving at, right?

Nick Priegnitz:

Mm-hm (affirmative). What is the difference if you were deleted? I don't think we speculated on that post but we have Dyno-ed plenty of deleted trucks at the shop that come in for Dyno testing. Typically within 10 horsepower at the 520 mark, so an emissions-equipped truck will be within 7 to 10 horsepower of a deleted truck. Now that we're at the 620 mark, I would anticipate maybe a 10, 12, 15, horsepower difference so we're at 617, I think Dyno-ed and delete the truck, maybe you get to ... Let's give them benefit of the doubt, say you make 630. I can tell you on any day of the week truck set up is going to be worth more than 13 to 15 horsepower.

Paul Wilson:

By far, yeah.

Danny Voss:

We've proven that.

Paul Wilson:

Anybody who's been sled-pulling I think has a pretty good understanding it's not just horsepower, right?

Nick Priegnitz:

Right, yeah and-

Paul Wilson:

Especially that small of an increment.

Nick Priegnitz:

Exactly, setup goes a long way and even seat-of-the-pants if you were to drive a deleted truck versus driving a Clean Sweep, I would be surprised if your seat-of-the-pants Dyno could detect.

Paul Wilson:

If you could roll the windows up so you can't hear it, I don't think you'd know to be honest.

Nick Priegnitz:

The sounds get you. You know what I mean?

Paul Wilson:

It is.

Nick Priegnitz:

When you're driving a deleted truck the sound is-

Paul Wilson:

They hear the turbo whistle, they just assume it's fast, that's the God's honest truth. Which I did too. Danny, this one was for you. "How often are you going into re-gen?"

Danny Voss:

That's a loaded question as well. A lot of these questions are questions that are different case and scenarios. If you're just driving a truck, I've had a chance ... We're talking about 3 truck here. We're talking about a deleted truck, we're talking about a non-deleted truck with just factory tuning, then we're talking about a non-deleted truck with tuning on it, so emissions in-tact truck with tuning. It matters what truck you're talking about. As far as mileage I have had a chance to drive all 3 trucks and I got to tell you, power and mileage are real close to each other.

Paul Wilson:

I think this one is specifically was Clean Sweep, so how often is Clean Sweep going into re-gen? If you start off a day, I don't think the DPF ever goes to zero, but let's pretend it did. If you started off the day at the track with zero grams of soot, what's an average? How quick do you pick up soot and then how quick do you burn it off?

Nick Priegnitz:

Yeah, we've seen a lot of files from Danny pulling and it would be unwise for him to make more than 3 hooks on the truck in a row. The truck puts up with 1 hook, 2 hooks just fine. The third hook you can see the differential pressure getting up there so it makes sense to take the truck out on the street, run it through a re-gen at that point. We're talking what, 20, 30 miles of driving?

Paul Wilson:

Mm-hm (affirmative).

Nick Priegnitz:

If you were driving the truck daily to work that'd be a non-issue anyway. Yeah, so [crosstalk 00:18:05]-

Paul Wilson:

At the McHenry County Fair, Danny, actually you would hook 3 times.

Danny Voss:

3 times, that was most.

Nick Priegnitz:

Then so Danny hooked 3 times in the McHenry County Fair, was killing it. That's about 20 miles away from my house, he came to pick me up in the middle so we had another pull going on that same night back at the fair.

Danny Voss:

Yeah, for the shoot out.

Nick Priegnitz:

DPF was almost full. You were up to 40 some grams of soot in it.

Danny Voss:

Yeah, and we got it to go in.

Nick Priegnitz:

Yep, drives 20 minutes away, picks me up, drives back, the DPFs cleaned. We went and hooked 2 more times that night and-

Danny Voss:

Yeah, fresh filter, but yeah, to answer your question, I like to have a fresh re-gen before I drag race or chuck hole, just to have the best advantage.

Nick Priegnitz:

Yeah, and normal driving, if that question's ... If you're concerned about that it really depends on how aggressively you're beating the truck so if you're driving, I would say medium-aggressive, 250 miles between re-gens would be the short number. On the highway you can go as much as 700 miles, especially if you have a load behind the truck and it's warm, but 250 to 400 miles, so once every tank of fuel would be pretty typical on the Clean Sweep I would say.

Paul Wilson:

Okay, that's the same as a DT-520 setup, somebody who has an intake, a lift pump, the basics.

Nick Priegnitz:

We're making more horsepower and we're using more fuel but we're also moving more air through the engine so we're burning that soot off.

Paul Wilson:

Right, and I think a lot of guys are starting to learn that there's an efficiency scale, so more horsepower does not equal more smoke. We've proven that there's no equation there. It is really nice to see that starting to move in our favor.

Danny Voss:

The biggest thing I get asked though is, "Why? Why are you guys doing this?" The answer is because it's the law and it's the right thing to do. It's the industry and it's where it's going. A lot of people ... Don't blame us for doing this. We were put in a situation.

Paul Wilson:

Right, I would wholeheartedly agree there. I do have another quick question, so I have somebody looking at some other drop-in turbos for their LML and they're considering the Stealth 64 that's being run on the Clean Sweep. They want to leave the truck emissions-intact and they're question is, "Do know anybody else who's offering emissions-intact turbos besides us?"

Nick Priegnitz:

Anything within reason, any smallish turbo charge can be tuned emissions-intact. How it's going to perform really just depends on testing, so I can't speculate. I think one of the guys on there mentioned a 5-blade or a compressor wheel upgrade, essentially.

Danny Voss:

Correct.

Nick Priegnitz:

The answer to that would be if you could move more air through the engine then you can maintain the air-fuel ration, make more power, then yes, it'll make more power. If it's small and it [inaudible 00:20:56] up quickly and maintains variable [geometory 00:20:59] turbo charger then we can tune it emissions-intact.

Paul Wilson:

I think that leads me into some of the basics out there because we've had a lot of conversations ... Danny and I, about lag, right?

Danny Voss:

Mm-hm (affirmative).

Paul Wilson:

What one guy considers laggy, to the other guy considering laggy. I think a 4094, like a Power Mac Stage 2 is a pretty well-known turbo. I think that gives us a baseline. I think everybody in this room agrees, that's a very laggy turbo for a daily driver, unlike an LBZ with stock fuel, right?

Danny Voss:

Mm-hm (affirmative).

Paul Wilson:

About 600 horsepower.

Nick Priegnitz:

It's not laggy compared to an S-400 but compared to stock it is noticeably laggier.

Paul Wilson:

How would something with that much lag, how would something that feels like that in an LBZ, what do you think the potential is? Do you think that would just build soot too fast for a daily driver with an LML intact?

Nick Priegnitz:

Anything can be tuned not to build soot, but what you have to remember is that you always have to be leading the engine with air. The air-fuel ratio has to be in favor of the air side so what you're going to be doing is waiting for that turbo charger. Every minute that you had to wait for that turbo charger and LBZ, you're going to have to wait for it even more on an LML or an emissions-equipped truck, so bad, right? What's bad on LBZ will slightly worse on an LML.

Paul Wilson:

I think that's really good insight when we're starting to look at this because I think we're going to start to see this emissions-intact or this emissions-present movement starting to follow. We're going to start finding guys out there who want to move forward with this, who want to keep their truck, the emissions intact, so they can drive in places like New York and California and things like that.

Danny Voss:

Canada.

Paul Wilson:

Canada, yeah, certain spots of Canada and actually not have to worry about huge fines. That brings me into the article, so as we start talking about the article that was published in the New York Times we start getting into some questions here. First of all, any initial comments from the peanut gallery?

Nick Priegnitz:

What do you think, Daniel?

Danny Voss:

I was excited. When somebody comes up to you and you're sitting in the pits and they say they're from the New York Times, you kind of look at them funny and you second guess them but then I look and I see they got the New York Times badge on. They got the lanyard and everything is official and it was just really cool to have the opportunity to get some publicity that way.

Paul Wilson:

It seemed like a slightly slanted article if I could just be up front with my opinion about it.

Nick Priegnitz:

I think anybody in the diesel industry who reads that article just immediately is going to have a reaction of, "Ohhh!" Just fuming, you know what I mean?

Paul Wilson:

It was, there were so many, I think it was great to see an outsider's view. When she writes about this, she's not a terrible writer or anything. Rolling coal has origins in truck pulls which pickups compete to pull heavy sled the furthest.

Nick Priegnitz:

Very basic.

Paul Wilson:

I feel like that's a bit of an oversimplification on-

Nick Priegnitz:

Very basic.

Paul Wilson:

2 very big topics right there, right? Rolling coal, I don't know that you could ... I don't know how she traced that back to sled-pulling number one.

Nick Priegnitz:

Yeah, I think what she means is that kids see sled pulls and they dream of rolling coal and they buy a diesel truck and they want to do the same thing, or young guys, or it's just a ... It's their association of a sled-pull.

Paul Wilson:

I agree. I think it's that smoke equal power, that old idea that-

Nick Priegnitz:

Right, yeah.

Paul Wilson:

If you see smoke you have power and that's-

Nick Priegnitz:

Of course, right? You went to a sled-pull, you saw a badass truck blow a bunch of smoke and pull the sled the furthest like, "I also want to be badass so why would I not do this?"

Paul Wilson:

Just, I wanted to give everybody the Illini State Puller's League president, Scott and Vivan, said "We pull for bragging rights and smoke isn't a big part of it." I think if you're actually in the pits and you were to actually take the EPA out of the conversation and ask guys, "Does smoke matter?" They would all say no.

Nick Priegnitz:

No, going the furthest matters.

Paul Wilson:

Right, it's [inaudible 00:24:42], it's how far can I drag this thing down the track? Yet, when we bring the EPA into the conversation, everybody seems to have a very personal offense to it.

Nick Priegnitz:

We get very sensitive about the smoke at that pint, yeah.

Paul Wilson:

Okay, now I will say, obviously, Calibrated Power being the only company mentioned, Danny Voss being the only emissions-equipped truck there that we know of, the only emissions-equipped dedicated sled puller.

Nick Priegnitz:

Yeah, there's very few guys pulling emissions-equipped in the country. There are a few out there and I applaud them but as far as making 2 dozen hooks this year I don't know that anybody else has done that.

Paul Wilson:

All right. I will say in the article she seemed to have some heavy-handed words for the Diesel Brothers. I think just about everybody that's actually a really dedicated member of the sled-pull community would probably agree with her on that.

Nick Priegnitz:

Yeah, this whole article is against rolling coal in public on city roads in a malicious way towards other motorists and cyclists. Really, I don't think anybody listening to this podcast probably has an offense to that. If I'm driving on the road it's my right not to be obstructed by the soot of your vehicle, right?

Paul Wilson:

Right.

Nick Priegnitz:

I shouldn't have to navigate soot on a roadway. Likewise if I'm a bicyclist I shouldn't have black smoke blown on me by a truck and be forced to huff that. It just shouldn't be that way. The sled-pulling thing is a totally different thing. The reason that we run Clean Sweep and the reason that we run in a sled-pulling class is to show that you can make power through a DPF and hope that translates to guys who are driving on the road who also don't want to blow a bunch of smoke and who want to be clean and stealthy and have that section work. Really, this article ties together 2 things that aren't necessarily tied together, sled-pulling and blowing smoke on motorcyclists and other cars.

Paul Wilson:

There is, there's a big jump from where it started and why she started writing the article. What she writes about in there to where it went with sled-pulling being attached to that. Like you said, it's a closed track. You actually, generally pay to go watch these guys do it outside or in an arena in a controlled environment.

Nick Priegnitz:

It's a competitive atmosphere and there's really no laws on the sled-pulling trucks blowing smoke. You can blow as much smoke as you want as a sled-pulling truck. The EPA's not going to do anything about it. It's a competitive atmosphere so it really-

Paul Wilson:

I think it ties back into our video as well about what was the intact? When we put our video out there, we're not saying, "Stop doing what you're doing, don't sled-pull, don't blow smoke. That's not our intent.

Nick Priegnitz:

Our intent was just to show that it's-

Danny Voss:

Can be done.

Nick Priegnitz:

It can be done, exactly, that we can it. We can make a bunch of hooks and at the end of the season we can run the truck through a re-gen just like we did at the beginning of the season, and really, it's a non-issue. Guys who are afraid of their trucks breaking because they had DPFs on them, I mean, we gave this thing an ass-kicking of its life this season and it sill runs fine.

Danny Voss:

And I still have my man card. That was a question somebody asked me. "Did you get your man card taken away?" Then I responded, I said, "It was neat to actually end up, when it was all said and done, a couple of the pulls that we had some great success at, we were taking man cards."

Nick Priegnitz:

It's all about the footage and I think that's what is driving this thing here. It's the form follows function and the function is to get the most footage. To get the highest horsepower, to get the best-driving truck. If that means smoke then that means smoke and that has been in the past but I think in the future we have the tech to control this air-fuel ration thing. We have the technology in turbocharging. There's just no need for it.

Danny Voss:

I had a chance to talk to a very well-known sled-puller in the industry. Everybody would know his name but I'll keep him anonymous because of his request but he told me, he said, "You guys, if I end up pulling this open truck with a DPF on in the future that's going to ruin sled-pulling forever, and whatever you guys are doing, I appreciate what you're doing on the street but if it comes to this in a competitive format, I want nothing to do with it."

Paul Wilson:

Do you think that's in response to the segment of the video where we said, "We would love to see an emissions-equipped sled-pull class?"

Nick Priegnitz:

I think that's probably the response there and I think there's a lot of fear that goes around this thing. Any time there's a potential change in the industry there's going to be fear. There's going to be, "I can't move from the status quo, this is what I know," you know what I mean?

Paul Wilson:

Yeah.

Nick Priegnitz:

I think it's important that people understand that we're not trying to make 2,000, 3,000 horsepower trucks or sled-pullers or tractor pullers run DPFs on their tractors. That's not at all what the Clean Sweep movement is about. That's not at all what we're about doing at CPS. We're about high horsepower street trucks, tuning on the street, and proving that it can also be competitive in a sled-pulling atmosphere. I think that comment about the DPF-equipped class was about the street class. It just makes sense to drive the innovation on the track that you can make use of on the street.

Paul Wilson:

I think it ties back into what we were saying earlier. If smoke equaled power, if that was true, we wouldn't be talking about using DPFs, right? If the EPA wasn't cracking down on the industry, we wouldn't be talking about using DPFs, we would have stuck with status quo. Our intent is not to make people change, it's saying, "The industry has already changed."

Nick Priegnitz:

Yeah, there's pressure in the industry already. We didn't create the pressure, right?

Danny Voss:

Great point, because that is not us. This is we're just dealing the cards that are ... We're playing the cards that dealt.

Paul Wilson:

That's it. We're doing the best making opportunity where we can see opportunity. There was a time that we didn't believe in the emissions equipment. There was a time that we didn't think that it was going to work or we didn't think that it was effective enough. We've all seen LLYs with 200,000 miles of the EGR pulled off. We got it, but the reality is that the industry has changed. The parts have gotten better, the government regulations have gotten tighter and if you want to continue to do this in a long-term you have to be a part of it.

Nick Priegnitz:

That's where our market is, that's where our customers are but the factory is releasing this year, what, 440 horsepower stroke, Rumor of a 450 horsepower LML? There's factory high-horsepower, clean-running, emissions-equipped trucks and there's always going to be guys out there who are looking for extra 100, 150, 200 horsepower. They want a nice driving, stealthy, smokeless truck. That is our focus and that's what we're using the Clean Sweep and our competitive forum for.

Danny Voss:

You have to get out of the mentality of going back to what you know. We talked about this in previous episodes when EFI came out for cars. They were putting carburetors on those cars because they knew [crosstalk 00:31:51]. I see this trend happening with our emissions equipment and just because LMM left such a poor taste in everybody's mouth with the whole entire deal, that's really people's mentality. I feel like they got scarred, but they really need to open their mind up and realize that things are better, things are different. This isn't 07 and a half to 2010 era.

Nick Priegnitz:

Right, things are getting better.

Paul Wilson:

Exactly. Excellent. This has been Paul Wilson.

Danny Voss:

I'm Danny Voss.

Nick Priegnitz:

And I'm Nick Priegnitz, that's for listening.

Narrator:

Calibrated Power Solutions, the leading North American developer of clean diesel power and home of duramaxtuner.com, is the proud sponsor of the Diesel Performance podcast. Calibrated Power develops emissions-equipped tunes for a wide variety of diesel power trains including the Duramax, Commons, Jeep, John Deere, and many more. For more information and the best customer service in the industry check out calibratedpower.com or call 815-568-7920. That's 815-568-7920 to reach out to the diesel performance podcast, send us a message through Facebook or email paul@duramaxtuner.com or danny@duramaxtuner.com.