How to Make 450-500hp On a 3rd Gen Cummins RELIABLY

I'm Andrew and I'm setting out to make better videos for diesel enthusiasts follow along as I review products how to's and share my personal trucks here on just diesels what's up guys we are back with another update video and today we're going to be talking about my third gen now I've been doing my best to document every stage of this build as I can and so in this stage we're going to be talking about power now my goals for this truck was to make around 400 to 500 horsepower reliably and so today I'm going to be giving you my recipe for how that's done there's a lot of people online that have their opinions on how this should be done what's needed what's not I think a lot of people cut corner so today I'm going to be running you through what it's like to actually drive this truck the tuning that I put on it and all the sporting mods that were there to make it happen now if you subscribe to my channel you have seen the video that I did on the NRA Performance Tuning that is on this truck when I first put it on that was before any of the supporting mods were on and that was actually a version one of the tuning today I'm going to show you guys what it's like to actually drive this truck with the version 2 tuning that is the all-out tune now that I have all the supporting mods to actually put this power to the ground Nick and I have kind of fine-tuned things it is a really really solid tune and I'm gonna bring my friend along who has no experience with this I was trying to figure out how to show you guys what it's like to drive this truck and I thought someone's candid reaction who's never been in this tune truck before is probably gonna be the best way to do it so he's ridden the truck a lot stock but never tuned so these are his legitimate candid reactions to going and driving this truck so I'm just going back it's on these trucks so he knows what they should feel like so this should be kind of fun to get his interpretation of how this truck feels after the tune so right now we're just cruising on the freeway I'm in tune one which is basically the stock tune so it's a slightly relaxed parameter stock tune it's gonna have a little more oomph than stock but not quite so here's an example I'm going 61 right now um I'm in fifth gear at 2000 RPM and I'm on pretty much flat ground so if I punch it and floor it 62 65 66 69 70. so yeah it's slow it's a little slow yeah okay so he has a 2012 six seven truck so yeah five nine versus six seven his blows the doors off mine um no as you probably know if you're having these five nine trucks especially the manual stock they're a little on the slow side so that was two and one that stop so we'll go to tune two so tune two is supposed to be the towing tune um this one is basically gonna have to have so on this 1011 . this one's nothing magical in terms of power output but it's a great tune if you're going to be Towing super heavy and you just don't want to look at everything like I don't want to be watching my gauges and staring at the that's what team two is two is for where you basically get a little more power and you just don't have to worry about burning the truck up so kind of boring let's get that one so we'll do tune three now so this is the 12 valve tune uh this is the tune that gets rid of the initial pilot injection event so it makes the idle a lot rougher a lot clatterier so if I rolled on the window yeah it sounds exactly like a 24-12 second gen so crazy this tune's gonna have a little more power than stock it's fun um it's really more about the sound than anything else supposedly gets better mileage um because of that uh initial pilot injection vent being on I haven't all the tunes get better mileage in stock so I haven't really noticed one being a standout from the other one but this one's super fun just to kind of make some clattering noises I don't know you probably just how does that sound yeah it sounds just like an old truck it's crazy yeah it's like mine first and then it sounds like an old one yeah so it's kind of cool so I'll give you a pull in this tune really quick yeah you can hear the difference for sure oh immediately yeah yeah [Music] way more power than stock um but has that kind of classic clattery uh 24 valve sound so I'm gonna run on the window and change to tune four and you'll hear it immediately so this is tune three and that's two and four you can hear it right away yeah totally like Smooths out the the clatteriness of the idol all right so the next tune is gonna tune four there's five total uh so tune four is gonna be the second most aggressive tune um and this tune in this truck especially with the manual I think is really best noticed on pressure so like either towing or going so right now we're coming back from riding the reason why I did this video on this ride is because we're going to be going up a pretty steep Road here so we'll have a good chance to build some boost on the truck and actually get into the tune and so this is uh two and four so right now we're going to start in fifth 700 1800 RPM at 52 and step on it and you'll feel like right around 2K RPM is where it just fully so we're going 70 up that hill immediately and like oh my God yeah you feel like it built into the booth same it like doesn't feel like that and then you look outside you're like holy um and EGT is used with 1200 and that was like a good wide open throttle pole uh this is too far you have a pretty solid grade so not too bad all right so next up is tune five this is the uh the big tune so this one is an absolute ride to drive I I literally cannot believe you can squeeze this much power out of a truck with basically stock fueling stock Turbo stock everything else it's not um so we're gonna go with this hill here this is a solid grade that we're going up right now um right now it's flat but we're about to go into it so I'm gonna put the truck at kind of fifth gear actually we'll go fourth to start so we'll start at Fourth 2000 RPM 3000 RPM and now we're in a fifth so we're going 60 . oh my God what the hell no gnarly so damn we were just going 80 miles an hour can I do this on my truck yeah okay yeah we're just going 80 miles an hour up a hill without Full Throttle that was not full throttle if I did that in Full Throttle on stock tune we would still be back there soon Harley so it's the hardest thing ever to capture like what these Tunes do to a truck so that's why I thought I would bring him along as like a candid he's never ridden this but it's gnarly and the coolest thing is I only hit 1400 degree agencies for like a flash second there at the very end so like these Tunes still run totally to the absolute limit but there's so much more power behind this video yeah it's nuts like oh my God hey and I don't know if you guys can see out the back window but there's no smoke either which is really cool yeah um I have an actual double exhaust so you would see it right out the back window and there's nothing even though I'm literally flooring it up a hill so pretty wild so hopefully that shows you guys oh my God what this thing is uh what the thing is capable of you're instantly in your seat now there are a lot of ways to make big Power on these trucks but like most people on Facebook say the key is going to be tuning so for this truck I opted to go with EFI live custom tuning from Nick NRE performance I think that that is probably the best platform you can get for the 06 to 07 trucks now if you have an 03 to o5 Common rail truck and you were looking at your tuning you're going to be looking at HP tuners but again it's still going to be custom tuning to make these power levels there's a lot of box tuners out of there smarty Edge Etc et cetera I just don't think that they have the flexibility and the customizability that you get out of these custom tuning platforms and so you're just going to get better results from one of these custom tuning platforms now of course tuning is only part of the puzzle as I kind of hinted at earlier there's a lot more stuff that needs to go on in terms of supporting modifications to actually make this power reliably that's going to be key if you go on Facebook everyone's like oh all you need for 500 horsepower is a tune but realistically you're not going to make that 500 horsepower for very long if you just slap tune them on these common rail Cummins trucks so to handle the supporting mods I took my truck down to Russ at maximum diesels in Hemet California he's the only guy I trust to really work on the engines and transmissions on my trucks uh if I don't have time so he handled all this work but I'm going to dive into what is needed to make this happen so in terms of supporting mods the single most important modification that Uber can do is probably transmission work kind of a toss-up between head studs and transmission but I think I'm going to put transmission at number one because it's just so important the actual forward movement of your truck if you try and slap 400 to 500 horsepower on one of these trucks your transmission is not going to take it very long whether it is a automatic or a manual so unfortunately if you're looking to make this power you do need to budget that into your build if you have a manual you are only going to be needing to do a clutch that's what I did in my truck looking at that in a second if you have an automatic transmission you will need to do at least a valve body ideally a bunch of other upgrades internally in the transmission to kind of support this power reliably honestly if you're looking to make this power reliably and automatic you're probably looking at somewhere between three to seven thousand dollars in terms of a bill depending on how crazy you want to go with the transmission and how much they charge for labor this is going to be just like what I did with tier one on my second gen build that's a stage two trans rated for right around this level of power but that's kind of what you're looking at unfortunately in terms of price tag for this kind of power level if you have a manual all you need to do is a clutch now now granted if you're going to be Towing super heavy you're going to be flogging the truck you might want to do some more supporting mods than that but in my case all I did was a clutch in my truck and I've been very happy with it now you will need a dual disc clutch for this level of power so I opted for The Valor dual disc organic it's their quiet version of that clutch and I've been really happy with it it puts power down way better than the stock clutch and I really like the way that the organic clutch engages it just feels a lot more natural I'm gonna do a standalone video on this one just by itself because I think it's a just an awesome topic on its own but yeah so far I've been really happy with that it's actually pretty quiet for a dual disc as well so again hold on for the Standalone video on that and puts more miles on it but been very happy with that so far now the next thing the team at maximum Diesel's tackled after doing the trans and rear main seal was doing head studs valve springs and push rods now you don't need to do all three of those things but I do think that if you're going to do this right that's the way to go head starts to be your minimum now the reason why we're doing these supporting modifications is because to make this power level what's happening actually internally in the engine is you're increasing in cylinder pressures your upping boost pressure and your upping timing and so that's going to increase the actual pressure in the cylinder each time it goes boom and so when you do that you're actually going to be putting more stress on the factory head studs you're more likely to blow a head gasket and you're more likely to float a valve so to fight that I went with ARP 625 head studs Hamilton push rods and Hamilton 103 pound valve springs those three things are going to work together to basically keep the head on the Block and also keep those valves from floating under heavy cylinder pressure and under higher RPM again this is assuming that you're going to be making this power at higher than traditional stock driving RPM so 2 000 to 3 500 RPM you're kind of in that range where you're risking floating the valves on a factory valve train so this is where these 103 pound valve springs come in and the supporting mods of the push rods and the head studs are also key if you skip on these it will eventually absolutely below a head gasket if you skip the head studs so these are really really important factors as well if you're trying to make this level of power on a common rail track regardless if it's O3 to O7 any 5.9 truck you're making this power lever on these are really important modifications now the fifth supporting modification is something I actually just did a video on and that is a lift pump of some sort now I opted for a fast 165. if you choose to not do a lift pump and you're making this level of power on the truck what's going to happen is the CP3 is actually drawing enough fuel that it will overwhelm the Factory's lift pumps capability so on this truck when I was running the higher four and five level Tunes I was able to drop fuel pressure down to about 2 PSI or less when I was at Full Throttle that ain't going to cut it for the injection pump so with the fast 165 on there I'm able to see full fuel pressure full fuel flow over regardless of throttle input on the truck and that way I don't see crumbling rail pressure I'm not putting extra stress on the CP3 injection pump I'm actually getting proper fuel flow to the truck regardless of throttle input I think this is an extremely under underrated modification on this truck again I have a whole video dedicate how important these are on 3rd gen trucks but I do think that if you're making this level of power this is going to be a very important thing to add to the truck now there's one other thing that I added while Russ was in there working on this truck that I think is also kind of a key thing it doesn't necessarily have to do with making power but if you have the transmission out if you are doing head work I think it's actually a really good modification and that is a coolant bypass now I chose to go with the fleece coolant bypass there's a bunch of different brands that make them but what's happening with the coolant bypass is your optimizing coolant flow in the block so traditionally coolant flows from cylinder one then to two three four five and six so by the time it gets to six it's been heated up by one through five and so this is why you see so commonly that when there are engine failures on common rail trucks it's typically on cylinder five and six they're running the hottest with this coolant bypass in place you're seeing even cool and flow and even cool in temperature all the way through the cylinder head of the truck this is going to be key to preserving this truck first I mean this engine in the long run this is really important if you're towing heavy and towing regularly but in my two cents it's one of those things where it was just kind of an oversight in the build of this engine so if you have the transmission out it's really easy to install one of these it cuts down a lot in labor time so if you're pulling the transmission if you're doing a built trans or if you're doing head work you may as well just throw one of these on there it's not that expensive and it's a well worth it upgrade for these trucks so to recap can you make 400 or 500 horsepower on a tune alone absolutely will you make it reliably absolutely not so what you need to make that actually reliable at transmission head studs valve springs push rods and some sort of lift pump on the truck unfortunately that is not the list that you're probably hoping for it's going to be more expensive than expected for a lot of people but realistically honestly that is what it takes to actually make this level of power reliably all right guys so there you have it that is my recipe on how to make 500 horsepower in a third gen common rail Cummins Truck obviously there are cheaper ways to do this if you want to cut some corners but this is the way to do it right this is the way to keep your truck reliable this is a way to make sure you don't have any problems down the line as always if you guys have any questions please feel free to comment them down below I'll be happy to answer and I will catch you guys on the next video

Channel: Just Diesels

Views: 29,268

Keywords: cummins, powerstroke, diesel, dodge ram, ram, dodge, carli suspension, carli, lift, lifted, lifted truck, 5.9 cummins, Ram, Dodge, Ford, 7.3 powerstroke, f-25-, f-350, 2500, 3500, trucks, lifted trucks, diesel trucks, diesel truck

Id: XkeN4CR3gzQ

Length: 15min 33sec (933 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 02 2023