2001 Chevy Silverado Duramax

Trenton Nell has a familiar story. A few years back, he was shopping around for a diesel to tow his trailer and he ran across this low-mileage '01 Duramax. When Trenton bought it, the truck was already chipped with an Edge programmer, which resulted in some high EGTs while towing. Now a lot of people tow, but not many pull trailers like Trenton does. He uses his Duramax to haul 15,000 pounds at an elevation of almost 10,000 feet, which is as hard as you can get on a diesel engine.

"The first few modifications were performed in the name of lowering exhaust gas temperatures--that's how this whole thing started," says Trenton. He tried an aftermarket exhaust, intake, and even water-methanol injection, but his EGTs would still crest 1,400 degrees when climbing big grades.

"About this time, a buddy of mine was taking his truck to the track," says Trenton. Curious to see how his own rig would perform, Trenton took his tailgate off, pulled the hitch out, and removed his spare tire and everything else he could get his hands on before going to the track. "I thought it wouldn't be very fast, so I removed all the weight I could to help it out," he says. To his surprise, the mildly modified Duramax ripped off a 13.1-second quarter-mile, then shortly after dipped into the 12s. From then on, Trenton was hooked.

After his first trip to the track, things began to get serious. Trenton swapped on a 66mm S300 turbocharger along with a FASS 150 fuel system and a Hellmann billet fuel tank pickup. Somewhere around this time, Trenton also managed to fry the stock Allison, so it was upgraded with Sun Coast parts and the help of Mike Lovrich at Inglewood Transmission. The transmission received a Sun Coast 1055 torque converter along with internal upgrades and was ready to take on the dragstrip. Trenton also installed HP-Tuner software and started tuning the truck himself for quicker elapsed times at the strip.