Grrunt! It's what gets you moving down the road. Sure, horsepower has its place, but you need torque to get at the horsepower. And pound for ft/lb, nothing grunts like a diesel.
Out of the hole, diesels make torque like nobody's business at an engine speed where gasoline engines typically idle. By that same token, the total rpm band is also extremely short. Still, when you're talking about having a few hundred ft/lb of torque by the time the engine spins to 3000 rpm, it's impressive.
Here's the little devil responsible for the big power gains. The Puck's housing is billet aluminum, and the wiring harness is designed to plug into the existing harness on the Dodge. You literally need no tools to install this.
One of the most impressive diesel engines found in medium-duty trucks today is the Cummins Turbo Diesel in Dodge Rams. But being hot rodders at heart, our credo is, "If lots is good, then more is better." To get more power from our diesel, we went to Diablo Sport in Boca Raton, Florida, and installed one of their Power Puck engine reprogramming modules.
The Power Puck works by upgrading the factory fuel system via computer. By remapping the engine's fuel and injector maps, Diablo is able to get a ton more power out of the already mighty engines. Diablo's Pat Stajdel explains: "The manufacturers are only interested in meeting a set of guidelines when they design their engines. If it makes X and Y, they're happy-they don't care about going past that, even if they can get more power. By giving the diesel more fuel and playing with the duration and timing of the injectors, we can safely give the engines a lot more power."
The engine's computer talks to the fuel pump's computer via this connection. Disconnect the plug from the pump computer, plug the Power Puck's connector into it, and then plug the engine's plug into the back of the Puck's.
Pat explained how their system works. "The Dodge Turbo Diesel Rams have two computers-the truck's engine computer (a Bosch engine controller), and a Bosch fuel-pump computer. The engine computer talks to the fuel-pump computer and tells it what to do. The engine controller says, 'Fuel pump, give me this much fuel and this much injector timing,' and the pump's computer says, 'Okay, I've given it that. What should I do next?'
"We install our Power Puck and intercept the signal between the engine and the fuel-pump computers, so now when the engine computer says, 'Give me this much,' we intercept it and say, 'Okay, the engine wants this much, we want this much plus,' and send that message to the pump computer. The pump computer gets our signal, giving the engine more fuel and more injector timing and duration."
This system allows the end user to customize the entire fuel and injector curve of their vehicle, optimizing power output to suit their particular needs. Installation is beyond simple, using factory-style wiring harness connectors to simply plug into the truck's wiring-harness, so wires don't have to be cut or spliced. In truth, you don't even need a hand tool to install it! Where the work comes in is strapping it to a dyno and plugging in your laptop computer and fiddling with the maps.
There are several different screen options available to the user while mapping the new curve, and the ability to modify the fuel and injectors on a cell-by-cell, line-by-line level is there. You could literally spend days fine tuning your vehicle on a dyno (without even getting your hands dirty).
Here's how it's done.
EngineTPAfter Pack InstalledEngineTPRPMft-lbhpRPMft-lbhp1200RPM data not available1200206.347.31700333.2107.91300336.983.61800368.1126.11400382.2101.91900382.3138.31500412.3117.82000390.1148.61600438.9133.72100402.5160.91700468.0151.52200410.8172.11800500.0171.42300415.3181.91900535.1193.62400415.5189.92000561.6213.92500413.0196.62100577.0230.72600419.9207.92200578.5242.32700404.8208.12300572.8250.82800389.9207.92400563.4257.42900366.4202.32500547.2260.53000340.2194.32600525.0259.93100311.8184.12700501.9258.03200278.5169.72800484.0258.0Avg:377.6174.82900460.9254.5Max:419.9208.13000438.1250.23100421.1248.53200396.4241.53300369.9232.43400343.6222.53500315.8210.53600293.4201.1Avg:449.2203.7