Shell Rotella Truck Of The Month - GMC SLT4 Mini-Max Prerunner
You’ve seen Brian Bush’s creations on multiple covers of this magazine over the past five years. Each featured truck its own unique style of machine, each with a diesel under the hood, and each having first been displayed at the annual SEMA Show in Las Vegas. Here’s his latest build, our Shell Rotella Truck of The Month.
The 7.3L faithful are just about as dyed-in-the-wool as they come. Even with a complex, vastly outdated injection system and plenty of other engine options to make easy horsepower, they’ve chosen to stick it out with the 444ci, HEUI V8. To these die-hards, the only power plant that matters is Ford’s first Power Stroke. For Mike Satkowski, the 7.3L addiction started before he even had a driver’s license.
For much of its history in agriculture and commercial truck manufacturing, International Harvester had diesel options. The first was a gas-start diesel developed for tractors in 1932, with commercial diesel trucks following five years later. IH got into the light truck business in 1907, but as with other American manufacturers, diesels were not high on the “things-to-develop” list—at least not until the gas crises of the 1970s, when everyone found themselves scrambling to develop diesel-powered cars and trucks.
The early 1960s brought a lot of changes to the worldwide Ford ag equipment manufacturing empire. Ford announced a new organization, Ford Tractor Operations, in March of 1961. The goal was to consolidate all of global Ford’s ag manufacturing into one organization, under one name. As a result the British Fordson name would disappear and new tractors would follow a standardized pattern and identity worldwide under the Ford banner.
Installing A Bullet Proof Diesel Level 2 Kit in A 2004 Ford F-350
You should be no stranger to Bulletproof Diesel, the 6.0L Pros that fixed one of the most problematic diesels to hit the market. This time around they aimed to fix a 2004 F-350 SRW with some good mileage under its belt, and the goal was to not only customize under the hood with some fancy powdercoating and anodizing work, but also to add a Level 2 upgrade to the 6.0L Power Stroke.
A quarter century ago, Ford’s HEUI-injected 7.3L Power Stroke was state-of-the-art. These days however, your ’94.5-’03 Ford is way behind the times. But just because brand-new diesels are packing 400 hp or more and 1,000-plus lb-ft of torque from the factory doesn’t mean your old workhorse can’t be made to compete. On the contrary, a thriving aftermarket continues to provide full support for Ford’s first Power Stroke—and breaking the 500hp barrier isn’t as difficult as you think.
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