The journey of a truck into the 4 digit power range is seldom an easy one. For Justin Holder, owner of Confederate Diesel the journey started in December of ’12. The truck he started with was his 2011 Ford F-250 regular cab long bed. The truck was Holder’s work truck and had a little more than 100k on the odo.

Holder started the journey by custom building a single turbo kit. This was uncharted territory due to the fact that up until that point, there were no commercially available turbo kits. So, they began by fabricating all of the exhaust piping and the mount kit to get the turbo in place. Then with the turbo in place, they custom fabricated the intake, and the CAC (charge air cooler) tube going to the intercooler. From the intercooler, they had to custom build a new intake as the factory one just wouldn’t do.

With the new kit on the truck, Holder said, “it worked without a check engine light or access to custom tuning. We had some electrical tweaks to some sensors but all in all it was a good kit.”

Finally after getting the charger replaced, they installed an H&S Performance Mini Maxx tuner in January. After playing around with the truck for a little while, they decided it was time to start changing up the turbocharger sizes. “From day one we have been amazed at the airflow and efficiency of the 6.7 PSD engine,” commented Holder. “We started installing larger and larger turbo’s and they spooled right up,” he continued.

By mid-February, they were maxed out on fuel (roughly 500 horsepower). So, they decided to build a custom duel high pressure fuel system. Holder started with a Bosch CP3 from a 6.7 Cummins and they fabricated a kit. This belt driven pump was fed by a standalone FASS fuel pump. He opted not to mess with the factory low pressure fuel pump or CP4. With the additional fuel available, he jumped frame sizes and started installing BorgWarner S400’s. Eventually, they ended up where they are today, which is a BorgWarner S400 with a 72mm compressor and a T-4 1.25 A/R turbine housing.

With the truck running well, they strapped it down to the dyno and laid down 636 horsepower on fuel only (October of ’13, video below). This is with completely stock internals, transmission, basically everything else. So, it was not off to the track to see what they could run. The truck weighs in at 6200 lbs and with 636 horsepower they weren’t expecting to set any records. Unfortunately, they did find that they had some traction issues at the starting line but managed to finish the 1/4 mile running 117 mph. Extremely pleased, they headed back to the pits, but noticed that the engine wasn’t running as smooth as it normally did. After some initial inspection, they came to the conclusion that the “imbalance” was coming from within the engine. “Upon tear down we had bent 7 of the 8 connecting rods,” Holder said.

Holder didn’t want to just upgrade everything that he could. He wanted to know where each weakness was. So, even though they tore the engine down, they upgraded the bent rods with a set of R&R rods. “We, also, decided to call Zach Hamilton of Hamilton cams and upgrade the valve springs,” mentioned Holder. “We put the heads on a flow bench and found the [factory heads flowed] 200 plus cfm per cylinder to be satisfactory for our application. We balanced the crank and installed new rings and bearings and put the old engine with 100k miles back in the truck,” finished Holder.

Before putting the top end back together (turbo, intake, fuel lines, etc.) they opted to send out the nozzles to Extrude Hone. They had the nozzles extruded to 60% over. Once they got the injectors back, they put the top end back together. Since the truck was back at the shop, they decided to install a set of Calvert Racing, CalTracs to help with traction. With the truck back up and running, they heading back out to the track!

“Our first time out at the drag strip we ran 127 mph and slipped the overdrive clutches,” snickered Holder. “With the larger injectors the turbo spooled much quicker than before as well, but now we had a handful of new challenges. The 2wd truck was a handful at the line, the ABS and traction control would defuel the truck, and the torque converter was very tight,” commented Holder.

So, it was back to the shop for more repairs. He knew that the transmission was going to be the big issue. The ABS and traction control were relatively easy to bypass. He simply removed the fuses and disabled them. But the transmission would require some ingenuity. Most of the parts they wanted weren’t available yet. So, Holder along with Rodney Warfield and Evan Moser, also, from Confederate Diesel tore into the transmission. The first thing they did was cut the torque converter apart. “The first thing we did was cut the converter open and bend the fins on the impeller over to increase stall,” said Holder. “We found a very robust 2 sided clutch, heavy duty thrust and stator support I was satisfied this torque converter is robust enough for 1000rwhp. With the torque converter all put back together, they welded it back up and moved to the transmission.

The billet overdrive hub they wanted wasn’t available. So, they changed out the frictions to Raybestos high energy friction and put the transmission back together. From a tuning side of things, they had already ramped the line pressure up as high as they could. So, they hoped that the higher energy friction would do the trick.

With the truck back together, they once again headed back to the track. This time, they were having issues with holding the rear tires as the spooled up. Every time they started building boost, they would start rolling forward. To address this issue, they again decided to custom fabricate something. They decided a pinion brake would be the best and easiest solution. So, they grabbed a Honda Civic rear rotor and two 6 piston calipers from a Suzuki GSXR 750 motorcycle. They custom built the brackets and hooked up a hand control in the cab. So, now Holder has the ability to set the pinion brake independently of the regular breaks.

Unfortunately, winter had come and the local drag strips were closed. So, they haven’t been back to a track since, but in testing the truck around the shop, they can hold about 18 psi of boost. That should drastically help reduce their 60 foot times. Holder is figuring that the next time they hit the track; they will be required to have a cage.

In early March, they took the truck back to the dyno and laid down 763 uncorrected horsepower with 32 psi of boost. While Holder was happy with this, he did say, “we typically see 50psi at the track.”

With that said, he figured it was time to bring the extra air/boost with him next time he hit the rollers. So, he plumbed in a two stage Nitrous Express Stacker Ultimate System. This should be good for a few hundred extra horsepower to send the truck into the 1,000 horsepower range.

So on March 22nd, about 16 months after starting his journey, Holder managed to break the 1,000 horsepower with a run of 1030.57 horsepower and 1869.41 ft-lbs of torque. He is so excited that he cannot wait to see what the truck will do on the track!

His only concern is that the transmission may not hold at the power range without the billet overdrive hub. So, they may turn it down a bit until they receive the hub. He, also, just received a set of ARP head studs that he will be installing in the coming weeks.