Duramax Drag Truck: Brian Bauman’s 2004 Silverado 2500HD

A tried and tuned performer, this ’04 2500HD is a diesel you don’t want to mess with, lest you crave a bashing. Its owner, 24-year-old Brian Bauman of San Tan Valley in Arizona, turned the truck from a bone stock zero into a highly modified hero in a span of nine months, and it continues to impress with every pass it makes down the blacktop.

For Bauman, the diesel bug bit hard back when he was sixteen. His father had bought an ’03 Cummins common rail, and soon after installed a Bully Dog Power Pup tuner to give the truck an added dose of efficiency and power. As Bauman told us, “The first time I drove the truck afterwards, I was hooked. It was insane that so much power could be tuned from a diesel!”

As Bauman grew more and more familiar with diesels and tuning, he eventually got to work on an ’06 Duramax LBZ that belonged to his dad, and “that’s where the real fun started,” said Bauman. Through the truck’s trials and tribulations, young Brian met and became friends with Newly Tolf, diesel enthusiast and founder of Underground Diesel Performance in Las Vegas, who owned a Duramax that reportedly ran in the 12.40s. Tolf was able to teach Bauman a great deal about the inner workings of Duramax motors, and the two became good friends.

When Bauman first purchased this 2500 in May of 2013, Tolf was there to help get the truck’s performance in line with Bauman’s goals. “I basically wanted a 10-second Duramax that I could drive around town and still have fun in out at the race track,” he said. “I didn’t [just] want an all-out race truck; I wanted to fully enjoy what I built.”

Since speed was the ultimate goal, it followed that Bauman seek out a single cab Silverado, since it would be the lightest of any GM truck at around 5530 pounds with a driver inside it. “I wanted to keep my setup very simple yet very potent,” he told us. “Single turbo, twin CP3s, and some nitrous, with a sub-6000 pound curb weight.” Interestingly, it was a premature blow-up of the engine that provided the motivation to kick-start the nine-month project.

The build started with a custom 6.6L shortblock from Larry’s Engine and Marine of Tucson, as well as a custom-rebuilt Allison trannie by Mike Lovrich of Inglewood Transmission. Following that, a single 80mm turbocharger from BorgWarner went into the engine bay, along with a Pureflow AirDog lift pump, EFI Live Max Effort tune, and Dynomite Diesel Products (DDP) 200% injectors, among others. A nitrous kit from Zex Diesel provides an extra 100hp to the rear wheels, and the exhaust system was kept stock.

The truck was dropped two inches in front and five inches in rear to keep it level, with suspension mods in the form of Rancho nine-way adjustable shocks and Caltracs traction bars to keep things steady and balanced. The wheels are 22-inch KMC XD Badlands with Nitto NT 420s. Meanwhile, everything that weighed the truck down was stripped completely out. “I ditched every pound that I didn’t need to keep,” said Bauman. “I ended up with 650 pounds of truck parts removed from the truck that I no longer needed.”

For a truck that survived a severe engine malfunction, the end result is a definite home run. And it demonstrated to Bauman that when it came to boosting a vehicle’s performance, there was more than one way to skin a cat: “I once thought that you had to have all the fancy expensive aftermarket mods to go fast in a diesel. I proved that you can run fast times with stock hard parts and that all the other aftermarket parts are not necessarily needed.”

The truck has made a big statement in Arizona, where it has run 10.57 @ 134mph. We at Diesel Army salute Bauman and his magnificent truck, and can’t wait to see it perform even better in the future. We love sharing cool rigs and their stories, so if you have cool rig of your own, Like us on Facebook and send a message along–we can’t get enough of these incredible machines.