We have been building a truck for a customer over the course of the last few months from the ground up. We have documented and dyno'd almost every modification from stock to almost 700HP. We're going to unveil all those products right here.
First off the truck is an '06 MegaCab w/ an 8" lift and 38" tires. It is four wheel drive and an automatic. The customer originally came to us and bought an edge ez and a valvebody upgrade to keep from damaging his transmission. He had previously bought a S&B intake and 5" straight exhaust. Through trading with his buddies he experimented with stacking either a diablo predator programmer or a SuperChips FlashPaq tuner with his edge ez. He preferred the SuperChips so that is what we start our adventure with.
His particular tuner from SuperChips only had two levels. We did our baseline dyno testing on the higher of the two levels which was rated at "100" hp. The truck dyno'd 414HP.
At this time we installed our tsunami fuel system on the truck to guarantee a solid supply of fuel volume and pressure is fed to the CP3 injection pump. There is no HP gain with this modification as it is merely a supporting modification for future upgrades. So I am leaving out the dyno chart.
The first performance modification the customer chose was a Silver 64 Turbo from Industrial Injection. This turbo has a 64mm compressor inducer and a 73mm turbine exducer. It's a little laggy for my tastes but the customer didn't find the extra lag objectionable at all. And this truck never has to perform towing duties, so it works well. In fact he rather enjoyed the louder exhaust note and the fact that the EGT was only 1100 degress at full power. Here's the before and after dyno of the turbo install.
We make every effort to be consistent in our dyno sessions. Since we start the pull at the same rpm you can see the extra lag the turbo gives by the lower power figures until a little later in the rpm range. But regardless, a peak to peak hp gain of 48 is very impressive. If you follow the rpm range to 3400 you'll see the turbo added almost 80HP at the top of the rpm band. This really shines on the road since most '03+ Dodges are a little slow to shift into overdrive. Most don't shift until 75+ mph and your engine is right at redline. The extra 80HP in this region really helps out.
Now on to the next modification. The customer read all over the internet about how impressive the Smarty tuners were. So he "HAD" to have one. Smarty rates their programmer at 170+ HP. We dyno'd the standard Smarty software and then downloaded the "Revo" tuning since it was supposed to deliver slightly more power. We would have liked to have seen a 70HP gain, but instead it was 33.5HP gain. You'll notice in the dyno graph that there is more delay in the power build up. Similar to the extra lag from the turbo upgrade. The smarty smokes something fierce at low boost levels and contrary to popular belief this delays turbo spoolup. A little black smoke and a little more fuel increases turbo responsiveness, but when you put out so much smoke that you cover up intersections, although cool, it actually quenches the exhaust temperature and reduces turbo spoolup. This is one of those times where when a little is good that doesn't mean that a LOT is better. Here's the graph of 100HP Superchip vs 170+HP Smarty Revo TNT.
Unlike the turbo upgrade, the smarty offered very little gain outside the 2700 - 3300 range. But at least it was forward progress. We dyno'd all levels of the smarty program from 3 all the way to 9 which was the highest gain.
The truck was driven like this for a few weeks and the simple valvebody modification was holding up well to the power, but the customer knew he wanted more and with transmissions it's better to strengthen them ahead of time rather than wait until a catastrophic and expensive failure occurs. We installed a Suncoast converter, billet 3rd gear drum, billet input shaft, updated clutches and bands, and several other Relentless secrets to reliably hold the power. Like the fuel system upgrade before, no power gain here since nothing was slipping. But I didn't want to leave this out of the lineup since it is a substantial cost and I don't want to lead people to believe this could ALL be done on a stock transmission.
The next step was to add injectors. We use and recommend Dynomite Diesel injectors for most applications. We chose a 90HP nozzle upgrade for this particular truck. It's tempting install the 150HP or larger injectors since the cost is similar, but the 90HP nozzles do an amazing job of increasing power without hurting fuel mileage or increasing black smoke at cruising levels. We've tried many brands of injectors and one thing is the same with all of them. They all add power. The thing I like most about the Dynomite Diesel injectors is that they use very little fuel to make the desired power. With any common rail injected diesel, the main hurdle to making big power is high pressure fuel volume. The cp3 pump can only deliver so much fuel at 25,000 psi. So you have to be as efficient as possible with that fuel. Injectors whose spray angles are modified incorrectly or who suffer from poor atomization will have to use more fuel to make the same 90HP.
Here is the before and after dyno graph of the DDP 90HP nozzle upgrade.
We are already running out of available high pressure fuel since we are running both an edge ez pressure box as well as a smarty on level 9. Despite that, the Dynomite nozzles added 77 peak hp. But more interesting is what happens both before and after the peak. At 3400 rpm the gain is 100 HP and all the way from 2400 to 2800 rpm the gain is over 100HP. The customer reported that max EGT was 1200-1250 degrees @ 48 psi of boost.
The next upgrade was a modified cp3 from wicked diesels. The customer selected the stage 3 dragonslayer pump. The install was nice and easy and we did our best to accurately dyno the upgrade and here is what it delivered with no other changes.
The increase in fueling at lower rpms further smothered out the spoolup, but once the turbo lit there was an obvious improvement. A 37HP gain from 2800 through 3400rpm. At these levels hp is getting harder to come by and much more expensive.
The customer drove this combination for several weeks waiting for the next batch of parts to arrive. He relayed back to me with the additional fuel and power from the cp3 upgrade the EGT had climbed to 1400 degrees under full load. So our next upgrade was obviously more air to cool it back down.
We contacted Nathan Wright from Maximized Performance. He builds nice twin setups for the duramax crowd and has very good attention to detail in his work. So naturally he was our only choice. He provided an s480 turbo and all the necessary plumbing to create a compound set of twins around the existing silver 64 turbo we already had. We have a few pictures of the installed product.
Nice gray powdercoat matches the vehicle color.
Overall, excellent clearance around a/c lines. Nathan really goes the extra mile for little details. On '06 Dodges the metal coolant line runs directly under the exhaust manifold and has a steel pipe that turns up and runs toward the firewall. When installing compound chargers this line is right in the middle of where the hot pipe needs to be. I've installed several twin kits from different manufacturers and most simply cut the steel line and reroute it with simple 5/8" heater hose. Not Nathan. He builds a custom steel coolant line that routes all the way around the back of the head. It sucks installing, but the finished product is well worth the effort. No chance of a rubber line rubbing through or getting burnt by all the hot exhaust components. With his plumbing the coolant lines are as reliable as stock.
The 5" downpipe was really easy to connect to an existing 5" exhaust. One simple clamp and you're done.
Another impressive feature from Nathan was the completely reshaped transmission dipstick. Most other manufacturers tell you to simply "adjust" or "tweak" the line for proper clearance. But the MPI kit comes with a new dipstick that hugs the firewall all the way up to provide tons of clearance for the 5" downpipe. As the installer, I really appreciate the extra effort on his part. And for the customer this means no grinding or vibrations showing up 100 miles down the road when a "tweaked" dipstick begins rubbing the exhaust system.
Here's another view of the clearance around the downpipe. You can put your hands around this thing everywhere. There is more clearance here than with the 5" exhausts on stock trucks. Nice job.
Since we are shooting for 60+ psi of boost we went ahead and installed a set of arp headstuds to keep the headgasket from blowing.
Now for the part you've been waiting for. Twins take a bit to get dialed in so we made several dyno pulls while tweaking little by little. We adjusted on the small charger wastegate several times. With twins, more boost most always lowers the EGT. But that doesn't necessarily increase power. Often times more boost means less power. So you find yourself finding a happy medium between EGT control and power. So we start low and creep up in small increments.
We ended up with a setup making 68 psi with sustained egt of 1250 degrees.
We're going to do the dyno graphs in two steps. The first graph shows a roll-on acceleration test like all the others have been.
This gives you an idea of the extra lag from having to spool two turbos instead of one. For instance if you look at the 500HP line you'll see it takes roughly 150 more rpm to make the same power. It shows a nice 55HP gain from peak to peak and as much as 80 hp in the 3200 rpm range.
But this isn't the whole story. Large turbos need more time to spool so for a final test we preload the turbos with boost before the dyno pull by using the dyno brake. Some may say this is a dyno "trick", but this is more like the power level you would see if you are accelerating on the street through several gears. In this situation you already have boost. This graph shows single silver 64 turbo versus MPI twins with 15psi total boost at 60 mph then accelerated.
Peak to peak HP gain of 69, but more importantly 50-75HP throughout the entire operating range at a cooler exhaust gas temp.
680HP while spinning 38" rubber is impressive. More impressive is it commutes from Houston to Dallas regularly and has maintained a surprising amount of reliability so far.
What's next? Dual CP3 kit? Nitrous? Intercooler? All of the above? Stay tuned!
We used a .010" thicker headgasket than stock to drop the compression to help bring down some of the cylinder pressures. 
He came back asking for more power. The truck was basically fuel limited. It was still running just one CP3 and a mild set of 90HP injectors. We knew it was going to need dual CP3's as well as larger injectors to make a significant gain in power. The dilemma was which one to do first. 
Thanks again for all of your hard work and time spent on my truck. I will be seeing you again soon... David