Making His Own Way
Ever since the beginning, Jake has liked to do things on his own. “How hard can it be?” seems to be his mantra. For his 2001 Cummins, he decided early on that he would do all the maintenance himself, which resulted in him breaking the prime when he changed the fuel filter. The experience taught him about the necessity of a lift pump, and he installed an AirDog 150 to fix the problem. That was the first of many upgrades on that truck; soon after, traction bars, control arms, wheels and 200HP Dynomite Diesel injectors followed.
A few years later, he was out looking for a truck for his girlfriend (now his fiancée) and got talked into giving up the truck. The seller really liked it and wanted to do a straight-across trade, which struck Jake as odd, because “his truck was worth way more than mine.” He says, “I ended up coming to a deal: if he gave me $800 on top for body work, then I’d do it. I ended up doing it and regretted it at first, just because I had an emotional attachment with my first diesel.”
He was locked in though, so he made the most of the situation by, well, basically stripping the truck bare and building it back up. It was a base model 2006 RAM 2500 that had been used as a masonry truck. “Along with being a base model, the ‘roughness’ included spray-painted logos, cement on portions of the fenders and wells, a torn cloth interior, vinyl floors, and more. There were obviously a lot of improvements to be made.”