Making A Change
About eight years ago, Kalin was driving a 2005 supercharged twin-turbo Mini Cooper. One day, she spotted a 1999 Ford 7.3L Power Stroke with a six-speed manual transmission for sale. Something flipped inside her and she knew she had to have it. She got it for a killer deal (400,000 miles will do that) and took ownership of the beast. She says, “I just fell in love with it right then and there. It just became an addiction, I guess. I just wanted more and more, like bigger tires, a bigger lift. I wanted to make it go faster, but it’s a 7.3L, so they’re gutless.”
Once she had joined the ranks of the diesel community, she met a group of girls who drive Cummins who told her, “You really need to get into a Dodge.” With that prompting, she bought a 2004 longbox RAM with a 14-inch lift. She loved that truck, but she became a mother and knew that she needed something a little more practical. Enter her current truck, a 2011 6.7L Cummins that she has named Smashley. Why that name? “All the girls name their trucks. I said, ‘I don’t know, Smashley?’ Because I have hit some stumps with her. She’s definitely gone through some stuff. I don’t even know how she still runs, to be honest!”
When she bought it, she says the truck was “grandpa-style, straight-up stock.” She absolutely hated how it looked. “I went from a 14-inch lift to something slammed to the ground and I hated it,” she says. Upgrades came quickly in the form of an S&B cold air intake, a Diamond Eye 4-inch exhaust, and EFILive tuning with a DSPS switch. She also has an Edge CTS2 monitor, ARP 425 head studs, Hamilton 103-pound valve springs, and, because she couldn’t help it, a 4-inch lift, as well as some 35-inch tires.
Kalin says she doesn’t necessarily have a specific goal in mind for how she wants to build the truck (“Let’s just see where I can get this and go from there”), though she does have a few ideas. “My truck is pretty quick as it is now. The 4th-gens are pretty quick. I’d really like to build more horsepower, but I’d really like to get a 6- or 8-inch lift. I know Total Metal Innovations here in Oregon are talking about building me new bumpers and having them painted the same color as my truck and that’s cool. It’s just kind of a slow process.”