ATS Diesel holds an event called the Gauntlet Challenge at their headquarters in Arvada, CO, every March. It acts as a sort of unofficial stop on the way to the UCC. Official competitors come to show their prowess, but there’s a public dyno portion of the event that anyone can enter. It was there that we encountered Davis Ulrich and Black Betty, his 2011 RAM 2500 with three turbos. Let us be the first to pick our jaws up off the floor.
To The Floor
Davis’s truck had some of the cleanest work we’ve ever seen in a truck and put a lot of other rigs to shame. To hear him tell it, though, this 900hp beast had rather humble beginnings. Davis didn’t start out as a diesel guy, or really even a truck guy. He had been driving a 2009 Cadillac CTS-V and needed a change of pace. He says, “I just wanted something a little bit more useable in Colorado. The Cadillac was really nice, but not when it snowed.”
He continues, “I was searching around a Cummins forum one day and I was kind of thinking about buying a truck and I came across the truck. It was in Georgia and I’m in Colorado, so I got ahold of the guy and started talking to him. I decided to buy a plane ticket and flew out there to check it out. It had 37-inch tires on stock wheels, a Carli backcountry kit and an H&S tuner. He’d already done some stuff, but besides that it was all stock.”
Davis decided it was the right truck for him, so he bought it and drove it all the way back to Colorado from Georgia. “It was a lot of fun driving that thing back from Georgia!” he says. “I’d never been out there before.” His fun was temporarily set back when he hit a deer in his newly-acquired truck, but luckily there wasn’t any permanent damage.