Tabla de contenidos para December -2016 Work Truck Review en 8 Lug

Rugged Ridge 770-614-6101 • ruggedridge.com Break-In Protection You’ve kept your work truck on the road for 250,000 miles, and you just rebuilt the engine. Don’t ruin all that hard work and history by screwing up the break-in process. Royal Purple can help with its special Engine Break-In Oil. Using highly refined mineral oil and additives with zinc and phosphorus, the break-in oil provides good protection for the rotating assembly while also promoting effective piston-ring seating. It’s a great way to give your old work truck new life. Royal Purple 888-382-6300 • royalpurple.com Bully for You Quick installation and fast operation are two of the benefits of the Bulldog Velocity Series High-Speed Jack. The hydraulic jack makes it easy to hitch fifth-wheel and gooseneck trailers to your truck, and it installs…

When Nissan recommitted to the fullsize truck space, the company went allin designing a range of pickups that launched with the introduction of the Cummins turbodiesel-equipped Titan XD. As you probably know by now, the Titan XD is Nissan’s tweener—a notquite-heavy-duty but more-than-light-duty “Xtra Duty” option in the fullsize truck space. The Titan XD chassis shares nothing with the upcoming ½-ton Titan—not even the lug nuts. It’s truly in a class above the typical ½-tons, if not quite to the level of today’s true heavy-duty pickups. Following the Cummins-powered XD, Nissan has taken the next step in the Titan rollout by introducing the gasoline model. Under the hood of the gas-powered XD resides the second generation of Nissan’s all-aluminum 32-valve DOHC 5.6L Endurance V-8, known as the VK56VD, backed by…

There are fewer things more quintessentially American than classic car shows. They’re fun for the whole family and a great time for gearheads of all walks of life to gather and “talk shop.” However, the other experience often synonymous with classic cars is mechanical trouble of one sort or another. As fun as classics can be, they’re often susceptible to overheating, electrical problems, mechanical failures, and other assorted manifestations of Murphy’s Law. To help keep these icons of yore rolling at the Woodward Dream Cruise in Detroit, Chevrolet teamed up with several local dealerships to deploy a fleet of six Chevrolet-certified service rescue squad ’16 Silverado pickups at the event on Saturday, August 20. The trucks were staffed with ASE-certified technicians and provided on-site assistance to event vehicles that stalled,…

Ready for Action ■ YEAR/MAKE/MODEL: ’14 Ram 2500 ■ OWNER: Brandon McIntosh ■ HOMETOWN: Hamilton, Ohio ■ ENGINE: 6.7L Cummins I-6 ■ TRANSMISSION: 68RFE six-speed automatic ■ ODOMETER: 27,000 miles ■ FUEL ECONOMY: 13 mpg ■ MODS: 6-inch ReadyLift kit, Fox shocks, and 22x12 American Force wheels on 325/50R22 Nitto tires ■ OWNER SAYS: “I’m very happy with the truck; all the modifications have been done by my father and me.” Red Widow ■ YEAR/MAKE/MODEL: ’14 Ford F-250 Platinum FX4 ■ OWNER: Kevin Lohr ■ HOMETOWN: Garrettsville/Bethesda, Ohio ■ ENGINE: 6.7L Power Stroke V-8 ■ TRANSMISSION: 6R140 TorqShift six-speed automatic ■ ODOMETER: 35,000 miles ■ FUEL ECONOMY: 17 to 24 mpg ■ MODS: Confederate Diesel S366 Pro Turbo Kit with billet compressor wheel, dash-mounted H&S Performance Mini Maxx tuner, H&S…

Jackhammer Regens I put on about 1,200 highway miles a week towing box and flat trailers with my ’15 Ford F-250. At around 35,000 miles, the 6.7L engine started shuddering, pinging, and losing power during DPF regenerations. I went right to the dealer and was told this is a warrantied emissions issue that requires pulling the cylinder head on the driver side and rebuilding it with new exhaust valves. Less than a month after I got the truck back, the problem resurfaced and the dealer rebuilt the same head again. That repair lasted just shy of 70,000 miles. Now the truck is back for its third round of warranty repair. I love Big Blue, but this is really testing my patience. Has Ford found a sure-fire fix for this? Larry…

Did you like to play in the dirt when you were a kid? Use big trucks or earth-moving equipment to dig holes and make tall mounds of dirt to motor over? Push cars and other objects around a sandbox or backyard play area with the big trucks? I did! And I got to do it again recently! This time, I was the driver of a 20-ton bulldozer and a 26-ton excavator. I carved out holes and created sand piles and then motored over them. I even pushed a truck like it was a matchbox model and lifted a car into the air to maneuver it to a different location with ease. It was childhood memories of this type that motivated Randy Stenger to start Extreme Sandbox—a heavy equipment adventure company.…

CHATTANOOGA CHOO CHOO The International Towing & Recovery Museum (internationaltowingmuseum.org) pays homage to the huge role tow trucks and wreckers have played dating back to the beginning of the automobile. This sector of automotive work is something that has typically been taken for granted—but those days are in the past. Whether it’s a mom who (along with a van full of kids on the way home from a soccer game) gets a flat tire or runs out of gas, two vehicles that need to be pulled apart at the scene of a collision, or a tour bus or giant military vehicle with a mechanical failure, the tow trucks and tow truck operators that respond to the needs of all types of vehicles are honored at this museum located in Chattanooga,…

Iwas visiting Ford’s Vehicle Operations (Pilot Plant) in 2002 with a Ford engineering buddy of mine when he decided to show me Ford’s all-new F-150, which was scheduled to debut for 2004. There were several F-150 pilot units on the floor, which had been bucked and built for engineering purposes: proper fitment, function, quality, and shakedown. This is what Ford’s Vehicle Operations in Allen Park, Michigan, does: It conducts a pilot unit run and checks pre-production vehicles thoroughly to make sure everything fits and works well together at the company’s two F-150 truck plants in Dearborn, Michigan, and Kansas City, Missouri. When my buddy opened the hoods of these new ’04 F-150 pilot units, it was obvious Ford had a very different Modular planned for the new F-150 and Expedition.…

NISSAN ADDS SINGLE CAB TITAN AND TITAN XD, PLUS AN IMPRESSIVE WARRANTY Nissan is now offering its first-ever single cab in the Titan lineup. Both the ’17 Titan and Titan XD can take advantage of this configuration, with a King Cab on the way as well. And the Titan can now boast having the best pickup warranty—or what Nissan is calling “America’s Best Truck Warranty”—which is a 5-year, 100,000-mile, bumper-to-bumper warranty, including powertrain. MERCEDES-BENZ URBAN ETRUCK Meet the M-B Urban eTruck. It’s a silent, allelectric, zero-emissions example of what heavyduty trucks could utilize. This concept is based on a heavy-duty three-axle and is designed as a short-radius-distribution city truck. Power comes via lithium-ion batteries, and there are electric motors adjacent to the wheel hubs. “Electric drive systems previously only saw…

While Nevada is known for a lot of different things, such as gambling, cowboys, and Area 51, mining is a major industry of the Silver State, as it’s one of the largest sources of gold and silver in the world. Terry Fagg’s ’07 Dodge Ram 3500 is a regular at various mining sites, since he does repairs and maintenance on heavy equipment. But this work puts some serious demands on his pickup. Handling the job required adding some specialized modifications to make sure it holds up in the harsh terrain (along with the green light on the cab roof, which we’ll explain shortly for those not familiar with mining sites). “We don’t care about horsepower. We went for max torque, driveability, and low smoke.” –Tim Anderson of T&A Performance Getting…

The Ford F-Series is about to reach a milestone as the bestselling truck in the U.S. for 40 straight years, an unprecedented winning streak. For many months over the last few years, the F-Series has even outsold the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra combined. While the F-150 is the volumeseller in Ford’s truck lineup, the contribution of the Super Duty to the F-Series’ success cannot be denied. Ford does not publicly break out separate figures for the F-150 and Super Duty, but it is estimated that the Super Duty accounts for between 30 and 40 percent of total F-Series sales. So when it came time to redesign the standard-bearer of the “Built Ford Tough” brand, Dearborn knew it had a lot riding on it. Based on our first impressions and…

Few things betray a vehicle’s age as much as oxidized, peeling paint and yellowed, dulled headlights. While it’s possible to preserve the original paint through regular washing and periodic waxing and detailing, as the years go by, it’s hard to avoid the effects of the sun’s punishing ultraviolet (UV) rays on plastic headlight housings. Sure, there are plenty of products out there that can temporarily bring back the shine to dulled, yellowed headlights, but it’s just a temporary fix that will have to inevitably be repeated as the UV inhibitors wash away. Automotive styling trends have come a long way in the last decade, but rather than having to go out and pay $40,000-plus for a brand-new truck, you can spend a few hundred and give your older truck a…