Do you pull a trailer? Do you haul a heavy load? Would you like to use less fuel? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you are a candidate for a tuner. A simple box in your pickup can do all this.

One of the joys of owning a new truck is the paint looks great. In fact, it will never look better than it does straight off the showroom floor. There's not a chip or rock ding to be seen on the unblemished surface. But life on the road is hard, especially for the front end of your vehicle. When going 60 mph, even a small pebble acts like a BB shot from a gun. The painted surface it hits doesn't stand a chance, and missing paint is usually the result. There is a way to keep those damaging rocks away from your delicate paintjob, though, and the best part is that you won't even see it working.

People are always trying to figure out new ways to make their truck stand out. Many people go to the SEMA show in Vegas at the beginning of November each year to find the newest truck candy. But sometimes the coolest stuff is done at local shops down the street from your house.

Tru-Edge Custom Calls built a very nice ’11 Ford F-250 6.7L crew cab, standard bed pickup to use for the business, and the crew wanted to use the best parts possible. The 6-inch lift kit from Trail Master was one of the first things done to the truck.

When you drive a heavy-duty truck like an F-550, or even an F-350, Ram 3500, or a big GMC, you just expect everything to work…like forever, right? Then, one cold morning, you turn the key and there is that ominous “click, click, click.” Could be the starter. Could be the batteries—especially if you have a newer diesel with common-rail direct injection and glow plugs. When the “Wait to Start” light comes on, those little glow plugs that preheat the chambers above the pistons in Power Stroke and Duramax engines are, in essence, a dead short, sucking any surface charge off your batteries if they are already low. Now, in the case of our 7.3L Power Stroke with the HEUI injection system, those same batteries need enough power reserve to spin the motor at 150 rpm—fast enough for the high-pressure oil pump to produce around 400 to 600 psi. Additionally, the batteries need to have enough amps left to feed the IDM (injector driver module), which converts 12 volts to 115 DC volts to actually pop the injectors. Ford did not switch to the common-rail until 2008.

“More” of most things is good, but more suspension travel is very good—especially when it comes with the added benefit of righting a wrong. In this case, the wrong is the odd decision GM made when designing its trucks to have a distinctly nose-down attitude. Sure, that may look good on a muscle car, but on a truck? It’s just wrong.

When we were approached by Traxxas to review the Slash 4x4, we were a bit skeptical. After all, 8-Lug HD Truck magazine features custom-built trucks, installation articles, and product reviews for ¾- and 1-ton trucks, and the Slash 4x4 is a toy—isn’t it?

As truck owners, we have all suffered through the following scenario. We’re at the home improvement center and just bought something that is slightly longer than the bed length with the tailgate closed, or we have pretty flowers, umm…delicate cargo, that we don’t want to slide around in the bed and get damaged on the way to the job site. Enter the BedXTender HD by AMP Research. It instantly adds nearly 2 feet of usable length to the truck bed. When the extra length is not needed, the BedXTender HD effortlessly flips forward into the bed of the truck, providing a protected area to store cargo and protect it from sliding around in the bed of the truck. While in the stowed or forward position, the BedXTender HD does not interfere with the operation of tonneau covers. The engineers at AMP Research designed a quick mount system that also serves as a tool-free method to remove the BedXTender HD when it is not needed.

Let’s face the honest truth about truck ownership. At times, bad things happen. Truck parts are designed to have certain longevity or an expected lifespan. However, when things are changed or modified, all bets are off. Case in point is the ball joint installed on the upper control arm (UCA) of our ’07 Chevy 2500HD. Under “normal” use, the ball joint could last upward of 70,000 miles. Change things up by adding a 6-inch lift, 35-inch tires, and a heavier front bumper with a winch, and the life expectancy of these and other parts are significantly shortened. Unfortunately, most parts do not have a wear indicator to signify their impending demise. The passenger-side ball joint decided to fail while we were navigating a sandy wash at speed. As a result, the UCA transformed into a cutting chisel on a lathe and proceeded to turn an impressive 0.2x0.3-inch groove into the sidewall of the General Grabber tire. Thankfully, the DuraGen three-ply puncture-resistant sidewall of the tire withheld this obscene torture, and we were able to return home in one piece.

The words fuel and oil go hand in hand for 7.3L Power Stroke owners. They know all too well that anytime you upgrade the fuel side of the HEUI injection system, you’d better be ready to step up the oil delivery as well.

With a set of 160cc Stage 1 injectors from Bean's Diesel Performance, a custom-tuned TS Performance six-position chip from Total Diesel Performance, and a CPR fuel system from DieselSite, our ’97 Ford F-350 Power Stroke’s fuel equation was taken care of. Now we’ve moved on to the oil side of things.

When ATS released its long-anticipated Aurora turbo system upgrade for the 7.3L Power Stroke, we couldn’t have been more excited. There are several piecemeal ways to upgrade the factory Ford turbo system and a few mild makeovers, but the Aurora was different by design—mainly because ATS didn’t start with the assumption that the 7.3L is dead.

Some new products are born from the numerous requests of customer suggestions and cries for help. Take, for example, the new line of Talon Performance series winches from Superwinch. Let’s face it, eight-lug vehicles are heavy and when stuck require a winch capable of safely extracting an 8,000-pound truck mired up to the doorsill in mud and muck, which can easily double or triple the effective weight of the vehicle.

Water-methanol injection has recently become a hot item in the racing and towing communities; its roots lie in pre-WWII fighter planes. The U.S. military began injecting a mix of water and methanol into the P-47 Thunderbolt’s engine, boosting horsepower numbers, in some cases close to 2,000 hp more than stock. This allowed for much shorter takeoffs and increased power for dogfights while enjoying better fuel economy at the same time.

If you own a truck with a bed-mounted toolbox and have to make a run to the home improvement store to purchase some long lengths of lumber, that toolbox at the front of the bed is always in the way!

In the quest to make a better everyday workhorse at D&Z Customs, we chose to upgrade this ’07½ Chevrolet Silverado 3500 HD. This truck works hard, going to plenty of track day events where we take our 44-foot gooseneck trailer with two cars in it.

For years now, the problem of the dreaded pump rub has crept up on unsuspecting GM truck owners and bitten with a vengeance. In early 2012, we noticed a leak in the drivetrain but had a difficult time chasing the culprit down. Our ’04½ Chevy Duramax 2500 HD had 164,000 miles on it and we knew things were due to start wearing, but leaks are usually something you can find and stop immediately. After spraying off the oily residue from everything under the truck, we drove around town for a few minutes and came back to the shop for a look. The oil was contained to a small drip on the transfer case and nowhere else. With no obvious signs of an escape route for the fluid, we began rubbing the underside of the transfer case to see if we could identify a crack or possibly a loose bolt. As we pressed against the case to steady ourselves, a very small hole opened up and a small piece of the magnesium cover disappeared into the case itself. We found what we were looking for, but we knew there were bigger problems we couldn’t see from the outside.

The Ultimate Tow and Work Truck project keeps moving along, and this time we’re detailing the installation of front and rear winch-ready bumpers with the Integrated Warn PowerPlant HD and Superwinch Talon 9.5 winch.

One look at the factory Chevy front bumper, and you’ll see why we needed to change it. From afar, it looks big and strong. Get up close, and what appears to be chrome-plated steel is actually plastic. The bumper is so flimsy, it looks as though if you clipped a Yugo, it would become damaged.

Many of us have wished our eight-lug trucks could operate as a dump truck. Any time you’ve tried to unload dirt, rocks, and other heavy loads, the issue probably came to your mind, too. Jim Springer of Hermitage, Pennsylvania, decided to stop dreaming and actually build a dump bed for his Dodge 2500. Here’s the story in his words:

Chances are, if you’re reading this you probably own a diesel or gas truck and at one time or another you have wanted to improve the performance, be it for power, economy, or both. The trouble is, most of us do not have unlimited access to sophisticated test equipment or unlimited time on a dyno to compare before and after results.

If you want to stretch your paychecks by making your work truck last as long as possible, you can overbuild it for hauling and towing. Sure, you can check the box next to the towing package options if you’re buying a brand-new truck, but that doesn’t mean you have to stop there. You can improve on the manufacturer’s setup, or even build your own trailer package from scratch.

This ’03 F-250 was due for a change after more than seven years of hard service. After driving the newer, coil-spring-front-suspension Super Duty, we knew it was possible to coax a good ride out of a solid-front-axle HD truck, but what are your options with an older, leaf-spring truck?

For those of you who own one of the OBS (old-body-style) Ford F-250 Power Stroke diesels, you may or may not know that when you are towing, your EGT (exhaust gas temperature) tends to spike a little more than you’d like. One of the biggest reasons for that is because these trucks were not equipped with an intercooler. In today’s world of diesel-powered vehicles, it is not uncommon to see a truck equipped with an intercooler from the factory.

Weak links. Every truck has them: the part in the system that’s just a bit weaker than the rest. Some become apparent when you add copious amounts of power. Others make themselves known with age. The front axle in the ’99 to ’08 Dodge 2500/3500 and ’99 to ’04 Ford Super Duty trucks are great examples. Overall, these are pretty good assemblies, but they use unit bearings, which become a weak link over time. It’s natural for bearings to wear, but when these fail, the front wheel can part ways with the truck. And if you’ve added more power and larger tires, you’ve shortened the life expectancy of the stock unit bearings considerably. The other big weak link in these front-axle assemblies is the steering joints. The stockers are generally OK if you haven’t added power or larger tires, but do both and you’ll find the limit pretty soon.

With so many companies making tons of killer parts these days, the possibilities for modifying your vehicle are seemingly endless and can require some forethought. We like this pursuit of product satisfaction as much as the next guy, and we’ve also learned that some parts simply become outdated, wear out, fade, or become fatigued and crack. Our testbed ’01 Ford F-250 Super Duty with a 7.3L diesel has been the victim of all the maladies mentioned and has now had several different front and rear suspension systems, multiple sets of rims, and now we are moving on to a new front bumper!

Let’s face it, accessing the toolbox or auxiliary fuel tank, disconnecting the fifth-wheel hitch, or simply reaching for items in the bed of a lifted truck is difficult if not impossible—unless you happen to be vertically blessed. At 6 foot 2 inches, I too struggle to get items out of the toolbox. Until now, there were few options to gain access for those hard-to-reach items: store a small step ladder in the bed of the truck or climb up onto the rear tire. The first option guaranteed laughs and jeers from friends, and the second offered a great opportunity to slip, leading to more ridicule. AMP Research came to the rescue with its BedStep2, a side-mounting truck step specifically designed to allow for easy access to the toolbox and other items in the front of the bed of the truck. Its ambidextrous attachment hardware allows the step to be installed on either side of the truck, just behind the cab.