Las Vegas has a new performance diesel shop that's booming. We visited Diesel Power Challenge 2011 competitor Newly Tolf at his growing small business called Underground Diesel Performance. It's located at the south side of the strip.  Newly's background is working on pipelines in the oil fields so that's how he got familiar with diesels. He said he still has contacts in this area so maybe we'll feature the world's biggest bulldozer and other cool diesel powered equipment. These diesel performance shops are filling the vacuum left by traditional Speed Shops. What might make these newer salons (or gathering places of ideas and hang outs) more robust is that they work on work equipment too. Elastic and inelastic sources of income this way.

 1. First thing we did was take his Kodiak for a spin down the strip. 

2. Then we checked out the projects, which were in the works for customers. Lots of twin turbo setups and complete engine rebuilds. We'll be checking in on these from time to time.

3. The white Chevy which Newly entered in the DPC was getting rebuilt.

4. Underground Diesel sells an adapter which allows Duramax owners to use the cheaper Cat filter that also filters to a finer degree.

5. We'll be looking at shop case studies to see what problems are common. One we found so far was for ’04 Duramax owners. The number 2 and 7 injector wires become frayed because the fit is not quite right (it makes for chafing which causes electrical shorts and a rough running engine). The part number is written on the package with bar codes (see picture).

6. Transmission rebuilds and EFILive tuning tips courtesy of Underground Diesel Performance's Mike Meyer.

Look for all of this in the coming weeks.