Diesel of the Week is presented by
Tyler Lambert’s journey into diesel performance began in his formative years in East Tennessee. Starting as a hobbyist in high school, he soon found himself knee-deep in engine work once he began working as a boat technician at Bass Pro Shop. On the side, he also worked as a diesel technician for a local shop.
After honing his diesel truck and engine skills for 7 years, he took the leap and opened his own diesel performance shop, in Dandridge, TN, where he used those skills primarily to work on the 7.3L and 6.0L Powerstroke platforms. He operated the small shop for around 4 years doing general repair and performance upgrades on Powerstrokes, before closing the business and stepping into a new endeavor.
Lambert now manages a fleet of 21 trucks and 15 pieces of equipment, while still building a few projects for others. In fact, as a guy who’s been working on Powerstroke trucks since high school, Lambert has a few of his own that are standout builds.
“My first truck was a 7.3L, and as a 17-year-old, you don’t really know any better than just slapping on a tuner and parts to see what would work,” Lambert says. “Once I moved over to a 6.0L and put on smaller injectors and a bigger turbo, that’s when the obsession started.”
Lambert’s F-250 started as a project with a simple goal – to extract as much power as possible. Equipped with a 6.0L Powerstroke engine, the truck underwent a series of transformations that elevated it to the powerhouse it is now.
The 6.0L block is punched out .030” over to clean it up, and a Colt Stage 2 camshaft was installed to fix the 6.0L’s emissions controls issues by reducing EGTs. Aside from o-ringed cylinder heads and ARP .625 studs, the bottom end was essentially left stock.
“We were running VGT on the market for awhile, but I kind of wanted to move away from that,” he says. “Now it has a compound-turbo kit from SoCal Diesel which is 366 in the valley and 480 on the atmosphere with an Odawgs S3R ported intake manifold. For fueling, we got an AirDog 5G 165 fuel pump with a regulator return and Warren Deisel Injection 250/107 hybrid injectors.”
The current setup sits right around 900 horsepower, but Tyler has yet to spray the two kits of nitrous with his recently installed Maximizer 4.
“It was tuned by Truck Source Diesel and we installed a full billet 5R100 transmission from Warren Diesel,” Lambert says. “I knew I wanted a race truck, so we gutted the interior and got it down to 6,800 lbs.”
Lambert’s ultimate goal is to dominate the 6.70 class on the racing circuit. He has plans for larger injectors and turbos in the near future, and hopefully an appearance at the Ultimate Callout Challenge.
Diesel of the Week is sponsored by AMSOIL. If you have an engine you’d like to highlight in this series, please email Engine Builder Editor Greg Jones at [email protected].
