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When you’ve been at the forefront of your industry and profession for 30 years, you tend to be known for setting new precedents that others can only follow. That’s exactly the case for Tony Rizzi and his shop, Full Pull Diesel Performance in Edmond, OK. Tony has been dominant in sled pulling for many years and more recently he’s been doing the same in drag racing too. He now has his sights set on building the first all-steel diesel to run in the 3s in the 1/8th-mile.
While diesel performance has made up the bulk of Tony’s career, he started in the automotive industry in his early teens and has never stopped moving forward since. He spent several years at a dealership as a GM tech, and several years in a machine shop before branching off to do his own thing. He’s had experience building muscle cars, race cars, sand rails, mud trucks, diesel trucks, and more.
By the time Rizzi was looking to start his own shop, diesel engines were being introduced into domestic trucks and it wasn’t long before Tony was hooked. The diesel community has come a long way in the last 15 years, and Tony has stayed right there with it, loving it, learning it and developing it.
“We were one of the originals,” Rizzi says. “Me and Clint Cannon used to be next door to each other before it was ATS Diesel. This is all I’ve ever done. We started out sled pulling in Colorado and won just about everything there was to win. We went to Georgia to pull PPL professional for five years and won 43 of 54 hooks in PPL with the Southern Hooker. We’ve been in Oklahoma for four years now.”
Full Pull Diesel Performance specializes in all diesel trucks and engine platforms, and also builds Allison transmissions in-house. However, while the shop will work on Cummins and Powerstrokes, Full Pull Diesel’s bread and butter is the Duramax.
The shop is 12,000 sq.-ft. where seven full-time employees work on trucks for serious towing, drag racing, sled pulling and anything in between. Full Pull Diesel also doe cylinder head work in-house, has a 1750 Mustang chassis dyno, lathes, mills and more.
“We’re a one-stop shop,” Rizzi says. “We do custom fabrication, twin turbo kits, headers and more. You name it, we do it. We’ll do general repair work all the way up to full performance stuff.”
One of those performance jobs has been the shop’s 1937 Chevy pickup truck named Outcast, which features a Duramax diesel under the hood. Recently, Tony and Full Pull Diesel Performance decided to create a new Outcast truck to meet the rules of Street Outlaws, but to also be the first all-steel diesel to run 3-seconds in the 1/8th-mile.
“The truck itself is a 1937 Chevy pickup,” he says. “Both the old one and the new one are the same body. The biggest difference in the new truck is it’s an all-steel body and it’s a factory 115-inch wheel base. The old truck was a 106-inch wheel base. It was shorter than factory, so it didn’t meet the rules for Street Outlaws, so we had to build a new truck for the show.”
While the wheel base length was an issue the shop had to address to compete in Street Outlaws, Rizzi says the new Outcast was built for one reason.
“The new truck was built for one purpose – to be the first all-steel diesel in the threes in the eighth mile. The old truck has gone 4.30 at 169 mph. The new truck we’re just about ready to test.”
Unlike the body of Outcast remaining a 1937 Chevy, under the hood, the truck got something entirely new and different. Rather than a stock block 360 cid LML Duramax as it had before, the new and improved Outcast got an all-billet 460 cid Wagler Duramax.
“This new engine is a completely different engine,” he says. “It’s all billet and puts out 3,500 horsepower! We’re using Wagler’s crank, rods and their other internal components. The truck also has a new chassis, a Rossler three speed and a Carmack Engineering 11.5˝ rear. We did all the rest of it in-house.
“The fuel system is from S&S Diesel Motorsports along with the standalone Bosch ECU. We’re using 500% over LBZ injectors, three 10mm pumps, a 118mm single Precision charger with a 66mm gate, a lockup Neal Chance converter, and we’re running Weld wheels.”
All in all, Outcast isn’t envious of other vehicles, nor does it want to be like all the other “cool kids.” Rather, Outcast is in a class of its own, and with 3,500 horsepower on hand, a 3-second pass is surely in its and Tony’s future!
Diesel of the Week is sponsored by AMSOIL. If you have an engine you would like to highlight in this series, please email Engine Builder magazine’s Editor, Greg Jones at [email protected].
