The diesel addiction started in March of 2010 when Bruce Stafford returned from Afghanistan while serving in the US Army and bought a 2010 Chevy Silverado and tricked it all out. But that truck didn't last nearly as long as he had expected. Sadly his house caught fire by the garage and took his Chevy down in the blaze, just a few months after he got it.
After recovering from the fire, he went out and bought a 2011 GMC 2500HD LML Duramax diesel and was tempted to just leave it stock.
"I loved every part of my truck and the first thing I told my wife Desarae was that I wasn't going to play with this one, meaning I was going to leave it alone," says Stafford. "Well that didn't last too long."
He loved his truck, but never felt it had enough power since the day he bought it. He wanted to do what most diesel enthusiasts do when they first get a truck and that is to go online and get a cold air intake, exhaust and a tuner coming. But at the time he wasn't able to find a manufacturer who had any of these products available yet or were even in the process of designing them. So he patiently waited and when they did become available he had everything overnighted to him.
Stafford started with an H&S Performance Mini Maxx tuner, an aFe exhaust, a Banks intake, as well as a Line-X sprayed bed liner. For a few months he was content with his 6.6L Duramax, but that all changed after he had it lifted in November of 2011. He added a SkyJacker 7-inch, non-torsion bar drop lift on his truck, with 37-inch Pro Comp tires.
"Those 37s took away some power from what I had before I added the lift, so I went back to the computer to find out about turbo upgrades," recalls Stafford. "But again, I found that nothing was available for my truck yet."