Purchasing a new truck is always an exciting feeling. If you’re new to the world of trucks, you’ll quickly find there’s an exciting, thriving community of people who enjoy taking steps to modify and improve the performance of their vehicles, especially diesel trucks.

There are many practical ways you can improve the performance of your diesel engine. Here are just a few places you can start when you’re looking to improve your diesel performance, from an auto repair shop in Corpus Christi, TX.

High-flow exhaust

One of the main things that differentiates a diesel engine from a standard gasoline engine is that in a diesel engine, all of the combustion processes involving the fuel are closed off. This means there is more restriction with regard to the way air flows through the engine, which in turn places a greater emphasis on the injection of the fuel into the combustion chamber.

Once the fuel lights, the exhaust (which pushes the vehicle forward) pushes through the rest of the system. The more air that gets injected into the engine, the greater the engine’s output. In most cases, the stock exhaust systems that come with diesel engines restrict the airflow, which means you’ll experience reduced vehicle performance. For this reason, installing a high-flow exhaust system is one of the first and best things you can do to increase the overall performance of the truck, and it won’t even require you to do a whole lot of tinkering under the hood.

New tuner

If you do want to tinker under the hood, though, one of the first things you should look into is installing a performance tuner. There’s a lot of potential to increase engine performance. With a performance tuner, you can unlock some of that potential by overriding the electronic control module (ECM). Unlocking that ECM gives you the ability to completely rewrite the computer in your truck and access some power that would previously have been unavailable. The more you modify and upgrade your truck, the more this tuner will help you out, especially when it comes to taking away some of the stress on the transmission that will result from increased horsepower and torque.

Cold air intake

Finally, you can add a cold air intake to your truck, which shouldn’t be too much of an investment—it’s usually only several hundred dollars, on average. This is an essential upgrade if increasing performance is your goal, as it brings in cold air that is more easily compressed than hot air. Once that cold air is compressed, it increases the oxygen that gets injected into the engine’s combustion chambers, resulting in greater performance out of the engine.

These are just a few examples of some of the most practical upgrades you can make to your diesel truck. There are, of course, plenty of aesthetic upgrades you can make as well. For more information about available upgrades for your vehicle, visit Coastal Diesel Injection or reach out to our auto repair shop in Corpus Christi, TX by phone today!