Diesel engine mods to make your oiler kick arse for the next three decades

Reliable diesel engine performance is only three easy steps away – and a few key mods…

Whether you’re young or old, rich or poor, chances are your vehicle is one of the most expensive things you’ll ever buy in life. Second only to a house, and maybe a nice caravan if you’ve got expensive taste. It stands to reason then, that not only would you want that diesel engine to last as long as possible, but also that you’d want it to perform as efficiently as possible.

We were recently elbow deep in engine oil on a 30-year-old diesel rig with near on half a million kays on the clock, and it got us thinking. If you’ve got a reasonably late model rig, how do you make it an absolute rock star and still last 30 years? Surely there’s a balance to be had somewhere between crazy tow-anything horsepower, and a 1hp Briggs and Stratton engine that’ll last forever but couldn’t pull the skin off custard, right?

We did some digging and came up with a winning combination of fun and sensible diesel engine mods to make your oiler kick arse for the next three decades.

Keep it clean

Step one sounds pretty straightforward, but it’s one that people very frequently miss the details on. Keep it clean. Now that doesn’t mean you need to spit polish your rocker cover, but it does mean you need to be conscious of what’s going through your diesel engine’s moving parts.

Regular servicing with fresh oil and oil filters will keep your diesel engine’s ‘behind the scenes’ working. But you’ll also want to pay a little attention to what’s going into the belly of the beast too. Dirt, grit, and gunk finding their way into the air intake can shred cylinder liners, sandblast valves, and cake the inlet manifold to the point of literally starving your engine of air, throwing off air fuel ratios and giving poor economy, and even worse reliability.

A snorkel raising the air intake well above the dust cloud, a pre-filter, and clean air filters will go a long way, but you’ll need to consider a catch-can as well. These separate the oil vapour introduced to the system by the emissions gear that’d otherwise be heading straight into your diersel engine. There are a few different brands on the market, all with their pros and cons, but we’ve found success with the offerings from DieselCare. There’s also plenty of extra info on their website if you’re keen to learn more about one of the most often overlooked diesel engine mods.

Get it efficient

From the very first internal combustion engines produced to the latest and greatest supercar engines on the market, they all fundamentally do the same thing. Pump air. They have some sort of system to get air in, they mix it with fuel, make it go bang, then get that air out as fast as possible so it can all start over again. Helping your new or old diesel engine to move air into and out of your engine is one of the simplest ways to make it operate more efficiently, with the fun little by-product being more power when you squeeze your right foot.

A free-flowing exhaust system won’t only sound a million bucks, it’ll also help those spent gases get out of there quicker reducing back pressure, and the associated heat that builds up as a result. On the cool side of the engine, an aftermarket turbo is a reasonably cost-effective way to give your diesel more air, so you can add more fuel, and get more power as a reward.

You could write literal textbooks on turbocharger theory and practice, so unless you’re jumping out of your skin to study stoichiometry, then it’s probably worth just having a yarn with a professional about turbos while you’re talking to them about catch-cans.

Make it all work together

If you’ve got the right hard parts on your diesel engine, and it’s fed nothing but a clean diet of fresh fuel, air, and oil, then there’s just one thing left to do. Make it all work together. In the old days, your friendly local mechanic would just wind the fuel screw in until black soot rolled out of the exhaust, dial it back just enough to clean it up, then send you on your way, assuming everything was hunky-dory.

But just like modern diesel engines have gotten more complicated, so too have the ways we tune them. There’s a few different ways to…err… shave that cat, but one of the most popular is essentially a pre-programmed box from a mob called Steinbauer designed to suit specific makes and models. These will piggyback onto the factory ECU, so leave no lasting changes, and typically bump power and torque up by around 20% while often giving a slight reduction in fuel consumption too.

You can pair the installation of this kit with a dyno tune, or rolling road as they’re otherwise known. This will physically run your rig up to speed with the wheels strapped to a roller and all sorts of diagnostic equipment plugged in. It’ll give the shop the ability to ensure all the modifications are working safely and reliably together and identify any preventative maintenance issues you’d otherwise by unaware of. Neat eh? There’s a whole list of diesel tow-tugs the Steinbauers suit so check ‘em out.