Season 2, Episode 65 - Have You Heard? The Latest In Truck News (Ford Ranger Sport Truck, Ram, and Volvo)

 

 

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Holman & Lightning (0s):

Hey Lighting, Have, You, Heard. No new

Intro (5s):

The truck show. We’re gonna show you what we know. We’re gonna answer What? The truck, because truck rides with the truck show. We have the lifted. We have the lowered and everything in between. We’ll talk about trucks that run on diesel and the ones that run on gasoline. The truck show. The truck show. The truck show. Oh It’s the truck show with your hosts Lightning and Holman.

Holman & Lightning (42s):

This episode of The Truck Show Podcast Have You Heard is proudly presented by Nissan with the Frontier Titan and Titan Xd. Nissan has a truck for every need, along with the legendary Nissan durability Test. Drive your next truck at a local Nissan dealer today, or point your browser to Nissan usa.com where you can use the build and price tool to configure a Nissan truck that fits your lifestyle. And when you’re thinking about adding power or improving fuel economy, Banks has over 65 years of experience. Whether it’s cold air intakes or exhaust systems tuning, throttle control charge, air cooling, lubrication components, and much more. No one offers smarter, safer, 50 state emissions compliant performance parts than Gale Banks. You’ll find the best engineered parts for your truck at Banks Power dot com.

Intro (1m 26s):

This is the show where they talk breaking news and This is the part where Cole has Lightning. Have. You Heard.

Holman & Lightning (1m 34s):

Hey, Lightning. Have. You Heard. Yes. No, no. I actually haven’t. So lighting from the annals of, we won’t get that here. I think I found a truck that you would want if we can do that here. All, right? You’re good at that. You’re good at showing me little tiny miniature trucks that I want so bad. And yet we’ll never arrive on these shores. Okay. How about the new Ford Ranger? MS dash rt. Ms. Dash rt Miniature, I don’t know. What does this stand for? Miniature sport. Rally truck. That would be bad. All, right? Lowered and wider. It’s a street truck that was created by Ford’s m Sport rally team.

Holman & Lightning (2m 15s):

And it’s only available in Europe. But wait, I know you’re giving me the, the O face. You’re like, whoa. Yes, but, but you haven’t heard the best part. This has got Lightning written all over it. Yes. Tell me more please. M Sport made the Ranger 3.2 inches wider on each side. Yes. Is it just fender flares? There’s a body kit. Yes. There’s 21 inch wheels wrapped in Conti Conti Sport Connect tires. Okay. A track that’s 1.6 inches wider than normal. Yes. A better stance because it’s been lowered 1.6 inches. Yes. And a rad front fascia.

Holman & Lightning (2m 55s):

How about a three liter turbo diesel V six with 237 horsepower and 443 pound feet of torque I mean that’s not that much backed by 10 feet. You worked for freaking Banks. You don’t think if that truck came here Yeah, you wouldn’t just, Gail, wouldn’t I mean turn the wick up on it? Maybe if, yeah. Yes. So what? Don’t worry about that. I care about the stance. Yeah. Can I see it? 10 speed automatic? Yeah. Let me see. Lemme see. Lemme see. It’s a Ranger Street truck. Hold on You just sit back there. A Ranger Street truck. I’ll put it on this screen. Where? All right? All right. I’m damn ready to, okay. Ranger. mss. RT. So that’s Ms Dash rt for those of you who want to go out and search for it, the max payload is still 2200 pounds. So still a ton. It can tow up to 7,700 pounds.

Holman & Lightning (3m 36s):

So that’s a lot. Yeah. And. it looks way better don. Don’t know if it rides better, but it’s got super deep front seats with like bolsters that go out to the dashboard. Like Ricardo Styles like racing seats. Yeah. I mean they look like Ricardo’s don don’t know if they’re actually Ricardo’s, but they look really awesome. So who’s this built by Ford? This is all four. Yes. What? You don’t get it here. You don’t get it. You don’t get it. I need it. Do you wanna see a picture? You don’t get it? Do you wanna see a picture? Yes, yes, yes. I’m putting it up on the Yes, please. Putting it up on the pod shed TV for you right now. All. right, dude. Dude. I mean that looks pretty rad, right? That looks great. It’s not nearly low enough, but that looks wonderful.

Holman & Lightning (4m 17s):

Those aren’t just fender flares. Those are, it’s very, they bulge out the way My TRX Well it’s almost, yeah, it’s almost like a, a raptor, but it’s more street than It is off road. Yeah. I still, it’s got four inches too much gap. So Yeah, you could definitely put a soda can in there. Yeah. Way too much. Do what you want. Listen, be on the ground. The best part about It is you have a, a great platform to start from and it’s, this is on the new body style Ranger. I think it looks great. That looks great. It really does. I think they did an awesome job on it. Those wheels look aftermarket. I I like the wheels. Yeah, they, they’re very cool. So anyway, I just wanted to tease you. That’s a good looking truck. It’s a great looking truck. Wow. Seriously. And we and we get it here when never.

Holman & Lightning (4m 59s):

No, no, no. That’d be half past. Never. I We’ll try and get it up on our, on our social. Dave, are you listening? And you can guys check it out. I, I honestly, I wanna know what your feedback is on it because I know there’s a ton of people from Ford who listen to the show and maybe we just need to start a campaign to get this thing over here. And I know we’ve talked about the Maverick having a sport truck version coming out ’cause it’s been caught in spy photos. But dude, come on. Come on. This is the truck people want telling you sport trucks are coming back. Put the Raptor engine in it, right? The three liter gas twin turbo V six. Yep. And do this exact package. And the Americans would buy the crap outta those things.

Holman & Lightning (5m 39s):

I got a winner. Yep. But here, here’s the thing about it being a little bit taller than you. Like, you don’t have to slow down for speed bumps or anything. It’s still a truck. No, no, no. It’s still toes haul. They’d be gorgeous on the ground and with arch power train would haul ass. Yeah. No, this, these, these wheels tires need to be tucked. That looks good. Dang. And look at the, the, the lip on the top of the little duck bill Spoiler on the back tail. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, I like it. Oh, it’s good looking. Hey lighting, Have You Heard. No, no, I have not. Some specs have been leaked on the fifth Gen Rams website about the 2025 Ram 1500, which as we all know, will no longer have a Hemi V eight.

Holman & Lightning (6m 21s):

Yeah. That’s gonna have the straight six hurricane. And I believe there’s some spike photos this past week of the RHO. And where yours says 6.2 liters supercharged. You like how the, on the hood it says you like how the the the gaffers tape had like peeled off. Yeah. And it said hurry. Yeah, which I think is kind of funny. They should call it the H cane. But then I guess that’s that old, that’s the stick that old people use that they get off daytime tv. The hurry cane H cane. I haven’t heard that before. Yeah, it’s this like a cane that helps you walk faster. But I’m thinking they should have called it the hurry cane in the, anyway, doesn’t matter. You’re not getting my reference. So no don don’t. Moving right along. The high output version of the engine will be making a 540 horsepower and 521 pound feet of torque.

Holman & Lightning (7m 4s):

And that will be on premium fuel according to the owner’s manual. All the high-end vehicles are using premium these days. Nine one. Yeah, but, but here’s the good news. The three six pennis star V six, which is the base engine, you can still use 87 or 89. And then the non-high output, which is a hundred 20 horsepower, less than 52 pound feet torque, less runs on regular also So I. Think the, the big thing will be how much more fuel efficient is it than the outgoing Hemi V eight. If you look at the grand wagoneers a comparison, you’re probably one or two miles per gallon better with the new engine. So we’ll see. I, I want to see someone like HB Tuners break into the CCM and try to best the TRX 7 0 2.

Holman & Lightning (7m 45s):

Do you think that’ll happen at some point? I mean we did that reel about it and I think there’s a super high output, not to steal from Ford’s show Natu, but I think there’s a higher output version of the hurricane coming. We’ve talked about on the show before. That block is good to like a thousand horsepower or something like that in Crate engine for him. I guarantee you somebody could do a 750 horsepower because Tim Meniscus, who’s still running Ram, he was the Hellcat everything guy. Yep. I mean, come on, Tim’s not gonna be like, oh well Raptor R is beating us. He’s gonna go hold my beer or hold my oil can or something Two. Yeah. Adding 200 horsepower over this launch edition. Interesting. That’s a lot. so we will, we’ll see, we’ll see what the, what they do. But my guess is that there is a, a higher output version coming.

Holman & Lightning (8m 28s):

Okay. Hey lighting, Have, You Heard. No. Nope. In other Ram news, there is some scuttlebutt about the updated Ram HD being shown later this year. But don’t get yourselves super excited. I don’t believe it’s gonna be based on the 1500 DT cab. Really? But it might be I mean it’s still a dj, which is the old body style. Now even though the cab looks the same, same as the older truck, there’s way more high strength steel and price. You’re saying Hold on a second, you’re saying that that I don’t think it’s a full redesign is what I’m saying. Oh, okay. I think it’s a mid-cycle refresh. Now is this the one where they ditched the Cummins? Do you wanna get into that?

Holman & Lightning (9m 8s):

I mean it scare everybody. don don’t think they’re I doing it now, but I know that there’s been discussion. What goes in its place? I Think we need to do some research because there to be Do you think Cummins is out? I think Cummins is out At what point? I think they’ve gotta be considering the bloodbath, like the, the betrayal that the fans will feel. Oh yeah. They would all walk away from Ram instantly. They’d be like, no Cummins, I ain’t going but I just have a, something tells, and I don’t know this, I don’t know this, but my gut tells me that they’ve wanted to part ways for a while and like the recent emission scandals are, are gonna force things.

Holman & Lightning (9m 58s):

Probably probably not, not helping that. Not speed that up. Well the 2025 Ram 1500 and cut Cummins is Hold on the, the 2025 Ram 1500, which is coming out now. So the, the journalists are driving it currently that has some exterior design tweaks and bigger screens on the interior, new trim levels, all that kind of stuff. You know, there are new powertrains over the year updates, blah blah blah, blah, blah. Do I think that the heavy duty is getting some of that? Sure do. I think it’s gonna get the current cab on the 15. Now people ask me all the time, when is the 1500 cab coming to the heavy duty trucks? And the reason they didn’t do it at launch was ’cause they only had so much money. I think people think that the That’s the same cab.

Holman & Lightning (10m 39s):

Yeah, it’s not, it looks so identical. No it doesn’t. No it doesn’t. At first glance It does. It does. So, okay, so Ford and Chevy all look the same at first glance too. Okay. But if, if you’re the nuance of of a truck eye, they know, they totally know that that’s the old cab and the 1500 has a new cab. I don’t know that the 1500 cabs coming to the heavy duty, although it should. But that would be a completely new redesign because I think the mounting points are different and the frames are different. Like the, the DS to DT frame is a different frame and all that kinda stuff. So, I don’t know. don don’t know. I wish I knew Engine. I’d like to tell you guys. Engine, where are they gonna go for an engine?

Holman & Lightning (11m 19s):

That’s the question. Who would supply? Does it lantis? You think so? The Cummins has some Yeah, I They’re not changing that soon. No, no, no, no, no, no. I I I mean of course they’re not gonna change it for this. The six for this refresh, the six four is going to be the same gas engine. I understand that And it You’re not gonna get the six, the the six cylinder hurricane and heavy duty. No, no, I get that. The six seven Cummins gonna be for this refresh if that’s what It is. I’m saying ultimately in say 2027. What’s that? Ram heavy duty power I don by I. don, I I think you could take the current Cummins six seven and you could put the, the eight speed behind it. ’cause ZF had a eight speed and I know they had some mules and stuff like that. Yeah, you could put the eight speed and that would transform that engine and make it competitive.

Holman & Lightning (12m 0s):

I understand that It would but it’s still the same block. And it, same pistons And it. So it’s just how much extra power do you need? It’s not about the power. Everybody just said what, how, how Can you say that, but it’s not just about the power, it’s, it’s about how do you EA little more power out of it and still retain the emissions. We talked about like the 8.3 liter gm. I get it. Yeah. But if you’re using a multi-speed transmission, you can keep the revs in the sweet spot, you know, more often. But that doesn’t but absolutely changes emissions. No, no, but you, you Can you can keep the sweet spot. Yes, but you can’t increase horsepower because you’d have to add more boost which adds more compression, more cylinder pressure, which equals more knocks All.

Holman & Lightning (12m 41s):

right. So what engine is it gonna be? I’m curious. What do you guys think? So Lighting doesn’t know. No I don’t. Truck Show Podcast at gmail.com. Do com Do remember we used to have Mr. X’s who used to send us stuff. Listen, if you know something and you wanna get it out there and you want us to talk about it, just shoot us a little note. You can, your subject line can be Mr. X, we won’t out you, it’ll be all secretive and we’ll tell everybody what you know, truck Show Podcast at gmail.com if you know something about the new Ram heavy duty engine. Because if you know something you’re not supposed to talk about, I I just, something tells me it’s gonna surprise us.

Holman & Lightning (13m 23s):

If you know something, say something, say something. Let us know. ’cause we, we, I guarantee you there’s some testing going on. I just feel it. Will it, are these engines being developed inside of Stellantis or externally inquiring minds? Want to know truck Show Podcast at gmail.com Hey lighting, Have You Heard. No. Oh, no, I have not, I know this isn’t necessarily our core wheelhouse, but Volvo just released some information about their new D 13 inline six engine, which has a maximum torque output of 1,850 pound feet. You know, you love those commercials. Volvo has some amazing commercials for their big rigs.

Holman & Lightning (14m 4s):

Well check this out. you feel like the CEO is always hanging by his hard hat like dangling somewhere like connected to a truck on a giant crane? Have you seen those? I haven’t. Okay. But what I have seen is that Volvo has what they call a waved piston crown design. So I guess they introduced it back in 2016, but they’ve used computational fluid dynamics in order to make it more efficient. And so now these, the, the piston crowns have these odd ridges and so they’re around the radius of it and the fuel injector nozzles basically spraying the valleys between these ridges. So have you ever seen a Volvo piston before? No. Check that weirdness out. Lemme stretch it. It looks like a Wheel, like if you were to look at the top of the piston straight on, it looks like a sped Wheel.

Holman & Lightning (14m 48s):

Yeah, that’s very interesting. like a high offset spoke Wheel. It does remind me though of the new duramax piston, but without the, the rigids, the spokes. But that’s the whole point of This is the spokes. That’s the whole reason of existence. Very interesting. Do you know who I’m working on as a guest by the way? I do not a professor at Clemson. Okay. They have inserted thermocouples into the piston so they can measure the temperature of the plumes of fuel as they’re being injected and exploding or or igniting in the bowl of the piston. When the piston goat travels down the boar for just a few milliseconds, it charges and then it goes back up.

Holman & Lightning (15m 35s):

It’s fascinating. They’ve got a wireless charger in the boar and the bottom of the piston. And when they get close it charges And, it goes up, it measures the temperatures, it goes down, it charges, it goes up and measures again and then transmits it out the side of a block with an via an antenna. It’s fricking fascinating that this university is doing this and they have an amazing laboratory, a dyno cell, so well we love content from inside laboratories. So they are studying how the fuel ignites diesel in this particular case and they’re getting into like a alternative fuels. So that would be a fascinating discussion. So continuing with the Volvo story, this is on the drive, talks about how Volvo had had modeled the flow inside the combustion chamber, but then they found that with traditional piston crowns, when you spray the fuel from top dead center of the combustion chamber toward the cylinder walls, the the flame front goes toward the walls before coming back and then it leaves unused oxygen in the center of the chamber.

Holman & Lightning (16m 35s):

Yes. What they did was they rid, you know, they have these ridges, radial radially and then the fuel injector nozzles spray in these valleys. And that creates these flame fronts that move toward the cylinder wall and then reverse back to the middle. So the original ones I guess had six segments and the upgraded version has seven. So interesting that they changed the design slightly on the new engine and then that required another, another nozzle in the fuel injector. And then that allows them to divide output of the injector into smaller, more controlled doses according to Michael fibo at the drive. So obviously we know precision control is is huge. So they say that these upgrades improve fuel economy by 2%, but cut so emissions in half, which is pretty incredible.

Holman & Lightning (17m 20s):

That’s that’s a lot incredible. Yeah. So Gail frequently talks about swirl, right? Because as the piston comes up, the bore And, it compresses the fuel and ignites it’s swirling around. And this sounds like it might be potentially stopping the swirl sw or maybe not swirling like a toilet bowl, but, but coming in on itself, like turning the swirl on its side. Maybe that make sense. Almost like a, a nuclear explosion that you see like, yeah, curls around like a, like a, a mustache. So they also changed the turbo in the new D 13, so it’s smaller. And so Max torque used to be between 1300, 1500 RPM, but now this engine starts making peak torque at a low, low, low 1050 RPM and actually maintains it all the way through 1500.

Holman & Lightning (18m 8s):

So Volvo says every a hundred RPM drop while driving is a 1.5% increase in fuel economy. That’s amazing. So anyway, there’s a whole bunch of interesting stuff about the what happens after the turbine section of the turbo goes on. So go to the drive.com and, and check out the, the story. If you’re into big rigs, Holman, does it surprise you that companies like Volvo and so many others are still investing so much money while doing the EV thing, but in ice, like still trying to perfect the science of internal combustion? I think it’s cool. I think people realize that internal combustion is still needed for a long time. The EVs make sense in last mile of delivery school buses, things like that.

Holman & Lightning (18m 52s):

But they’re not, in my opinion ready for primetime cross country All, right? Lightning, I put something up on the screen in the pod jet for you. Why are you on screen and why are you so, wait a minute, what is this about a Keystone big show? What are you doing All? right, so Keystone hired me to go to their big show, which is like a mini SEMA Keystone’s, a giant company that is a distributor for a bunch of aftermarket products in the industry. And they do this show for all of their, basically the manufacturers and their customers and it’s like a mini SEMA. And so every year they, they open up the show with like a discussion or a panel. It’s like the the big boom deal.

Holman & Lightning (19m 33s):

And I get to be your your moderator on that. You are moderating a panel. I am moderating a panel That’s actually really interesting. So what we are calling the panel is the revolutionizing the ride, the relationship between OEMs and aftermarket accessories and the automotive landscape. And what that is is, you know, we’ve had Sheldon Brown on, we had the guys from GM on, we’ve had Nissan on talking about collaborations with Bill Stein and Fox. And so many times we’ve spoken to these executives at the oes and it’s so surprising and cool that they’re excited to work with the aftermarket And it actually embrace the aftermarket. You’d think that they would be, you know, fighting with the aftermarket, but surprisingly not so much. Well so that’s the question, right?

Holman & Lightning (20m 13s):

So you’re gonna have a lot of shops and jobber there. So the point of this panel is to talk about how these halo vehicles affect, is there a downstream effect? Should you be afraid as a shop owner or as a manufacturer that the OE have partnered with these people and now there’s nothing, no meat left on the bone for you? Or is it like our conversation about Raptors, right? You go get a Raptor, you’re not gonna stop modifying it or maybe you can’t afford the TRD Pro, so you get the TRD off road, there’s still room to, to court that customer. And so this whole panel is around the aftermarket and what it means to basically the end consumer and the jobbers and the shops and, and so we have this great panel. So the panel, I’m really proud to be moderating it.

Holman & Lightning (20m 55s):

It’s our buddy Mike Bagla, president of SEMA. I’m not familiar with Mike I mean he, that’s a, that’s a pretty big name. How about the, the Chief Growth Officer for Real Truck, which obviously is a massive player in the aftermarket. Tony Ambrosia and then Brad Aikens from Aikens Ford and Wild Willie’s Custom Accessories representing the independent retail sector. So the panel should be pretty cool because it represents all of these companies and interests to kind of educate shops on what’s coming in the future. So I’ve got a bunch of questions lined up, So, it should be a really awesome panel and I just wanted to let you know that if you don’t hear from me from three or four days, I might be in Florida. Wait it, the panel is just a couple hours on one day.

Holman & Lightning (21m 38s):

Why will you be unavailable for four? No, I was just thinking about enjoying my stay in Free America for a couple extra days. That’s all where you can get your hands on some Cuban cigars and High-end hooch. Well, that’s actually in my writer. So yeah. The Truck. Show Podcast is a production of truck famous LLC. This podcast was created by Sean Holman and Jay Tillis with production elements by DJ Omar Kahn. If you like what you’ve heard, please open your Apple podcast or Spotify app and give us a five star rating. And if you’re a fan, there’s no better way to show your support than by patronizing our sponsors. Some vehicles may have been harmed during the making of this podcast.

5 (22m 19s):

Everything looks safe here.

6 (22m 22s):

Not so fast. Chris. Look closer.

5 (22m 25s):

Aha. The microwave is running unattended.

6 (22m 28s):

That’s right. And there’s a can of paint thinner inside.