Dakota Sargent has a background in diesel engines, mining equipment, highways, highway trucks, and US Air Force mechanics, but light-duty diesel work has always prevailed. More than a year ago, he founded Full Hook Performance and is developing killer models like this compound turbocharged 5.9-liter 12-valve Cummins. check it out!

Diesel by this week

Dakota Sargent, who is only 27 years old, is one such person: Once he focuses on a goal, he will not stop until it is achieved, and to the highest degree. Considering that Dakota is less than 30 years old, he already has a rich and experienced working background, and today, his focus is on developing Full Hook Performance, a diesel business located outside Las Vegas, Indian Springs, Nevada.

Dakota started using diesel trucks after graduating from high school, when he was attending college at Northwestern Kansas Technical College in Goodland, Kansas. He graduated from a two-year diesel project with an associate degree in diesel technology.

"I worked in the truck shop after get off work throughout the school period to get myself through college," Sargent said. "After graduation, I moved to Harrisonburg, Virginia... I worked at Freightliner. I spent most of my career on road trucks on the highway. After moving back to Nevada, I started working in mining equipment. Worked as a field mechanic and workshop mechanic for several years.

"Now, I am currently a contractor in the U.S. Air Force as a mechanic and run Full Hook Performance after get off work. Our goal is to use Full Hook Performance to do my own thing full-time soon. We are really close That point."

Full Hook Performance specializes in manufacturing 5.9L 12 valves, P pump 24 valves, VP44 24 valves, and also does manual transmission work. In addition, Dakota also established the suspension department of Full Hook Performance to manufacture high-quality aluminum billet double adjustable control arm kits for Dodge from 1994 to 2013.

"Full Hook Performance can complete engine manufacturing, gearbox manufacturing, and suspension work under one roof," Sargent said. "In most of the engines we make, we don’t see trucks. Customers provide engines, and we build them to whatever power target they want. We will build them in-house and provide them with an engine. You can almost Feed newborn babies at any power level.

"The starting point for the suspension is my personal truck, a 98.5 Dodge with P pump 24 valves. Once it reaches 700 horsepower, I want to turn it into a street truck. It is lifted and on the highway Or it feels unstable when we do full-pull or similar things, so I want to set the truck back to the inventory level. I noticed the high-price, low-price industry's defects. The high-quality suspension parts for trucks ranging from 1994 to 2013 . As a mechanic, I can see things and point out the problems that I will change. I have been surfing the Internet looking for a suspension kit to restore my truck to the stock height with the control arm, but none of them caught my attention , So I did it myself."

You may have felt that Dakota has been running Full Hook Performance for many years, but he actually only opened this store in April 2020.

"I run my company as a small shop (30×25) rented from my friend," he said. "His son is actually my only employee, so only me and Anthony. He and I work 7 days a week, 18-19 hours a day. Anthony is only 18 years old, but this child is definitely a machine. No complaint, no matter how many hours we work, how late, how many days a week we work. He is always by my side, learning and absorbing as much knowledge as possible. I hope that in the next two to three years, he can be without my help Manufacture these engines under the circumstances. This is the goal."

One of the other goals of the store is to continue to develop the engine manufacturing business based on the current strong demand for Full Hook engine work. As this situation continues to increase, Dakota states that it plans to have more store space.

"I am building a new facility on my property and I can work full-time," he said. "My ultimate goal is to be able to complete all my engine machine work in-house, because I outsourced my machine work to a local Vegas machinery workshop called Heads By Rick (HBR competition engine). They do it for us. Every engine made has completed all our cylinder blocks, cranks and our head work. We have been using them for about a year, and we really like the work they have done for us.

"However, my goal for the next two years is to have my own machine for drilling, honing, deck and line honing blocks. I hope to be able to do all the head work by myself, because it is difficult to find a good mechanical workshop now. I just I hope my turnaround time is very fast and I can check every bit of work in our store with our name written on it. I want to know exactly what I did to it and know it is done right.

"Before I left my daily work and worked full-time, I was really trying to expand and really perfect everything, because our engine manufacturing really took off in the past four to five months."

Dakota recently completed the construction of a larger engine for his good friend Taylor Swanson, who owns the window tinting of northern Nevada in Reno. Last season, Taylor bought a mid-90s Dodge Ram 2500 single cab, long bed, and used a charger (S369), a Farrell Diesel 215 pump and 5×25 fuel injectors to run the truck, providing 785 horsepower . Like any diesel fanatic, Taylor thought of more power.

"We built a few trucks together, but there was nothing too crazy in terms of power scale," Sargent said of his friendship with Taylor. "After the season, he called me and said that some people were talking to him, so he was ready to go all out next season."

The engine is a 5.9-liter 12-valve Cummins. Taylor’s guy took it out of the Dodge 2500 and drove it to Full Hook Performance for disassembly.

"Anthony and I tore it off and sent it to HBR," Sargent said. "We are tired of 0.020˝. We chose some Mahle high-performance cast pistons with coated skirts. Josh McCormick's relief cut off the pistons for us. We used them on top of the pistons. 0.080˝ relief for valve clearance using Stage 5 Colt cam. Stage 5 cam is a 199/218 lift cam. We run a 1.45 common rail tappet in it to expand the footprint of the cam lobe. We TIG welded the cam gear And crank gears.

"We chose the Hamilton Stage 2 head with an oversized valve and a Hamilton conical valve spring. We were not 100% satisfied with the valve's work, so we finally modified the valve according to our own preferences. There was also a fire ring on the head.

"We ended up running some Dynomite Diesel Super Mental syringes. They made a custom nozzle for us. We have a Stage 4 Farrell Diesel 215 pump. It has an attitude regulator and a small addition to the Stage 5 pump. It has 5,000 rpm governor spring. We used Wagler Street Fighter rods with half-inch L19 rod bolts for balanced rotation assembly. Adam Aquino set these for us.

"We use MAHLE H series bearings-power and rod bearings throughout the engine. We have billet piston cooling nozzles and billet freezing plugs. We have a Keating Machine billet tappet cover with a baffle breather. We There is a Keating Machine one-piece billet bonnet. We made a Manton 7/16ths chromium-molybdenum hybrid putter with 24 valve balls and 12 valve cups. We used ARP 625 head nails. We also have a Gorilla belt at the bottom.

"Most importantly, we have a Steed Speed ​​T4 manifold with EvilFab Performance composite turbocharger kit. We installed S472 SXE side by side on the S488 SXE turbocharger. This is a V-belt, TIG welding, The all-stainless steel kit is also polished. The charger set by EvilFab is far more than a 1,000-horsepower charger, and the cam will really help winding and refueling."

Since the rebuilt 5.9-liter 12-valve will spin at higher speeds and have high boost pressure, Dakota hopes that the piston and valve clearance in the engine will be greater.

"With these chargers, the engine may easily reach pressures close to 100 psi, so we got thicker washers from XDP, so we have more valve-to-piston clearance," he said.

Cummins manufacture is also equipped with Fluidampr balancer and Keating Machine billet front cover, but the lift pump is an area that has received special attention.

"We need as much fuel as possible, so we decided to run dual AirDog 165 4G lift pumps," he said. "AirDog's Kevin actually bypassed the regulator on the pump internally, so they ran full fuel-over 300 gallons per hour-directly to the P pump. He also set up their new adjustable boost reference for us Return to the regulator.

"In our workshop, we use TIG to weld our own accessories to run high flow when returning, and return from 3/8 to 1/2˝ to the regulator. This way we can actually dial in us when idling The fuel pressure, and then once we enter the booster, it will always maintain the pressure without hot soaking the pump. This really strengthens our fuel game. We feed the P pump at the front and the side-an AirDog to the side Feeding, another AirDog feeds the front of the P pump, which really helps to cool the pump and deliver as much fuel as possible to it.

"We have also been running 1/2˝ back to the dual oil tanks. One of them uses the return stroke 1/2˝ from the syringe pump. The second port above powers one AirDog, and then the second tank powers the second AirDog Due to the internal bypass of the regulator, the return rate of the two AirDog backhauls is low, so we can merge the two regulated backhauls from the AirDog into one port on the sump."

In addition to all the advantages already on the Full Hook Performance engine, Taylor also needs some nitrite for him to use, so Dakota added a single stage, 200 times nitrite.

"I want to say that the truck will be completely reduced at every point of 750-800 horsepower, and the charger and fuel settings have already reached it," he said. "We set a power target of 1,000-1,300 horsepower. Before we need to upgrade to a 13mm pump, we will really limit the fuel of the Stage 4 pump, but we really want the truck to still have a street style, so if he wants to, He can take it out and tear it down the street."

Contributing to the performance of the truck is a complete gearbox manufactured by the local Reno shop. The gearbox is also equipped with a four-disc converter, Muldoon's fully manual valve body and a ratchet shifter.

Some finishing touches of the complete build include Full Hook Performance's dual adjustable billet control arms, elimination of vacuum pumps, gear-driven power steering pumps, complete wiring in the engine compartment, and moving the battery to the bed.

"This is a very good build," Sargent admitted. "It's a bystander. It can walk and talk. This truck is mainly a dedicated trailer, but he still has a complete interior and a complete bed. He will also take it to the street to play. We Air conditioning will be installed for the truck, so he does have luxury air conditioning for a 1,000-horsepower truck."

Currently, the truck does not have a cage suitable for the new horsepower on the track, but plans are being made to install the cage on the truck as soon as possible. In addition, Dakota told us that they built the entire device for this 5.9-liter 12-valve Cummins engine in just three days.

"We performed pipeline inspections on the entire fuel system, assembled the entire engine from a naked body, and were able to break the cam on my engine running rack, and then perform thermal torque and shoot it on the truck before the end of the weekend."

As you can see, Dakota has the motivation and determination to succeed in everything he does, and Full Hook Performance is our name, no doubt you will hear more.

"My goal in life is to do this full-time," Sargent said. "I know I have the will to make it happen. Once I make up my mind to do things, I won't really make inaction an option. I hope I can continue to do more badass builds."

This week, the diesel engine was sponsored by Amso. If you have an engine you want to highlight in this series, please send an email to [email protected] to Engine Builder editor Greg Jones

Diesel this week: 500 HP compound turbocharged 4BT Cummins engine

Diesel this week: 1,000-horsepower 5.9-liter Cummins engine

Diesel this week: 700-horsepower 6.0-liter Ford power-stroke engine

Diesel this week: compound turbo 6.4-liter power-stroke engine

Diesel this week: three turbocharged 5.9-liter 12-valve Cummins engine

Engine News: All Pro Limited late model series released in 2022

Engine News: Desperado World Sprint Cars Announces 2022 Schedule

Engine News: ARCA Menards Series 2022 Schedule

Engine News: Terry Mattox takes over as ASCS owner

482 cid Stack Injected Ford FE engine

Four-cylinder 2.5L "Polo" Porsche engine