Mark Martin's "Hot Rod" Newell Coach: Huge Power Compound Turbo Cummins & Stories From The Road!

The motor coach for me is like my race cars were to me in the 80s7s in the 70s and 80s. I'm always thinking about how can I make this better? How can I make this work better? How can I make it look better? How can I make it function better? So, this is all custom fab stuff. Boost goes. I think what it really was is it was actually breaking the tires loose. No, I we don't need more power. We're fine right now. Now we're in the infield of Las Vegas Motor Speedway and this is the famous Mark Martin Newell. You know, I don't want to play any kind of competitive game. I'm I'm real happy living life and uh trying to be a lot more stress free. Still making your motor home fast, though. Yeah, but that's just fast up the mountains. I mean, you know, I I'm not interested in breaking the speed limit, but when I go up a mountain at 30 32 miles an hour, I can't hardly stand it. So people don't really get it. I'm not I'm not making it to be a hot rod to drag race or to go fast. I mean the you know these things they'll haul on flat ground but at 65,000 lb once you start up a mountain you know I mean you've you've been going along at the speed limit all this time and you've been passing all these people and you start up a mountain and all those people you pass are passing your back and you're going 35 m an hour. I just can't take it. So, I my deal is I want to go up the mountains at at the speed limit. I don't want to lose any speed once I start up start up a a mountain and and uh you know, with Jared's help. Standing here with the guy who facilitated all of the shenanigans going on with the engine here that make it extra special and we're going to learn all about it. So, we've done this on two different coaches for Marks and we've already done his new engine. I don't know if you've seen that, but there's new components we're doing on his new engine. So, some of the different things we did is we honestly started out with just the tuner and an intake. And the intake's on this side of the engine, and then we went to the add a turbo setup. The reason we developed the add a turbo setup that a lot of people don't understand is we let a bigger turbo drive the engine instead of having the smaller or the smaller turbo with a BGT that's very drivable yet on the top end and having high horsepower is very inefficient. So what we do is we change some some mapping around turbo mapping fuel mapping and then we develop the add a turbo that adds more boost has a bigger AR and pumps more air to the engine to make it more efficient. Of course had chrome and jhawk coated a bunch of the different applications that are on it. How much power does it make stock versus now? So these engines and we've done a lot of newles uh customers work at our shop and had them on the dyno. their consistency between f 490 to the tire and 510. Mark's engine, I believe, if I remember right, was right around 740 2480 torque, at the tire at the tire. And there's about a 10% to 15% loss in the drivetrain. even know the drive shaft's so short. Some special tuning to go along with having that much horsepower that torque management had to be managed differently than it would be on a normal coach with just a tuner or stock because it made was enough power. Mark was saying it sounded like it was tearing the transmission out so we had to do some special tuning there. Was it actually or was that the vibration caused by something else? Uh, we never seen any slip coats or anything like that, but I think what it really was is it was actually breaking the tires loose, even, you know, at a 60,000 lb uh, motor coach. Wow. You ever tried to do a burnout with one of these things? Recently, I've had a good bit of people tell me that they've been randomly unsubscribed from the channel. So, I just want you to check real quick down there. Make sure that you are. If you never were subscribed before, now is a good time to do that, too. And if you click the little bell, um, you'll get a notification when we post something. That way, you can be one of the first people to comment. And we are super interactive in the comments. They're too nice to do burnouts. But it would be it would be super cool. I think you might have to try that just to see if it does. You know what? if we could talk the driver of this coach into doing it, he'd be the candidate. Cuz like the first time I ever met Mark, we kind of got involved with him and his old coach, the white coach, and we had just put the add a turbo on it and he had somebody formally tune it before us and it was having major issues even after we got done. So I drove to India and we spent 2 days going back and forth up this hill and like I swear Mark thought he was in out here at the track and raceway cuz we'd get up along somebody and then we go out around you know other coaches or or semiis. Not only do we make incredible performance but we make better fuel mileage at the same time. And you know those guys he's got the the master fabricator. I I've never I haven't really worked with a fabricator with any more skills than than than Tyler there. So, uh he's a master fabricator and can fabricate things that that we need to function really well and look really pretty back there in the engine compartment. The turbo, exhaust manifold, intake, and then of course tuning. And now since this coach out is out, we've got all kinds of different chrome components that we're selling to a fair amount of different new or Cumins owners. So, is this like a like a traditional compound turbo setup for in terms of like, you know, people thinking about Duramax trucks and things like that? Is it is it are they fed the same way or do you have it fed exactly the same way? A lot of tuners out there do not use charge maps and different thing. we change charge maps. Uh these newer engine are actually measuring intake volume pressure that comes into the compressor side of the stock VGT. You know, there's a lot of guys out there that don't like the VGT, but in this application, the VGT works really good because of the exhaust brake and also drivability to make sure that uh you know, you get out on the road, but also have throttle response because the bigger turbo that that we manufacture is only good on the top end and in the medium. We don't use it at all in the bottom. We shut the veins down and let the actual VGT factory turbo do the drivability really. And that's the cool part is because you can have almost like a race car cuz the throttle response is there. And you know, granted, you're from the turbo market, right? You know a lot about turbos and gas engines. And if you get too big a AR, if you can't power break, you don't get off the line. It's hard to power break a 60,000 or 80,000 lb, you know, semi. So, that's the cool part about the VGT is we can actually tune it to make the drivability be good, but then once we get over about a certain uh boost pressure, we allow the big charger to do the work and the BGT opens up. Huh. That's funny you say that cuz I actually have tried uh like brake boosting mine and launching it and it does work. It doesn't have any nies on it that that limit you from doing that. Like I could launch that thing with like 10 lbs of boost that makes cabinets fly open and stuff, right? I don't know if these ones will let you even do that. Unfortunately, the way this one's tuned, we would have to turn torque management off to do that cuz it would and then we could break stuff. I mean, it's like turning, you know, 700 plus horsepower almost 800 flywheel loose. So, yes, there's there's that chance of load factor of breaking something, but you you could power break it if we made some tuning adjustments. I heard from somewhere, I forget who it was with it. Did Allison actually want to see the transmission files from this thing because it was handling more power than they thought it could? Yes. And Allison actually was willing to help work with PDI on a certain end of things to make it work for for Mark, but we ended up being able to do it through torque management. Wow, that's insane. You get the actual the OEM, it's like, "Hey, what uh what are you doing here?" Like, that's impressive, right? To get them interested like that. And and that's one thing that I believe that we have to offer that others don't is everything that we do is carb exempt, you know? So, we do everything through the Carberry source board. Our tuner, our manifold, turbos is everything ran through with testing. We spend millions of dollars at the te in in San Antonio at a test center and we pull the motors out with all the emission systems and send them out and have them certified. And even on the older motors as which you have a series 60 that actual tuning and manifold and turbo was actually got an exe executive order on it also. Really? So for the the um the gear heads in here, what could you show us on here that's like cool to look at like as far as like installation or anything goes? So this is all custom fab stuff. Uh on our trucks, we actually uh cast all this in over the road trucks, but because of this application, this is all handbuilt in house. Uh we do have about five newles we're going to do this year, including Mark's new one, my new one, and then two or three other customers. And we're going to probably print them out of aluminum. So, we'll actually have a robot print them out of aluminum and then they will be actual using pieces that are printed out of aluminum. I don't know what you can't see that's not cool. I mean, Mark is absolutely the cleanest guy I've ever seen uh with the chrome. You can you can get to Mark's place or anytime or anything that he does. And it's mint. We've done a his new engine for his new coach that's coming out. We painted it Viper red, so it's a lot darker red. And then there's a fair amount of different chrome pieces different than this. And then actually these are black accent. Black accent. And then this would be all black with a black valve cover. I'm I'm building one that's going to be a blue a blue engine with a some blue in the coach. And then like I say, it'll have all the goodies on it. And we're going to build them. The only thing that we're going to change is we're actually going to put uh intercooler between the turbos on this one to drop intake air temperature that will actually make it perform probably I think we can pick up another 20 horse and d near 100 footlbs of torque more efficiency. Huh. And Mark has had some issues originally until we came out with our new boots. These boots are rated at 550°. if you just take a regular boot because of the pressure, uh, they run a fair amount of temperature and he was like having a blowtorrch run through some of the just the standard boots. So, there is some stuff that goes along with it besides just the cool factor and look and the power that that we've had to make changes and R&D on our end, too. Where can people find more info about this stuff? ww.pdiesel.com or call us at 800511231. But the most important part, me and you've been talking back and forth through Instagram for some time. We need to get your coach up there and do a little tuneup on it and see how it goes. Yeah. I always wanted to put that thing on a dyno. Just wish we didn't have to drive to Utah to do that. Yeah. But maybe maybe whenever diesel prices come down or more people start watching these videos. Yep. Definitely want to do that. Jared just really has an eye for uh for the aesthetics piece of it as well. He's real meticulous. Got these beautiful show trucks. I mean, absolutely unbelievable. His trucks are crazy underneath the hood, all over, outside, inside, and everything. And so, he's been a great uh addition to my uh endeavors in making, you know, motor coach even better. the motor coach even better. So, I'm having fun with it. It's like u the motor coach for me is like my race cars were to me in the 80s7s in the 70s and 80s. Um I'm always thinking about how can I make this better? How can I make this work better? How can I make it look better? How can I make it function better? And so I'm always trying to improve uh and always trying to one up, you know, uh everyone else. And I enjoy the build process just like I enjoyed building new race cars every year. So every 3 years, um, you know, we I I do a new coach and try to take it to the next level. And this next one we're working on, it's going to be next level stuff. Is it going to be more powerful than this one? It's going to be more beautiful. No, we don't need more power. We're fine. In fact, we got it dialed back. It's however much you want. You know, once you get the the added turbo in there, I mean, you there's no telling how much power. So, you know, we've got it dialed dialed down nicely. Uh, so it's not about making more power once you get that added turbo on it. You know, you've got super cool exhaust temperatures because you're putting so much air through there and you can you can give it however much fuel you want in the programming, you know, and and make it whatever power you want. I'm not interested in going over the top. I just want to go up the mountains at speed limit. Do you do the gear ratio changes in this thing yourself? No. Cuz I Wow. We asked him about that and he said you did that. I was like, "What? You did that?" Well, I you know, I had the crew do it. Crew at knew. No, that is a monster. That thing uh you know that that is that is heavy. So, yeah, I've done I've done a lot of things like, you know, I revalved the front shocks three different times back in the day. Uh and I've just made it ride rougher and rougher and rougher and never really accomplished what I wanted to. So then I went back to the stock shocks and uh and we had bigger sway bars front and rear built for it and that did the trick. Um and I've had uh a couple different gear ratios in it. We really got the right gear ratio now. Um actually new told me that you know the the 430 gear was the gear and I'm like you're you're wrong. You terrible fuel mileage. it's not going to work. And I've got more power in mine than everybody else. I don't need that. So, we, you know, we had a 380 gear in ours when everybody else, all the other coaches were having 430s. Finally, I decided to give the 430 a try. And boy, were they right. And what was iron? So, it's cool to have people collaborate. I mean, the guys at New are like my race team. Sometimes they know more than I do and sometimes I know a little bit more than they do and we're able to collaborate and you know every once in a while I bring something to the table that maybe helps them or shows them a problem that I have and and the fix or they come up with a fix. Um they're incredible there. Their engineering is awesome to do it. Um and then when it comes to the engine stuff, Jared's 100%. All I tell him is we need more, we need less of this, you know, uh, more power, less fuel, more more fuel, whatever. We've been through this a good bit now. So, we've got it refined. We found the things that the tweaks that we needed to make since we originally did did this uh added turbo on the on the coach before this. So, um, it's u it's about uh about dialed in perfectly. Yeah. He was telling us about the time where you found the breaking point of those uh those boots. The boots. Yeah. What happened? What happened with that? Where were you whenever that happened? I I was on the mountain of course. Um what we really found was and I blew I blew the boots off multiple times. Uh, and what we, you know, what we found was we were making, uh, too much heat for the boot. And so, a standard boot would deteriorate under the heat, the uh, charge air boots. And so, the one coming off the turbo is the hottest one, and that one would would blow through the side. I got where I could, you know, pull over on the side of the mountain, and in 15 minutes I could have a new boot on it. I had all my tools laid out and all that stuff. And I had it had it happen multiple times until Jared had uh super high temp boots made, special made. So, we had boots that were made that were double uh double the temperature. And I haven't, you know, we haven't blown one off since, but the the temperature because you have a radiator on the side and instead of having a a truck with a radiator in in the aftercooler up front direct into the wind, you know, it's a little bit more of a challenge to cool this coach. And so our our intake air temperature would get higher, much higher in this than in like a a Peterbuilt or a big truck. And so you know, we had to do the we had to figure that out and then have the the boots manufactured. Now he's got now he's we've got it. I'm just trying to picture what the what the scene looks like. You're going up some mountain somewhere and and you you feel in the pedal that the boot came off. It just goes poo and the boost goes and you're just like, "Oh, let me get as far off the road as I can here." The first time I didn't really know what it was. It took me, you know, actually we creeped the first time and creeped and creeped and creeped and got over the top of the hill and luckily there was a rest area and I creeped it into a rest area. It would run about 10 mph and I got it to the rest area and then you know diagnosed it, figured it out and of course I carried spare boots with me and stuff and so I got it changed. But after that I was more prepared. I knew what tools it was going to take, you know, what impact wrench and had all my stuff geared up. And so, as it happened after that, you know, I I p could pull right over on the side of the road and in 15 minutes be fired back up and going again. But, uh, yeah, I'm mechanical. I mean, I get my hands dirty. This that's what I love about this is it's not all uh uh, you know, electronic. Like, I can't change the oil in our cars. I can't work on it. I I I don't even know where to start. But this is still mechanical. I can still get my hands dirty. I can still work on the engine. I can still change the filters and oil myself and work on the generator and do a lot of things. So, there's still a lot of stuff that I can I've worked on the suspension before. I've changed the sway bar uh um boots or uh bushings, sway bar bushings uh you know, a couple times on different coaches and done different things. So, uh, I enjoy that. It's It takes the place. Everybody has to have their thing. That's my thing. That's my golf game. People don't understand, don't you golf? No, I don't want to golf. I rather go work on my motor home, you know. And it's weird to them that I want to go work on my motor home. Well, it's weird to me that they want to go golf. Yeah, I relate to that. If you want to see how these newles like marks get built, we have a video inside the factory. It's under the new motor home playlist, but I will also link it in the description. So, go watch that right now. It's pretty freaking cool. And our tour guide is actually Josh Snider, who some of you may know as referenced on Dale Junior's podcast from all those those old stories. Josh is from Morsville now. He works at New. So, there's your tie there. If you like the shirts and hats we're wearing in the video, like this one and these, you can find them at stapletonautoworks.com. If you'd like to support the channel, we got stickers and stuff, too. Check it out. If not, won't hurt our feelings. We're just glad you're here either way. And if you never been here before, you got to check out the rest of the channel. There's all kinds of cool stuff on there with his racing history. Got videos working on the new. Um cuz I have one, too. It's just old. It's a 96. That's actually kind of uh how I got to know Mark was through my new and new world and all that came about way before us ever living in North Carolina or doing anything with NASCAR. So, there's a little fun fact of the day. Don't forget to go watch that factory video if you haven't seen it before.…