860 miles today. Just settled into my nest on the air matress close to Sioux City, IA.

I am going to be super-early getting to Atlanta. After all these years of cross-country trips I would have hoped to learn that it doesn't take 5 days to get there...

The really messed-up part is that 8 weeks after I get back home I am driving to Albany, NY for 3 days.

 

@BWST i knew there were some resources but I couldn’t remember where and I had lost them due to a computer reset (thanks Windows 11), thank you. I know we had talked about tuning back in 2024 and I had bought the software and Quarterhorse back then as well. Then the transmission in the truck started giving up later that year so I put it all on pause until I had a healthy transmission.

Bill has been amazing and actually provided me with some modified valve body tunes so I could compare them to the stock ones as well as answered some questions I had about his transmission tuning.

 

While I don't generally get to work on many of these anymore, I'm thinking I may have to put it on my calendar for a get the heck out of Ohio weekend for next year, assuming it continues happening. Come down open minded and leave with an even worse case of PMS.

 

Planning on going Saturday just to stroll around. Hope to run into some of you folks !

 

I think I'm the only only one in this FTE group here right now. I won't be here Saturday as I'm leaving early that morning for east-central Florida. Truck shows aren't my thing as the last one I went to led me to eventual heartbreak and emotional ruin.

PTSIs are a bitch.

 

Really? I figured some folks from here would be there. How has it been so far?

 

I've got another week away from home. I'll type up a big thing about it on my PC - not my electronic leash.

 

Gary McClenny did a video with Bill
Cohron

Interview with Bill Cohron of PHP Hydra about his new product that is hitting the market about right now.


Gary is the ADMIN and founder of

7.3 Powerstroke Technical Page

 

I walked in my front door about 45 minutes ago. I'll put some ideas down later this weekend as I am BEAT.

I went from east of Orlando, FL to south-central MT in two days and 5 hours. 1010 miles the first day, 1170 the second, and finished off the last 300 this morning (200 of which was ice). 2450 +/- miles total leaving 3/12 at 5:15 AM MST and ending up at home 3/14 at 7:45 AM MST.

 

Looking forward to your write up.

 

that was pushing it, waiting for you to recover and give us a synopsis of how it went.

I am soon heading to Atlanta, GA
a place I never want to drive through,
I try to catch the outer loop up to Dawsonville, GA but I miss it half the time....

Google says 14 hours, seems a lot longer than that to me....
maybe my 83 summers has an effect on me?

 

My experiences on the Summit 7.3 trip:

I left home on the 27th and drove to Cumming, GA. I have this bad habit of always arriving places too early but it worked out as I got to follow Bill around like a lost puppy for a day (the 2nd) while he made the Medusa display for the event. We went to rent a Ryder truck that afternoon in preparation for loading the vendor display/merch/truck show supplies on the 3rd. The 3rd was the day for loading the trailer, the Ryder truck, and stereo equipment for the presenter portions of the event. It was nice that none of Bill's team (all great people by the way) was upset that I wanted to get sweaty and help load the equipment/supplies as I am NOT fascinated by work and I can't just sit and watch people do it all day. By this time the callouses on my hands had already started to soften and that is unacceptable. That evening I met Bill, along with Aaron and Ward, at the conference center and we unloaded and set up the stereo equipment on the stage. We thought we'd have 5-10 minutes to hurry and just unload (due to time constraints at the conference center as they were supposed to be closed by 5 PM) but there was another group of people there using another part of the building so we had almost two hours to set up. Those two hours would have been a nightmare first thing on the 4th.

The 4th - Minotaur training day. Unfortunately I don't have a real positive experience to convey but it's NOT because of anyone or the fault of those involved. I was unaware that there was a "Basic" and an "Advanced" class. The advanced class had 6 people while the basic (under Andrew Arthur) had the remainder - at least 10 or 12 people. My opinion is that the class would be much more beneficial if it were ONLY one - maybe with co-instructors. This is no insult to those in either class but there weren't any questions or ideas from the advanced class as it turned out to be more of a B.S. session and a few what I would consider "basic" questions. I will be the first to tell everyone that I do not know everything about tuning these things but I have had PCMX-based software going on 19 years and Minotaur (PHP Tune) based on PCMX for nearly 17 years. I have immersed myself in it for almost 2 decades and nothing discussed in the advanced class would be considered as such. I did however, befriend Dennis Schroeder of Driven Diesel in that class by discussing a few technical issues of time-based features (or detriments) of the HEUI system in detail. We have quite a bit in common and he's genuinely a great guy to be associated with. I spent a few minutes chatting with Andrew Arthur too - he seems like a hell of a good guy and he's got a great sense of humor (and his beliefs are in the "right" place).

The first conference day (the 5th) started with a mad rush assembling vendor booths and unloading vendor products that had been shipped to PHP in advance. When the speeches started, it turned into a good day to learn about financial strength training and learning about how to incorporate business culture in your professional life and within your employees with many examples of a few successful businesses that practice "business culture" religiously. As mentioned earlier, I am the boss and the employee of my business so I guess I need to have a talk with my guy about his attitude and professionalism but he'll probably just tell me that I'm a ****ty boss. The second speaker of the day was a gentleman who covered the importance of proper diagnostics in today's repair fields. While he was entertaining, the subject matter is already something I think I'm pretty good at in my profession as-is.

That night, there was a get-together at a local bar with live dueling pianos (music/comedy) for a few hours. I sat with Dennis and a guy named Garrett from Pure Diesel Power (pardon me if I got that wrong) and we spent most of the night talking about music we know and like and music we don't know and don't like. The drinks were sponsored by Alliant Power but between me not being physically able to drink alcohol and the fact that my hotel wasn't "shuttled", I just watched the festivities. I had been awarded a "VIP Breakfast" with Kory Willis of PPEI at the end of the first conference day for the second day's start but I gave my spot to Garrett since he's actually IN the industry and I'm just a repair shop guy.


Oh, there was also a podcast-inspired sit-down with Vinny Himes and Kory Willis discussing current EPA rulings and issues in regard to false economy of the whole government system. His fights with the court system and government -imposed retaliation are all over the internet if you're interested in digging.

The second day started with a couple speakers who had very relevant topics about today's employee traits (younger people) and retention. The next one was Charlie Fish's wife Kacee whose presentation was more HR-focused on how to deal with workplace drama. My favorite speaker of the event was Mike Roberts from my table - CNC Fabrication's Business Development Manager. He gave a VERY insightful lecture on the ins and outs of developing a culture in business and how to expand on those principles. Charlie finished up the day with a fun non-scripted presentation encompassing all previous speakers' points.

I skipped Saturday's truck show as I had to go to Florida to visit a friend of mine from our grade school days who moved a few years ago.

In all, Summit 7.3L was a darn good insight into the business end of what small companies deal with on a daily basis. I really don't have a place there as I'm not in the industry but I made sure to pay attention and be involved with the process to support my friends Bill and Angela. I hope I represented the values of their operation while I was there (since I was wearing their shirts the entire time). I met a lot of good people, saw some pretty awesome products I never would have known about otherwise, and ate some really good food. On the other hand, I also met a couple of people that really rubbed me the wrong way...but we're all different and I don't have to see them or deal with them again.

I didn't sugar coat any of this. I might attend again next year depending on scheduling my New York trips (so long as they can keep happening but that's another subject). This year it worked out as the dates weren't overlapping as in years past. I feel it was good enough to keep going as there is a TON of great information being shared by many different people from very different walks of life and life experiences.

 

Did the mention when the Medusa will be available for purchase?

 

Care to elaborate on what Medusa is?

 

A "middle man" that hooks between php hydra and edge insight cts 3 that also you to change the tunes from the cts3 screen and get rid of the old hydra push botton selector. Supposed to have bluettoth built into it as well and they said will be able to load tunes to the hydra with Bluetooth off a phone app as well.