Kevin Tetz’s Cummins-Powered ‘71 C10

WORDS BY JOHN MATA JR.

PHOTOS BY MACH1MEDIA

YOU MAY BE FAMILIAR WITH KEVIN TETZ’S NAME, BUT IF IT DOESN’T RING A BELL, YOU’D MORE THAN LIKELY RECOGNIZE HIS FACE OR THE SOUND OF HIS VOICE. Kevin has hosted and been a guest on many automotive how-to shows on regular TV, digital TV, YouTube, podcasts, as well as other social media outlets. His current show, “Hands-On Cars,” further shares his knowledge of everything related to building custom cars and trucks. This dude makes his rounds and has done a fine job throughout the years of sharing his expansive know-how with an audience of DIY-minded enthusiasts who are always looking to learn something new in the garage.

Kevin always his hands working on auto projects that are mostly performance-based since that’s just what he enjoys the most. When he locked down a ‘71 Chevy C10 pickup, the first thing that raced into his head was to turn it into a Pro Touring truck that would absolutely tear it up at any autocross course. While that might sound like a blast, it really isn’t exactly groundbreaking by any stretch—that is, until you hear Kevin’s entire plan. What he had cooking would attract more attention than that and would really be a large first step in the performance-centric C10 industry.

Instead of settling for an LS swap into his ‘71 Chevy pickup, Kevin set his sights on something a little larger in scale that would indeed be accompanied by a ton more labor and logistical preparation to get it to work. For this build, nothing less than a Cummins 5.0L turbo diesel engine would do, and Kevin so happened to have access to one, along with a matching Aisin 6-speed automatic transmission—both harvested from the same ‘16 Nissan Titan XD. Now, before we get too much further into this tale, the answer is YES. Yes, this idea is insanely awesome, a little bit bonkers, BUT not impossible, which is really what fueled Kevin’s fire to see this first-of-its-kind swap done, and done right.