Dakota Sargent is one of our favorite up-and-coming engine builders for a multitude of reasons. Still in his 20s, he’s cultivated a remarkable diesel engine building business that’s pumped out several really cool Cummins builds over its three-year lifespan, thus far. Even more impressive is the fact that Dakota runs Fullhook Performance as a two-man operation with his sole employee Connor Bonham.
The shop is based in Indian Springs, NV, a small town just 30 minutes outside of Las Vegas. Its still relatively small, but it’s highly respected in the industry, with a strong presence on social media. Dakota has been steadily building a reputation for his work, amassing an impressive 10,000 followers on Instagram.
This is his third time in our Diesel of the Week series, and we implore you to check out his 12v and 24v engines we’ve already featured. The duo recently finished another 12v Cummins engine that is sure to turn heads.
This particular 12v will be going into an OBS dually truck that OBS Headquarters is building for next year’s SEMA show (2024).
“We fully build our engines from the ground up, and this one was probably one of the worst core engines I’ve ever been given,” Sargent told us. “It looked like it came from the bottom of the ocean when I got it, so it’s really come a long way.”
Sargent still uses Head by Rick (HBR Competitions Engines) as his go-to machine shop until he can do his own work. For this particular build, HBR balanced the rotating assembly, resized the rods, balanced the crank, line-honed the main journals, decked and o-ringed the head, and bored the block .020″ over using torque plates.
