Daman Perry has built a lot for himself in the short time he’s been in the diesel industry. The Orange County native moved to Fort Dodge, IA in 2011 and quickly earned his diesel technology degree from Iowa Central Community College. He began working for a company called Highway Truck Equipment where he’d complete welding, wiring and fabrication work on plow trucks and other vehicles.
On the side, Perry started working on co-worker’s diesel trucks in the parking lot. As more and more requests came in, he borrowed a friend’s driveway to complete more work. It eventually got to the point where Perry was working past midnight most nights after his full-time job, so he promptly left his place of work and opened his own business.
DP Customs opened its doors in 2019 and Perry hasn’t looked back. The shop does everything from oil changes to brake jobs to head gasket work and Allison transmission builds. Many of the guys that walk through the door are looking for performance upgrades for their drag racing and pulling trucks. Perry uses his personal truck as a sort of “mascot” to show what can be done at the shop.
He’s owned his 2003 LB7 Duramax since he was in college, and the truck has gone through a number of changes over the last decade.
“Back in the day it was just a stock motor with a drop-in turbo, dual stock pumps and stock injectors,” Perry says. “I upgraded some things after that and then bent all my rods a few days later. I sent the motor over to Dirty Hooker Diesel and they went through it and sent me pictures of all the bent rods and the three spun main bearings.”
DHD was imperative to the refresh of the engine, which came back as an LML block bored .020″ over with an LB7 stock crank. It features Fingers FOBCP oval bowl race pistons, billet mains, SoCal Diesel street rods and a 6480 alternate firing camshaft.
“We added a SoCal girdle, billet crank, flywheel, pushrods and rocker studs, and it has Kill Devil Diesel Stage 2 heads,” he says. “Everything’s bolted together by ARP 625 head studs. It’s also got a high RPM water pump from DHD, which has been awesome and super helpful to run. Then, to dress it up a bit, I have some other things like an HSP manifold, valve covers and up-pipes.”
