Turbo development under load is all about airflow, density, backpressure, and heat—not just a boost number on the dash. On a long 7% grade at altitude, ATS needed to see what the engine, turbo, exhaust, and transmission were really doing while towing more than 30,000 pounds. That’s where the Banks iDash Pro fit the job. It pulls factory data, adds external sensor inputs when needed, and logs everything together so the team can study the whole system instead of chasing isolated readings. That matters when you’re trying to optimize turbine hardware and vane programming, because the goal is maximum usable air through the engine with controlled backpressure and stable temperatures. Instead of a cab full of separate gauges and handwritten notes, the data is recorded in one place and ready to review after the pull. For development work, that means faster decisions and better calibration. For truck owners, it shows why real data matters: the right information helps you catch stress early, understand what the powertrain is doing, and make smarter tuning choices under real towing conditions.
Clint from ATS outlines a repeatable mountain towing test they call the Gauntlet, a roughly 100-mile loop in Colorado used to evaluate durability and performance under extreme load. The route starts around Denver at approximately 6,000 feet elevation and climbs toward the Eisenhower Tunnel at about 10,000 feet. The truck is loaded heavily for the test: a Ram towing a fifth-wheel trailer with an additional trailer behind it, putting the combined load in the 30,000- to 32,000-pound range.
The route is intentionally severe. It includes multiple 7 percent grades ranging from about 3 to 15 miles in length, with the final climb to the tunnel being a sustained uphill pull of roughly 15 miles. Clint describes I-70 in this corridor as especially punishing because the combination of altitude and long grades steadily reduces air density while increasing thermal and mechanical stress on the vehicle.
The focus of this session is ATS's Aurora turbocharger program, which is offered in Stage 1, Stage 2, Stage 3, and compound configurations. For this run, the team is testing the Stage 3 turbocharger in a single-turbo arrangement after previously collecting baseline stock data and then testing the Stage 1 and Stage 2 versions.
Clint characterizes the Stage 3 as the largest single drop-in turbocharger ATS developed for this application. The goal is to deliver the desired towing and performance capability without requiring the added hardware complexity of a compound-turbo setup. This particular outing is not the first evaluation of the Stage 3; the team has made the trip many times and is now working through final design refinements, including hard-part selection and calibration details.
A major part of the test methodology is the use of the iDash system for data acquisition. Clint emphasizes how much easier it makes development work compared with older setups that required separate data recorders and numerous external sensors. By pulling factory data directly from newer vehicles, the system provides access to nearly every relevant operating parameter without extensive add-on instrumentation.
When additional inputs are needed, external sensors can be integrated into the iDash in groups of four and logged alongside the factory channels. That allows the team to review pressures, temperatures, and other operating conditions across the entire vehicle, including transmission-related data such as pressure and temperature. Clint describes it as combining the roles of a data recorder, weather station, and multiple standalone monitoring tools into one system.
During the run, only six channels are displayed on screen for live monitoring, but the system records everything in the background to an SD card. A blinking green light confirms that logging is active, eliminating uncertainty about whether the test data is actually being captured.
Soon after leaving Denver, the route passes through Morrison and into an aggressive initial climb that Clint says catches many vehicles off guard. Although this first hill is not especially long, it is severe enough to expose weaknesses in trucks that are already heat-soaked from highway driving across the plains. According to Clint, this section has contributed to many transmission failures and turbocharger failures in compromised vehicles whose owners begin climbing without paying close attention to temperatures or hardware condition.
That early grade serves as a practical reminder of why the Gauntlet is useful. It does not merely test peak power; it reveals whether the entire vehicle package can survive a real towing scenario in which heat, altitude, and sustained load combine to push every system toward its limit.
Clint explains that the engineering target is not simply maximum boost pressure. What ATS wants is the greatest possible airflow and air density through the engine. Boost remains part of the equation, but it is not the primary metric if it comes at the expense of efficiency.
With the Stage 3 turbo, ATS opened up the turbine section to reduce backpressure. The expected tradeoff is slightly lower boost pressure, but with a horsepower gain because the engine can move air more efficiently. In Clint's explanation, diesel turbocharging reaches a point where chasing additional boost no longer improves performance because compressor or turbine efficiency begins to fall off. Once that happens, the important factor becomes charge density rather than raw pressure.
The iDash helps quantify this in real time. It can display manifold air density directly, along with exhaust backpressure, boost, and other key parameters. That information is then used not only to choose the internal turbo hardware, but also to refine vane control strategy and trim-related calibration. Clint says the team has gone back and forth through multiple rounds of testing to determine the turbine wheel and vane programming that are optimized for this engine and towing setup, and they believe they are now close to the final combination.
After the first climb and descent, the route continues through one of the harshest stretches of I-70, approaching the Continental Divide. Clint notes that this corridor between Denver and western Colorado is one of the few places in the United States where roads consistently provide this kind of sustained mountain-load testing.
The most punishing segment is the climb to the Eisenhower Tunnel, which Clint calls the true Gauntlet. He points out that the tunnel has two names and that on this pass they are heading through the Johnson side. From there, the truck faces about 11 miles of uphill grade that, in his words, never seems to end. This is the section used to determine whether a setup is genuinely durable in real-world towing service or whether it still needs redesign.
About halfway up the Gauntlet, Clint reports several live data points that illustrate how the Stage 3 setup is behaving under heavy load. The diesel particulate filter backpressure is only 1.5 PSI. Boost pressure is 16 PSI, while drive pressure in the manifold is 46 PSI. He highlights the 1.5 PSI exhaust backpressure figure as notably low given that the truck is effectively at full power and running around 1,400 degrees EGT.
He also uses the data to show that the engine is not being overstressed thermally. Engine coolant temperature is 217 degrees, and transmission temperature is 174 degrees. In his assessment, those numbers indicate the powertrain is still well within a comfortable operating range rather than approaching a failure threshold.
The truck is also equipped with a separate air-fuel-ratio gauge used for real-time monitoring because that parameter was not yet available in the iDash at the time of testing. Clint notes that before adopting the iDash, the truck would have needed roughly 15 gauges to monitor everything they cared about. With the current setup, they are down to two standalone gauges, and he says support is underway to bring that remaining air-fuel-ratio data into the iDash in a future release.
At the top of the climb, Clint summarizes the result as a successful pull. The truck was able to run essentially flat-footed, wide open throttle, hauling more than 30,000 pounds up a 7 percent grade for about 15 minutes while maintaining what he describes as prime engine condition. Speed on the pass stayed in the 60 to 65 mile-per-hour range all the way to the top, even while pulling triples.
For ATS, that outcome represents the kind of towing combination they are trying to achieve: strong sustained pulling power, manageable temperatures, and durability under prolonged mountain load rather than a short burst of peak output. Clint notes that they could add more fuel and raise power further, but this exercise is specifically a durability test, not a maximum-power demonstration.
He concludes that the team is close to the end of development on the Stage 3 turbo package and its associated tuning. The SD card from the iDash now contains the complete dataset needed to continue refining the turbocharger package and make the final product better.