Project Red Strokes: E-Fuel and Bronco Tank Upgrades

Project Red Strokes: Fueling the Beast

Every project reaches a point where appearances have to take a back seat and the real work begins. Project Red Strokes has officially reached that stage. The vision has always been simple: take a bone-stock 1997 Ford F-250 Crew Cab Short Bed 2WD and build the OBS Lightning that Ford never gave us. A truck that looks like it should have rolled off the showroom floor wearing SVT badges, but instead packs a 7.3L Power Stroke capable of putting more than 500 horsepower to the pavement. We wanted the right stance, the right attitude, and the kind of performance that leaves modern trucks wondering what just happened.

After months spent transforming the truck visually, it's finally starting to look the part. The suspension, paint matched front end, and overall styling have completely changed the personality of what was once an ordinary work truck. But looks only get you so far. Eventually, you have to open the hood and make good on the promise the exterior makes.

The foundation was already beginning to come together. A 4-inch MBRP exhaust gave the old Power Stroke some room to breathe while providing the unmistakable sound every OBS deserves. A Power Hungry Performance Hydra Chip opened the door to custom tuning, and an Edge Insight CTS3 now occupies the cab, giving us a crystal-clear picture of everything happening under the hood. As horsepower climbs, keeping an eye on critical engine data becomes just as important as adding new performance parts. Fuel pressure, boost, exhaust gas temperature, oil temperature, transmission temperature—you can't protect an engine if you don't know what it's doing.

With those upgrades installed, it was time to start thinking seriously about fuel delivery. The goal for Project Red Strokes has always been to eclipse the 500-horsepower mark while maintaining excellent street manners. Anyone familiar with the 7.3L Power Stroke knows the factory mechanical fuel pump simply wasn't designed to support that kind of power. Before ordering parts, we wanted to see just how bad things really were, so we installed a fuel pressure sensor and started gathering data.

The results weren't encouraging.

At idle, the truck struggled to maintain even 30 psi of fuel pressure. As soon as the throttle was rolled in and the engine was put under load, pressure dropped as low as 21 psi. Even on a stock truck that's less than ideal, but once larger injectors, more aggressive tuning, and additional airflow enter the picture, those numbers become a serious concern. Low fuel pressure isn't just a horsepower issue. It can shorten injector life, increase exhaust gas temperatures, create inconsistent fueling, and make tuning nearly impossible. Before we could even think about making more power, we needed to solve the fuel system.

That meant the factory setup had to go.

Ford's dual-tank system works great in stock applications, but unfortunately, it's one of the biggest bottlenecks on a performance-oriented OBS build. Every drop of fuel has to travel through relatively small factory lines before passing through the restrictive selector valve that switches between the front and rear tanks. That selector valve quickly becomes a limitation once fuel demand starts increasing. Rather than trying to work around the restriction, we decided to eliminate it entirely.

Both factory fuel tanks were removed from the truck. In their place, we're installing a much larger Bronco rear fuel tank that allows us to retain nearly the same fuel capacity while dramatically simplifying the entire system. The Bronco tank fits nicely in the rear tank location, eliminating the need for a selector valve altogether. The only downside is saying goodbye to the spare tire, but that's a compromise we're more than willing to make on a truck whose primary purpose is performance. Besides, deleting the spare only helps clean up the undercarriage and complements the lowered street-truck look we're after.

Simply installing a larger tank wasn't enough, though. An electric fuel pump can only move as much fuel as it can pull from the tank, and feeding a high-performance pump through a tiny factory pickup is like trying to drink a Coke through one of those little coffee stir straws. It kind of works, but you're making life much harder than it needs to be. So while the new tank was on the floor, we installed a 5/8-inch pickup tube assembly from Driven Diesel, replacing the restrictive factory pickup with something capable of supplying all the fuel we'll ever need. That larger pickup feeds the system through a massive 10AN hose, replacing the smaller 6AN inlet used with factory-style installations and ensuring the pump never has to fight for fuel.

At the heart of the entire conversion is Irate Diesel's Electric Fuel System kit, and it's easy to see why it's become one of the most popular upgrades for performance-minded 7.3 owners. Rather than piecing together components from half a dozen manufacturers, Irate has engineered an incredibly clean, complete package that takes the guesswork out of the installation. Their beautifully machined billet filter base serves as the centerpiece of the system, mounting the Super Duty-style electric fuel pump, a 10-micron water separator, and a 2-micron final fuel filter all in one compact assembly mounted neatly to the frame rail. Everything has a purpose, everything fits properly, and the installation looks like it could have come from the factory.

From there, the kit supplies every hose, fitting, and hard line necessary to route fuel all the way to the engine. A dedicated return line runs back to the factory return circuit near the steering shaft, while the engine receives an entirely new regulated return system utilizing a Fuelab regulator mounted above the high-pressure oil pump reservoir. The regulated return design constantly circulates fuel through both cylinder heads while maintaining a steady 65 psi regardless of engine load, eliminating the pressure fluctuations that plague the stock mechanical system.

Unfortunately, reaching those cylinder head fuel ports isn't exactly a five-minute job.

To install the regulated return system, the turbocharger, turbo pedestal, and up-pipe collector all have to be removed. Depending on the age and condition of your truck, that alone can consume an entire weekend. Four hours would be considered an easy day. Ten hours isn't uncommon if corrosion has taken hold.

We thought we had luck on our side. Our truck spent its life in Louisiana. It's remarkably clean, almost completely rust-free, and has relatively low mileage. Naturally, we assumed the turbocharger would come apart without much of a fight.

It had other plans.

Every fastener seemed permanently welded together after nearly thirty years of heat cycles. Bolts snapped. The up-pipe hardware refused to budge. The turbine inlet hardware became sacrificial, and before long we found ourselves cutting factory components apart simply to continue making progress. It's one of those moments every diesel enthusiast has experienced at least once. What starts as a straightforward weekend upgrade suddenly snowballs into something much larger.

Our original plan was to install only the Irate fuel system and immediately head over to Edge Products to make a series of back-to-back dyno pulls. We wanted to quantify exactly how much horsepower could be gained simply by maintaining a constant 65 psi of fuel pressure while changing absolutely nothing else. How is the torque curve affected when the fuel pressure is maintained all the way through the RPM range? It would have been a great real-world test showing just how much performance is left on the table by the factory mechanical fuel pump. Instead, broken hardware forced our hand.

Once the stock turbo system was apart, it made absolutely no sense to reinstall nearly thirty-year-old factory components, especially knowing the horsepower goals we have for this build. Sometimes projects choose their own direction, and this truck made the decision for us. Besides, we’d used a Sawzall and grinder to get this far, that stock stuff couldn’t go back in if we wanted it too.

Project Red Strokes will now receive a KC Turbos Gen 3 Stage 2 system, converting the OBS turbo arrangement for the Early '99 Super Duty configuration. It wasn't originally part of this chapter, but sometimes the best upgrades are the ones you didn't plan on making. We'll cover every detail of that conversion in the next blog article.

With the turbo finally out of the way, the rest of the Irate installation came together beautifully. New AN fittings thread directly into both cylinder heads, while precision-bent stainless hard lines route fuel cleanly across the engine before meeting at the Fuelab regulator. Additional hard lines connect the rear fuel ports to a tee supplied directly from the electric pump underneath the truck, creating a system capable of maintaining consistent fuel pressure regardless of engine demand.

While we were swapping tanks, we also installed a new sending unit. Since Ford never offered a diesel sender specifically for the deeper Bronco tank, the float arm requires a simple extension of roughly six to seven inches to allow the factory fuel gauge to remain reasonably accurate. It's a small detail, but one that's much easier to address while everything is already apart.

In the end, this chapter of Project Red Strokes wasn't the glamorous horsepower session we originally planned. There weren't any giant dyno numbers or clouds of tire smoke at least not yet. Instead, this was about building the foundation the right way. Reliable horsepower always starts with a reliable fuel system, and this Irate Diesel setup gives us exactly that. With unrestricted fuel delivery, stable 65 psi pressure, and enough capacity to support well beyond our 500-horsepower target, we've eliminated one of the biggest limitations of the OBS platform.

Sometimes the most important modifications aren't the ones everyone notices. They're the ones that make every future upgrade possible.

And with the fuel system finally ready, it's time to let this old Power Stroke breathe. Next up, we'll bolt on a KC Turbos Gen 3 Stage 2, then throw in some 238cc Full Force Diesel injectors and continue transforming this humble OBS truck into the diesel-powered street fighter Ford should have built from the very beginning.