ENGINES, ENGINES EVERYWHERE

April 11, 2007 Vol. 3, No. 7

There’s no getting around it: this is a diesel kind of year. It sometimes seems that I write about nothing else,
and I won’t break the pattern here. The new International MaxxForce engines in big-bore form take pride of place in this edition of Product Watch.

But that ‘big bore’ phrase is a relative thing – like most folks, I use it to describe 15- and 16-litre motors, but
since Navistar’s engine lineup until now has stopped at mid-range engines, I’ll allow the point to be stretched a
bit. The company’s latest offerings are in capacities of 11 and 13 liters, and it may well be that they act like
bigger engines. It’s something we’ve seen before with diesels in that range, and I’d guess that the 11-liter
diesel of today is a stronger beast than it was 10 or so years ago.

A couple of features in these new MaxxForce motors are worth noting, mostly the common-rail fuel system that
allows very precise fuel metering at pretty high injection pressures – about 26,000 psi in this case, though others have gone higher in 2007. The system also contributes to quiet running, and since the new MaxxForce also has ribbing cast into the block, this is said to be a pretty quiet engine.

That comes with the engine’s European heritage, I should think, because noise is a much bigger issue over there than it is here. The basic engine and its block are existing German MAN designs, with the new top end and emissions systems being jointly developed by the two firms. It’s probably no coincidence that MAN has been using a common-rail system for some time, and when it switched its racing trucks to that technology half a
dozen years ago, it began to dominate the European Super Trucks series so dramatically that the other players
couldn’t compete and dropped out. Without the factory teams, the whole series collapsed. I’m simplifying things
a bit, but the MAN advantage was very clear.

We’ll see the newest MaxxForce engines on the street toward the end of the year.

IN OTHER INTERESTING ENGINE NEWS, Cummins has gone one better than everyone else by approving the use of B20 biodiesel blends in its 2002 and later emissions-compliant ISX, ISM, ISL, ISC and ISB engines. This includes the recently released 2007 products.

Cummins says it can upgrade its previous position on the use of biodiesel fuel, which was limited to B5 blends only, up to B20 for three key reasons. First, the American Society of Testing Materials specification ASTM D6751 now includes an important stability specification for B100 biodiesel. Second, the availability of quality
fuels from BQ-9000 Certified Marketers and Accredited Producers is growing rapidly; and third, Cummins has
completed the necessary testing and evaluations to ensure that customers can reliably operate their equipment with confidence using B20 fuel.