Experience with Ford Diesel Pickup?

I don't know how the various models compare, but here's my observation:

The diesels that most comercial outfits purchase seem to rum pretty quietly. The ones sold to individuals seem to come with that exhaust option that makes them all sound like they have loose rocks in their crankcase.

Do us all a favor and order the truck without the rocks option.

Reply to
Paul Hovnanian P.E.
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The noise mostly comes directly from the engine block, not the exhaust. As for the current crop, the 6.4 in the Ford is one of the quietest, you don't have to shut it off to order at a drive through.

Reply to
Pete C.

Speaking of Diesel engines, a couple of days ago, I read an article which said in five years there will be some Helicopters using Diesel engines.I think I read about it at wired.com. U.S.Marines is, or was, trying out some Diesel engines Motorbikes. cuhulin

Reply to
cuhulin

Except for the fact that aluminum engines are much more easily damaged by even mild overheating episodes. Iron can take a pretty severe overheat in stride.

Plus there's limited clamping force a the head/block joint when aluminum is used for the block material, requiring more head bolts for equal clamping.

Plus I'm leery just because there are precious few medium-duty or larger aluminum diesels out there. I can't think of one, other than the Scorpion, in fact.

Reply to
Steve

Its only exhaust noise if its been modified. Most of the noise you get from a diesel is directly through the engine block. The Cummins ISB introduced in the Ram a few years ago is amazingly quiet. When Cummins switched to common-rail injection they were able to alter the injection pulse profile so that the "burn" in the cylinder ramps up pressure much more gradually and it COMPLETELY altered the way the engine sounds. I think the Ford 6.0/6.4 has a similar injectionprofile, but being Navistar engines they still sound pretty rattly (the old Navistar DT-466 found in a million school busses and dump trucks has to be one of the most distinctively rattly diesels ever, although brutally reliable).

Of course the first thing some diesel pickup owners do is change the exhaust out for one that lets you hear every exhaust pulse modulated by the turbo whine... which sounds REALLY cool for the first 10 minumtes :-/

Reply to
Steve

Dunno, I've got the 6.4, and with the 5,060# on the front axle with the truck empty, I don't think there is much aluminum there.

I'll let the early adopters buying V1.0 get stung by the Scorpion...

Reply to
Pete C.

Aircraft engines with their 2000 hour time between overhaul limits?

That's only 120,000 miles for a car engine at 60 mph overall average speed.

While the statement that "iron engines last longer than aluminum" is a gross oversimplification (and not even necessarily true for light-duty engines) I do think that its very questionable to use an aluminum block for a medium-duty diesel in a pickup truck that will undoubtedly see some pretty heavy towing use in the marketplace. At any rate I don't want to be a pioneer in that little experiment... I'd rather stick with a tried and true iron-block engine like the Cummins.

Reply to
Steve

They will probably see some new and interesting failure modes when the "more HP" kiddies start "tuning" those new Scorpions and getting stung...

Reply to
Pete C.

Not a fair comparison. The aircraft engines spend almost there entire lives between overhauls running between 70% to 100% of rated power. Most car engines spend 90% of their time running at about 15% power. And most aircraft engines are running just fine when they are overhauled, it's just that for safety they can't risk running on the tail end of the durability curve like you can in a car.

Reply to
Ashton Crusher

There's not. All of the current medium-duty diesels (Cummins, Navistar, Duramax) are iron block/iron head. The Scorpion is going to be all aluminum.

Possible- but on the other hand Ford got stuck on the 6.0/6.4 and has been testing the Scorpion for much longer prior to release than either of those were. I'll wait and see.

As for the "never adopt version 1.0" that really isn't always the best thing to do IMO. One of the very best vehicles I ever owned (my wife's

1993 Eagle Vision TSi) was an early build in the first year of production for the LH chassis, the gen1 3.5L v6, and the 42LE transmission. The only thing that ever gave any trouble in the 260,000 miles we had the car was the 42LE, and it lasted 150k miles (not terrible for a front-drive automatic, though nothing great by RWD standards). The difference there was that I'd done a lot of research on it, and everything looked very solid and nothing was all that far afield of what had been done before. The Scorpion diesel, on the other hand, is EXTREMELY far afield of anything Ford has sold, let alone built themselves, in the past. It may be the best thing since sliced bread... but I'll let someone else test the waters this time ;-)
Reply to
Steve

All true, except that I would argue that a fair percentage of pickup truck diesels will spend their lives running at a large fraction of rated power too. Not to the extent of an airplane (or worse- boat) engine, but still much more than any car, or the same pickup used as a commuter/HomeDepot runner. Lots of pickups really do get *worked* hard.

Reply to
Steve

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