DETROIT DEISEL SEEMS TO BE STILL RUNNING STRONG
As a mechanic over the past many years I have not worked on as manyDetroit’s as Cats and Cummins. Could this be reliability? Possibly. Looking back I can remember the old screamers, the engine that runs as good backwards as it does forward, the 92 series, what a big heavy engine. Could run wide open all day long and never miss a beat. Then came the Series 60. Looking a lot like the 3406 and 855 we all wondered if could keep up. It leaked less oil and this worried us, after all if aDetroitisn’t leaking oil it isn’t running. The series 60 did leak oil but not near as bad. The new DDEC system took a little getting use to, now we had electronics helping to control things and the seemed awful strange. I remember one of our fleet customers coming in and requesting information from the engine. He added a few of the S60’s to his fleet because of the engine monitoring and recording features. We plugged in the all so ancient Pro Link and attempted to read the trip data. Wow how impressive we thought. Little did we know where this was going to advance to and all the info we can read from the ECM’s nowadays.
I left the business for several years, watching the evolution from behind a desk and missing every aspect of the repair industry. Coming back into it with the MBE, I was amazed at how much the diesel engine had changed. I remember pulling the plastic covers off the side of the MBE and seeing a Mack ASET engine with the cam on the wrong side. Now the simple ECM was not only managing every single function of the engine, it was also talking to other control modules on the truck. We now have vehicle speed, automatic transmissions, automatic braking, traction control and stability control modules telling the engine how to react.
Now the newest of theDetroitline is the 2010 Detroit Blue Tec. Everything I have read about and know the systems it has, this engine is going to be top of the line in economy. It should and hopes to put more money in the drivers pocket and less in the fuel tank. It is incredible the fuel economy these newer engines have produced over the evolution of the truck engine. There have been many bugs to work out, but overall they have seemed to be quite reliable. Let’s see if the Blue Tec can gain the million mile award.
