The last two cummins I drove have not been worth any thing other than noise makers compared to the 96 CAT I had, and the 00 CAT I have now.
I know every body says cummins is better. But not all of em are!!!!!

__________________

The only good engine is one that doesn't brake down on the road!

__________________

Holy **** I can't believe anyone would vote Detroit as best fuel economy ?!?!

I've never been able to get it with Detroit. Usually 6.2 or less. Most times less.

__________________
.
Team Players.....
It's hard for me to play professional team sports. On a minor league salary.

Best mpg of the current big 3 is the Cummins ISX, a motor I don't like. The engine is efficient because it reduced upper engine parts and had less internal friction.

All of the engines have problems, some are due to driver error, some are due to them being mechanical devices, none of which are perfect. I was told that the N-14 shouldn't be revved over 2200 holding back on hills; I have driven Red Tops that would top that easily without breaking a sweat on acceleration, others wouldn't get over 1800-1900 no matter what. I drove older Cummins with or without jakes, the Detroits I have driven have been better motors overall than the Cummins, they may not have been the first up the hill but they went further on a gallon of fuel than the Cummins.
They also had less leaks despite the nickname for Detroits of Driptroit. On the same line, Cummins are Come-aparts, and Caterpillars are Crapterpillars

I would buy what I thought I could make the most money with, I don't care about how they sound, more about how they run.

The engine thing has been complicated recently by emission considerations and the fact that you might not be able to get your preferred engine in your preferred truck. Cummins considered Detroit competition and then stopped selling Daimler (Freightliner, Western Star, Sterling) Class 7-8 engines, but they are still selling them the smaller B and C engines for medium duty trucks.

Dealerships are specifying trucks that can get better mileage if they are properly driven, that means learning to operate the machine instead of just driving it. There is a Freightliner dealership pushing the C13 Cat in such a manner, it is lighter in weight than the big Cats and the way they spec it, if you drive it right, you can get better mileage than the Detroit can, or so they say. I don't know what will happen in the future, but any improvements in performance will likely be of small amounts.

Until the diesel sheds it's undeserved image for being dirty, we will continue putting up with regulators trying to clean it up even more.

I believe it all depends on the driver. The old way of driving is going away to the CDL schools that push the students through to get their CDL. I was always taught to never run the engine up against the peg (governor). I see new drivers that just run the pis out of the motors by running them up to max on every shift. I know the idea of progressive shifting has been side lined but I'll take a relaxed driver any day of the week. And one that treats that truck as his livelihood and trys to get the max life out of all the components.

I'll go back a few years and say I liked the Cummins 444 the best. But you had to do the modification allowed by Cummins by going to 450hp with a different turbo. That motor pulled our super tankers the best. It beat out the 60 series Detroit and the 425 Cat. Cats are the best for construction equipment but their service for trucks sucks big time. We would always be down for a day for a simple fix. Cat will not let anyone else touch the motor so you're at their mercy. But since I've been retired for some time now I wouldn't know what's best and I'm sure they've all made improvements.

[quote=25(2)+2;313517]Best mpg of the current big 3 is the Cummins ISX, a motor I don't like. The engine is efficient because it reduced upper engine parts and had less internal friction......
quote]


Our company has bought ISXs and the new DD15s recently. The DD15 is more fuel efficient than the ISX in our operation....by a significant amount. We like the ISX too because it is powerful and smooth and has a longer history. But from what we see so far, these DD15s are really very fuel efficient and at least as powerful and smooth as anything we've driven.

We had good luck with our Cats until the ACERTS came out. They weren't bad, but they just were not as fuel efficient as the Cummins we had.