Some quick facts about Cummins Engines

October of '07, I sold a '96 W900, 475 3406E w 13 speed;
1.3 million miles, and that truck very, very , very, VERY rarely saw rpm above 1500. It pulled strongly from 1150 til ..... I don't even remember the top rpm. I was hauling grain with a 100,000 # agriculture permit, and to a dumb cajun, that meant 100,000 "in the box". With those loads, most times I shifted UP at around 1250 or 1300 in the lower gears, and NO PROBLEM building speed!
By the way, did I mention that it rarely ran above 1500 RPM?

My next truck was a '01 W900 flattop C15 500 10 speed, which I drove the same way, only leased to a carrier, so I was legal weight ways.
In March I traded the '01 on a '04 W900 with the dreaded bridge engine. Power band on it is quite narrow, 1200 to about 1550 max. above or below those numbers, it's gutless, and I do mean GUTLESS!

Most fellows in my area that have Cats have the same type of performance as the first two trucks I mentioned, maybe they are configured different in your neck of the woods?

 

while i dont know much about deisel's, i have been driving (on 3rd trk now) international 9400's for 1.5 yrs now. i seem to get best pulling/acceleration on hills between 1300-1700
couldn't the difference in tranny gear ratios affect how some percieve the "pulling power"/torque? or are they all geared the same in the tranny?

 

Whats the CAT you drove? 3406B? sounds right.

 

Heaps of ISXs here with that prob i think. Stick a manual fuel press guage on bottom of IFSM take for drive. Press should be 250-270psi. get hot and to miss.If press drops to around 100psi Either the280 or 320psi fuel press regulator is sticking open. If you turn truck of and restart will it still miss etc?

 

While this may not be the issue, at least if its documented somone may get a problem fixed rapidly and easily.

I had a similar issue, missing and generally carying on..

turned out that the inner connections on the jake harness were allowing oil into the plug, which was shorting out a pin, activating a jake solenoid.

cleaned it up and it was good.
Longer term solution was to replace the jake harness.

 

The C 15 ACERT i had in the 379 shifted between 1200- 1400 RPM's, and it pulled at these low RPM's. The CUmmins ISX in the 389 I drive now seems to shift more like a DD engine, Rpms around 1500. But I could v\be doing it wrong, I had the ACERT for 3 years and got used to it.