Caterpillar Engines

Please elaborate. Your making it sound like cats are not for pulling and you can't lug them down. Last I chequed. Every cat I ever drove could almost lug down to idle were are a Detroit you gotta rev it like a 8v92 just to get any power out of it.

 

Look for a 5ek. And a fuel tanker to tow behind. Mine is very thirsty, but I love it.

My next truck, (glider) will have a 6nz under the hood. I've run a few of them, just not crazy about them. Every one I've driven sounded like they were ready to self destruct at any moment. But they seem to hold up very well in our operation. So maybe after March, I'll come to liking the 6nz.

 

I'll second that! There's four Detroit's in the fleet of twenty trucks where I work. The boss had to beg people to drive them. They do alright if you keep them over 1300 rpms. But they aren't a Cat!

 

When I bought my first truck I went for Cat because I liked the idea of an engine that started its life(more or less) in a D8 dozer. Big, strong, relatively simple engines. Expensive to fix but hey, if you want to play you have to pay. Onto my third 6NZ now and I love them.

 

Remember the cats Ive had were mechanical. RPM's were king. As long you had RPM you had go. Computers changed everything. Detroits were not that great at holding RPMs above 1600. That is where the CATs did well.

We could lug a Mack Super 500 down to 900ish at times.

 

People seem to think you drive all engines the same. That's just flat wrong. That's why once you get use to a cat you hate detroit's. And vice versa, they all drive different and if you try to drive em the same you'll say one or the other is crap. Just have to learn to use your tools!

 

The one engine I cannot stand is Cummins. It's a steady RPM engine. Best used at Sea with a boat or ship. You can see it's potential on the highway for 2000 miles. But try to climb or do stop and go or regional with multi stops it's just a engine that needs to be like 600 horse plus to be any good. In my day it's the big cams that killed me with the tall roadrangers or eatons to boot. Rockwells were my favorite, almost sporty with it's short gears and enough of them to really get up and go.

Macks will run uphill twice what a big cam cummins will do speed wise.

Cats to me were top end engines. I kept them at the top end of the RPM because they will get there and stay there being slow to give it up. A detriot is my bread and butter because it refuses to give up RPM until around 1100 and it's not always good to lug down a small detriot because you can do damage.

As the one poster said you can make a cat lug, but be ready to shift just before it starts to buck on you. I never had a electronic cat. That's a shame.

 

An old mechanical cat will lug quite well, but they heat up fast on the pyro. Which wasn't good for aluminum Pistons. The old macks had an extremely broad torque curve. That's why the ran fine with 5 and 6 speed trans. The old Cummins just didn't have that broad curve to em. But they were the cheapest and easiest to work on.

 

I learned to drive on an old Maxidyne 5 speed pulling live chickens from the farm to the plant. Sometimes these loads would gross over 90k lbs (at least that was what some got caught with). It was amazing what those engines could do with a 5 speed

 

Once you got em in 5th you just stayed there all day