Swapping Detroit for CAT or Cummins

Had a 500 hp 14L DD60 in a Sterling...'00 or '01 not sure. 18 speed, all aluminum slotted rims. Hood, grill, rad, CAC was smashed. Sold it for $5,000 CDN. Probably should have kept it.

Also had a '95 T600 with a red top N14. Front rear diff was junk. Knowing what I know now about emissions, e-logs and speed limiters, I KNOW I should have kept that truck.

 

Lol....that's one hell of a lunch counter tale.

 

We had 12 of them in the fleet. If you had one your job was run ball's to the wall week in week out. There were weeks when 4k miles were done in 4 days solo. We had 6 solo 6 team testers . We had a saying in the test fleet if John aka the owner of the company says I need 5k out of the solos we didn't say no to him. It was throw the logbook in the bunk and stand on that go pedal .

 

Remember this was way before the DOT started matching you to the minute on everything .Heck I hit Truckee once with and average speed the 3 days before of 85 in my logbook to have hours. I still got a clean level 1 inspection .

 

Dont you think too much power its gonna eat your savings. I dont think you were making 5mpg on too much HP. I mean is nice to have such power but its gonna suck our wallets

 

At 665 I was getting 7 mpg with that Detroit. Why it only produced that power when she had to. Just loafing down the road she was making 30 percent of max power. However hit a climb and she ramped it up. The funniest part was we had Super 10 transmissions on these things and not once had a problem with gears failing or drivelines. The regular 430 470 engines in the fleet tore up enough for everyone .

 

High horsepower doesn't mean a higher fuel bill if you drive it with common sense. In fact, you'll get better fuel mileage with a higher horsepower engine.

 

The test trucks with over 100 HP more got on average 1 MPG more than the rest of the fleet and we were not governed either meaning we could run 75 instead of 65.

 

I swapped a Paccar out to a 2005 Acert in a 2013 Pete. Easy deal, all J-1939, only had to buy one harness for about $600 from Ed Mawk. Obviously I had to find mounts and water pipes etc from boneyards but that was easy.

 

Whats the HP on your trucks? how many MPG?