When did common rails come out?

I sorta understand the resistance to technology and so forth "demasculating" a diesel cause it doesn't knock.

The truth is it was brought on because of combustion efficiency not the noise aspect.. it's a side effect.

Nothing to do with the Latte' drinking harley riding douschery that hang at Starbucks and the golf course... Nevermind. Lol.

Smoother pressure rise in the cylinder doesn't hammer intetnals as hard. Anything to help durability isn't a negative either..



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Pilot injection or also called split shot injection was around before common rails were common place in heavy duty trucks. Detroit played around with pilot injection in their cold start strategy in the mid 90's in the N2 electronic unit injectors. The main reason for pilot injection is to lower emissions, specifically NOx emissions. Engine manufactures first tried to meet lower emissions with only ret**ded timing. This works, but fuel economy and performance suffers. Anybody that has had a low NOx flash file or low NOx rebuild that used this strategy most always want there "old" motor back.
The next strategy to lower NOx emissions was pilot injection. The small shot of fuel helps start combustion smoother and reduces cylinder pressure spikes, lowers NOx, and increases overall efficiency vs ret**ded timing. Early pilot injection engines were quieter, but still sound like a "diesel". The 99 -03 7.3L Powerstroke had pilot injection built into them mechanically through drilled ports in barrel and plunger and they were by know means quiet at all! The 03 Series 60 and Cat bridge motors and ACERT both relied on pilot injection among other strategies for NOx reduction and I also wouldn't classify them as quiet motors. Serious noise reduction started when multi-injection became possible. Multi-injection of five events become a reality with newer electronic unit injectors and common rail. Noise reduction was a positive bonus to this strategy, once again the main goal was emissions reduction. Common rail has taken over for a couple reasons. #1 is emissions reduction! Also, part of EPA OBD for HD trucks required monitoring of fuel rail pressure monitoring and misfire detection. This is much easier to comply with using common rail vs EUI. The last hold out was Volvo/Mack, but their EPA17 are a hybrid of EUI and common rail. Current common rail is up to nine injection events per combustion cycle.
It is possible with tuning to turn off multi-injection with tuning, but I kind of doubt these modifications would result in an emission compliant engine. Multi-injection is how newer engines can run higher compression ratios and have full torque around 900 RPM without having cylinder pressure getting out of hand. Someone not knowing what they are doing starts playing around with timing/duration injection maps could lead to blown head gaskets, rod bearing damage, and worse. I think if you want the sound of an older diesel in your newer one, more power to you. Just remember is was designed for multi-injection and there is no positive benefit to the engine at all by going to single shot injection.

 

There are some smart folks on this forum

 

@MACK E-6

Are you saying you don’t like these new diesels where you have to look for the emblem to tell it’s not a gasser? When Dad fires up the 2003 F250, there’s no doubt by sound or smell what it is.