350 HP 12.7? How much can it handle?

I'm curious of the answer myself.

I thought all of the 12.7s of that era were 470 or 500 horsepower.

 

Emphasis on small.

Not very much hp or torque.

I had a 330 CAT against a 24% 3 mile pull in Vermont near Beecher Falls (Ethan Allen to the west towards I think 91) and that engine lifted the 80000 pound rig at less than walking pace all the way to the top. Took a hour and 20 minutes or so in lowest gear all out on RPM. ALL of the gauges were pegged Mr Pyro burned up and quit working pegged at 1550 and it never came off the peg. All the other gauges finally after about 2 to 3 hours calmed down and returned to normal, or nearly so. The fuel was the biggest problem. About 30 gallons burnt on that pull. I did not have much more than that anyway on that one fuel tank with ATS. (Mid roof freightliner with the standard eaton 10 which was itself a crappy transmission...)

Long live Cat. I love cat forever. Detriots are good but Cats? whoo hoo.

There has been one other truck in my experience under a great deal of weight which itself got totaled (A early 60's era short mack offset cab model under a load too heavy to talk about here... but it made it. Only took 11 hours to go 230 miles... burned it up in several ways)

The M11 350 with flatbed is not particularly fast at all. It was the last of the ungoverned trucks maybe 90 all out. Rockwell 9 transmission. Maybe 100 downhill. Hauled coils with that one. Speed is the last of your thoughts with coils. It is a nice engine because when you need a little throttle, it did not take much to give it. It was ... frisky in the RPM dept. First of the computer era engines as well back then. The ECM was replaced twice, AC replaced once (As in entire system) and a couple of other major fix its with lists of up to 50 accumulated items for the company shop to fix. (Volvo) fix fix fix fix. And fix it again. fix fix fix. The toggle switches in the cab were plastic,. They broke off. I started replacing them with truckstop bought metal toggles... which quit breaking. It was not much of a truck, but she did ok when there was nothing to fix.

330 to 350 is small horse. You want a minimum of 500 in the USA however 1000 horse wont hurt a bit. Not out here. More horse, less work lifting 40 ton up and over the mountains.

 

I am curious about the answer myself, I know back in the late 90's when I was looking for trucks, I passed on a lot of them that were in the 350, 370 range. I did not know enough to know if they were upratable or not.

 

my 96 was set at 360/430 its set at 470 now no problems I never heard of a dd4 set at 350

 

Give Pittsburgh Power a call. If you can get a hold of Ethan he should be able to help you. Thy might be able to do a remote tune and get that Power and torque up. Or at least tell you if you need to upgrade the turbo or anything else.

 

My '95 12.7 was a 430/470 with a 10 speed transmission. They could have turned it up to full 470, but the transmission wasn't rated for the torque that would have put out back then. So, they can be turned up. Perhaps like it was mentioned, larger injectors and some tuning. It also depends on what boost pressure your turbo puts out.

 

I do remember having to be careful sliding tandems as the drive shafts (Spicer in particular) were rated for 1350 torque and will intentionally fail when you try to pull more stump than you have engine power..

Todays trucks run upwards of close to 2000 torque. Plenty strong. With special tuning fire trucks etc go closer to 2400 and that requires some really nice engineering under there.

 

I have a 430/470 and have had since 99, as torquy as that baby is, I would not be afraid to have run an old 95 series tranny in it. lol Just kidding, but what series tranny was in your 95 they were afraid of?