You know, I really was hoping someone wasn't going to try turning this into one of the typical childish "Ford is teh suxxorz! Chevy is teh greatest!" "No way, Chevy sucks!" "Hey guys, what about Dodge?" internet pissing matches, but since it seems to be happening... let's take a look here.
Ford has zero history of designing and constructing their own in-house pickup diesel. They've used Perkins, they've used Mazda, and most famously they've used International engines. None of the Powerstroke engines or their predecessors are Ford designs. They are International engines. If you had read the article and noted the emphasis being placed upon the fact that this is a Ford design, you'd realize that this is a first for the company. Ford has apparently been successfully designing smaller car diesels for foreign markets for quite some time, but we here in the states have no experience with them due to their lack of availability here. Zip, zero, nada. So to say that anyone else's engine is going to be better than this one is complete and utter bull-crap-sourced conjecture based on personal bias and prejudices rather than factual data and trends.
They at least seem to be doing some things right, like using six bolts per cylinder for the heads and going with a compacted graphite iron block. The dual circuit cooling system should help keep temps down as well, allowing for more efficient EGR and oil cooling. The move to an AWIC is interesting, I don't think I've ever seen one of those stock on a diesel. Putting the turbocharger and exhaust up on top of the engine will help keep bay temperatures down and shield the accessories and belts from extreme heat, no doubt increasing their lifespans. There are concerns about their rod design and the use of an aluminum head, but the latter has worked successfully on souped-up smaller diesels for a while now so we'll see how it all works out.
Chevy, on the other hand, has a pretty pathetic track record for producing good truck diesel engines. The 5.7's first go-round wasn't exactly a home run, and its hurried "oh crap we've got to fix this" version wasn't stellar either. The 6.2 was a lackluster follow up, and then the 6.5 turbo with its pump electronics and fuel sensor issues... Isuzu, on the other hand, has a pretty darn good track record for engines, being the ones responsible for both Chevy's smaller diesel truck engines and the Duramax spoken so glowingly of. "Chevy's" diesel record gets a whole lot better when you get past the point at which they were trying to do it themselves and went with the expertise of someone who knows what they are doing.
The conventional engine layout of putting the intake tract in the valley is a relic, yes, a relic of the carburetor days. Whole lot easier to mount a single large carburetor and balance all your cylinders when your intake sits between their heads, but the advent of electronic fuel injection, then later drive-by-wire cable-less throttle setups rendered that convention completely unnecessary. Intake in the valley has never been a necessity for diesels, with their lack of throttle plates or carburetors. All the conventional designing to date putting the exhaust on the outside and the intake on the inside has been exactly that, conventional designing.
Exhaust in the valley has been kicked around for several decades, but nobody's felt a compelling need to break from "traditional engine design" and actually do it. With the modern need for tighter and tighter packaging and hotter catalyst temperatures finally creating the need, it's finally getting done. Putting the exhaust in the valley makes sense on so many levels it's astonished me that it's taken this long for someone to finally do it. Shorter plumbing routes for a single turbocharger for both banks, no need for complex balance tubes or pipe routes, and the ability to have an extremely short run from turbo outlet to catalyst make sense. The high mounted catalyst will stay hotter and in its operating temperature range for longer periods of time, allowing for cleaner emissions and higher efficiency catalysts. It might just extend the catalyst's lifespan, too.
The dual-compressor turbocharger is likewise nothing new. That's been a gas turbine design for ages, ever so slightly modified to allow for gas take-off between the stages rather than in-line axial and centrifugal compressors. It's nothing we've seen on a car in the United States, but I think we're all in agreement that the US has gotten screwed out of the diesel goodies for some time now. A twin compressor gas turbine is no more complex than any piston engine, just a little more complex than your average turbocharger with it's single compressor and single turbine. Certainly a lot fewer parts to fail and a smaller package than the sequential turbochargers that have been kicked around as a way to provide broader, deeper boost ranges.
Topic: New 6.7 L Ford setup (Read 4755 times)
