Ford Completes In-House Super Duty Diesel

by John Horner

Published: September 1st, 2009

ford completes in house super duty diesel

The long Ford-Navistar diesel engine drama has played out its final days and the replacement engine is finally officially in existence. Given the troubles—contractual and otherwise—with the outgoing Navistar-sourced engine, Ford is quite eager for everyone to know the new 6.7-liter Power Stroke engine is “Ford-engineered, Ford-tested and Ford-manufactured”. Buried amongst the PR gems in the release is this nugget: “On turbocharger service, for example, the body/cab no longer has to be removed from the frame to access the turbo.” Wow, that means you have to remove the truck body to repair the turbocharger on the current engine. Ouch.

The new Power Stroke uses a unique architecture in which the “exhaust manifolds [. . .] reside in the valley of the engine instead of outboard, while the intake is outboard of the engine. The cylinder heads are essentially flipped around in comparison with previous V-8 engine architectures.” This thing is surely going to look different under the hood. Oh, and by the way, Super Duty diesel users will also have to keep a urea tank filled up to help manage the exhaust emissions. I wonder if this means Ford dealers will soon be able to top off the urea tanks for Mercedes diesel owners, and vice-versa.

John Horner

More by John Horner

Comments

Join the conversation

4 of 51 comments

TR4 on Sep 02, 2009
ComfortablyNumb : September 2nd, 2009 at 12:10 am Might want to get the physics book back out. HP is a function of the torque an engine develops. Torque tells you how much force can be applied to a load. HP doesn’t tell you anything directly. Nonsense! HP (or actually power in any unit) can be defined as "the rate at which work is done". It is a function of torque AND speed as expressed by the formula Power = (Torque X RPM)/5252. Torque by itself is relatively meaningless. If a 200 lb man stands on a 10 ft long wrench he will generate 2000 lb-ft of torque. Does that mean he can move a load up a hill faster than Cummins' or Ford's finest? I don't think so!

Like Reply
Chuck Goolsbee on Sep 02, 2009
jaybread : ?? We have 3 Cummins diesel V8’s at our location that run emergency back up systems. Wouldn’t the V16 count as 2 V8’s? Um, NO. We have a Cummins V-16 supplying 1.25mW of backup power to our facility and it is NOT 2 V-8s. The thing is immense and even half of it would weigh 10,000lbs.Not practical for moving anything with wheels. A rudder maybe, but not wheels. --chuck

Like Reply
Eric Bryant on Sep 02, 2009
jschaef481 : Lost in all of these comments is that much of this technology and re-engineering is required to meet 2010 EPA standards reducing NOx. The good news is that fuel economy increases due to reduced heat management issues. EGR cooling needs are reduced. More heat allows for more complete cumbustion, generating more power and better fuel economy. Well, the problem with so-called "in-cylinder" (as opposed to "exhaust after-treatment") is that NOx reduction is accomplished by lowering the in-cylinder temperatures and peak pressures (high temps and pressures being what stimulates the formation of NOx in the presence of nitrogen and excess oxygen). There is more heat, yes; that's largely because of heat rejection to the EGR system due to the need for high flow rates and low charge air temperatures. Oh, and as an added bonus, the lower temperatures increase the likelihood of smoke/soot formation. Adding to the problem is the friction and pumping losses created by the aforementioned EGR flow rates; pumping all that exhaust back into the intake reduces the effective volumetric efficiency of the engine and thus drives additional displacement and all the disadvantages that come with it. Due to the horrific cost of current exhaust after-treatment technology (described by various individuals as "bolting a chemistry lab onto the exhaust manifold"), nearly all 2007 and 2010 diesel engines use various amounts of in-cylinder emissions reduction with the corresponding decrease in fuel economy. I suspect that the use of direct-injected (and perhaps stratified-charge) forced-induction gasoline engines would be far wiser for most truck consumers (that group consisting of the folks who are driving heavy-duty light trucks that are unladen 99% of the time), but those have a major disadvantage - they don't make cool rattling noises at idle and acceleration, and they don't spew black soot that pisses off the liberals and hippies. Oh well; the automotive market would be no fun if customers were rational ;)

Like Reply
Cdotson on Sep 07, 2009

Adding somewhat to what Scott.A alludes to: A few years ago I worked with an engineer who was a heavy truck engineer with International in Texas during early development of the PowerStroke 6.0L. He had chance to wander by labs doing load testing on numerous engines simultaneously. He got just enough of the dirt on the 6.0L to spread the word around before Ford launched the engine into production that nobody should buy one. Sure enough, quality problems and rumors of quality problems ensued. I wish I could recall some more of the details that he had actually heard but it was too inconsequential at the time (only recently would I even consider Ford anything anyway). What I do recall was problems with the fuel system and injector style. Problems that Int'l knew about and tried to address were stifled by Ford who would not allow fundamental approach changes to the type or control of injectors nor would they concede on cost-sensitive aspects of the problem parts. Kinda like Ford said "we know there are problems, now fix them without changing anything."

Like Reply