I was with a group at Caterpillar HQ last week, heard a presentation on their ACERT engines. Basically, they opted to redesign their entire engine lineup to meet EPA Tier 3 (?) emissions as opposed to using EGR technology.
Bottom line, they claimed to increase performance while competitors just complicated their engines with EGR and a bunch of coolers on their pre-emission engines. Engineer told us that the cooled EGR resulted in more soot in intake and shorter oil change intervals as well struggling to maintain performance.
Only negative was higher cost than competitors, but with diesels in truck and industrial equipment the longevity was a perceived benefit.
I asked the marketing guy for trucks if they would be doing a pickup engine. He politely said no and sounded like it would stay that way. Too many potential problems and the cost of a Cat would probably be too expensive in a competitive market.
I just kept thinking about how they took the easy way out in making the transition to the LLY and how we all end up chasing the performance backwards by removing what they had to do (EGR, Cat Converter, etc.)
We probably should not expect much better when many of us trade every 2-3 years anyway.
BTW- Changed the oil after 5K miles with EGR on, filthiest I have seen from any of our diesel engines!
Bottom line, they claimed to increase performance while competitors just complicated their engines with EGR and a bunch of coolers on their pre-emission engines. Engineer told us that the cooled EGR resulted in more soot in intake and shorter oil change intervals as well struggling to maintain performance.
Only negative was higher cost than competitors, but with diesels in truck and industrial equipment the longevity was a perceived benefit.
I asked the marketing guy for trucks if they would be doing a pickup engine. He politely said no and sounded like it would stay that way. Too many potential problems and the cost of a Cat would probably be too expensive in a competitive market.
I just kept thinking about how they took the easy way out in making the transition to the LLY and how we all end up chasing the performance backwards by removing what they had to do (EGR, Cat Converter, etc.)
We probably should not expect much better when many of us trade every 2-3 years anyway.
BTW- Changed the oil after 5K miles with EGR on, filthiest I have seen from any of our diesel engines!