Since late 2003, Ford engineers have been abusing the new 6.4-liter twin-turbo diesel engine in the redesigned 2008 Super Duty pickup. They've been using every trick in the book trying to make it break. They've pulled heavy loads up steep hills in minus-40-degree weather. They've punished it by hauling trailers in broiling desert heat. And they've run test engines nonstop for thousands of hours on a dynamometer.
The man cracking the whip on the new Super Duty is chief engineer Pete Reyes. Reyes, 43, is under immense pressure to deliver a flawless truck. Ford needs perfection to atone for the previous Super Duty's troublesome diesel engine as well as to fend off fresh challenges from General Motors, Dodge and Toyota. Reyes spoke with Automotive News staff reporter Richard Truett.
I've heard that your engineers have put 10 million test miles on the new Super Duty. Tell us about that.
It's 6 million dyno miles and 4 million real vehicle miles. We've had fleets and fleets of trucks, hundreds of trucks, with this engine. And we've had fleets of trucks we've run internationally, piling on big miles. Some of our known customers have had trucks in extreme conditions, up in Alaska and down in Houston. So they are out piling on miles for us now.
We also went to existing customers, about 15 different fleets running the 6.0-liter, and we took black-box data from them. We needed to understand all of the operating and environmental conditions that people really see.
Going out and seeing how the trucks were being used in the real world was a bit eye-opening for us. We tailored the druability, length and heat of the tests to real world conditions.
In the 10 million miles, did anything break? How did you make the Super Duty better?
In the first million miles, we had a lot of things we wanted to fix. After that, the number of incidences of things you want to address decreases. You know you are in good shape if you have a pretty aggressive ramp-down of things you've got to fix. We've been in good shape. You can monitor whether you've got issues replaced by other issues. But this one came down as we expected it to.
The new engine has technology we've not seen before on a Ford diesel engine, such as piezo fuel injectors and twin turbochargers. Was that the reason for the strenuous testing?
Absolutely. The new technology probably dominated the testing. When you get the engine right, then the next tests are to ensure that the cooling system and everything else on the vehicle works right.
Is this the new standard of testing for Ford trucks?
As we develop diesel engines in the environment of extreme measures for emissions, I would expect the 10 million miles to be a standard for Ford.
Did you have a chance to crawl under the new Toyota Tundra at the Detroit auto show?
I looked at the Tundra. I would say there's a no-excuse lineup out of Toytoa now. How well it sells is going to be up to the marketplace. I can't predict that.
