6v-53 trike

[balboa_71]

Nice looking beast of a trike! Detroit Diesel power

http://www.carpictures.com/photo/viewer/07HEA100225135G

[andrewaust]

Nice - have to send this link to a few Detroit fans.

I thought the 6V-53 was a great old engine, much better then the 92 series. As always the transport industry wanted more HP and the bigger displacement was brought in. Friend has a 8V-92 in a Kenworth, sounds nice, plenty of power, but you need to keep an eye on the coolant and liners, they tend to corrode "suffer from cavitation", same as the CAT and Cummins etc, with wet liners.

A

[pietenpol2002]

An obvious omission on this engine is the requisite emergency air shutoff flapper attached to the big red handle that's deployed when the blower seal departs. The absence of bearing seals allows the engine to feed on an uncontrolled supply of engine oil and then the fun begins. You just hope the oil is depleted before the engine starts to shed parts. I only ever had to deploy it once, and that was on a 71 series. The stories that used to be swapped about the catastrophic failures of the 2 cycle Detroits is likely the stuff of myths, but great stories nonetheless.

The demise of the 2 cycle Detroits in the States was the challenge of emissions and fuel mileage.

[balboa_71]

I was introduced to DD's in 1976 when I worked for the city where I lived. From time to time, I worked on a Ford garbage truck that was powered by a 6V-53 DD. Behind the engine was an Alison 6 speed automatic with the shifter on the dashboard. I loved the sound of the engine and even with a full load (40,000 lbs of trash), it would run down the freeway at 60+ mph. That's a lot of guts for 318 cubic inches of displacement. I remember the emergency kill knob on the dash and every now and then, one of the guys would kill the engine using it, thus we would have to climb up under the hood and reset a small lever on the top rear of the engine near the firewall. I don't remember all the details, but we never had a run away situation. Thing about the engine that stood out, was no matter how cold the weather, that truck would always start, but when idling, oil pressure was low, down near 5 to 10 psi.

Cris