By Alan Bunting
In the wake of its effective takeover of Renault’s truck business – including Mack in the United States – Volvo has revealed an ambitious new medium/long-term engine development strategy. The huge R&D investment involved is being justified through what have become greatly increased total manufacturing volumes, while having to meet the requirements of Euro 4 2005/6 as well as US EPA 2002 and 2007 emissions compliance. Production capacity of Volvo truck and bus engines at its Skovde plant in Sweden is around 100,000 units annually. But with French Renault VI and US Mack output added, the combined potential volume (of engines of 4 litres capacity and above) for what is now Volvo Global Trucks is nearer 200,000.
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Today’s Renault 4.1, 6.2 and 11.1 litre diesels (recently re-engineered to take common-rail fuel systems), as well as Mack’s unit-pump equipped 11.9 litre engine, produced at its Hagerstown, Maryland plant, are set to remain in production until 2005. But they will then be superseded by a new generation of engines sourced from, or via, Volvo. Within the same time frame Volvo’s own long-established 5.5 litre D6 and 7.3 litre D7 will also disappear.
Sten-Ake Aronsson, head of Volvo’s powertrain division, says the company’s 12.1 litre D12, an all-new overhead-camshaft design when it was introduced in 1992 (becoming Europe’s first-ever unit-injected diesel), is the only current engine from any of VGT’s three marques able to achieve Euro 4 compliance in four years time without fundamental re-engineering. It is, however, set to be increased in capacity to almost 13 litres, in which form it will develop over 500hp; and, according to Anders Kroon, Volvo’s chief engineer on engine development, maximum injection pressure delivered by the latest Delphi slimline E1 unit-injectors (recently adopted for 420 and 460hp Euro 3 versions of the D12) will go up from 1800 to 2000bar.
He makes no mention of Delphi’s E2 injector waiting in the wings, though Volvo is expected to be its first user. Outwardly similar to the E1, it nevertheless embodies an additional plunger check valve, which to some extent simulates the attractions of common-rail, in making nozzle pressure less dependent on engine rpm. Kroon does make clear however that other refinements to the D12, ready for Euro 4, are being appraised, notably EGR (exhaust gas recirculation) – which Volvo is almost certain to need for the 12 litre’s North American applications in only two years time, to ensure EPA 2002 compliance. If, as Aronsson asserts, Euro 4 compliance will be met by the upgraded D12 engine without downstream aftertreatment and without a ‘significant’ fuel penalty, then EGR appears unavoidable.
By 2005, the upgraded Volvo D12 engine will take over from the Mack E7 in Renault and Mack badged vehicles. In consequence, total demand for the Volvo 12 litre will rise to the point where it will, implies Aronsson, need to be manufac-tured in North America as well as in Skovde. The Mack engine plant close to the Maryland/Pennsylvania state border is almost certain to be the chosen site.
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By GlobalDataHagerstown might also produce the greatly-revised Euro 4 compliant variant of the 16.1 litre D16 in-line six introduced in the mid 1980s as Volvo’s biggest-ever engine. An engineering programme to convert the D16 from a traditional jerk-pump fuel system (albeit, latterly, with EDC electronic governing) to unit-injectors actuated by the main engine camshaft, has been subject to a series of stop and go investment policy decisions through the last decade. As long ago as 1993, Lucas – as it then was – unveiled a larger version of its EUI unit-injector tailored specifi-cally for use by Volvo in a 16 litre ‘six’. Volvo’s vacillation on the future need for a flagship engine likely to appeal – in Europe – only to owner-drivers and ultra heavy haulage operators, has until now been caused by questionable volume-related viability.
Now, backed by the combined potential volumes of Volvo FH16 and VN, Renault Magnum and Mack top-of-the-range US class 8 tractors, the project has been given an unequivocal go-ahead. The unit-injected D16 ready for Euro 4 – which, says Volvo, will be launched in 2003 initially as a Euro 3 engine – can be expected to develop well in excess of 600hp, matching the performance of arch-rival Scania’s 15.6 litre unit-injected V8 launched last year.
Future production of D12 and eventually D16 engines in America has been made even more probable following the announcement at the end of May, which surprised, and even shocked, many in the US heavy truck industry, that Volvo engines will be sold to North American rival Navistar. It overturned a preferred-engine-supplier agreement concluded with Cummins only a few weeks before, under which the latter’s 11 litre ISM and 15 litre Signature/ISX diesels would have been the ‘first offer’ in Navistar’s class 8 International brand chassis. The deal to supply Navistar marks the first tangible sales success for Volvo Global Powertrain, a division created at the beginning of this year (paralleling a similar move by DaimlerChrysler two years before) with the aim of selling Volvo, Renault and Mack engines and transmissions to third party manufacturers.
Some observers are however questioning the acceptability of Volvo engines to Navistar’s established heavy truck customers. What is in doubt is not product quality, emission law compliance, fuel economy or performance, but the ability of Navistar and Volvo between them to match the coast-to-coast close-knit service and parts support that the existing proprietary engine suppliers, namely Cummins, Caterpillar and Detroit Diesel, have built up over many years. They will also have to overcome the notorious, albeit more nebulous, conservatism of US truck buyers, when it comes to trying a new, especially non-American, brand. In its own VN series chassis built at its New River Valley plant in Virginia, Volvo has striven for the best part of a decade to ‘convert’ customers to take the in-house 12 litre engine in preference to the well-proven outsourced diesels so familiar to buyers. But despite such inducements as specially favourable finance packages, take-up of the D12 engine remains less than 15 percent, with Cummins remain-ing the main engine supplier.
Augmenting the Euro 4-compliant range of truck engines from Volvo will be a totally new ‘cruiserweight’ diesel of just over 9 litres swept volume being developed in Gothenburg. With a maximum output of around 370hp, it will embody many design features from the bigger D12, notably its overhead camshaft and, of necessity, a one-piece cylinder head. And the camshaft will drive electronic unit injectors. The 9 litre diesel will however depart from previous Volvo practice in having the timing gears at the back of the engine, adjacent to the flywheel. As well as cutting noise, such a layout will simplify the adoption of turbocompounding, if required eventually.
For future Volvo and Renault middleweight trucks, power will come from an engine series developed in Germany by Deutz. A joint venture agreement was signed by Volvo and Deutz about four years ago, long before Volvo’s link-up with Renault-Mack was envisaged. An all-Swedish merger with ‘heavy only’ truck maker Scania was seen at the time as far more probable – which would not have boosted the requirement for mid-range engines. But now, following the Franco-Swedish amalgamation, it can be argued that combined Volvo/Renault middleweight chassis volumes are sufficient to justify an in-house engine programme for chassis in the 6 to 26 tonne gross weight range. But the joint venture with Deutz is now too far advanced for Volvo to back out. It seems possible however that the terms of the deal might change, with the Deutz-developed engines being made in a Volvo-Renault plant – either Skovde in Sweden or Venissieux in France – rather than being shipped from the Deutz factory in Cologne.
The Deutz engines destined for future Volvo and Renault middleweight truck – as well as some bus – applications, are the1013/2013 series, members of the first water-cooled engine family from what was then KHD, introduced nearly ten years ago. At the time they excited technical interest with their innovative unit-pump fuel system – a configuration subsequently adopted by Mercedes-Benz for all its truck and bus diesels (and also seen on the Mack E7). Like unit-injectors, unit-pumps are mechanically actuated from the main engine camshaft, delivering fuel through high-pressure pipes to ‘conventional’ (hydraulically opened) Bosch injectors. Competitors have argued that, on middleweight engines of about 1 litre/cylinder, particularly a ‘four’, they are unacceptably elaborate and costly, especially when compared with common-rail.
In two different cylinder sizes, the Deutz engines going into future Volvo mid-range trucks range from an up-to-170hp 3.8 litre ‘four’ – replacing the similar-sized Perkins Phaser currently fitted by Volvo in small numbers in its slow-selling FLC 7.5-tonner – to a 265hp 7.2 litre ‘six’. They will replace not only today’s Volvo D6 and D7 engines, but Renault’s 4.1 litre 040226 and 6.2 litre 060226 diesels – just going into production in Euro 3 form converted to common-rail fuelling.
