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frompdx | 11 months ago

My time to shine! I still own an early square body truck with the 6.2L Detroit Diesel. The thing that stands out to me in this article is that the Suburbans shown are an earlier generation produced from 67-72. Those did not have a Diesel engine, however the 6.2L Detroit Diesel was designed to drop into anything with a Small Block Chevy, so I can see how these may have been retrofitted. In fact, these engines are still produced today in 6.5L form (see the AM General Optimizer) and are used in the HMMWV.

These really are very simplistic engines and simplistic vehicles in general. Mine has power nothing, at least electronically. The shifter really is comically large and very inconvenient to whoever sits in the middle. The highest gear is third gear.

Powerful? No, not really. But surprisingly efficient for the size. Reliable as well.

discuss

order

cellularmitosis|11 months ago

I once swapped an OM617 (the 5-cylinder turbodiesel used in many 80’s Mercedes sedans) into a 67 Chevy pickup.

Once started, the engine would run with no electrical system at all! Even the fuel shutoff operated on vacuum.

https://youtu.be/5teg3Zlj0bo

https://youtu.be/q8LEWIZi21Q

https://youtu.be/kuDcSuwdzaw

https://youtu.be/MqWwUC3h3VU

By far my favorite hack :)

frompdx|11 months ago

That's really interesting, but I'm curious to know if that amount of vibration is expected. It seems like something isn't mounted correctly from the videos.

seabrookmx|11 months ago

The original castings were pretty poor in the 6.2 and 6.5 and lots of them crack at the crank webbings. This is supposedly fixed in the AM General blocks. They were common work trucks in the PNW (forestry, mining) but while you see the old Cummins or Ford IDI's around still the "Detroit"'s (no relation to the 2 stroke Detroit or Series 60) are quite rare. My family still has an early mechanically injected 6.5 that's held up OK though (~300,000km on it).

frompdx|11 months ago

I'd say that 6.5 as plenty of life left. My 6.2 is pushing 400,000km.

veunes|11 months ago

You must get a lot of questions (or confused looks) when people see that thing still running! The simplicity of those engines is kind of a lost art these days. Everything now is so computerized that you can't even diagnose half the issues without special software.

MisterTea|11 months ago

Whats very coincidental is those suburbans in the article are on the Wikipedia page for that generation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Suburban#Sixth_gener...

> The highest gear is third gear.

Was it the strait 3 speed or the 4 speed with a "granny gear" aka the stump pulling L - Low range? 4 speed should be the Muncie SM465 which I had in a GMC 6000.

frompdx|11 months ago

It's the 4 speed with the granny low gear.