Was just drooling over my dream truck (389 Pete) at Truck Paper.com and noticed a lot of new Peterbilt rigs equipped with Cummins engines. How do they compare fuel mileage and longevity wise with Cat engines? 8)

 

I noticed that myself, Midnight Flyer. There were a lot of 389s with come aparts. Me personally, I would have a 550 kitty, with an 18 behind it. 373 rears.

 

Like any engine it all depends on how well it is taken care of.

 

In my personal Opinion, the Cat and Cummins runs neck to neck. I like them both. Both are Strong Engines. The only difference I see or notice, the Cat your paying for the Name.

 

Don't like the new Cummins, from what I've been hearing they seem to be using a lot of oil like a Detroit. Boss wanted to get a new piece of construction equipment that comes with the newest Cummins and the mechanic's all told him that it would be a waste of time to get it unless another engine could go in it.

 

CAT's like to eat their turbos....both of them.

 

The following msg is from a friend who is a consultant in the truck manufacturing industry. After reading the posts he sends this to me.......

,.........Repair on the Cat is twice that of the Cummins, plus if one Tubro goes so does the other one, and with the new emissions standards Cat is having a hard time meeting them. As far as fuel goes it all comes back to the driver. Heavy foot hard shifting.....equals poor fuel.....personally I would wait a year before getting getting either one but the Cummins would be my first choice

THE PRECEEDING IS NOT NECESSARILY AN OPINION OF THE CAD MEMBER.

 

I still prefer CAT. At one time CAT's seemed to have more torque. I don't know that is the case any longer. A friend of mine has a 500 hp Cummins. He has a lot of torque. Cummins used to cost less to work on, but I am not sure that is the true either. At one time Cummins seemed to get better fuel mileage, but I think that they are probably pretty much the same. At this point, it is more likely a matter of personal preference. Cummins is still a few hundred pounds lighter than CAT. I have know of many more CAT's going over 1MM miles than Cummins. Overhauls and major expenditures are more a matter of how you take care of maintenance and drive the truck than anything else.

 

This is true religion, and dangerous ground. For every driver on the radio bragging about his big yalla cat, there is another driver who wouldn't have one of those cussed things in his truck if it were free.

I'm in the latter camp. I am a Cummins man through and through. Every truck I have ever driven as "mine" has had a Cummins, and every loaner/temporary truck I've ever driven has had either a Detroit or a Cat. I hate Detroits and Cats passionately. Give me a Cummins.

I like the way they sound, I like where their power band is, I like their reliability. We used to have a lot of problems with Cats blowing turbos and shearing off head bolts. My old Cummins probably had close to 2,000,000 miles on it when we finally retired that truck. (Impossible to know, because there's no telling how many different speedos that truck had over its lifetime.)

I didn't fare as well with the newer ISM, which had injector problems, but it was a pulling son of a bitch.

I lost that job, and that truck, and now I'm running an older N14. It's another pulling son of a bitch.

I love a Cummins. I've never had any problems with them that weren't due to having had the crap run out of them.

Y'all can keep your big yalla kitty cats. (And I'm sure there's someone out there with exactly the equal opposite experience, who hates a Cummins, and loves his kitty cats to death.)

 

i never owned anything but a 11.1 detroit. still in it. over a mil mi & no work done to it yet. i think cat is like a pete... great products but overated. i'm not sure a cat can compare to the fuel mieage of a detroit, all things being equal. i am refering to the older models. 90-2000 models.