Overdrive Magazine | Trucking Business News & Owner Operator Info
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/135388
Drive Test Kermit climbs the Cascades Relying on a natural gas engine? To pull 140,000 pounds? Up a mountain? Yes. Yes. And yes. This 2012 Peterbilt 367 daycab is equipped with the Westport 15L, a 475-horsepower high-pressure direct-injection natural gas engine. By Jack Roberts N atural gas truck engines are on everyone's lips these days, and Westport is clearly the technology leader in this field. The company is probably best known today for its partnership with Cummins and the resulting ISL 8.9G – and the soon-to-be-unveiled ISX12 G – natural gas engines. But the company also produces its own proprietary line of natural gas engines, including the Westport 15L, a 475-horsepower high-pressure directinjection natural gas engine. I was in Vancouver to see how it performs, and this would not be your typical test drive. It would be lugging 140,000-pound flatbed doubles – a "bi-train," as the Canadians call it – into the Cascade Mountains. As with the Cummins-Westport family of natural gas engines, the Westport 15L uses a Cummins "donor" engine as its foundation. Once modified, these engines are considered entirely Westport products. Last year, the company began repainting its engines orange and will brand them "Westport" this year. Cummins-Westport engines will continue to sport Cummins red. While Cummins-Westport engines are spark-ignited, Westport 15L engines rely on a small shot of diesel fuel to initiate combustion. The company says that out of the total fuel capacity on a Westport 15L-powered truck, 95 percent of diesel fuel is replaced by liquefied natural gas, with 5 percent of diesel remaining to initiate combustion. This allows fleets to employ natural gas engines in severe-service applications because compressionignited natural gas engines do not run as hot as spark-ignited ones, says Stephen Ptucha, director of product management for Westport. So there's less risk of engine overheating in tough driving conditions. Additionally, fuel costs are reduced drastically because natural gas prices are still relatively low. 38 | Overdrive | June 2013 TestDrive_0613.indd 38 5/28/13 10:33 PM