Equipment World

July 2016

Equipment World Digital Magazine

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EquipmentWorld.com | July 2016 79 S itting in Ford's F-650, towering above the surrounding traffi c, feels strangely familiar. Strange only because I haven't driven the truck before, but familiar because of how much of its design is shared with its Super Duty sisters. This generation F-650 gets a facelift that puts exterior styling and interior comforts more inline with the rest of the Super Duty lineup. The bright orange 2016 F-650 dump truck I piloted through the greater Ann Arbor, Michigan, area featured Ford's Triton V-10 gasoline engine. Pumping out 320 horsepower and 460 pound-feet of torque, the 6.8 liter is the only gasoline engine offered in a Class 6-7 truck. From both the inside the cab and outside of the truck, engine sound is minimal – hardly louder than you would expect from any standard size pickup – and that offers ad- ditional benefi ts. "Pulling up on a job site before 7 a.m., people really appreciate not hearing the diesel clatter coming down the road," says Kevin Koester, medium duty truck and Super Duty fl eet brand manager. An optional 6.7-liter Power Stroke V-8 turbo diesel is also avail- able with three power ratings. For anyone who's driven the current generation Power Stroke diesels, you know the diesel clatter there is pretty minimal as well. Regardless of which engine you chose, you'll wind up with a fully integrated "Built Ford Tough" powertrain. The Cummins inline-six and Allison automatic transmission are no longer available. After the dissolution of Blue Diamond Truck pro pickup | by Jason Cannon | JasonCannon@randallreilly.com TEST DRIVE: 2017 FORD F-650 IS A BIG OL' SUPER DUTY AT HEART 2017 FORD F-650 IS A BIG OL' SUPER DUTY AT HEART L ater this year, Ford will roll the aluminum dice again with its workhorse Super Duty line. "Heavy duty customers are tradition- ally more accepting," says Brian Rathsburg, marketing manager for Ford's Super Duty, "because they see aluminum applications in their industry more frequently." They also more frequently batter their truck like a work tool, but Raths- burg says those customers stand to benefi t most from the use of alumi- num alloy."They appreciate the longer term benefi ts in fuel savings and light-weighting," he says, "and that you can reinvest all the weight savings back into payload or in an upfi t." Ford isn't just giving customers a lighter truck for 2017. The refreshed 2017 Super Duty is getting a full makeover. Under the lighter weight aluminum body, Ford engineers beefed up the truck's frame with 95 percent high-strength steel that features more torsional rigidity than the previous frame. Other Super Duty improvements in- clude a larger gas tank, an integrated tailgate step and larger brakes for the F-450 and F-550. Aluminum comes to Super Duty

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