The Ford Dagenham/Dorset/Dovers and also the Perkins 6.354 are historically important engines. They were the global 6bt's of the 1960/70's and they were powering the industrial world nearly 2 decades before the 6BT even left the draftsmans office 👍
@@hughjarse4627 Yeah, the CAV rotary pumps were the weak link in pretty much every engine that had them 😂 They weren't the best, pretty fragile and very fussy on fuel quality.
The Rotary Fuel Pump and accessories like starter were swapped from CAV to Delphi components for the American market. I neglect the system as much as possible, and it keeps working without complaints. If it sits for a long time, I prime fuel pump by hand to speed starting. I keep a 5/16" wrench in the cab to tighten injectors when one vibrates loose and pressure drops. From what I have seen on Australian videos, pumps + injectors can be rebuilt on a work bench by hand with basic hand tools and a seal kit. The way I look at it, if third world countries like them and they survive there for decades; then it's a reliable design.
I bought one in the UK and will be shipping it to the USA . I plan on installing it in a Fordson Major that my father bought from the UK in the 70’s . The guy had 2 of them when I bought mine .
Think the fordson majors had Perkins built fords in em, I'm sure you've seen the vids on here of folk slipping the 504 v8's in. Good luck anyway sounds like a fun project.
Im in the USA and I have 2 of the 450hp sabre diesels in my 35’ combat boat coupled to dowty jet drives, shes an absolute beast, i agree, they are a smoky sob when cold, but a couple quick revs after building oil pressure and they clear right up.
I'm not gonna speak for the whole country, but this American is well aware of the Ford diesels, particularly the Brazilian ones. The problem eith them, and specifically swapping them is simply lack of supply, and next to zero aftermarket support ( here at least..) versus something like the B model Cummins. You can literally buy ANYTHING for a Cummins here with a quick trip online or service parts at numerous local dealers. Furthetmore, if someone wanted to be "different", there are similar size engines that are even MORE suitable for tuning available here, like the International DT360, or the Isuzu 6BD1. Both are capable of SERIOUS power with little mods. Edit, I have worked on similarly tuned Brazilian Fords like the Sabre here in thr US in sport fishing Yachts, though I cannot for the life of Me remember who marinized and tuned them, it could have been Sabre ( it's been 30+ years since I've seen one..)
I have a 1960's 5.8 Perkins 6.354T in an International Loadstar truck in Ohio. I have to get my little bits from overseas (cold start assist); millions made worldwide, nobody ever heard of them here. Looks like the 6bt's hd grandpa; Perkins still runs great, works all day without complaints, and uses little fuel.
@@jhoncho4x4We used to have a 6.354 without a turbo in a square body GMC 2500. 8ft bed, 4 doors. Geared it up a bunch so it would do highway speeds, that truck would pull down a house and it got 30mpg. Great engines.
We use them in fordson majors for tractor pulling most are modified standard Dorset and Dover engines but know of two that came out of speed boats with twin turbos one with the majormec pump and one with a Bosch pump cost a lot of money I believe.
Very nice. Pal of mine recently sold his 1960 fairy sports boat. He had removed 2x Perkins P6 and shoehorned in, 2x Sabre 6 cylinder fords, at 280 hp each ,20 years ago. He had bought the engines at a navy auction. 1 had 50 hours, the other was new in the box. Lovely note off them. As a late friend of mine once muttered while listening to them, sex is alright, but you can't beat the real thing!
Ford pulled out of the truck market and there was a merger with Iveco, this was the reason that production of the Dover engine series stopped. Production did move to the Ford Otosan plant in Turkey, no issues with getting the engines or spares but newer engines were coming along and development of the engine family stopped, this also happened just as emission regs started to come in. The Ford Dorset and Dover engines are great, very simple and engineered right from the start. I would put them above the B series. I used to work for the main distributor and then importer for the engines, Hendy Power. We did all sorts with them, convert them to run on gas for CHP, modified for high outputs and different builds for so many different applications. Think you’ll find there are quite a few modifications inside the engine, including different main bearing caps. Not sure of it will have chrome liners. Think you’ll find the BSD range was Basildon Small Diesel, mainly used for tractors and later renamed New Holland. Quite a heavy engine but also good work horse.
Amazing power output from one of those old Ford engines, an engine which has its roots in the 1950s Fordson Major tractors!! With a sump and front engine mounting plate modifications, one of those beauties wold bolt straight into an old Major! Now THAT would be nice👌🏻👌🏻👍🏻👍🏻😁
I work on them daily. Very simple engines to work on. Many people are tired of them, but they will go to regret the newer stuff when they start to go bad.
There was a Dover gas engine too, gas as in natural gas/methane. Had different pistons and higher temperature valves and seats. I worked on one at a time. It had the marine exhaust manifold and water heat exchanger for heat recovery into an industrial heating system, forming a chp, combined heat and power genset. Plugs where in the approximate position of the diesel injectors.
I bought my first Ford Sabre in 1987 a 212C, ran that for 6000 hours then upgraded to a 280c a few years later I heard from one of the Sabre engineers that they had a brand new 6.7 litre 350 hp still in a crate that had been returned from the MOD. These engines were built by Sabre on a specially cast block to fit in Army craft that were powered by two 350's , evidently the Army had decided that they needed more power so they went to another manufacturer. These 350's were one of the best motors that Sabre's built and were known for their longevity . The Brazilian block 7.8's had a terrible reputation with many problems and did not stay around long. My last Sabre's were built on Perkins base engines just before Caterpillar bought Perkins then Sabre around 2000. As a commercial operator I was able to deal direct with the factory and ran their engines for over 20 years they were a great company to deal with. Sabres racing pedigree goes back a long way and I think they did the engines in the trio of Fairy Huntsman's one of which was called Fordspeed. that raced in the Cowes Torquay in the 70's.
Great stuff. As a young boy I rebuilt one of these engines from a D series Ford truck. 2014 model. 140hp turbo and like you said lying on its side. The turbo was a weird setup because of this and was it smokey in the morning. It set me up in my career as a mechanic and now truck driver. Thanks for this wonder video.
I love old cool stuff like this , I’ll never forget ten years ago when I found out gale banks and Pontiac did transams off the dealer floor 455cube turbo things making upto 700hp with a warranty …In the 80s !!! Same category as this , guys in the 80s weren’t silly . Cubes , air density , fuel and boost !
In 1989 I worked for Cougar marine in the UK we put two of those in an old experimental mono hull we had in the back of the shop for a plumber … it was called “ Flippin heck” … There was a doco made of it . I do remember that to start it you had to pump petrol into it at start up as the compression was too low until the twin turbos wound up…! Smoke !! Greenies would hit a green apple!! 😂 It went well enough..
There's an ancient NA D series powering the fire systems pump in Cavaghan & Grays Carlisle factory. It gets run up on weekly iirc tests and still behaves perfectly and sounds beautiful to this day. It's got to have been there since the 70's at least 🙂
The lineage is as follows. Ford built the 4-cylinder petrol (200CID) and diesels (220CID) that were fitted to trucks and tractors from 1952 to 1957. In 1957 a 6-cylinder 330 CID was added, fitted to Thames Trader trucks, the industrial version was the 590E "Dagenham". In 1962 they were updated with a Minimec injector pump. In 1965 the 2700E or Dorset, as fitted to D series trucks was introduced, 240CID, 330CID, 360CID. Around 1968 the 330 was dropped when the 360T and 380 were introduced in 1968. The Dover, or 2720 engines were introduced with the introduction of the Ford Cargo truck in the early 1980s. The turbo versions were the 2726T, 2726TM (Marine). and 2728TM.
I had a 1992 Ford CF7000 (Ford Cargo in Europe and UK) with a 5.9 Cummins (even had Ford stamped in the rocker covers). I've only ever seen one parts truck within a 1000 miles of me with a Dover variant. I think ford, being a typical American bean counting company, just used the Brazilian cab on US frame rails and axels. I do believe the marinized and New Holland variant floats around every once in a while, but car/truck guys are never thinking that far out of the box.
Our Birchwood’s twin BMC mermaid engines also used to belch out thick white smoke on cold start, even in summer ! The starboard side engine was slower to heat up & clear than the port side engine.
My old man used to race bikes back in his younger days. In his office he had a single cylinder Ducati engine from the 1950's on his coffee table as an ornament.
Hello from the South West USA. Those early Ford diesels are not widely known over here, and hard to come by nowadays, sadly. Even the smaller Detroit V series. I am thrilled to see you guys keep up your great work. Hopefully for decades to come.
It’s quite frightening to know you could tickle up an old Dorset enough to get 630 HP. We have the 135 HP version in our boat. It’s been a little hard to start since it drank a fair bit of salt water with its usual ration of diesel. We fixed the fuel supply (it had a problem with the breathers) and we are getting the injectors and fuel pump serviced. I was looking for info on timing the injector pump and stumbled onto this interesting clip. Cheers!
You can still find these engines in some of the military boats used for setting up bridges for the army. The Arsenal that I worked at still ran them and when they would refurbish them they'd have these engines rebuilt and stuffed back into them.
Interesting video - thanks again for great content.. Particularly the compund arrangement ! 😄 Many moons ago I used to work at Lister Petter in the R&D department. One of our jobs was to carry out durability testing (mostly 1000 hrs) on engines that were being 'badged'. You might already know that these engines were badged by Listers in both NA and TURBO format and fuelling was mostly set up for running genset applications at 1500 rpm. Occasionally - Lister marine department used to sell the odd marinised version (variable speed) which might be a useful source of spare sparts for you ?? I think it was called a CST6 - but this was over 30 years ago and my brain has dried up.... Sadly the Lister badged Dover got the chop when the IVECO / new Holland tractor thing kicked in and they switched to an Italian version, which was also available in 3,4 or 6 cylinder variants.. Love the channel .... and your work and the fact you give a shit about the Uk still producing some quality kit.. Hopefully when I have some budget, i want to purchase some of your fuel pump kit for compounding my OM 605... Keep it up ! Thanks
I had a fairey Huntsman 28 which I restored from the ground up. It came with a pair of Ford Sabre 225hp dorsets, which at some point had been underwater (allegedly the last owner had run her aground on Ryde sands, and when the tide came in she sank). They ran perfectly nicely, but when cold smoked like b4stards - someone in the boatyard said it looked like the chimney from the vatican when they're trying to elect a new pope... I pulled them out and stuck in a pair of intercooled cummins 6bta's, which ran like clockwork, and didn't make so much as a puff of smoke. The Fords were sold to two different buyers, who bought them because they couldn't get spares for their existing Sabres, which spoke volumes, really. I believe the Dovers are slightly easier in respect of spares than the Dorsets, but most owners I know who opt for a repower, in the 180-300hp range, go for Cummins, Iveco or Perkins 215's.
As a Californian surprised to hear you mention Banks Power. My 1990 Cummins had all the Banks as well as my current 2007 6.7l Cummins. Was an Operation Engineer running Cats but saw the concrete mixer drivers whip those Cummins like a rented mule but you couldn't kill them. Running joke is Dodge is just the shipping crate for the Cummins. It's nick named the million mile motor. Very rarely does anyone swap a PowerStroke or Duramax into another vehicle. It's almost 100% Cummins into ??? There's cheaper diesel performance products but Banks has CARB, California Air Resource Board approval certification & don't want ANY beef with CARB! Gave my 1990 Cummins to my son, truck looks like ____, odometer broke at 800,000+ & have now idea how many miles she has but still purrs like a kitten. Love your 0M606 videos here in the Wild Wild West.
I have the Ford Mermaid 4cylinder diesel of the same family of engines. Someone stole the turbo but ....i still have the engine and the intercooler.... Brittish built legend
Yep, when you gotta have it you gotta have it and keeping the history and heritage around is important, same as guys do with the trucks etc, I've got an old Ford Trader with dorset engine and i remember those boats from 80s when i was an apprentice but never knew those wete the engines, great stuff and keep it up, air density has ALWAYS been King not just because someone still shitting yellow just learned about it like you see on a lot of channels, love following your content from OZ
From USA. I own a couple Perkins 4 cylinders. Great engines. I’ve ran a couple 6.6L Brazilian Fords in F700 or F800’s. I hear they blow up. Never owned one. My F700 and F800 have 5.9L and 8.3L Cummins both Bosch ppumped.
I love High performance diesels and the Brits are good at it, along with likes of the Deltics and others. This is new to me, the Ford thing is what caught my attention For Us Americans its the likes of Detroit, Powerstrokes and Cummins.
From U.S.: Great content very interesting engine you got over there in Britain. So far as I can tell the reason we aren't using these Ford engines is because they are not here. We put International and Cummins engines that are light enough and compact enough to fit in our pickups. It gets pretty hard to fit a diesel that is longer or taller than a Cummins B-series. If the weight is over 1,100lb and the dimensions are much larger than a Cummins B-series I personally would only consider one for my heavy trucks (1.5/2 ton). This is a very cool engine and would love to be able to find one here. I once had a Cummins B-series that had its rotary style fuel pump rebuilt by a chap in Canada who built Cummins engines for offshore racing. Little 5.9l at around 45lbs of boost made almost 1,200lb/ft to the wheels. Had a 7.3 International V-8 turned up to similar power levels in a Ford. Very curious what your 6.8 I-6 weighs and its dimensions.
The Dorset 360t was notorious for head gasket issues, I would be intrigued to know what Sabre did to keep the lid on the 630hp version. The fatal floor of the Dorset 360 was cracking on the lower left hand side of the cylinder block. This was remedied in the later Dover versions with external webbing.
I have a couple of 6 litres 225hp in my boat. One is 1986 and one is 1992, both Dover and marinised by Sabre. They run well and dont smoke from cold. Minimec pumps. They are tough pushrod engines, no belts no chains and i can get all the parts... no need to change them
Oh man, a ford in a ford would be sweet. I knew a fellow that swapped the american tractor engine version (401 cu in, 6.6 l, i believe) into an old ford truck, and that was pretty cool. I have never heard of the sabre line, but never underestimate ford in doing ridiculous things!
Great content and nice to see something different, these old mechanical engines are so underrated and so appealing especially for boat applications, if you are planning on doing a dyno session I have a Seatek I can bring down as I would love to see what injectors and pump tweaks will do to the power levels.
This is the og Ford diesels got 2 4 banger mermaids in a boat, but this Sabre in my cape boat would be minty, got like 10 dover/dorset/Leman/senator diesels too the 6poppers Nearly indestructible, just gotta watch that oil feed line from the oil pressure side of the oil pump to the fuel injection pump
Hello Luke Would love to see you get your hands on a Foden 2stroke diesel I worked on one in the 80’s It came to us as a bare engine from the MOD if memory serves it came out of a RN MTB It had the usual supercharger but also a turbo Sound was amazing
We yanked a ford dover/dorset turbo fire pump from a paper mill i worked at in nz, it's probably still in the parts yard, out in the open with no cover, full of rain.
Nice vid' the 2 turbo combo' is a compound setup this is well known in the tractor pulling circuts' a good friend has a dorset in his superstock 7000 lots of internal work like balanced crank/pistons/flywheel dont know what the output is he's never dyno'ed it but one one thing that says a lot is the block has a wire rope that goes right round over the head because they are known to blow the head off with the methanol/water injection setup lots of horsepower ........
Ok... Been watching your channel for ages... Been wanting the Merc 606 upgrade for ages but we don't get that model here.... But it's nice to dream.... Now...this video reminded me of my 100hour old ford mermaid 4 cylinder... Pure low down power.... Wondering about the possibility of upgrading it to 200hp. All mechanical ..... Act quite excited. Wonder if this could work..
Ford continued making diesels in the uk through the nineties at Basildon under the new Holland brand the 4 cylinder 4.4 and the 6 cylinder 6.6 and 7.5 litre powerstar engines were some of the best engines to come out of the nineties although primarily for agriculture some did find there way into gensets and boats
I'm as old as that engine is and I have never seen one the only straight 6 diesels I know about are the very popular the Mercedes and the Cummins I didn't even know Ford made a straight 6 diesel very cool video I'm from Ohio USA
Rolls Royce were probably the first company to do inter cooling between two compressor stages, with the Merlin. Stanley Hooker's excellent book "Not much of an engineer" talks about the development of the concept. Because the large X-24 cylinder Vulture was failure, the humble V12 Merlin needed to be a lot better at high altitude to fill the same role.......and thus a Merlin blower was boosted by a Vulture blower, cast as one housing with the inter cooler between them. However, that Marathon engine with 3 inter cooling stages must be unique in engines.
In the USA a very popular 18 wheeler engine is a Detroit series 60 almost no one knows but there are numerous engines call the Detroit series 50 it's a giant 4 cylinder they put in buses and short trucks would love to get a hold of one of these
The Ford Dover engine in its Cargo truck application was only good for turning diesel into noise and smoke. Nice to see someone do something useful with it.
OK! perhaps a rehab and a dyno run? As well as modernizing it a bit with better intercooler cores and maybe some fettling to make it make more power and less smoke at the same boost levels??? This can be a wonderful video series... Also love to see what youve developed the BMW 57's
US and UK did lots of turbocharging and supercharging research during the war to compensate for altitude and increasing horsepower. The published papers on the tests and results are very interesting, if it can be found. They broke it down to a science, no more guessing.
We use them in fordson majors for tractor pulling most are modified standard Dover and Dorset engines two I know of came out of power boats fitted with twin turbos one with the majormec pump and one fitted with a Bosch pump cost a lot of money I believe. Can be seen at Welland steam rally.
Interesting video, never knew those engines existed in that form, Definitely ripe for fitment in an old fordson major for tractor pulling, may be an issue keepinp enough cool water going through those intercoolers !! I stand corrected but I was always under the assumption that the BSD engines were made at Basildon tractor factory as they were used extensively in Ford tractors of the time
Caterpillar bought Perkins diesel as well. I work on boats, and when we have to have crankshafts repaired on perkins, we have to ship them to the caterpillar machine shop in England.
I had a 30ft launch single screw with the 180hp turbo after cooled engine. 1.5:1 velvet drive. She done 18knts at 2450rpm. 600 odd hp would have crazy 😂 and yes i sure did save on cigarettes when she started from cold haha
That's awesome! is the sabre brand the same as the marine Perkins 1006 marine engines, weren't they often referred to as a Perkins sabre? As we know, Perkins was also bought out by caterpillar
So yeah I’ve never seen one of those. Back then we got the gutless IDIs that once running after a large amount of ether felt like they could run indefinitely. Ya know Luke I am getting ready to build an old school F600, for daily use. Lol. That would look very nice in between the frame rails mated to a Eaton/Fuller 10 speed, again for daily use. Very cool engine!!!
If the IDI's have a good IP and working glow plug's (most don't) they'll bust off with a flip of the key if there isn't air in the fuel lines. Had a '86 E-350 (Econoline) Camper van with the 6.9 and it was a delight, I thought it had decent power for what it was all things said. Considering the weight and that it's N/A.
I am from Canada, and many individuals will change the engine out in an older model truck that they're fixing up, so usually they'll find an engine that is diesel run; if they're lucky, they'll try to find a second motor that they can fix up with low mileage, but most of them will find something in their price range. Some mechanics that have a little bit more skills will buy a new car engine either from the United States or from Europe. The problem with these mechanics is that they'll install extremely large wheels on their pickup truck, burning out those engines as they're not made for 4x4s. However, there are people who really know what they're doing and find a motor that they can use for that certain pickup truck. One of the options is a crate engine, but many people don't know how to install those properly. Canada has extreme weather; it could be extremely hot in the summertime and then extremely cold in the winter. The province of Manitoba, where I live, can get down to -45 below, so most of our vehicles have heater cores. This is winterizing your vehicle with a blanket around your battery that heats up and the heating core that goes into your oil block that keeps the oil warm. But there are many people who prefer diesel motors, as Canada is a very big place, and they tell me that they can drive longer distances with a diesel engine than a regular gas engine. then there are people who love Toyota engines as they prefer some of the older ones as they are sort of indestructible, so everyone has a preference on what type of motor they want for their vehicle. So everyone in Canada has a preference on what type of engine they would like in their vehicle; it's all up to them if they're doing the job themselves or a mechanic is doing it, but there are people who know what they're doing and have some really great engines in their vehicles.
Cummins are very common and there's so many aftermarket parts you can get anywhere over here. if its a swapp you can get adapter kits also. That ford does look cool but parts will be much harder to come by and adapting it also. It does look really long with the turbos set up that way too. How would one run that on the street with those water to air intercoolers, im sure that boat took in lake water to cool those things, did it not?? or did it have a massive cooling tank on board?
Besides the lack of availability of these engines COST and WEIGHT are big reasons they are not popular for swaps. The 5.9 B series Marine 370hp factory engines are also known to be cold start smoky as well thanks to their 15-1 compression ratio. I am guessing they had compression knocked out of these Fords as well. Can't forget Mercedes was setting records clear back in the 70's with their hopped up OM617 so racing diesels is certainly not new. Heck Cummins set the pole record at INDY with a diesel once in 1952
Rather interesting engine. I haven't personally seen any 6 cyl ford diesels in the US, with the exception of stuff like 590E tractor engines. A shame really. The 6.9 IDI started in 82' as I recall, and basically everything that needed a diesel got a variant of the Navistar v8. I've found those in everything from F250s to three yard dump trucks and school buses. A few in the US build the old IDIs for performance but very they're a rare breed.
WAWMBGA W ain’t we making Britain’s great again. I totally understand where you’re coming from. We seem to be a diluted nation at present. All the great engineering of our past has been thrown away and we are now full of high tech tech coffee shops and male barber shop shops concentrating on boba tea and nail saloons. Our colleges are more concentrated teaching kids to take “ologies” courses to help people find the social skills and fight the depression of a sinking country. Let’s find our way to the top again
I still run the Brazilian 7.8 l. A real reliable source of power with great mpg and good cold starts although smokey. Question for ya. Is your marine version turn clock wise or counter clock?
i used to have the ( mis ) fortune to be paid to drive a Ford Cargo car transporter ... ooh how much better would life had been with 1 turbo & 1 inter-cooler ?? .... thanks for the history lesson Luke
