What is the WORST DIESEL ENGINE ever made? 

My minty pile of street sweeper has one of them pinchers... she's a hot pile hahaha

A head salesman for Detroit Diesel won a award for selling the most 8V-71 engines in his district. It was a miniature 8V-71 on a walnut stand. He took it home and it leaked oil all over his TV set. Lol.

My candidate would be any of the the Navistar MaxxForce engines

I agree with Dale. I had the great misfortune of working on Fuel Pinchers from 1980--88. I worked on a large fleet of school buses. The big tell was exhaust gas in the coolant. All new ones had that before the first 10,000 miles.. I remember the head bolt mod, as well. Talk about no work space; there was none in a GMC school bus with the FP. You couldn't run the rack on the back 2 cylinders, because the dial gauge you had to use wouldn't clear the bus body. I had one try to run away with me but, I got it smothered with a clipboard. Hated those pieces of junk.

Back in the day, the GM /Olds 5.7 diesel was converted from a gasoline design. These were installed in everything from Cadillac's to pickup trucks. I believe lemon laws were developed because of this engine. Blown Head gaskets, burned out glow plugs, inject pump internal problems, oil leaks, broken crankshafts. It wins my nomination as the #1, the 6.2 was only slightly better!

I used to work on them a lot. Lots of warranty work. I remember hating to work on them. First time I had to get metric tools. I didnt know they were putting them in boats. Just medium duty trucks. This really brings me back. I started working as a diesel mechanic in 79 but stopped that career in 94. I miss my two stroke engines, I was good at rebuilding them and making them fairly dry with some of my tricks.

It’s easy to pick on small diesels like the powerstoke but when you get to higher displacement it’s almost like the engineers had to try to screw up.

Not actually a truck engine but the 5.7 Oldsmobile Is definitely on my list.

I drove buses for my university while in college. We had a couple of 8.2s, and they held true to the old adage that a Detroit is only good at turning fuel into noise and smoke. (Don’t drag me, I love a 2 stroke though). The 8.2s forever spent their time with their accelerator pinned and screaming away. On highway trips, I legitimately was concerned about a piston coming through the doghouse and putting me out of my misery.

Had a 3208 in a 1976 IH dump truck. Ran and ran and ran. Never had a problem.

I once owned a fleet of trucks with various diesel engines. It was interesting because when a driver became familiar with the particular engine in his truck the maintenance issues decreased I discovered that there was a certain pride in and loyalty in each brand

I remember disassembling a 8.2 that had the rods installed facing the wrong way for its offset by the rebuilder. It did not live long enough to blacken the oil.

👀 Oh my! I worked on a farm in Northern Idaho where we had two of these trucks (early 80s models), both the N/A & turbocharged variant. I almost can't believe what was covered in this video...both of them hauled HEAVY loads of alfalfa hay for over 20 years, never required any repairs but typical maintenance and daily oil level checks. They were the first Detroit engines that I ever dealt with, which lead me to believe all Detroits were tough as nails. Shocked!! The turbocharged variant was hilarious for the reactions we'd get as it would *smoke like crazy* for at least an hour after cold start. I recently visited that farm and noticed they still had the N/A version for hauling square & round bales. They had got rid of Bluey the smoke machine. RIP Bluey

We laugh about cutting the firewall for the Detroit engine but with the 3208 engines I remember being full of hope that someone else had already cut the firewall on the GM trucks out so I didn't have to unbolt the front cab mounts and raise the front of the cab in order to get the valve cover bolts and the valve covers off. My boss didn't believe in cutting the firewall but if I got lucky and someone else had been there I could remove the patch off the floor and use it to get to the rear valve cover bolts on the left hand head. 3208 engines were like the 5.9 Cummins of the 90's. You could find them in everything from excavators at a boat anchor 120 horsepower all the way to 425 horsepower in some of the large Terra Gator fertilizer spreaders in the day. Personally I liked the 3208 and my favorite was 3116 since they were the last of the mechanical engines Cat made and if you knew how to set them up they could make pretty good power reliably. I agree with everyone else. The 8.2 Detroit and the 5.7 GM engines had way too much penny pinching engineers involved. C7S and the C9S Cat engines should have never left the drawing board. Navistar Maxxforce 11 and 13 was an electrical nightmare.

I would have to agree. When I started working for Pepsi, they had a bunch of non tubo topkicks with these. They were constantly broke, made it tough for a fleet mechanic

I had a set of 8.2 Detroits in my tug boat in Australia. They worked great for 15 years without issue. Never a problem.

No webbing on the top of the block. I bet it just rocked the cylinders back n forth until the head gaskets gave out or it cracked the cylinder. Amazing.

We had six school buses in the late 80’s with fuel pinchers. Had no problems, they fixed the head gasket problem by then. It also had a different timing per cylinder. I however worked on 8v-71 and 6v71 and they were great engines. I could do an in chassis in two days.

The 8.2 was interesting to troubleshoot as I learned in USAF vehicle mechanics advance diesel class. The governors of the 1982 or so engines were extremely similar to that of a two stroke DD. The injectors highly resemble screamer injectors. The oddity was that the rack was made so if the engine was running and you needed to perform a cylinder misfire test, with the rocker covers off, you would push each injector rack per cylinder to flood a cylinder at a time to make a misfire or locate where. They idled a touch quieter than a 3208 because of not having an injection system like the the 3208. The 3208 made more power, but they both were good ways to convert fuel into smoke and noise. A damn 6-71 238hp naturally aspirated engine had a ton more guts than either of them and was reliable. After learning from your video, I wouldn’t trust an 8.2 block to be a good boat anchor if you ran the anchor chain thru a crank maincap!

My father works in the agricultural irrigation world, and I can remember him showing me a hefty concrete plinth that for many decades had mounted a Lister single cylinder diesel water pump engine. The Lister had been replaced due to wear with an Italian made engine of a brand I have forgotten now. The new engine shook so hard it had managed to tear apart the concrete block in a week, that had been standing under the previous engine unharmed for decades. Vibromax 5000!

International Navistar Maxxforce 7. In the garage I work for, the adage is that if its a Cummins, put the fire out. If its a Maxxforce, let it burn.

I do personally despise the C7 and VT365, but working on skid steers, the Peugeot XUD9 definitely deserves a place on the shelf beside the 8.2 Aluminum head on an iron block, belt driven OHC. Very interfering engine, so if it didn’t randomly spin a bearing and window the block, you could count on the belt breaking, at minimum bending valves and shattering the cam.

They were put in runway sweepers 1979 models and we still run them to this day with very little problems

Bought a used school bus with this engine in the early 90’s . Used it to travel all over the country working flea markets . Overloaded it and pulled a trailer , weighed it once , 52000 gross . It would do 62 mph up hill or down . Did almost zero work to it but regular services . Put almost 200,000 on top of the 60k it had on it . Never let me down or gave me any issues .

I owned two 3208s. The first one gave about 20 years of flawless service, a rod bearing went and I replaced it with a remanufactured one that ended up having a cylinder bored too big for the liner they put in. In hindsight I should have just add the first one fixed but I was on the time crunch.

Open deck blocks are common on low compression gas engines, however modification is needed for power increases to avoid issues.

I guess I was LUCKY !, I drove a Ford f700 tow truck with a Detroit 8.2 L. "fuel pincher", diesel engine and a 10spd. trans. I didn't have much trouble with it, but I can say this, I could pull as much weight with my bicycle as with this truck !! Even though this truck had air brakes,, you really didn't need them because you couldn't get up enough speed to need them !! Also Ford f700 dashboard s. we're mostly held together with screws, the dashboard s were constantly loosening up and rattling apart !! Great. Video. Thanks

Hi Josh, Dale is absolutley correct. This 8.2 was a complete disaster. We had a bunch of them in the 80s and could not keep the head gaskets in them here in the mountains. Still have all the tooling for them in the shed somewhere.

I remember this fiasco. When I was a newbie fresh out of tech school the first shop I ever worked for tasked me with repowering all the f600s from the local arborist company, about 35 in total. They had me replace the Detroit 8.2 with the Ford 6.6. we would buy front cuts off of f700's from salvage yards up north where the rust ate up the frame before 200k.

We had one in an F700 as a brush fire truck. N/A and backed with a 5 speed, it was gutless. Few of the hills in our district would require you downshifting to 3rd before creating them…and that was with a full head of steam (~85km/h or 45mph). It’d take forever getting to the scene, but it could go anywhere…and had a pto pump so could pump water while driving. Just got replaced this week with a brand new ford f550 gas 4x4

Had one in a f700 towtruck, was gutless as hell but ran forever...did use oil, kept it full and kept going, had over 400k on it when I got rid of it.

When I read the title, the GM Toro Flow engine, came to mind

6.4 powerstroke is top 5. Not as bad as that 8.2 tho

I started my off-highway diesel career in the early 2000s and I think I can agree to this. Not having any personal experience with them but at the time I was working for Steward & Stevenson which was the largest Detroit Diesel distributor in the United States at the time. I remember stories from older technations that worked with Detroit to Marina's that engine. Heard many horror stories and guys flying all over the country working on these boats and engines for numerous problems. The guys would eventually end up having to repower with something different and I remember hearing about numerous lawsuits occurring over this Pile of junk. Every time I saw one coming to the shop for repairs it was scrapped and non reparable.

I know you probably have noticed it but when you sit down and teach us about diesels, your viewership spikes. I watch a lot of your videos but I don’t always watch the POV working vids but when the history lesson videos come on, im tuned in! Love what ya do. Please keep em comin.

My 8.2 was the best I have ever owned. Mine was an 84 172 horse. Got a true 18 mpg in city driving for 435k miles. Water pump had 27 fittings in it. I had a school bus with one. Glad I was "lucky". Bus never got less than 20mpg and sold engine for $10k.

These were common in low end fire trucks (that didn't get a 3208) and were pure problematic. Most of them manual transmissions and they got over-reved and short lived. I still know of just a handful still in service as reserves of our customers that have been lucky. Wouldn't have one if you paid me to take it!

We had one in a heavy rescue truck when I was running with the fire department. It was one of the turbo charged ones and had an allison automatic trans. It was an absolute gutless wonder. Running lights and siren in that truck was embarrassing. People would pull over to let it by and then get stuck behind it because it would barely do the speed limit.

I worked at a GMC dealership in the 80s and and some of these engines were replaced before the customer ever took delivery of the truck. Most of them had injector failures within the 1st 2 hours of running running, as far as the 3116s, I enjoy working on them, 3208's were ok in marine applications. C7S's were a challenge, loved diagnosing the aftertreatment

I worked for a GMC dealer in the 80's also and these things were in the shop everyday. I learned to love the little turd piles. Head bolt recall, cam follower problems, air compressor brackets in air brake applications. They had the dumbest timing height procedure, but I learned to like them and got most of the ones that came in the shop. It was easier to pull the engine in the gator hoods, and yes GMC made a removable panel in some of the cabs to get the head bolts out.

The CAT 3208 was far superior to its predecessor, the 1160. I never heard of the DD 8.2 V8, so thanks a bunch for that interesting story. The Cummins 903 was better than some people think, and it always got good fuel mileage.

I got a 8.2 (n.a.) in an old f600 dump. It always starts-even after years of sitting. It's no firebreather but it does what it needs to do. Any engine can be "good" if it makes you money.

Sorry to be blunt isx.

I was around some of the last ones put in trucks. We didnt have much trouble with them. There are several Diesel engines made that if you took care of them they were ok but if you didnt treat them just right they wouldnt last anytime .

I saw one not long ago in a classic Australian International C1800. It was obviously a retro fit. I had never seen one before and could not work out what it was till someone came along who knew. International in Australia built good trucks but they had a lot of trouble with the Cummins 555s and 500s and it caused them a lot of pain. There are still a few out there with the 555 but watch out if it blows up. The diff ratio will be way wrong for anything else. The 903 was a much better engine and when they started using the 14 litre Cummins they were on a winner. These are all old trucks now, alas.

These I believe make 165 horsepower, not 130. I think its being confused with its little brother the GM 6.2L Detroit which makes 130

My shop received a 8.2 that served as a commercial building fire protection water pump. Had low hours, started and ran well, sold on eBay to a party in FL that repowered boats, no negative feed back on that one, amazing.

Thanks so much for this video, you saved me from a huge nightmare, I almost bought a 1987 F-700 with a Detroit 8.2 turbo engine as the power plant .

I'll throw my hat in this ring with the Murphy Diesel. To truly appreciate these, you really need to leaf through their service manual, but here's a few highlights. #1. A one piece cylinder head on a rather large inline six engine. #2. On top of this head are six fuel injector plates. These are connected together for both fuel in and return fuel with double flared steel tubes, IIRC, there's fifty-four connections, er, potential leak points, not counting the O-rings on the injectors. #3. It's a double overhead cam engine, cams are driven by a tower shaft coming up off the flywheel end of the engine. It's driven by bevel gears, and the cams are turned by a worm on the tower shaft and worm wheels on the cams. Replacing the worm wheels when they wear out involves parallels, a machinist's protractor and a vise mounted HAND keyway cutter. #4. It's double overhead cam, but you still have rocker arms and valve clearance adjustments... #5. Lest I forget, with all this going on in the cam box, the injector rocker arm is mounted in what is essentially a "cap" on top of the hand hole cover that allows access to the injector and the valve clearance adjusters. It operates the unit injector via a very short pushrod... You need to see it or look through the book to truly get a handle on how hard this kludge is to work on. I dealt with them powering marine gensets; they were used in cranes (Northwest) and rock crushers too.

Okay - maybe the International 9 liter. Less power than the 6.9 yet weighs another 500 pounds!

I had these in many school buses. Their tune up process was very complicated and required many special tools. They smoked like crazy when they were first started in cold ambient temperatures.😮

I worked for a fleet of the 8.2 detroit they would start in the coldest of weather minus the head gasket problems was the injectors leaking diesel in to the oil and pens poping out of governer linkage. I realy liked the two cycle 6-71, the 6-v53 was used in army M113 APC never had a problem with theae.

For a while & still now I see 8.2s on Marketplace. They were used in busses, & very few of em ran great. I knew they were bad, but didn’t think they were that bad.

i worked for an oilfield service company that had mostly 3208 cats for truck engines. very few problems but an amish buggy could pass you going up a hill.

I worked on these 8.2L that were in 1984 Ford B-700 school buses and yes had to do the 14mm to 15mm head bolt in chassis upgrade on at least 6 engines. I think there was 5 gens of head gasket upgrades over the years. Let me tell you one of the hardest parts to change was that water pump that must have been 50 pounds you had to line up 4 or 5 hoses without tearing the gasket to get the bolts started. The open or free-standing cylinder bores was made because the engine was very quiet for an engine of that size but as stated blew head gaskets at will.

I still place the Cat 3176 2YG at the top of my list on diesel engines, that I have worked on. Was released to early, production was stopped for six months, after release. Cat had a 800 number to call if one came in. You entered the last five digits of the engine serial number. A recorded message would play back the characters to circle on the fifty two page recall list. Recalls was from A thru Z and since they ran out of characters, picked back up at Z1 thru Z6. Inner and outer front cover plates would crack. Had one came in for first valve adjustment. Tech adjusted valves, push rod came out and went thru spacer deck. Cat sent him a new engine. Part of the recall was to put a updated covers over the top of the camshaft to prevent this. Cat told you to put liquid glue on the liner joint to prevent coolant in the oil.Along with the bolts that hold the spacer deck down to the cylinder block. Put inferior o-rings under the spacer deck. Could leak oil or coolant. Had to pull head, liners, radiator, front cover and camshaft out, and deck, just to get to the o-rings. If you rebuild one Cat recommends to replace these o-rings. Radiator and cam has to come out to do this. . Injector cups was made out of copper and they would split filling cooling system up with fuel and running out the overflow all over the truck. It could cause the coolant seal under the spacer deck to swell up and leak. Camshaft gear had an outer ring that could be put on backwards and the engine would not start. Also it could warp and lose RPM signal. TDM had a fresh air line going to it. If it was routed incorrectly and a hole rubbed in it. You would/could fill the ECM, TDM and personality module up with water.All three parts has to be replaced. Just looked one up because on this failure, 8K for these parts now. A few recalls on Injectors.If the oil cooler fails, you have to replace all parts from the water pump to the cover that bolts on the side of the spacer deck. The exhaust has to come off and then you have to get around 24 bolts out of the aluminium spacer deck. Air compressor drive gear would wear out and damage splines on air compressor. Have to pull front cover to replace inner drive gear. Same with the power steering pump drive gear. Would wear out the power steering pump. Bolt holes that seal the camshaft to the front plate would strip out, had to get extra long helicoils to repair it. Also the gasket was bad to leak oil.

I got to “work” on a small number of trucks with these engines in them when I was still in the shop in the mid 00s. Every single one needed a new engine. Considering the age of the trucks the tree company that owned them scrapped them vs repair or re-power.

You made a comment about a hard spot in the block… my dad used to work for a motor rebuild shop way back I the 50’s os 60’s probably. They were still rebuilding engines from the Model A’s and everything up to the wedge block V8’s anyway he said he bored A LOT of engines and only the GM blocks would have a hard spot in them that would chip the carbide boring tool. And it happened on any variety of the blocks too didn’t matter how old like an old straight 6 or a V8 etc. The nearest he could figure out is it was probably something they were doing at the foundry whether it was scrap metal and an axle or old file got in the mix and never completely melted or something they were doing when they were adding material to get the blend they wanted. I hope this anecdotal information was at least entertaining, even better if a foundry worker or relative could she some light on the reason. 😬

One thing i would say with a 8.2 fuel pinnter was it always started on compression ever time if they are running right. Even after sitting for 3 years. My dad bought one in a Chevy bus with a bad injector. He fixed the injector and was a nice running motor but we never used it much until he come by one with electric governor and he sold the motor to him to fix the other guts truck

I used to work as a service tech in a few different places. The best way to find out what model of anything is junk is just to look at the one the salespeople push the hardest. Garbage designs are always the lowest cost to manufacture and thus carry the highest markup and profit of which the salespeople get the biggest kickbacks on. If you want the best model go talk to the service department and find out what models they work on the least due to design robustness.

I liked the 3208, we had a fleet of IHC school buses with them. Never worked on the 8.2 but heard some horror stories about them. My nomination for bad (not 8.2 bad ) was the IHC DV 550, a long list of issues.

The 3.0 EcoDiesel engines you’ll find in various Chrysler products

I owned one for close to 10 years that I purchased from government surplus. it was in a c70 chevrolet dumptruck, When I sold it with 270,000 miles on it, It was stripped of the bed, fitted with a 5th wheel and still hauls grain every fall. It had no power and leaked more oil than it burned fuel. But, it started all the time and was good on fuel. I would never consider owning another. But that truck made a lot of money for a long time.

My department ran a 1988 GMC 7000 based ambulance with the 8.2-liter (205-HP/440-lbs-ft torque I believe) for over 10-years in northern IL. I honestly don't recall having any issues with this engine. Left a small oil spot on the apparatus floor but never anything significant. Bear in mind, as an ambulance (even though housed in a heated building), this engine would get tromped on from a cold start on a regular basis and obviously idled (hi-idle on scene) a considerable amount of time as well. I believe it was sold with roughly 110k miles on it. Perhaps we got lucky!

The Cummins 903 or, as we used to call them, nine-oh-nothing was a gem of an engine. Cummins decided if DD could make a V8, so could we make a road oiler too.

I don’t know a lot about them, but if you like old, odd-ball diesels, check out GM's Toro-Flow diesels from the '60s.

I have one in a 25ft box van . I drove it home to use for storage 10 years and start it every couple years. Its a gutless eng but still runs smoothly.

I got one of those 8.2 fuel pincher and that thing starts everytime i start my ole gmc c70

Drove two Chevy single axle trucks with 8.2's. I don't remember all the problems you spoke of other than no power. I do remember them blowing oil all over everything includingthe clutch, which caused clutch failures. Later drove 3208s and 1160s, and I thought they were big improvements over the 8.2 as far as power, and oil containment even in tandems. We got a 3406c and it was like driving a muscle car.

The 3208 is really not a bad engine. Not a powerhouse .... But when used in the right application they last forever. My cat 613 is one example. also had one in a 2 axle truck.

This is great just to read all the comments, obviously from older retired techs , I too am a tech with 30 years experience in the field , the last 25 plus years being with GM and doing mainly transmission and differential work. I know when GM has their hands in it , it’s going to be a disaster. Love your videos

You mentioned GM advising to drill holes in the firewall as you could not remove them with the engine in place. Fast forward to the late 2000, and Ford 6.7 the recommended service procedure for head gasket replacement is pull the cab! Ford techs do it everyday. Cars and trucks are now built for assembly not for any repairs down the road.

Of the more recent diesels, the 5.0L Cummins V8 that went in Nissan Titans for a few years has made quite a few boat anchors. Can't stop snapping crankshafts, mfgr says it's "not meant for heavy uses (a diesel pickup). And comes stock with a CP4.

The 3116 isn't that bad of an engine. I'm a boat mechanic and I've worked on a bunch of them and they seem to do pretty well in the marine world if taken care of.

The DD8.2 Fuel Pincher was the exact engine i immediately thought of when I saw the title of this video. I started cheering out loud when you said it.

My Oldsmobile cutlass had a 5.7 diesel, had to put two head bolts and two pushrods in the cylinder head before you installed it, like a magic trick, tape helped a lot

There have been plenty of really crap engines made. The reasons behind these is interesting. Was the cause an inexperienced design team, over influencial finance control, poor manufacturing, lack of testing or development etc. I think there has often been a nutcase in charge of design that wants to do things his own different way and thinks he is a pioneer. Some call these people, disrupters. You also see experience leave/retire from a company and the wet behind the ears brigade take over. In UK Leyland wanted to get rid of the troublesome head gasket. They achieved this with their 500 fixed head series. The process that lead a large organisation to create such a huge debacle will have many of us scratching our heads trying to understand. Of course it's the good engines that provide the reference point. Thanks Josh.😮

6.2 from Chevrolet first series was also a night mare!

When I worked for British Antarctic Survey back in the 90's we had 3 or 4 Tucker Sno-Cat's with these engines and I dont recall many problems with them. What i do remember is these engines in the Cats ran up to 3200 rpm and when on boost they flew. we tried to lower the top revs but the goveners fitted would not allow us to tinker. we took one of the engines out of the Snow Cat and replaced it with a Perkins 1000-6T a really lovely engine.

Having driven a truck with the DD8.2 N/A It was brutal on leaking coolant and the amount of smoke at start up was insane! But also having driven many maxx force trucks I would take the smoke over the engine alarms going off constantly anyday lol thankfully we’ve got rid of all the inters and the truck with the 8.2 !

Worst diesel in my experience is a tie between the 6.4 PSD/Maxxforce 7 and the Maxxforce DT. Abhorrent engines

My personal nomination goes to the ISV5.0 Cummins 4 sets of timing chains with plastic guides: 1 for each bank, 1 for the oil pump, and 1 for the injection pump The VGT is mounted under underneath the intake manifold The 8 high pressure fuel lines go over the valve covers and are one time use And all for an engine that wasn't much more powerful or economical than an equivalent gas engine. As far as I know the only applications that they put them in beside the Nissan Tian was in some Tiffin motorhomes and some blue bird school buses for only a handful of model years.

In the UK back in the day it was the york diesel fitted in the Ford transit. Many burning newspapers were stuffed down the intake of these things to get them to start in the mornings. Those were the good old days.

Adept Ape, As a former diesel mechanic in a GMC dealership, I had almost gotten the memory of those 8.2 liter engines out of my mind, but now you remind me of them again. The dealership offered to send me to factory training school on the new Fuel Pincher engines which were designed for the medium duty truck market, like GM and Ford mostly; Since I worked on straight commission, I thought "The more work for me the better!" I agree with your friend that the 8.2 is one of the worst diesels ever, unfortunately I was the only mechanic at our dealership trained to work on them. It was a special nightmare when it was in a Chevy or GMC truck. Ford was a bigger cab with much more space to work on the engine. I remember on a GMC in order to remove the driver's side rear outboard head bolt, I had to torch a small notch in the frame so that the head bolt could come out. As for whether that was the worst diesel ever made, It think the 8.2 Liter would be just a little below the 350 Oldsmobile diesel.

This engine makes the gm converted gas engine look good which was used in pickups and cars.

Sorry Josh all the new diesels suck. I have never seen in all my years trucking more new trucks on the side of the road broke down with engine problem.

The moment I saw the title of this video the 8.2 fuel pincher immediately came to my mind for the worst diesel engine ever made. The Cat C7 Acert belongs on the list for sure, I had a C7 Acert in a Ford F650 and it was gutless, at the time I had a LBZ Duramax in a 3500 cree cab dually that would out pull the F650 like it was standing still. I ended up ripping the C7 Acert out and replaced it with a 6.7 Cummins.

I only worked on a couple of the 8.2 back in the 80s. both had major problems including one had a slight miss, we found the block was cracked lengthwise through the cam bores and down into the mains. Only about 2 inches at each end held the block together. We dropped a main cap and a chunk of block, from above the bolt, fell out. The other one I worked on had a crack inside the cooling jacket around the cylinders from the oil passage, dumping oil into the coolant. We also found that each cylinder could be a different size, bored that way from the factory.

A bit of a different class, but the General Electric HDL engine could well deserve a place on the list of worst or highly problematic diesel engines. This dates from the 1990s, when GE and EMD (then still a GM division) were both racing to design a 6,000 HP diesel locomotive in response to a demand from Union Pacific for such a unit. To speed things up GE contracted Deutz to provide them with a 6,000+ HP diesel engine, and Deutz in turn decided to speed things up further by taking one of their existing large natural gas engines (the MW632) and converting it to diesel, but did not strengthen it enough. The resulting engine was used in the GE AC6000CW locomotive, and had big problems with vibration and cavitation, under prolonged heavy load operation it would shake itself apart. Keep in mind that these engines were powering a $3 Million piece of heavy equipment, not a Ford truck or Oldsmobile sedan. The HDL had enough problems that GE sued Deutz for failure to deliver on the contract (they settled, Deutz paid GE $35 Million) and there are are no HDL-powered locomotives operating today, in fact only two units still have their original engines, one is in storage at the GE/Wabtec plant in Erie, PA after spending most of its life as a test unit and the other was recently donated by the plant to the nearby Lake Shore Railway Museum.

I will definitely vote for the 8.2 but I will have to also vote for the Cummins triple nickel (555) or the 903. The 8.2 with a 540 Allison in the f750 was a nightmare. 3208 was not that bad as long as you did bearings and nozzles at or before 125,000 miles/2,500 hours.

I owned a truck with an M11 Cummins motor in it, i worked for a carrier that had a dedicated customer ,strictly out and back....if i went on a trip, and didn't have to spend money on it, i considered myself extremely fortunate

It’s funny the only encounter I had with that engine was a neighbour farmer had a grain truck with one & I don’t recall him having a ton of issues & I actually saw it the other day for the first time in like almost 20 years & they’ve got it as a bale truck now so it clearly still runs haha!

6.4 powerstroke

GM/Oldsmobile - hands down.

A lot of people remember and hate the International 6.9L and 7.3L IDI engines in Ford pickups. They had a habit of blowing head gaskets, and of course fixing this on a V8 is a major pain. The cavitation problem on the thinner cylinder walls of the 7.3L caused the destruction of many engines. And the block heater on both could cause the block to crack. Still, I love these engines and have a 6.9L in a 1984 Ford F250 4WD pickup, undergoing a slow, spare time restoration.

I had a 1985 F800 single axle with a 5+2 It was turbocharged rated at 238 hp 8-2 fuel pincher It was very gutless and was subject to overheating if you lugged it in high gear consequently I did most of my loaded miles in 4th It was very good on fuel I managed to put 250-000 miles on this unit pulling a 53 foot light car trailer with the only major repair was a set of injectors Everyone told me that I was very lucky that it never blew up I think it was because I was willing to drop a gear and not overload No I would not buy another

At our CAT dealership we affectionately called the 3208 a spin on engine, due to the dry sleeve design. They were okay but not my favorite by a long shot. The 3300 and 3400 series engines were my favorites.

In 1985 I went to work for a company that had 1 of these things jammed into a 3 ton Chevy delivery truck. It got about 50 km a week on it. I lived in fear of the day it broke because it was so tight. What a POS, it couldn't go fast enough to get out of its own smoke. Our winters were cold, -34C even plugged in and in a shed the smoke was like a smoke grenade. Fortunately it never had a major issue and 3 years later I was able to escape that job and never saw another one. Fast forward 30 years. A friend invited us onto his boat to watch the Canada Day Fireworks display. Beautiful boat, 43 feet. I'm having a look around and got into the engine room. Could not figure it out, twin engines, small V8's with a DD symbol on them. Yup, twin 8.2's. Time to run LOL.

,,, I saw somebody say, 903 Cummins ¥~8, I have to disagree . And ran well in the race series 40 years ago .

The DD 8.2 is a new one on me as well!! Lol. Thanks for the info!