MAN rethinks V10
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• Customer interest in MAN's 343kW vee-tenpowered F90 chassis, which was launched as a market evaluation prototype (CM 17 January) and exhibited at the Brussels Show is proving to be far greater than expected.
MAN's technical director Dr Klaus Schubert said in Munich last week that planned production of the turbocharged and charge-cooled 18.3 litre power unit — scheduled for next year — will now be increased.
It was originally thought that MAN's most powerful in-line six-cylinder engine, which develops 269kW, would satisfy all but a handful of European heavy truck buyers — even in Germany, where the legal maximum gross weight for artics and drawbars was increased last year from 38 to 40 tonnes.
It will be some time before two-axle 19.462 and three-axle 22.462 vee-ten-engined tractive units start rolling off the production line at MAN's Munich truck plant, and when they do they are likely to be fitted with a higher-rated version of ZF's Ecosplit 16speed range change gearbox, the 16-S-220, which has been developed to handle the 2,050Nrn peak torque delivered by the vee-ten engine between 1,000-1,200rpm.
Schubert says that the D2840 LF/460 engine, governed at 2,000rpm for the sake of fuel economy, is conservatively rated at 343kW. In Austria MAN's OAF subsidiary already builds special purpose on/off road and heavy haulage chassis with what is essentially the same engine but allowed to rev to 2,300rprn, where it develops 392kW.
Specific fuel consumption, even with the restricted version, will not match that of MAN's 269kW in-line six. The latter's 'pulse-tuned' manifold concept, which boosts volumetric efficiency, cannot be applied to vee-ten or vee-eight configurations, says Schubert.
MAN-VW in Britain says it has not ruled out the possibility of bringing in a vee-tenpowered F90 if there is sufficient demand.