Race on Sunday sell on Monday" has been an unofficial slogan behind racing for decades, as manufacturers used the crucible of high performance to learn lessons that were eventually reflected in commercial products.
That spirit endures even on the heavy-duty side, as a popular "Super Truck" league in Europe shows off corporate colors and components, and in some cases serves as a way to accelerate testing of parts that go into commercial trucks.
High speeds, exaggerated power outputs and even "bumping," as aggressive drivers push their way through a pack, strain everything on the racing tucks. Parts wear and break far sooner than they would on the highway or even in a builder's formal testing program. And lessons learned on the tracks can and do transfer to products for everyday vehicles.
For an engine, "two races will equal three months of development on a dyno," said Henry Gracia, director of the Caterpillar Truck Racing Developments team out of London. "Everything we use in the truck is being pushed at three times normal stress:' The team has campaigned successfully with a C-12 engine in a custom-built chassis that resembles a NASCAR vehicle, albeit on a giant scale. With the skills and aggressiveness of driver Harri Luostarinen of Finland, the conventional style "Caterpillar Truck," as it is known to European fans, won the Super Truck championship last year and in 1997.
"This C-12 develops in excess of 1400 hp and 3400 lb.ft. of torque' Gracia said. "It runs at 2508 rpm at 100 mph with 0.83 gearing" in the rear axle.
Although the truck weighs about 12,000 lb., it can accelerate from zero to 100 mph in 7.9 seconds. Unlike other factory-sponsored teams which change engines frequently, the Cat team aims to make the C-12 last the entire season, Gracia said. A catastrophic failure prevented last year's engine from going the whole distance, so it was quickly replaced with an industrial block found in Cat's supply chain in Europe.
Ingenuity, performance and good driving win the races, and team members meanwhile confer regularly with development engineers at Cat's Mossville, Ill., engine manufacturing headquarters. In past seasons they evaluated hundreds of part and material designs that led to dozens of changes in the commercial C12 diesel.
"You could refer to the C-12 as a 'mule' because we are able to gather much data on components and component life, on electronic controls in very abusive environments, on gasket and seal designs, and on engine durability under extremely high loads," said Gracia.
"For example, a heat treat process and closer tolerances on some racing components helped prevent potential problems in production engines before they ever shipped to a customer. ADEM 2000 provided the truck race team with a feature similar to Soft Cruise that allowed the truck to keep speed variations to an absolute minimum.
"In turn," he continued, "the ADEM 2000 our customers rely upon is that much better in real world trucking applications."
Cat keeps most race-related data confidential, but "I can tell you that some components failed in just a few hours of truck racing, in what would normally take hundreds of hours in field testing to do the same thing," Gracia said. "We quickly learned what does work and what does not work.
"Because it's a standard production engine used in a racing application, virtually all of the components are also production iron," said Mike Blanco, a development engineer in Mossville. "Therefore, prototype components can be tested in a relatively short time.
"We evaluated different types of head bolts, thread lubricants and bolt torques and valves, valve guides and inserts," Blanco said. "We looked at material selection and tolerance for heat of the materials. We evaluated various bearing and turbine wheel packages, and compared real turbo limits with figures from bench tests."
Early in the engine's development, the racing program helped engineers identify failures in air compressor gaskets, and made changes that included a multilayer design and special edge sealing, Blanco said. They found a structural weakness in the front cam bearing and strengthened it before sending any engines to customers. The cam bearing weakness showed up after a few hours of running in a race engine, but would have taken hundreds of hours to detect in the field.
Engineers learned additional lessons about fuel injector leaks and ran experiments on fuel injection pressures and durations. They evaluated larger injector plungers that will help the C-12 grow in horsepower in the future.
"While this engine application is 'trucking' of a sort, resting also affects other applications, including industrial and marine," Blanco said. "Early on we used some high-temperature valve and valve seat materials which were later applied to marine applications."
