Paccar Engines

Hey Mike,

I've heard a lot of bad on the Paccars, unless it's the Px-9. That's the only one that's cutting it.

I used to work for Peterbilt and I was sent down to the factory in Denton Texas for training on the Paccar engines. I was not impressed with the engine from a technician point of view. For starters everything is rear gear train meaning the air compressor, power steering pump, timing gears, etc are all at the back of the engine. If you ever have to do any kind of camshaft work you have to pull the engine out. A cat or cummins you are able to do it through the front. The main bearing caps are impact fractured, if one is ever put on the wrong mate during overhaul and the fracture line is damaged, you have to replace the block. The electrical harnesses are not serviceable they are a foam filled harness that you cannot easily cut into and make repairs you have to replace the harness. Those were the things I disliked most about the engines as a technician, the final thing I hated up here in canada wasn't the DEF does not like cold and we saw lots of issue with the emissions system. I'd stick with a cat or Detroit if you can find.

Cheers Nate

The PX-9 is the Cummins ISC, painted gray with paccar badges, that probably explains why it has such a good reputation. As for the rest of them they are real hit or miss. Fuel economy is way down. There is a guy here locally that loves his MX 13 liter. No problems this far. Has 340K on it. Hard to compare the 13ltr paccar to a 15ltr ISX.

In my opinion only the isx is ok till overhUl time then trouble starts the blocks have to be cut down under the liner's and shimmed up to bring the liner's up to spec and the I have seen three of these pull the liner out of shape a d seize with only few thousand miles on them. Not like the old days, usually breaks the block and you are done, buy old cat And smile