[Warpath]

I mentioned this in another thread, but figured I post the full story here.

From the day I drove my rig off the lot I have been disappointed in the power of my Mercedes motor. I had alot of travel plans scheduled last year and with the delay in getting my rig which was do to a blown head gasket on the brand new motor, I did not get a chance to get it in to service to see if something could be done.

Finally got around to driving the rig to a W.W. Williams to have them plug the motor into there computer and see what options I had. Normally I could have given them my serial number off the motor and they could have told me over the phone, but some loser put a hokey computer sticker over the Mercedes motor placard which read Motor Rating = 300 hp. I should have known something was up with that when I saw it, but what ever.

Anyway it turns out that someone put the wrong motor in the truck, should have been 300 but is 280, still don't know if it was Freightliner or Detroit's fault, but Detroit is paying for the parts & labor to have the motor rated to the original 300 hp. Which is actually just a injector change and a re program from what I have been told. I don't believe anyone anymore.

The reason I say this is because when WW original thought it was the 300 hp version of, they said I could have it turned up for $400 with a reprogram. Now I am being told that the 300 hp version and the 330 hp version would require a block change, since the 330 version has a additional water jacket in the block for the water cooled turbo.

The funny thing is that now that I have uncovered the real motor spec info located on the motor in 2 locations they both read 7.2 liter 330 hp / 1,000 ft-tq at ?? rpm (can't remember what the rpms where). So I don't understand that, and no one can tell me why it has this info on motor.

One thing that does seem to be consistent is that everyone I talk to at Detroit says that the motor even rated at 280 should be a pretty stout motor for my application. And I do have to say that from 5 mph up 50 mph it is very good. But from 50 to 70 mph it's a dog. 70 to 75 are very good even in the mountains.

So next Monday I will take in to have the work done and I am also having it dyno'd to make sure it is what it is.

The thing that bugs me more than anything is that if I would have done my own checking I would have found out that Freightliner was making changes to the M2-106 to accommodate bigger motors. Changes that my truck received and for an extra 2 grand I could have had the 330 hp version motor and not had any power issues.

So as I go through my Harvard education in truck conversions, learn from my mistakes.

Next week I'll let you know if a true 300 hp motor is sufficient power for a motorhome conversion weighting in at 30,000 lbs