diesels have come along way, expecially in the last 8 years. next year gm is putting a 4.5L v8 baby duramax in their 1/2 ton trucks and fullsize suv's thats rated at 520ft/lbs of torque at the rear wheels and 31mpg in a reg cab short bed 2wd pickup. cleanest diesel ever. ford has a similar motor that is supposed to come out at about the same time with similar power numbers (i think its listed as either a 4.7 or 4.8L but not sure). dodge could easily have been using the 3.9L cummins 4bt. turn up the turbo and its at about 400-420ft/lbs of torque. add injectors, larger turbo, upgrade the head gasket and 500ft/lbs of torque is definatly in easy reach, great fuel economy as well. keep in mind that 4bt came out in the late 80's. with bottom end upgrades to the 4bt (only one of the 3 motors currently in mass production, thats why i'm mentioning it) and other work for strength i know of a 3.9L 4bt thats a little over 900ft/lbs of torque and its been reliable. major work done to it to get that from it (he doesnt think he can go any higher without killing it), could say that its had "minor tweaking" but thats definatly a lie. custom crank, sequential turbo setup, everything else he got for it he ordered the same parts as you would for a 12 valve 6bt, minus 2 of each.
then toyota puts an 8L in a prototype thats been tweaked up to 600ft/lbs, need to slap the engineers that thought it was a good idea. people figure bigger displacement, more power. yet as pat mentioned it has over a liter in displacement over any of the diesel competition and comes up to the plate with 50ft/lbs of torque LESS than the lowest power competition. motor thats expected to get significantly worse fuel economy, 5 speed manual instead of a 6 speed that all of their competators went to around the year 2000, DEFINATLY slackin there. either that tranny has wider gear spacing between the gears, has no overdrive, or doesnt have a granny low gear. come with an axle thats ring gear is 2" larger than any of the competition yet is rated for the same as the competition? i know the rear axles in the big 3 1 ton dually's will survive pulling 35,000 pounds on a regular basis, weakest link being the g80 gov lock offered in the gm's.
by the way not a toy the shuttle uses liquid oxygen and hydrogen for fuel. none of what i just typed is cut/paste.
