I gotta agree there, some motors just seem to keep on keeping on. Not necessarily a certain TYPE of motor, just individual motors. I know of a certain '87 or '88 chevy truck that has about 650,000 miles on it. It's been through 2 transmissions, and the heads have been worked twice. The bottom end is untouched. It's a simple throttle body injected 350.

Then, there are the engine types that often keep on forever-like the cummins. I doubt the duramax will prove to be quite as reliable as the cummins for two reasons: EGR, and more moving parts. But, it may end up being really good, far better than the 6 liter powerstroke would ever be. I won't buy one simply because of how packed in they are under the hood, not while something like the cummins is available. I haul fema trailers, and I see a surprisingly small amount of duramaxes. Not none, or even close to it, but not NEAR as many of those as there are fords and dodges. I'm surprised, because many of the ford owners with the 6 liter have the same old horror stories. The dodges, well they just run along. The few chevy guys I talk to generally are getting good service. I'm puzzled as to why there aren't more of them. Maybe brand loyalty to ford is still limping ford along, I dunno.

 

well i talked to a guy the other day that is starting to limp his tranny in a duramax, he has 200k on the truck, and the weight of it is just over 10k, he has a 130hp tune in from day one, and now when he pulls his 9k trailer, his tranny will limp climbing over steep hills, other than that no problems with the allison... i heard

the allison is the biggest advantage that the duramax has over the cummins, it makes the motor look great,and keeps the engine in the corect rpm, to bad cummins could not have it as well, might be a lot more cummins runners

 

That is an admirable performance by the allison. There is a tranny expert on another board (yes, he really does qualify as an expert) that works on them for a living-all brands, not just chevies or dodges. He got curious and pulled the service records of one shop he worked in. Apparently, he has several shops he rotates among. Anyway, the number of allison trannies in chevies that had been worked on was in the mid-high 30's. The number of ford torqshifts was a good deal lower, in the high teens if I remember correctly. The number of 48re's was 0. Not that there were no dodge diesel autos, there were some 47re's. But no 48re's. Now, this guy is in Texas. It's well known that Texas is crawling with dodge diesels, so it can't be claimed that there weren't enough around.

The allison is known to work well with the duramax torque curve. It just gets the power to the ground very effectively. However, it has NOT been the paragon of reliability that many people seem to believe. Especially in it's early years, there were many reflashes and fixes for dealers to perform. As expected, it has gotten better with refinement.

Last I heard, the dodges are supposed to get a 6 spd aisin automatic sometime in the '07 model year. I strongly suspect that'll even the transmission playing field out considerably. If they choose the gear ratios and torque converter correctly, the huge low speed torque that currently is wasted in converter slippage with the 48re will get put to good use. If you look at gear ratios, the allison and torqshift both have lower (higher numerically) 1st gears than the 48re. That right there puts the dodge at a disadvantage when taking off. It might not be so bad, since the cummins makes more low end torque than the others. The problem is, not only did they put less 1st gear in it, they put that loose sloppy converter in there, which then does an excellent job of turning that low end torque into heat instead of forward motion. A loose converter in combination with a relatively tall 1st gear is the worst combo to get a load moving. I can promise you this-if ford or chevy had coupled their non-bottom-end-torque-having diesels with the 48re, the towing performance would be laughable.

You could almost say that dodge, starting with the best torque curve for towing, worked hard to yank defeat from the jaws of victory. They succeeded too.

 

Amen, to that, from a performance standpoint. A lower low gear gets them out of the hole much better while still allowing for a decent overdrive, and in theory, allowing for use of a tighter torque converter.

The 48re is holdiing its own from a reliability standpoint, though.

 

No need to argue out of frustration that another brand has a great product.

The duramax engine is an awesome engine, and the allison trannys cant be beat. Very strong combination and the "we'll see down the road how things go".. doesnt apply, and is only delaying the inevitable.

Excellent engines, excellent transmissions, excellent trucks.

 

What is it that's inevitable? Also, why doesn't "we'll see down the road how things go" apply? Seems pretty applicable to me-the engines and transmissions haven't been out very long. We indeed WILL see how things go down the road, unless there's a time machine to show us the future that I'm unaware of?

 

i would love to see the hour meter on this thing, gotta be over 20,000hrs i would guess, i have 6 cummins on the farm, as tractors and such and i would get a bit nervous running that many hrs on them with out looking at them