2 nz truck and driver mar17

FEATURE

Story & photos Wayne Munro

The T610s and the more traditionally-styled T610SARs don’t look all that different to their T409/T409SAR predecessors from the outside....but there’s an immediately-apparent roomier feeling inside 82 | Truck & Driver

Truck & Driver | 83

T

HE THING IS, WITH THIS NEW KENWORTH T610, AS KIWI sales boss Richard Smart puts it, “you’ve got to feel the quality.”

So first-up, you need to open the door…and close it. Open…and close it. Repeat as many times as you like – appreciating the solid thunk each time it shuts.

Then, while it’s closed, reach up and grab hold of the rearvision mirror arm…and swing on it.

Then open the door, grab hold of the armrest….and swing on the door. Yep, don’t ask questions. Just do it.

Then (and only then), climb up and into the new truck. Take one look around….and you will, for sure, have already got it – what this new Kenworth flagship is all about.

Namely….the cab. Wider, taller, roomier, stronger, better quality, better-fitting than anything of the same name that’s gone before it.

None of this really shows from the outside: This so-called “best-ever Kenworth built in Australia” looks pretty much like the existing Kenworth conventional family.

There’s the more streamlined T610 – a la the T409 it replaces.

And there’s the much more traditionally-styled T610SAR, with more-chiselled edges. Yeah, very much like the T409SAR that it will eventually nudge aside.

The message, unequivocally, from PACCAR Australia when New Zealand Truck & Driver is invited to meet the Kenworth newcomers at the Mount Cotton Training Centre on Queensland’s Gold Coast, is that this T610 is “all about the cab.”

So try the strength tests recommended by the Kenworth guys – swinging on this, hanging off that, appreciating the solid feel of the door closing – and you’ve got a taste of the quality….

Then sit in the driver’s seat….and feel the width: Yep, it may not sound like much, but an extra 300 millimetres (under one foot in old-fashioned speak) makes a world of difference.

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What was a narrow thing that pinched your elbow room, gave you little foot-room and little headroom, is transformed into a positively spacious area (well, in comparison it sure as hell is).

With a roof in the sleeper cab models that even a two-metresplus bloke can stand up straight in – right beside the seat.

This, people is what you get when the PACCAR executive board commits $400million to create the next-generation premiummodel Kenworth T680 (and Peterbilt 579) for the North American market – with the No. 1 focus a wider, better, higher-quality cab…..

And then springs an extra $20million for its Australian arm to hang on the coat-tails of the T680 project and create what it reckons is an out-and-out game-changer for its customers.

The T610 (and the T610SAR), which get their NZ launch (with the very first trucks off the Kenworth production line in Melbourne) at this month’s THE Expo at Mystery Creek, are that good the PACCAR Australia execs can’t help themselves….

They’re so enthusiastic about extolling the virtues of the new models – proudly running down all of the improvements engineered into the T610 – that they inadvertently (but repeatedly) stray into comparing them….

With the current models, of course. So they come uncomfortably close to bagging their own current product.

Brad May, director sales and marketing for PACCAR Australia, catches himself doing it when he explains that “the main thing about this cab” is that it’s 2.1-metres wide at the B-pillars: “So our current conventional cabs are 1.83m wide….the narrowest cab in the market. I don’t say that as a badge of honour – it’s just a fact.”

And again when he invites the assembled Kiwi trucking media group to “really pay attention to the door fitment in this truck….. compared to what you know a Kenworth to be. Which, let’s face it, is….(a long pause here as he searches for the right word – one

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Truck & Driver | 85

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An extra 300mm of width at the B-pillars (just behind the driver’s head) doesn’t seem like much, but it makes a very big difference. The interior is substantially Australian designed

that’s not too negative)‌.. “Proven‌.but challenging at times as far as fitment and all those sorts of things go.â€?

At this point, Richard Smart – general sales manager for NZ distributor Southpac Trucks – gets things back on a positive track, declaring: “The doors ARE beautiful. You need to spend some time opening and closing the doors.� May: “Yeah – they’re like a car. And there’s triple-sealing and all that.�

Let’s just say that there’s a likeable honesty in evidence here as May runs through the compromises forced on Australasian Kenworth conventionals with the regulation-enforced need for a short bumper-to-back-of-cab truck: “You’ve got to shove the engine into the cab, you’ve got to somehow share the space between what the mechanic has to deal with on the bonnet side and what the driver gets to deal with on the feet side. “So, if you’ve got the narrowest cab, you’ve got the narrowest amount of space for the driver’s feet. To get to the sleeper you’ve got the narrowest amount of space between the seats.�

Try to redesign the firewall so that the driver gets a bit more space and, says May, “the fella who works on it says: ‘You’re kidding me aren’t you! How do I lift the head off this thing!’ “So these are all things that when you make it wider, all of a sudden you get more space there, you get more space there, you get more space there‌â€?

Throw in the advantages of also getting a straight steering driveline – rather than the usual re-routed job, with a dogleg, uni-joints, bearings, pillow-blocks and the rest of it necessary in a right-hand-drive conversion) – and May reckons that “you get a lot more benefits in a RHD truck than what they ever imagined in the US.�

And he adds: “I feel like I’m just pointing out all the legacies 86 | Truck & Driver

of our current product but really, this is about improvement, comfort, space inside the cab. “You get inside the cab, stand up – and what looks like a relatively small sleeper on the outside actually feels like a massive sleeper on the inside because you can stand up right next to the seat. “The driver’s environment is a substantial leap forward for our product lineup.�

To get all of this, plus much-improved quality (in terms of quietness, fit and finish), means one inescapable thing, says May: “You’ve got to spend the money.�

So much money that this was a project way beyond the capabilities of PACCAR Australia on its own. But when the Aussie company and its US parent found themselves on the same page in wanting a wider and better cab, the seeds were sown.

So when PACCAR in the US launched its $400m NGP (new generation product) project around 2008 – to design what would become the T680 Kenworth and the Peterbilt 579 in North America – a Kenworth Australia engineer was sent to work on the project. The aim, as May explains, was to ensure that, from the outset, the designers also thought about a right-hand-drive, short-BBC Australasian derivative.

Thus the T610 “started out life based on the cab of the T680‌.â€? The benefits of that being that “it has a wider cab and it also brought a whole bunch of functionality that’s a severe upgrade for our established product in this country.â€?

The result? Because it was factored-in from the beginning, the standalone costs “needed to make this work for our part of the worldâ€? were dramatically reduced. Necessarily so because, as May adds: “The facts don’t change – we’re a very small part of the world market, so our ability to justify investment is hard to do‌.

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because we’ve got no volume.”

The T680 itself wasn’t regarded by PACCAR Australia as a truck for this part of the world, says May: “It was a big thing for the US – they went really major on aerodynamics….with their CO2 laws and fuel prices going up. They’d decided they needed the ultimate aerodynamic machine.”

The American Kenworth also signalled “a big shift as far as Kenworth goes – it went really automotive. And to be honest we didn’t really agree with the way they went. So when you get in these trucks you should see a lot of traditional Kenworth… whereas the US went down a fleet path – a very modern, very automotive feel.”

So, let’s run it down – the similarities and differences between the cabs of the North American T680 and our new T610: The bonnets are different, the roofs are different….the sleeper cabs too. The T610’s firewall and floor are Australian redesigns (necessarily because of the switch to RHD) – as is the cab interior.

But, critically, “the aluminium part in the middle (this as May jabs his finger at the main cab structure) – that’s the same….. exactly the same.”

The whole cab structure (which is put together by robots) is made of aluminium, “except for a little bit around the cab mounts and up the A-pillars….There’s steel in there to create strength where strength needs to be.”

And that cab structure, says May, was one of the most expensive bits of the whole project: ““It’s all automated technology – stamped, pressed technology. So the investment in that tooling….it’s very expensive, very high-precision tooling to

make.”

It provides the basis for the new Kenworth’s cab precision engineering, its strength, the tight-fitting doors, solid dash and so on.

“The US (PACCAR US) were able to justify spending the money based on their volumes – and we’ve come in on the coat-tails of that, to say ‘well, let’s make it RHD and short BBC.” “This is exactly what we did in the 1970s with early SAR. And when the T600 came we did the same thing in the ‘80s. And when the Anteater came out….did the same thing. RHD, short BBC. “So this is not a new path. We’ve done this before – taking a US product as the core and Australianising it….or New Zealandising it.”

The result is much more an Aussie/Kiwi truck than an American truck, May insists.

As he says: “So the one thing we’ve tried to emphasise to everybody is that, apart from the cab, everything about this truck is as it is now – it’s designed by Australian engineers, for our part of the world.

“The Americans – all they had to do was help us sort out the cab part and then we were completely on our own. So all the philosophies, all the ideas that go into the product, as an Australian-made product, remain.

“We say that because a lot of customers look at it and say ‘oh it’s an American truck – you’ve lost the plot…..you’re importing them like everyone else.’

“Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s the same people, same philosophy, same trucks.”

Top: Hang off the mirror arms, suggested the PACCAR Australia people....so Allied Publishing director Hayden Woolston did just that. The A-pillars, the doors and mirrors are definitely strong

Above: Kenworth’s Kiwi sales boss Richard Smart loves the thunk the door makes when you close it 88 | Truck & Driver

Truck & Driver | 89

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There is, he adds, “a lot of the American truck – and there’s not, at the same time. The expensive stuff is what we’ve got (from the US).�

Even then, there was a lot to be spent in creating the Aussie version: “We were very lucky to get the best part of $20million worth of backing by PACCAR globally to do it – that’s the single biggest investment in product we’ve ever made in this country.�

As well as necessitating a new floor and firewall, the switch to RHD meant that for the T610’s interior the Australian designers “didn’t have to adopt their treatment. Because moving the steering wheel means everything changes‌we got the freedom to do what we thought was the right thing for here.â€?

May is clearly proud of the new dash and instrument panel in

the T610: “It’s about $2million worth of investment. The people who make this dashboard make the current Toyota dashboards.

So it’s a full injection-moulded dashboard – a level of technology we’ve never had access to before – both from an expertise and an investment point of view.�

The pullout of carmakers from manufacturing in Australia played to PACCAR’s advantage in this case – as these days they’re looking for new work.

The dash is about 6mm thick and fibreglass-reinforced, says May: “By all means give it a good punch on the dash and grab hold of her – she’s as strong as an ox.�

The Aussie designers opted for a more traditional dash than the T680’s – and spent money on “little details� like reversing the Truck & Driver | 91

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American up-for-off switch function: “So you don’t get in it and go ‘ah, this is an American truck.’”

And then there’s the exposed fasteners in the dash. Now there’s a WTF! innovation…until you get the rationale from May: “You get in any car these days and you don’t even think about pulling the dashboard apart – because you don’t see a screw and you’d have no idea how to get it apart.

“We had a lot of customer and dealer feedback saying ‘whatever you do, don’t stuff the dashboard up – don’t make it like a Freightliner, because they squeak and they rattle’ and this that and the other…

“And we think the real reason for that isn’t necessarily the material that’s used, but it’s those moments in the middle of the night when a mechanic has to get in and get access behind the dashboard. He doesn’t know how to do it so he pulls on the panel, breaks the hidden fastener – and it never goes back together properly and it squeaks and it rattles.”

So the T610 has exposed screws around the dash – “so any Tom, Dick or Harry can get in and say: ‘I can see how to get this thing apart.’ It comes apart so you can work on it and put it back together the way it came apart.”

“Little, simple decisions” like that, says May, are “styling suicide” in the modern automotive world – “you’d get your wrists cut for that.

“But we’re able to make those choices – and did – because we think that’s the foundation of a good truck in this part of the world…..the sort of foundations that have kept Kenworths durable, long-lasting trucks.”

Durability for Aussie conditions dictated too that the firewall is

fabricated rather than stamped – “to get strength. It’s 60% thicker than the American one.

“So, this has got to be a truck suitable for whatever the hell we’re gonna do with it…”

To that end, he reckons, the T610 is not only the best Kenworth ever built in Australia – and for the biggest investment. It’s also the most-proven.

“We’ve never done this much testing with a Kenworth. Ever, in this country.

“We always say, you know, ‘Australian trucks are the toughest trucks and that’s the way they’ve gotta be.’ But what does that actually mean?

“So years ago we got a whole bunch of rocket scientists out from our tech centre in the US and they went out into the bush” – and monitored a T659 Kenworth doing cattle work: “Essentially they recorded everything that truck was subjected to.”

Back in the States they compared the data to the profiles of other Kenworth applications – and “it transpired that yeah, it was pretty hard. But in some ways not as hard as Canadian logging…”

The Australian Outback stock truck’s working profile proved to be “not as severe – but it does it longer. Canadian logging is not as long, but severe.

“So we used both profiles as appropriate to throw it (the T610) in there and see if we could kill it on either profile!

“All the way through this project we’ve tried to kill this cab.

Whereas the Americans typically test to make sure it lives to a certain point and – if it doesn’t fail, it passes – we’ve tried to go to destruction. Fortunately we haven’t killed it, so that’s good.”

Shake-testing, for instance, was carried out at the PACCAR

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Above: The new Cummins X15 offers buyers who spec the Eaton UltraShift Plus AMT with many intelligent electronic management options, via the Cummins ADEPT system Top right: Editor Munro find the new cab impressive...probably even the game-changer that Kenworth reckons it is Lower right: West Coaster mirrors are not an option. But check out the extra visibility provided by the low-cut side windows and the mirrors that are set low....and out from the A-pillars

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proving ground in the US, using a prototype cab. In the US, one cycle of shake-testing is regarded as sufficient. It is, after all, says May, the equivalent of around one million miles of cab life. “We got to the end of the first cycle and we said, ‘do it again.’ We got to the end of the second cycle – and we said ‘do it again.’ “They didn’t let us get to the end of the third cycle because they said ‘we need our machine back and you’re proving nothing right now. And you can’t break it. It’s not going to break.’ “And we know – and I say this with a little bit of trepidation – that when we put a K200 through the same shake test (and we know that’s bulletproof for the most part), the K200 showed all sorts of failures that we’ve never seen on the road. “So we know that we’ve subjected it to some pretty full-on, extreme treatment – and the cab lived.�

There’s also been lots of styling simulation work done – “trying to get a balance between what it looks like and how (fuel) efficient that could be.�

Early fuel-testing with customers indicates that the T610s are achieving “slightly better� economy than a T409 – “same run, same trailer, same drivers, same loads. They seem to be getting about 0.1kms per litre better.�

Helping that is a small weight saving – despite the bigger cab. That, says May, is “because for years our level of design influence on these things was to go: ‘That’s breaking – make it out of bigger steel.’ There’s a lot more science in this truck‌.it’s designed smart rather than designed heavy.â€?

So what do you go without on the T610 that you get with a T409? Well, West Coaster mirrors are not an option: “But what you’re gonna get is a way better mirror.�

Mirrors that contribute to the improved all-around vision that May describes as “paramount� in the T610 design, with its wide and deep windscreen and extra side-window glass: “You don’t get a mirror and an A-pillar right next to it – there’s a gap there. And

the mirrors are quite low – you can see over the top.�

Thus the half-day at the Mt Cotton track, with its nice mix of hills and tight to sweeping corners is much more about getting a feel for this new cab, rather than a new truck.

For sure the T610 does have a new engine, in the form of Cummins’ X15 (available in ratings from 485-horsepower to 600, with 1650-2050 lb ft of torque). But, as Cummins says, that uses the same hardware and SCR emissions control technology as the existing ISXe5 and incorporates every product improvement since that engine was introduced, so it’s not exactly an unknown quantity.

It does, of course, also introduce Cummins’ latest advanced dynamic efficient powertrain technology (ADEPT), which uses load, speed and grade-sensing technology to make adjustments to engine power, torque and gear selection for maximum fuel economy when the X15’s integrated with the Eaton UltraShift Plus.

T610 buyers who spec the UltraShift Plus will initially also be able to get the ADEPT options SmartCoast and SmartTorque. The first disengages the front box of the transmission and returns the engine to idle on slight downhill running, reducing drag, maintaining momentum and improving fuel economy.

SmartTorque uses intelligent torque management to avoid unnecessary downshifts and keep the engine operating in its most efficient “sweet-spot.�

Cummins South Pacific, director of automotive business Mike Fowler, is expecting the benefits of ADEPT on the X15 to help boost the uptake of AMTs: “What’s interesting‌.there’s a very large percentage of the Australian truck market that’s moved some time ago towards automated manual transmissions. “That large part of the market just isn’t the part that has 15-litre Cummins engines. So at the moment I’d say that less than a quarter of the 15-litre product we sell is married to an AMT. And I’d guess that we’d at least double that this year, with ADEPT Truck & Driver | 95

Above & left: The wide-cab T610 and T610SAR are Kenworth’s most important new models in years.

and 2016 have experienced fuel economy savings as a function of that.”

ADEPT technology, he adds, “brings the opportunity to further build on that: Once you’ve got an AMT you can start to do clever things with an integrated powertrain. And SmartTorque and SmartCoast are just the next logical evolution of that relationship between engine and transmission.”

Next year and beyond, says Fowler, Cummins will begin to tap into more of ADEPT’s potential: “Predictive cruise control’s probably the next powertrain integration-type feature that we’re working on – and we are working on that today. And we think we can have that ready inside 12 months.”

The T610’s transmission options are both well-proven – the oldfaithful Roadranger manual, or Eaton’s UltraShift Plus AMT – as are the Dana and Meritor rear axle options and the Kenworth Airglide rear suspension (with a Neway AD2146/10 option).

There are interesting extras on some of the drive-day trucks, like the optional Bendix Wingman Fusion intelligent safety system that includes an electronic stability programme, lane departure warning…even active cruise braking, which sees the system initiate emergency braking to avoid a collision.

All interesting…but not essentially what we’re here for.

Remember: It’s all about the cabs.

And they are good – impressively good. Roomy, a bit quieter than their predecessors and, above all else, delivering that feeling of quality that Kenworth was after. They’re cool too, thanks to a new climate aircon system and despite temperatures outside that climb into the high 30s.

The old Brit tv sitcom gave us the legend: “Never mind the quality, feel the width.”

With the T610….you get both! T&D

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technology.”

The carrot for that is saving fuel…and thus money. Says Fowler: “I would say, just with the ADEPT technology alone, there’s an entitlement for most operators of up to 6% fuel economy improvement – just in that software.”

The complexity of ADEPT has seen Cummins devise a wide range of calibrations specifically for different applications and truck/trailer formats – in a market where, “you know, there’s probably not two trucks the same….B-doubles and roadtrains and tippers and dogs and fuel tankers and PBS combinations and 500hp and 550 and 600….”

Beyond that, Fowler adds, there’s even more specific tailoring of the engine/AMT integration to best suit a customer’s needs.

For instance, he explains: “How important is trip time versus fuel economy. And we can make those tradeoffs.”

He concedes that the Cummins/Eaton integration hasn’t always been “a happy marriage.” On the EGR and pre-EGR ISX, for instance, the fuel system “wasn’t the most accurate way of metering fuel into the cylinder.

“It’s a bit like having a pretty ordinary barman that either gave you a short pour or over-filled your glass,” he says bluntly.

But now the Cummins XPI commonrail fuel system “does an outstanding job of really accurate fuel metering. Which means that we can broadcast torque to the transmission really accurately – and when you do that you can get a really smooth shift.

“So once you get that done you can then focus your attention on optimising your shift calibrations and optimising fuel economy.”

And that, he adds, is exactly what Cummins spent a lot of time doing in 2015 – “and those customers who moved from manual transmissions to automated manual transmissions during 2015