Road Test
A TALE OF TWO TRUCKS IT WAS THE BEST OF TIMES AND IT WAS THE WORST OF TIMES, TO BORROW A LINE FROM OLD MATE CHICKA DICKENS, BUT WE FELT A BIT THAT WAY AS WE SQUEEZED IN DRIVES IN BOTH VOLVO’S NEW FH13 WITH TURBO COMPOUNDING AND ITS NIMBLE AND AGILE FM 460 LOGISTICS TRUCK. THAT WAS THE BEST OF IT, THE WORST OF IT WAS THAT WE WERE PLUNGED BACK INTO LOCKDOWN HOURS AFTER OUR DRIVES.
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ometimes during this incessant, annoying, frustrating ongoing pandemic, it feels as though the doors are slammed behind you. So it was as we boarded a Qantas 737 to head home from Brisbane after driving Volvo’s more intra-state targeted FH13 500 13 litre and the FM 460. Virtually the next day the Queensland border slammed shut yet again, which meant that fortunately we completed our tests of the major new trucks in Volvo’s refreshed line up before we were plunged back into shutdown. As you may have read in our other Volvo road test story in this issue, where we tested the new flagship FH16 XXL Globetrotter, the Swedish truck maker has updated its entire range and while the big banger 700 horse FH16 is the rock star of the line-up, these trucks are the working bees, the volume sellers of the range, working hard day in day out, hauling the essentials to keep the economy moving in and around our big cities. The FH13 with its turbo compound technology and smaller 13 litre donk, is designed to deliver strong performance and fuel efficiency from a smaller engine
026 www.truckandbus.net.au
and is part of an industry wide move for smaller engines, improved electronic control tech and overall downsizing to deliver those efficiencies. In other words why use a 15 or 16 litre if you are likely to be mostly hauling high volume/lower GVM loads either in B-Double or single trailer operations, when you could do the job better with a 13 litre. If you look across the heavy truck landscape there is a growing crop of smaller, lighter, more fuel efficient, but impressively torquey and powerful 13 litre engines. Whether it’s at Scania with its R540, Kenworth and DAF with the PACCAR MX-13, or Mercedes, Freightliner and Fuso with the Daimler 13 litre engine, there is a growing focus on this engine size for the bulk of everyday transport needs. So it was that we found ourselves at Volvo HQ at Wacol in Brisbane’s West with Volvo’s strategic projects and communications manager, Matt Wood, for a day of driving the FH13 and the FM 460. Our day was being spent not in the adventurous and captivating scenery of the Pilbara, where we tested the ‘Rockstar’
FH16 but in and around the Queensland capital, where the worker bees would be expected to earn their keep. For the FH 13 TC our route would take us west along the motorway to Ipswich and then out along the Cunningham Highway to the foot of Cunninghams Gap at Aratula, where we would turn around and head back for an all up run of 150 kms. Turbo Compound technology has both detractors and fans, but it is a technology that Volvo has embraced. It has also been embraced by Formula One motor racing, in a manner at least, but not surprisingly, in a different way to that deployed in trucks. The basic description of turbo compounding if you believe the fans, is a bit like the Dire Straights song, ‘ Money for Nothing’. In basic terms the Volvo technology is a means for recovering energy from the exhaust gas, with a secondary turbine further down the exhaust to provide added torque at the crankshaft. In the past that exhaust gas was not harnessed, so in a way it is energy for free. The energy is harvested as we say via a turbine and then added torque is fed to the crank via a gear train and viscous coupling.
