Power and driving characteristics
 

My 01 with the 5.9L is my first diesel and I don't have a lot of experience with diesels in general. And coming from an F150 with the 4L V6 I know there was going to be an adjustment getting used to driving a diesel. The V6 was a snappy, but underpowered engine for that truck. I would usually just hammer it (or half throttle) off the line to get going. On the freeway I would put it to the floor to pass traffic. I just seemed like it needed for me to be heavy on the pedal and the engine was comfortable revving a little. The engine felt balanced and smooth at 2500-4000 RPM.

Now with the Cummins (and I'll see if I can explain this right) it feels like it's power is from 1000-2000 RPM. When casually driving on a light pedal, when the RPMs reach 1800-2000 and it's getting ready to shift the engine just feels out of balance, like it's not comfortable at that RPM and is just vibrating out of sync with itself. Once it shifts and the RPMs drop back down it pulls good and feels like it's in it's comfortable range again.

Now when I'm in a situation when I need to hammer it, it does move. And if I recall, it was above 2000 RPM and it did pull smoothly without the feeling of the engine being out of balance. I think maybe because there was a load on it?

Anyway, can anyone shed some light on this? Is this normal for the Cummins diesel? Does it sound like there could be a problem? Fuel starvation?

TIA

Normal.. No problems. Cummins like a load. Even though it doesn't feel perfectly balanced at those upper RPMs, it's plenty safe all day.

It gets by on brute strength.

jh