I decided to buy a new 'compact' pickup and ultimately settled on the Colorado with the diesel. As I was looking into the engine, I came to realize I have a distant history with the GM 2.8L. I'm an engineer, and I've been developing diesel engines at the same company for more than two decades now. Back in 2000, my company owned VM Motori and I spent a couple years on a project to put this engine's predecessor in an American SUV for the European market (the project was ultmately cancelled, so no you can't see one).
Even before my time the engine was kind of a weird duck. It was a cast iron block with cam-in-block, wet liners, a tunnel crank, and 4 individual cast iron heads. That's very odd for a passcar engine, but there it was in the 1990's Chrysler minivans in Europe.
By the time I worked on the engine, it had ditched the individual heads in favor of the DOHC slab aluminum head (a lot like you see now), and it moved to the Bosch CR3 fuel system. The block was still that bizarre wet-liner plus tunnel crank legacy from the engine's industrial origin. We should all be thankful that the 70,000 mile timing belt of that 2000 era engine has been improved.
So it looks like GM, or VM, or somebody has done a lot more work on this engine. Displacement bumped to 2.8 liters (which VM was looking at doing even back in around 2001) and the block finally got redesigned to have a normal crank bearing system and parent-bore liners. The FIS is completely different, a Conti piezo system.
Back in the day I visited VM's home base several times in Cento Italy, which is about 30km north of Bologna. Nice little town. It's amazing to me how many iterations this engines been through, and how many vehicular homes the engine has found its way into.
Even before my time the engine was kind of a weird duck. It was a cast iron block with cam-in-block, wet liners, a tunnel crank, and 4 individual cast iron heads. That's very odd for a passcar engine, but there it was in the 1990's Chrysler minivans in Europe.
By the time I worked on the engine, it had ditched the individual heads in favor of the DOHC slab aluminum head (a lot like you see now), and it moved to the Bosch CR3 fuel system. The block was still that bizarre wet-liner plus tunnel crank legacy from the engine's industrial origin. We should all be thankful that the 70,000 mile timing belt of that 2000 era engine has been improved.
So it looks like GM, or VM, or somebody has done a lot more work on this engine. Displacement bumped to 2.8 liters (which VM was looking at doing even back in around 2001) and the block finally got redesigned to have a normal crank bearing system and parent-bore liners. The FIS is completely different, a Conti piezo system.
Back in the day I visited VM's home base several times in Cento Italy, which is about 30km north of Bologna. Nice little town. It's amazing to me how many iterations this engines been through, and how many vehicular homes the engine has found its way into.
