Page 25 - Demo

The Opa Transport Western Star winds its way towards Napier – handling the hills with ease, but not so the bumpy road surface
VARIETY IS THE SPICE, AS THEY SAY....BUT FOR KIWI WESTERN 24 in 2016.
Star buyers, for a couple of years, there just wasn’t any of it. Well not, at least, when it came to engine choice. In the
style of Henry Ford’s “you can have it in any color you want...as long as it’s black” approach with the Model T, the classic North American owner/driver brand offered any engine you wanted – as long as it was a Detroit.
Now, that’s changed – with the addition of the Cummins X15 engine, rated up to 620-horsepower, as an alternative to the DD15 for Western Star 4800 and 4900 models.
It is, Western Star importer Penske Commercial Vehicles believes, just what the make needs for its trucks to again find favour in the new Zealand logging sector.
There has been, says Penske’s national sales manager – trucks, Dean Hoverd, “a lot of interest around a Cummins e5 Western Star logger.”
There are, he adds, “lots of operators that, for many and varied reasons, like the option of a Cummins engine.
“It may be they have a long history with the product and it’s performed reliably, been well supported and it fits in with the rest of their fleet.”
An added attraction may be the fact that the X15 offers a bit more horsepower and torque than you can get currently in Western Star’s Detroit Diesel package, which tops out at 560hp.
Hoverd says the response to the Euro 5 Cummins option has been “great” – good enough, he believes, to hike Western Star’s market share significantly. Based on current figures, he predicts a 50% increase in sales this year. Last year, Western Star sales ran to just 25 trucks (in the overall market, for trucks above 4.5-tonnes GVM), with
Currently seven X15-powered trucks are in operation in NZ, including the Constellation Series 4864FSE5 8x4 logger, owned by Robert Kingi’s Opa Transport in Taupo, that’s the subject of this month’s Giti Truck Tyres Big Test. Penske says it already has confirmed orders for five more.
This and the other NZ 8x4s leave the factory in Portland, Oregon as 6x4s and Penske engineers twin-steer conversions here – a process that’s well established and well proven, says Hoverd: “Western Star has a long history in NZ, and local twin-steer modification is nothing new. Prior to getting twin-steers built downline in the factory circa 2013, all 8x4s were either fully or partially completed in NZ.
“All design work is a collaboration between Western Star, Penske Commercial Vehicles, local engineering companies and various certifying agencies.”
If it seems like it’s taken a long time to get a Euro 5 Cummins into these Western Stars, that’s reckoned to be simply a matter of Daimler Trucks having given priority to first developing trucks powered by its own Detroit engines.
The X15 in the Opa Western Star is rated at 448kW (600hp) at 2000rpm, with peak torque of 2780Nm (2050 lb ft) delivered at 1200rpm. The inline six meets the Euro 5 exhaust emissions standard using selective catalytic reduction (SCR), with engine braking provided by a Cummins Intebrake compression brake.
The gearbox is an 18-speed Eaton Fuller RTLO-22918B Roadranger manual with a chromed gear lever and a solid linkage. Meritor supplied the twin-steer front axles and the RT46-160GP rear axles with inter-axle and crosslocks. The rear axles ride on Airliner 46,000 lb air suspension.
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