Category Archives: Cummins 6CT and ISC 8.3 Information

How Much Does An 8.3 Cummins Swap Cost?

By Featured Writer Mike McGlothlin When a dump truck, bus, tractor, or motor home is underpowered or in need of an engine rebuild, one popular medium-duty diesel power plant gets a lot of looks. That engine is the 6CT Cummins, also known as the 6CTA (for aftercooled) or 6CTAA (for air-to-air intercooled). The widely-used, mechanically-injected…

By Featured Writer Mike McGlothlin In the medium-duty segment, the all-iron, wet-sleeve 8.3L Cummins is renowned for its workhorse nature, where million-mile durability can be had in any bus, motor home, fire engine, or garbage truck it resides in. Specifically, the mechanical injection 6CT—produced for on-highway applications from 1985 to 1998—enjoys a sound reputation for…

By Featured Writer: Mike McGlothlin On any internal combustion engine, compression is what makes the world go ‘round. For diesel engines, where compression is often at least double what you see in a typical gasoline engine, it means everything. Not surprisingly, being down on compression means you’re down on power—and that can’t happen when you’ve…

In the long and storied history of Cummins engine lineage, it doesn’t get more legendary than the 8.3L platform. What began as the mechanically injected 6CT 8.3L and then transformed into the electronically controlled, CAPS-fueled ISC 8.3L, was eventually followed by the high-pressure common-rail (HPCR) ISC 8.3L. No matter the injection system, the Cummins ISC…