Gear Patrol: Ram’s 3500 Heavy Duty Engine Tweaked To Set New Records For Torque And Towing

Torque and towing capability are to the pickup truck world what horsepower is to muscle cars and acceleration is for supercars: the metric by which they're judged. As with muscle car ponies and supercar sprints, of course, today's biggest pickups deliver such absurd numbers as to make comparisons academic; any of the Big Three's biggest rigs is powerful enough to knock off any reasonable chore with ease.

Nevertheless, as long as there are pickups, their manufacturers will attempt to outdo one another in terms of how much grunt they deliver and how massive a load they can tow. And as of December 2020, Ram has reclaimed those honors with its diesel-powered 3500 Heavy Duty, which now makes 1,075 lb-ft of torque — up from an even 1,000 — and can tow up to 37,100 pounds.

In order to squeeze an extra 75 pound-feet from the 6.7-liter Cummins inline-six turbodiesel, Ram's engineers upped the limit to the turbocharger's boost pressure and amped up the fuel flow. Small changes, sure, but enough to push it past the Ford F-350 Super Duty, which makes 1,050 lb-ft of torque in turbodiesel form.

Check out the full article from Gear Patrol here.