The 5.0-liter Cummins ISV engine scheduled

for the next Nissan Titan has been a long time coming. It doesn't sport any groundbreaking technology—at least that you can see. But this is the company's first new V engine in years, and one that fills the void between the 3.0- and 6.6-liter light-truck diesel engines on the market.

ISV roots go back more than a decade to a Department of Energy project that, among other things, yielded the NOx absorber strategy that allowed the 2007 Dodge Cummins to meet 2010 emission requirements. When the financial crisis hit Detroit, development money disappeared and Chrysler abandoned plans for the ISV in the half-ton Ram. But Cummins continued development, eventually dropping the V-6 version and de-stroking eight down to the current 5.0-liter displacement.

Nissan, coincidentally jilted from a failed light-truck partnership with Chrysler, signed on for a pickup version of the ISV. And given the number of Nissan vans running around Cummins's hometown of Columbus, Ind., recently and executive aircraft flights between there and Nissan's Nashville headquarters, the official announcement of the engine back in August came as no surprise.

The ISV architecture mirrors modern V-engine truck and sport-utility diesels: Compacted graphite iron block with slightly oversquare dimensions, aluminum four-valve heads with encapsulated steel gaskets and torque-to-yield fasteners, valley-mounted turbocharger, Bosch common-rail injection running up to 29,000 psi, and Piezo injectors firing up to seven times per ignition cycle. Four chains drive the oil pump, high-pressure fuel pump and intake camshafts geared to exhaust cams, and an SAE standard No. 3 bellhousing pattern assures easy fitments to a wide range of transmissions.

The single turbocharger is a water-cooled variable-geometry unit capable of exhaust braking, something the Ram 1500's VM 3.0 does not offer. The ISV uses ceramic glow plugs (Cummins claims a 2-second wait-to-start at minus 30 C), two-stage fuel filtering to 4 microns, and a relatively easy-to-change water pump. Weight is estimated at 800 pounds, plus another 95 for the exhaust after-treatment components.

Nissan has already said the next Titan will put out at least 300 hp and 500 lb-ft. The four current ISV commercial ratings cover 200 to 275 hp at 3200 rpm with 520 or 560 lb-ft at 1600 rpm. With better cooling and less stringent emissions regulations, we figure the engine could deliver up to 400 to 450 horsepower in a boat, and it's designed to fit where any big-block does.

We can gather more insight into the engine's capabilities from the gross-vehicle-weight-rating (GVWR) figures of some test mules we briefly drove, from 15,100 pounds to 31,000 pounds. Those huge numbers indicate that, like the original Cummins B Series that lives on in the Ram HD, the ISV engine is overbuilt for a half-ton pickup. Indeed, it would take nothing more than reprogramming and resizing the after-treatment and cooling systems to put it in a heavy-duty pickup.

All the development vehicles we drove came with automatic transmissions, so we can't comment on clutch-engagement torque—but the ISV idles smoothly at 500 rpm with noise levels you'd expect for a 5.0-liter void of any sound insulation. Spool-up to solid boost was quite quick in the short-geared step-van and a couple of seconds in the 15-ton bus (which was heavy with ballast), but we're okay with that. Five hundred and sixty lb-ft isn't something you want to hit a torque converter with—or multiply to a U-joint —all at once.

The ISV will be built in Columbus, Ind., at the same plant that machines ISX components and built the N14 engines. It is scheduled to go into production in late 2014 and at this time the engine is not exclusive to anyone, so it could find its way into other applications. Nissan hasn't made any official announcement on timing of the next-generation Titan or on when the diesel version be available, but the truck is widely believed to be coming for the 2014 model year.

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