Jerry, did you know there is a Cummins powered Corvette out there. I think the guy is on one of the 4x4 or Diesel boards. He has swapped a Cummins (6BT?) into a Corvette. I was too shocked to retain any details of how he did it.
I doubt it will pull 80,000 up a hill, but it will probably come a lot closer than my 350 powered Corvette...
And the reason is torque. The Cummins 6BT makes a better comparison to the Chevy 350, being closer to the same size. The Cummins has a four inch (4.02) bore like the Chevy (4.00), but where the eight cylinder Chevy has a 3-1/2 (3.48) inch stroke the six cylinder Cummins has a 4-3/4 (4.72) inch stroke.
Very similar size motors. Very different strokes. And very different in purpose.
While a new Diesel pickup and a new Corvette may be very similar in price, you probably don't compare them when shopping vehicles. You're looking for the features of one or the other. The engineers designing the motors used in each know that and make choices about bore and stroke and cam profile and a million other little things trying to create what you want to buy.
Much as I like my small block Chevy motors I just can't accept anyone calling one of them a torque monster.
