New Silverado HD Pickups Pack One Critical Old School Part
To unleash the full potential of the new Silverado HD, Chevy had to go back to its muscle-car roots.
These days, it’s difficult to find many similarities between new trucks and trucks built even just a couple of decades ago. Technology has advanced at an amazing rate in recent years. So much so that if you hopped in a time machine with a new Silverado HD, people in the past might think you’re some kind of alien from another planet. There’s more tech in one of these things than a super computer from a decade ago, after all.
But while you might think that a new Silverado HD shares only a bed and four wheels with an old one, it also packs one particularly cool old school feature. And it plays a critical role in helping the new 6.6 liter Duramax powered rides claim the crown as the most powerful vehicles Chevy has ever produced. That part? A hood scoop. What were you expecting, some kind of high tech, gadget thingy?
Undoubtedly you’ve noticed the presence of the hood scoop on the new HD pickups. It certainly looks cool, but it’s easy to assume that Chevy tacked it on only for aesthetic reasons. After all, lots of new cars have various scoops in various places, but few are actually functional. But it turns out that Chevy’s old school approach on the Silverado HD also serves an important purpose.
“I’ve worked on the Duramax since it first came out,” Chris DePolo, GM’s lead development engineer for full-size trucks, told Equipment World following a recent test drive. “If you can’t get cool air to that engine and it’s hot out you can’t make all the power with that engine that you want to make. When I have to merge into a 10-lane highway and I have to step on it and I’m making all that torque (the scoop) is a huge advantage.”
In other words, if you want access to all of the 6.6’s 445 hp and 910 lb-ft of torque, you need to keep the engine bay cool. Which made us wonder, why didn’t Chevy slap a scoop on these trucks before 2017? According to DePolo, developing the part was actually a “fairly involved” process that proved “particularly challenging.” In fact, it took engineers a full two years to develop this one.
It took that long because unlike that big open scoop you’ve got on your first gen Camaro, Chevy needed to develop a piece that would filter out contaminants. So they designed one that contains an air/water separator. The scoop provides 60% of the cool air the Duramax needs to operate at full capacity. The other 40% comes from an air filter housing mounted in front of the fenders.
So even though Chevy went a little old school with the new HD’s hood scoop, a ton of engineering went into its development. But the benefits are obvious. Chevy could have just opted to restrict power in hot and dusty conditions. Instead, they went the extra mile to ensure you’ve got all the juice you need. Regardless of whether you live in the snow belt or the desert.
