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9 liter deisel what? The light to medium truck diesels are getting 70 hp from injecting alcahol and water, the kits are available on line. Making extra power this way may acctualy prolong the life of engins and turbos in high stress aplications. If you are looking for more long term pulling power than off the light the short bursts provided by one of these systems will provide a trip to your local deisel shop is in order. Most medium and heavy truck engins came in several specifications and horse power levels. Retrofitting to a higher horspower level is not generaly too big a deal. The other side of that is that I have seen units having u joints, transmissions and diffs are only rated for the original spec. (this can save the original purchaser several thousand). Detroit for instance can look up your engine # and tell you how it was originaly delivered and what will fit as well as knowing how to up grade your engine. Good Luck
Thanks for the input. It is a School bus that my scout troop uses for an emergency services rid as a mobil kitchen. 26,000 lbs only 110K. Good rig but has little power on hills of any kind.
The 8.2L, particularly the non-turbo version, were never very big in the HP department. Most of those engines were set up for about 190-210 HP.
If your engine does not have a turbocharger that would be the first place to start.
You can tweak things in the pump to get a little more go out of one of those engines.
The bottom line is if you try to get much more HP out of that engine you spend a lot of $$$ for very little improvement.
It is what it is. And in a school bus that was designed and built to pick up and drop off kids going to and from school, it didn't need to have a lot of HP.
If the requirement is you need to have a bus that is better able to climb hills and cruise at the posted speed out on the highway you would be better off purchasing another bus that can do the job you need done. It will end up costing you a whole lot less and it will also end up being a whole lot less of a headache.
If the engine in your bus is a IHC 9.0L V-8, it never came from the factory in any application with a turbo. Most versions were sold in the 170-190 HP range.
At the time it was being sold it was being sold as a "money back" option over the big block gas engines--more expensive to purchase with the payback in less than 50K miles.
In terms of performance it wasn't that different from the SV345/392 and MV404-446 gas V-8 engines that were being sold at the time. The cost savings came in the form of twice the fuel mileage than could be expected from the gas engines. It was never intended to be a highway cruiser or hill climber.
If you wanted performance you checked the option box for the DT466 I-6 engine. In every application it came from the factory with a turbo.
You can tweak the fuel system to acheive a little more HP but the reality is the 9.0L was built and sold as replacement for a gas engine. It will never cruise at high speeds. It will never climb hills in anything except the slow lane. And if you try to do too much to it the life expectancy will be greatly shortened.
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