Yale has announced the completion of an engine alteration programme across its entire 2.0 to 3.5 tonne LPG counterbalance forklift truck range, in which true industrial engines have taken over from automotive-derived units.
The changes offer customers a more powerful and efficient engine with improved productivity while lowering the total cost of ownership.
For its feature-rich GLP20-35VX series, its standard-duty GLP20-25LX and its compact GLC20-35VX trucks, Yale has chosen to replace the previous Mazda 2.2 litre engine with a 2.4 litre PSI (Power Solutions International) alternative.
Matthew Allen, Yale solutions manager counterbalance product, explains: “Compared to their automotive-derived equivalents, industrial engines in lift trucks are more powerful, fuel efficient, quiet, reliable and long-lasting.
Much of this is down to the fact that they operate at lower RPM and this gives significantly more low-end torque – ideal in materials handling. Yale has worked with PSI for more than two and a half years to develop engines that are tailored to meet the demands of each application, incorporate the latest technologies for peak performance and surpass the performance of previous engines.
“Over 30,000 hours of testing, incorporating a series of simulations, reliability measurements and engine dyno testing, have been completed on the new engine and after each highly accelerated life test (HALT) the engines were disassembled and inspected to verify that they continued to meet durability expectations.”
Explaining the alternative testing, Matthew adds: “We used multiple tests to measure fuel consumption of the new PSI 2.4L LPG engine. In addition to the industry standard VDI 2198 light duty test course we included a productivity test to better reflect the heavy duty cycle environment our trucks perform. The VDI test does not allow the RPMs to reach the level necessary to fully compare the performance capabilities of the different model settings offered on Yale VX series trucks. We know our customer aim to move as many loads as quickly and efficiently as possible so in our tests operators moved as many loads as possible within the test cycle parameters to allow us to compare loads moved per hour and fuel used per hour.”
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