(First Posted August 2, 2013) The old saying “Make hay while the sun shines” simply means taking advantage of good conditions to ensure a quality harvest. It only takes a little rain to reduce the feed value of hay, so one keeps a sharp eye on the weather forecast before cutting. Here in the Middle West, it takes from 2-5 days of dry weather to properly cure the hay before baling. To improve my haying capabilities, I purchased a (very) used Hesston 6400 Windrower a couple of years ago. It replaced an ancient and finicky sickle-bar mower, and I was pleasantly surprised to find it powered by the venerable Chrysler Slant Six industrial engine…
The Chrysler Slant Six had its genesis along with the development of the 1960 Plymouth Valiant when, in 1957, Project A901 was initiated. The project’s aim was the development of a compact car to battle imports that were starting to gain traction in the U.S. auto market. Internally, the car was called ‘Falcon’ (until Ford introduced their car by the same name), and the early engineering direction for its layout involved using a rear-mounted, four-cylinder engine tilted to fit below the rear parcel shelf. The four proved to lack low-end torque, which led to the addition of two cylinders to produce the familiar configuration we know today. When word leaked that Chevrolet had rolled a Corvair in early testing, Chrysler abandoned the rear-engine configuration altogether and returned to a traditional front-engine, rear-drive setup.
Willem Weertman was the principal designer of the Slant Six, and in an interview with allpar.com, he indicated that the engine was essentially a clean-sheet design that owed little to the previous L-head Chrysler sixes that had been in production since 1929. Chrysler flatheads were last used in automotive applications in 1959 Plymouth and Dodge cars, and in 1968 Dodge M37 military trucks. Production for industrial engine applications continued as late as 1972.
What made these old engines so desirable for so long was their incredible low-end torque. The 265.5 cu. in. (4.35-liters) six used in cars made 218 ft/lbs of torque at only 1,600 rpm—which made it ideal for industrial uses. By the late-’50s, the L-heads, which were available in a range of displacements up to 413 cu.in. (6.77-liters), were considered thoroughly obsolete. As Weertman and his engineering team worked on a new-overhead valve engine design, he noted, “Making it an extremely compact and lightweight six gave us plenty of challenges, and we were pleased with the way it came out.”
Tilting the engine 30 degrees in order to fit under the Valiant’s hood provided the opportunity to use longer and more efficient intake and exhaust runners, as well as the happy side benefit of better access to engine accessories, including even those on the underside of the engine. It also moved the center of gravity a bit lower, which helps improve vehicle handling.
The Slant Six would prove to be a very versatile and durable engine platform, one that responded enthusiastically to such performance upgrades as the Hyperpak setup (seen above) that made 196 hp. The current Bonneville speed record for a Slant Six, set in 1965, stands at a shade over 142 mph. Aluminum-block versions were produced from 1961-1963, and prototype turbo and diesel variants were developed as well. At the other end of the spectrum, tuned for economy in a light car like the 1976 Plymouth “Feather Duster,” the Slant Six could deliver up to 30 mpg on the highway. These engines have been known to run 500,000 miles or more before needing an overhaul. Weertman clearly knocked it out of the park with the Slant Six, and later he’d repeat that success with the development of the 3.3-liter V6 introduced in 1990.
But enough about development history. Due to the engine’s fat torque curve, it was only natural for Chrysler to “make hay” and offer the new Slant Six for use in any number of industrial, truck and marine applications. Heavy-duty engines typically had a forged crank, double-row timing chain and chrome plated upper piston rings. Depending on their application, industrial engines might also have had polyacrylic valve stem seals, positive valve rotators, stellite-faced exhaust valves and a high-volume oil pump.
We’ve already covered the Cortez motorhome, and the following are a few other examples of non-automotive Slant Six applications:
How about a nice, tidy marine installation?
Or a clean-looking electric power generator set?
A Slant Six has been faithfully driving this pump for a number of years.
Many an aircraft tug was powered by the engine…
And it also found a happy home in various forklifts.
And finally, the engine’s durability and power properties made it a natural for ag applications. Hesston is well known for haying equipment, and produced the 6400 from the late 1960s through the early 1980s. (Mine is mid-late 1970s vintage.) Essentially, the tractor is a super-sized zero-turn mower. The Slant Six drives two hydraulic pumps through a series of sheaves and belts while the main drive wheels do all the moving and turning—the rear wheels are free-castoring.
The business end of the Hesston has a large takeup reel that rotates to sweep the hay into the cutter bar. This oscillating bar has numerous knives, or sickle sections–triangular, serrated blades working against fixed guards to cut the hay (or any critters that don’t move away fast enough—I occasionally find portions of snakes, frogs and other field animals poking out of hay bales). The belt drive allows for some give in the system in case you hit a rock or other obstacle.
Here’s the view from the driver’s seat. The cutting head is 10′-5″ wide (3.2m), and an auger pulls the cut hay into the center of the machine where hard rubber rollers crush (‘condition’) the hay before dropping it out the back into windrows. The crushed stems of the plants lets them dry out (cure) faster, which can shave one or two days off the drying time versus non-conditioned hay.
Unfortunately, the Hesston’s controls are somewhat “user hostile”. Pushing the steering wheel forward or backward produces the movement you’d expect. Turning the wheel steers the tractor by altering the relative speed and direction of the drive wheels, which makes the unit highly maneuverable. This works pretty well, until you try it while backing up—everything then goes backward from what you expect! I’ve come very close to putting the back end through the barn wall more than once.
And speaking of the back end, let’s have a closer look at that Slant Six… Yep, as is typical, the exhaust manifold is cracked, and the previous owner “farmerized” a quick field repair it both it and the rotted out exhaust pipe (which I have since replaced). Given that I hay only about 12 acres, the engine accumulates a mere 20-25 hours of running time annually. At that rate, I suspect it won’t need an overhaul for at least another decade.
Well, it looks like now the hay is cured, and doesn’t even need raking! Time to go bale. Anyone want to help?
I like this. The variety of applications for the slant six is broader than what I realized, but is not surprising given the versatility and durability of this engine.
Now for the question of the day: Does the starter motor have that pure Chrysler sound?
Sure does, although since the crank drives a belt pulley, it does have a different “startup sound” from a car engine.
“Cropside Classics?” Thanks, Ed! 🙂
Good old Heston, formerly made in Heston KS. As a kid living not too far from Heston we often drove by their factory that was right along I35 with a large lot of their equipment lined up ready for shipment. Eventually they were bought by Fiat and just sold badge engineered Fiat equipment.
Eric: I was unaware of the company or the location and for a guy that grew up in Dodge City that is surprising. Spent a lot of time visiting kin in Wichita but very little time running up I 35. Guess Fiat has bought into the american scene pretty heavily.
Always had a feeling for ag equipment. Learned about it as a very small boy helping my uncle on the farm. Thanks ed for the story.
I must have visited a countless number of farms since the early seventies but I’ve never seen anything like this. Other Hesston hay equipment, yes, but not a “windrower”. As a matter a fact I’ve never seen farm equipment with a gasoline engine, with the exception of small horticulture equipment.
You also got machinery with an LA-series 340 to speed things up a bit ? They also come with a forged crank and a double row timing chain…but I guess there’s no such thing as an “industrial 340”.
Eric, as far as I know the AGCO-Group now owns Hesston, not Case New Holland. (Fiat Group)
According to the AGCO Website: AGCO purchased Hesston Corporation, a leading North American brand of hay tools and a 50 percent participation in the manufacturing joint venture with Case International, known as Hay and Forage Industries (HFI). Which the way I read it AGCO owns the Hesston brand name but the company that manufactures products sold under the Hesston name is a joint venture between AGCO and CASE IH.
I do know that at one point I ran across a piece of Hesston equipment at a county auction and when I looked at the data plate it said it was manufactured in Italy by Fiat.
As far as gas powered AG equipment at one point long ago that was the norm. IH offered gas powered combines in the 70’s that were powered by the same SV (small V8) engine family that was used in Scouts, Pickups, Loadstar and other MD applications as well as stationary engines.
That’s just how things evolved after WW2. For anything but cars diesel became the norm in Europe. Started with big trucks and farm equipment and after that the smaller stuff soon followed. In the US gas stayed the norm much longer, certainly in road traffic.
Mack and International remained pretty popular though because they had their own diesel engines. Mack and International trucks were assembled here, way into the sixties. CKD-kits crossed the ocean and were assembled in the Netherlands. Here’s an International ad from the sixties, it says
“Quality trucks with their own diesel heart !”
I’ve never seen another self-propelled windrower around here, either. The much more common implement is a PTO-driven mower-conditioner or disc mower.
That sounds more familiar !
Maybe you can compare your windrower to a corn silage harvester with a cutting head for grass. Like this New Holland:
I never knew that the guy that designed the Slant 6 was around at Chrysler until the late 80’s when he designed the 3.3 V6,cool.
Had the 3.3 in my T&C minivan – and when I “traded down,” selling the T&C and buying a full-size Ram Van, it was a shock when I found out how much power I LOST with the Ram 3.9 and how much more fuel it used. It was heavier – but not that much heavier. And the lockup torque converter should have helped.
But the 3.3…economical and powerful and a great engine. Wish I could get another, in another of that generation minivan.
The 3.3 was one of the best engines I have ever seen, bar none, period. The whole while I worked at Chrysler, I only saw one come back, and it had gone 60,000 km without the oil being changed. All the rest were excellent motors. The later ones with the split manifold moved a short Caravan along very nicely in my opinion.
This generation of van had more that its share of issues (especially body computers, bad brakes, poor quality suspension parts to name a few) but they aren’t that hard to wrench on. A clean ’04 around these parts can be had for $3000 so it doesn’t matter if you spend $1000 a year keeping it on the road.
I think you would’ve been MUCH happier in the Ram Van with the 5.2 L V8 at minimum. 🙂
I met Willem Weertman in 1985 at a conference on fuel injection. By then, at least among the engineering staffs, there was a bit less territorialness between the domestics. While no one revealed specific secrets, a lot was discussed. By then, Chrysler was working out their version of TBI which was very similar to the system used by GM in their 4 cylinders.
The original slant six was canted so that the nose could be shortened a bit to fit into the then-new compacts. Aside from some intake tricks, the engine does not perform any different than an upright motor.
One thing that the slant six does, ever so slightly, is balance the car left to right with the weight center of the engine offset somewhat to the passenger side the combination of a long intake plus a driver only the car does not have a tendency to toe in on the driver side. For a smaller person say <180 in a car at least 3000 lbs it's virtually unnoticeable, but get a heavy set person say 250+ in a small car <2500 try putting a person in the right rear position you may notice a bit of a difference at speed.
One wonders what it does in RHD cars then! I gather the RHD conversion was complicated by the slant also.
It is interesting that the other slant engine I am familiar with, the Coventry Climax, has the manifolding on the lower side of the head. I gather that is primarily for better breathing in having a smaller bend from the port to the valve.
Did you notice that it didn’t take long for the Ozzeys to set the engine upright?
I didn’t know that, either, about the two engines having a common designer…even as an owner of both. Like the Slant 6, the 3.3 V6 has gobs of torque down low. It may have been designed with the minivan in mind but actually first showed up on the C-platform (stretched-from-K-Car) Dodge Dynasty and Chrysler New Yorker in 1990, supplementing the 3-liter Mitsubishi V6. The minivan didn’t show up until four years later but had been in gestation for an extended time.
My 1995 Dodge Intrepid has the 3.3 V6…and my long-ago 1968 Plymouth Valiant Signet, the Slant 6. Both: metallic blue!
Hoo, boy. I’m almost afraid to put this out…given that I’ve been branded the House Downer…but, here goes.
The Slant Six was quality – no question there. The owner of one of the cab companies I drove for, swore by them. With good reason; with lots of experience. Rust and accidents killed his cabs; engines, very seldom. And his cabs were USED when he got them – he’d run NYC police cars, bought at auction and driven over by five or so drivers at a time. That was 500 miles away from Gotham.
The rare time an engine would die…he’d have about four spares.
Okay. Here we have a work item that’s used, as Ed says, about 25 hours a year. Isn’t a Slant Six, coming from the factory that way…kind of like, too MUCH quality? The real test of that engine isn’t how many hours it can rack up – it’s how well it HOLDS up, inactive, year after year for months at a time.
I’d think an engine of a lesser standard, in fact maybe even a rebuit, would have done just fine for that kind of service. Sure – a remanufactured engine, put in on the line. Knock about a thousand dollars off the purchase price.
My 25 hours a year is consistent with hobby farm usage. Someone running hundreds or thousands of acres of hay would rack up many hundreds if not thousands of hours annually.
Not only that, but you weren’t the original purchaser!
The ‘duty cycle’ must be around the decision point of buying your own machine, renting one or getting a contractor in? The latter would cost more, until on the windrower breaks. Shared ownership or lending gear out to neighbors in a similar situation is far less ideal…
No idea what the Hesston cost new, but I paid $1500 for it, which I’ve already more than covered with my first two hay cuttings this year.
Interesting you should mention this. When we ran cabs, it was very rare of a good old GM V-8 to really blow up until like 1980 when bad motors started to come come on. Before that, the SBC was unkillable.
The same for the Slant Six. This was an engine customers just loved. Look at the torque curve of that baby. No Slant Six I have ever driven, even the heavy really smogged out M Bodies, felt slow. They all had a generous rush of torque right off idle to 65 mph.Yes, they were too good. Look what replaced them, the 2.2 was a POS from the day it came out of the factory. The K car was horrid compared to what it replaced.
If canting a six-cylinder enginer over 30 degrees is such a great idea, why hasn’t anyone else done it since the Slant Six went out of production? Does Chrysler hold some sort of patent? Even if they did, you would think someone like Cummins would have made the turbo diesel inline six Dodge uses in the Ram pickups a canted design.
I love the /6 as much as anyone, but could never figure out how/why such a great engine design could just completely disappear from not only cars, but even heavy-duty, industrial/truck applications, as well.
Most medium and heavy duty truck diesels are still I-6 designs, and that shows little sign of changing. However, an I-6 would not fit under most current passenger car hoods and light trucks share the same power plants; therefore no more gasoline powered I-6’s. I’m sure it is much more cost effective to use common V6 motors.
AFAIK the last gas powered I6 in the US was the 3.0L that went into 3 and 5 series BMWs. The last domestic I6 was the AMC 232 that went in the TJ Wrangler.
The GM Atlas series I-6 found in the Envoy/Trailblazer platform not count? or was it because its a truck engine and not a passenger car engine?
Come on down here to New Zealand, or to Australia, the 4.0L twin-cam I-6 Ford Falcon and Territory are still around – you’ve got 3 years to buy one before Ford stops production. Nissan Japan stills makes the I-6 RD28 diesel too, although it’s old-tech compared with the Ford engine.
The inline-6 gasoline engine is a dying breed, that’s for sure.
I think BMW will hang on for a while, BMW not offering an inline-6, would that be a “deadly sin” ?
By the way, is GM’s 4.2 ltr. inline-6 still around somewhere ?
Last Atlas 6 was built in 2009. The I-4 and I-5 variants are still in production. Still a damn shame in my mind. I know the V8 made similar power but that I6 smoothness and flat torque curve give that engine a niche all its own in my book.
Right, I remember seeing it in the TrailBlazer SUV. That was a while ago though, but it sounded very smooooth….
It’s a smooth engine! even the 5 that’s based off it is a pretty good engine in my book. Dad’s GMC Canyon moves off the line pretty well even with a 1,000 pounds of scrap frame in the bed.
I believe Mazda is currently developing 2 inline sixes.
Ahh the slant six. A marina I worked at had a travelift (acmehoist) built in the 70’s powered by a slant six it would sit all winter and was reveed hard alot to make up hydraulic pressure on it’s aging pump, hardly ever had a problem with it other than changing the points. We could lift up to a 45 ft boat with it (25 ton lift).
I also had a friend in high school with an early 80’s slant six ram. We once towed a 35′ boat weighing over 10,000 pounds with it once, great engine with the 4 speed it was a real stump puller.
I always wanted to build a a T roadster with a slant 6.
Nice to see this run again today. I sold the Hesston last year as I’ve been winding down my hay operation (the last of our livestock is in the freezer now).
Regarding the straight six: thought I read somewhere that a new one is coming from Jaguar / Land Rover plus BMW is designing a new one.
In the mean time I love the sound of my British I6: got the excellent XK in my Jaguar 420 and the lovely 2000 in the Triumph GT6.
I believe Mazda are currently developing 2 inline sixes.
Interesting machine Ed, it replaces two that still seem to be in regular use here the mower and tedder which does the windrowing ready for baling, large round bales are most common here now small square bales have fallen out of favour round bales are plastic wrapped and stored in the paddock until used for feed or trucked to where they will be used, another machine un rolls the while feeding out, All the hay machinery here that Ive seen appears to be PTO driven rather than on board self propelled like this.
Talk about a timely repost! We’re right in the middle of small grain harvest. Between last Monday and last Friday, I believe I spent 13-14 hours cutting rye in the Owatonna 260 swather, powered by the venerable Ford 200 Six. And in not quite a week, the oats will be ripe.
That should have a picture. Let’s try again:
Very nice! I have soybeans on the field this year.
I always though that the Dakota should have been offered with the slant six.
The 3.9 was created for the Dakota; its engine bay was too short to accept the Slant-6. That’s a pity—if the Dak could’ve accepted the Slant, perhaps we’d’ve seen that engine given a badly-overdue update. Just think what a Magnum version could’ve been like…!
What if the six was naturally made into a V12 for the Imperial? I can’t help but that that with a V12 or the turbine that the Imperial’s fate could’ve been drastically different.
I love that for a what if. Might need to dust off the aluminium block casting equipment to keep the twelve’s weight down though. Even if the resultant 450 V12 engine wasn’t noticeably bigger than the 440 V8, the fact that it was a twelve, and based on the indestructible slant six…..
Take that, Cadillac!
From a tooling cost and production line layout point of view, doubling an inline to a V-type is far more expensive than halving a V-type to an inline.
As a salesman for manufacturing capacity, I got an early education in how often the capital cost of a change vs. the engineering benefit of that change could tip the scales in favor of the lower capital option.
This was excellent and taught me more than a few things I didn’t know. I’m not sure if I’ve seen this post before and glad I pulled it to run it again, a side benefit of aging is being able to re-read something and feeling like it’s the first time again. I’m saving a fortune on books these days.
The industrial Slant Six took the baton from the Chrysler L-Head Industrial and whole generations of Continental L-Head industrial engines that defined durability.
Willem Weertman must have been one smart engineer to create two of the best, most durable six cylinder engines generations apart. One wonders if he had a hand in the AMC/Rambler/Jeep 232/258/4.0, the other great six of the era.
Bill Weertman was a terrific engineer—skilled, talented, dilligent, and thoughtful. He’s still around, retired to Western Washington State. He worked for Chrysler as Managing Engine Design Engineer (1955-’62), Assistant Chief Engine Design and Development Engineer (’62-’76) and Chief Engine Engineering Engineer (’76-’87, love that job title). He did not work for AMC, and so did not have a hand in the design of the AMC 6, and he retired the same year Chrysler bought AMC, so he wouldn’t have been involved in post-buy development of that engine.
His book is expensive and well worth it, for engine/engineering geeks.
I’m very happy to report that Hesston equipment is still made in Hesston KS. They are hiring in fact. My great-great grandfather A.L. Hess founded the town along with several other Mennonites who moved there from Pennsylvania.
These were awful common in the Kansas countryside. Honestly, every couple of farms you went by you’d see one of these. Was a pretty nice sight to see this get an article.