Cummins NTC-400

This may be the most ignorant question I have asked yet.
Why are some of the NTC-400s painted black and others are tan on the 900 series trucks?

My guess is the same reason some of the NHC-250s are in the 800 series trucks.

They come from rebuild as black and there is no need or wanting to paint them. But that's just a guess.
Pretty good one since I have three 818s sitting by the barn all rebuilt 5/2002 and all have black engines.

sw

I suspect the opposite is true on the 400s. The stock color seems to be black, and when the engines went to Cummins for an overhaul, they came back tan.

My engine in my 915a1 is a rebuild and is black. I have not been able to make any sense of that yet. 400 hp. is cool in any color.

I have an M917 and an M916 with new motors...they are black...but they are dated in the early 80s. Both motors are definitely "new"...probably can motors in storage. The re-cons were tan.

With regard to the M939A2 series, the earlier motors were black, and the later motors were tan. That is a fact. I suspect that the military spec'ed motors in black initially and then agreed to accept motors in Cummins tan.

One of my 915's has a 1992 manufacture date on the tag and its black, looks like it was just taken out of the crate.

the reason for the colors on the engines is because of the camoflage effect when opening the hood while in the field. The black engine were for the green and the green camoflage green, plus green was the standard color for everything in the begining. the tan went with tan vehicles. nowadays, you get what you get.

I have no idea about the MVs but I know that right around the years we are talking about here, Cummins changed their civilain engine color from tan to black. The early Cummins are tan, the later Cummins were black, and now they've went to red on some of them.