Overview
The EMD 567 is a line of large medium-speed diesel engines built by General Motors' Electro-Motive Division. This engine, which succeeded Winton's 201A, was used in EMD's locomotives from 1938 until its replacement in 1966 by the EMD 645. It has a bore of , a stroke of and a displacement of per cylinder. Like the Winton 201A, the EMD 645 and the EMD 710, the EMD 567 is a two-stroke engine.
GE now makes EMD-compatible replacement parts.
History
Eugene W. Kettering, son of Charles F. Kettering, joined Winton Engine in 1930. He moved to Detroit in 1936, and was a central figure in the development of the 567 and the Detroit Diesel 6-71. He moved to EMD in 1938, became chief engineer at EMD in 1948, then division director in 1956 and subsequently research assistant to the general manager in 1958 until his retirement in 1960. The 567 was released in 1938.
In 1951, Eugene Kettering presented a paper to the American Society of Mechanical Engineers entitled History and Development of the 567 Series General Motors Locomotive Engine, which goes into great detail about the technical obstacles that were encountered during the development of the 567 engine (these same considerations apply to the 645 and 710). The 567's designers started with a tabula rasa, systematically eliminating each of the 201A's many deficiencies which were preventing the earlier design from becoming successful in freight service, although the 201A was relatively successful in the less-demanding passenger and switching services. The 567 design had nothing in common with the 201A except the two-stroke cycle itself: each and every component of the 201A was replaced with a new design, even the "dipstick", to paraphrase one of Kettering's off-handed comments. The 567 proved to be exceptionally successful in passenger, switching, freight, marine and stationary services, and, counting its two successors, the 645 and 710, which are not materially different from the 567 (all have the same external dimensions, differing mainly in per cylinder displacement), collectively have given nearly 80 years of exceptionally reliable service to those applications. As but one example of the achievements of the tabula rasa design: whereas the Winton 201A was doing very well with a piston lifetime, the 567 immediately achieved a piston lifetime, and in at least one case, reached a piston lifetime, a 10:1 to 20:1 improvement.
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