Maruti Inaugurates new KB engine Facility

The plant is set to have an annual capacity of 240,000 units when running at full steam. The new facility employs 4 production lines at the moment the fully automated system is capable of churning out an engine every 55 seconds at peak running time. A total investment of Rs 1200 Crore has gone into the entire project.

The KB Series Engine:

The KB series engine is a brand new petrol engine that will join the MSIL engine family. Till date the J series engine has proved to be extremely reliable but the time has come to move forward and employ better technologies and further enhance the performance of the engine.

The new KB 10B engine, the first of the KB series to be manufactured right now is a 998cc, 3 cylinder unit that has a high compression ratio of 10:1 and delivers 67PS @ 6200 rpm and a noteworthy torque o f 90Nm@3500 rpm. Incidentally this engine is set to power the soon to be launched A-Star compact car, which will also be exported and sold under the Nissan badge.

The new lightweight aluminium engine boasts of low NVH levels, enhanced fuel efficiency and linear performance throughout the powerband. Salient features of the new engine include an all plastic engine manifold, a smart distributor-less ignition system with dedicated plug top coils and advanced injectors plus an innovative rocker-less DOHC shaft. The engine has been further optimized by using light weight pistons and nutless conrods. All this has lead to the engine having a dry weight of just 47 kilograms.

The state of the art engine is part of a larger series, which will be introduced in India as demand requires. The KB series petrol engine encompasses a range from 1 litre to 1.4 litre engines and the KB 10B is set to be the first to do duty in Indian conditions.