91 Maverick SWB, backyard turbo conversion

[Supercrown]

Hey Sketchy - I'll do up a diagram and some pics of the components.

The only thing it is missing is a way of having the system only trigger above a certain PSI - I want to work something out that is uber cheap.

[nine2nine]

Hey mate, i used one of these for my locker on the paj, tiny little thing but it works really well and can be set to any pressure.

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/water-met...item19ca6480dd

[Supercrown]

I was figuring to use something like that for the trigger, but the thing I need to search for is a cheap solenoid.

In the RR kits, he uses a Mac valve and shuts off the water, but those are too expensive for this project!

Anyone have any ideas for a budget solenoid?

[HoonBoy]

LPG solenoid?

[Tripper]

IF you have a trigger for it sorted, perhaps look in the gardening section of bunnings, look towards the auto sprinklers shit, they use them in air powered spud guns, size might be too large cant hurt to look.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3EOdNP6Iag

[Supercrown]

Might be worth a look.

Only issue could be flow rate, but a watering solenoid should flow a buttload in comparison to the required flow rate.

Will check both - cheers boys!

In a couple of weeks I'll get my hands on some pure methanol from a racer mate so will test that too.

[Tripper]

what about using a central door locking actuator $10 for a slave from jaycar, and you could use it to operate a ball valve or modify one of those trigger nozzles for a garden hose

[da9jeff]

hows this thing going? is there much difference in where you mount the water nozzle? pre/post turbo and pre/post IC?

Also, have you thought about E85 and water? not sure if it would mix but could be a cheap cooling liquid if it does.

[Supercrown]

Thread dredge.....

After my super nigger rigged PVC inlet duct melted and collapsed (to prove the concept I made up a quick and dirty inlet duct to allow the misting nozzle to fire straight at the compressor wheel using a Y piece and some 75mm pvc pipe), I finally got around to modifying the steel inlet pipe to allow the nozzle to be mounted permanently and have it firing the mist stream directly at the comp wheel.

It was a bit of fiddling to make up the little blind spigot and weld it into the side of the pipe, but it was necessary.

When I tried the nozzle at 90 degrees to the airflow – just mounted into a hole drilled into the pipe (lazy first attempt) – the mist was dropping out into liquid a fair bit, resulting in standing liquid in the inlet pipe. Whilst not a disaster, standing liquid being sucked into the comp wheel does result in damage/erosion over time.

So at present, the ‘air’ side of the misting nozzle is just fed boost pressure from a feed off the intercooler.

The nozzle is specifically a ‘siphoning’ unit so the pressurised air feed through the nozzle causes liquid to be drawn from an unpressurised reservoir into the ‘liquid’ side of the nozzle.

The pressurised air and liquid interact at the nozzle tip, with the liquid and air combining into an ultra fine mist.

When I did the quick and dirty dyno test, straight water gave a couple of rwkw, Hobby fuel (70%meth, 15%nitromethane, 15%synlube) gave about 7-8rwk but tended to cause rattling unless mixed with 30% water, with the best result by far and away being 15rwkw gain on 30%water 70%metho (95%ethanol, 5%methanol).

As I couldn't work out how to get the auto to hold gears, what the dyno test didn't get to show up was the improvement in response that was clearly evident when driving it around. I tried unplugging everything we could see that connected to the gearbox but still couldn't stop it kicking down. When driving it around, the turbo spools noticeably faster with less throttle required to get up to traffic speed or when climbing familiar hills. Whilst the metho/water mix gives the biggest power increase, even running straight water gives a noticeable improvement in response/reduction in lag. I figure it's down to the fact that the cooling effect of the water offsets the inlet air temp increase effected by the turbo compressing the air - the result being that the turbos efficiency/air density is greatly improved.

I've now put a fair few miles on it with various fluids through the nozzle and there's no doubt it is more responsive.

So yeah - the top end power gain is only part of the story, with the improvement in general response during general driving being the thing you notice the most.

To boot, providing you keep the flammable liquid percentage below about 70% you pick up response and power whilst lowering the EGT and reducing the thermal load on the slugs and valves - win win.

Last nights experiment was dumping 5L of coolant (ethylene glycol) and a bit of water in the reservoir, and it worked brilliantly. Noticeable power and response improvement. Next job is to make a reservoir that can be pressurised to eliminate the liquid flow rate reduction that occurs as the level in the reservoir drops - meaning the head difference changes - and the greater the vertical distance the liquid has to be drawn, the lesser the flow rate. (changes of less than 200mm affect the rate).

At the minute though, I just keep filling it up with water and every now and then load it up with metho if I feel like a bit more HP.


Shot at 2012-03-26


Shot at 2012-03-26


Shot at 2012-03-26


Shot at 2012-03-26


Shot at 2012-03-26


Shot at 2012-03-26

And just for posterity, see below the PVC nigger rigged inlet pipe that melted. Truly a monument to my inherent laziness.
(I never posted a picture of the PVC setup when I set it up because it just looked too rank and was embarrassing - mind you it did deliver the 15rwkw gain on the dyno, but driving up a steep hill in 35 degrees with no water in the tank to cool the inlet pipe was just too much - it melted, collapsed on itself and completely sealed off the turbo from any incoming air, stopping me dead. I shat myself as initially I thought I'd finally blown the motor. LOL)


Shot at 2012-03-27

[Supercrown]

hows this thing going? is there much difference in where you mount the water nozzle? pre/post turbo and pre/post IC?

Also, have you thought about E85 and water? not sure if it would mix but could be a cheap cooling liquid if it does.

Ah yes - I have been planning to test E85 and should get to it pretty soon. The trick with it will be getting it to absorb as much water as possible as with only e85 it may cause a bit of rattling/preignition, but given the amount of rattling the motor has absorbed so far without issue, it should survive the flow-rate set-up phase (I hope)

[nine2nine]

Nice and simple and works a treat - i like it. How long would it take to use a few litres? As a turbo diesel sits on boost on the highway, would you be topping up every 100kms?

[Supercrown]

To be honest, I haven't really got around to properly assessing the appropriate flow rate for each mixture.

With water, it seems I can have the liquid restrictor valve fully open and just let it dump in the max flow rate. As the water has zero combustion potential there is no risk of pre-ignition, and there isn't any reduction in performance with the flow rate set to max. On a 45min freeway run at 110/120kmh through the adelaide hills, with boost anywhere from 5 to 20 psi (avg probably about 8-10 psi) it chomped through about 3L of water. At the moment I'm just using the washer reservoir, so it only holds 3L I think.

If you use a good size tank - say 20L - it'd last a fair while - and with some reasonable testing you could see how far back the flow rate could be wound whilst still giving good gains.

[mondo2000]

Any noticeable reduction in black soot out the zorst?

If you're taking the head off please take pics. I'd be interested to see how clean it is.

[Supercrown]

No reduction in soot that I can tell, but as it's set to freeboost the only time it blows a touch of black is when I bury my foot from a standstill when there's no boost in the system. On the freeway cranking up hills at 110/120 kmh in OD with the converter unlocked (just on the limit of kicking back to 3rd - my foot is well in it at this point) it sits on a constant 20psi@2700-2800rpm with zero soot anyway due to the over supply of air.

I've just started a new job and am driving the truck 115 km to/from each day on the freeway. I'm sitting between 110-120kmh through the adelaide hills and it's returning economy of 12.8L/100 which I think is pretty good considering it weighs well over 2000kg and has the aerodynamic pedigree of a brick wrapped in barbed wire.

Next week I'm going to drive the 380 to work one day to see what economy it returns for the same run at the same speed. Considering it did 9.2l/100 at 115/120km/h on the flat run from melbourne I'm not expecting it to do much better than the pootrol on the run through the hills actually.

How tragic. My has been reduced to comparing vehicle economy......................................LOL

[Supercrown]

Nothing has really changed mechanically, but I have put some effort into getting it looking tidy, rather than nigger.

I fucked off the stock rims and put some black 15x8s on it with dueller 694s 32X11.50R15 rubber.

I got the bullbar powder coated black and had the couple of dings I put in it fixed.

Next is dark tint.

I towed 2.5+ tonnes of wood/trailer from Waitpinga back to Adelaide today, and with the bigger trans cooler on it now doesn't ping the trans temp light as easily.

When we got back I unloaded the trailer and then jumped back in it. It had been off for a good 45 mins so had cooled down - and the run to home is 4 km of downhill anyway.

However - when I jumped in it would only select 1st gear. I put it in drive but it won't change out of first - fuck!

Mind you, this is the first issue it's ever had, despite lots of nasty towing, so I'm not that pissed.

[irsa76]

Thought of LPG?

[nine2nine]

Water/meth is much better than LPG.

LPG is expensive and increases combustion temps to make more power. Water/meth is cheap and decreases combustion temps to make more power. Water/meth will normally provide a greater power/torque increase than LPG also.

[Gavatron]

I should try and find that skid vid from thePF xmas party at TKs a few years back...

[irsa76]

Cheers nine2nine. I've seen alot of discussion about LPG injection over the years, know a few guys who've played with it in the US with good results.

[Supercrown]

I have the pre-turbo, liquid atomising nozzle on this obviously, and have fucked around with a bunch of different things. Ethanol (metho) straight and cut with water at varying percentages, Methanol in various concentrations - including 20% nitro hobby fuel, diesel, LPG (super basic BBQ bottle nigger rigged into intake) - though I have avoided petrol. With the ethanol blends it increased rwkw by a significant amount (12kW or something like that - which is significant if you are making less than 100kW)

I have a daily drive to work that varies very little - 15km of winding hills road and then 40km on the freeway in the opposite direction to morning traffic (basically zero traffic) - so I tried to see if I could improve economy with injecting different stuff.

Ultimately I found that although I could improve economy a little, the cash that I had to spend on whatever was being used outweighed the mileage improvement.

After 2 years of experimenting I basically came to the conclusion that if I wanted any serious HP gains on it that I would need to stump up and get the main pump modified to significantly increase fuel flow and grab a matching blower. The injecting thing seemed good for transient power increase, but there was always the fucking around with it, making sure the tank is full, buying whatever it was etc.

The main thing that I use it for now is straight water when I'm towing 2.5+ tonnes to keep the EGTs down whilst climbing at 3/4 throttle and 20psi for minutes at a time.

[TD42T]

Advance the pump timing. That will help economy and EGT's. EGT's will rise quicker but be less overall. It will be a little slower to build boost, but this will be offset by better engine response
Avoid lpg and any type of petrol, compression ignition engines with variable loads are really hard to get it setup correctly so it doesn't cause damage.
As for your water/meth setup, I know guys running upto 700cc/min jets on TD42's. Keep upping the jet until it stumbles and then go back a bit.
And yes decent power only comes with a big pump, but you can have great economy with that also. My GU Ute which is 210rwkw and 700nm returns constant fuel figures around 12.8ltrs/100km, highway or driving around town.
Keep up the good work, love what your doing.

Marty

[Supercrown]

Do you have any tech diagrams of the pump that identifies what the various screws do?

The only one I've diddled with is the main fuel screw (I wound it in to the point where it dictates the idle speed).

For the 210kW have you had the pump done? What other stuff?

I'm getting 13L+/100 on the highway with a locked converter and 14-15 round town.

As this has a much higher stall converter due to the fact it started life as a petrol, advancing pump timing shouldn't give me much/any lag as the turbo gets well into positive pressure before the stall point at the moment.

[ls400x]

http://www.rocken-tech.com/RotorHeads.html

this is what you need.

Also, anecdotal evidence suggests that cast log ex manifolds build boost significantly sooner and make more power throughout the whole rev range. Examples over on patrol4x4sandyvagforum.com

[TD42T]

Yes, first thing to do change the manifold. Short, compact cast manifold to retain as much heat as possible, better drive pressure for turbo.
Earlier pumps without a compensator on them basically only has the main fuel screw you can play with.
Loosen the 3 nuts that hold the pump on, and the support bracket bolt underneath if its still there, and pull it away from the motor towards the guard. Do it in about 3mm stages until you are happy. If the pump is in decent condition it should start to rattle a little.
Once you have done that crank some fuel into it with the main screw until the revs are a little slow to come down, but leaves you a little idle adjustment.
Wind the boost up to control the EGT's. After all that you may get 100-110rwkw plus whatever the w/m gives.
Forgot it was auto, that would be fun.
With a 11mm GU type pump you could expect upto about 140-145 on fuel only with 26-28psi.
No need for 14mm heads unless you are trying to spin up large wheeled turbos, the 12mm pumps are fine.
Nothing special about my Ute, good 12mm pump, cheap arse 600x300x100bar and plate cooler,2871 with a .5 compressor cover on it and a bit over 30psi. Trying a few different things at the minute though.

Marty

[Supercrown]

http://www.rocken-tech.com/RotorHeads.html

this is what you need.

Also, anecdotal evidence suggests that cast log ex manifolds build boost significantly sooner and make more power throughout the whole rev range. Examples over on patrol4x4sandyvagforum.com

If you get the runner size right (often significantly smaller than port size) and properly lag them to begin with you will drop spool and pick up HP over a log. Most aftermarket runner manifolds have runner sizes waaay waay too big. This one has runners that are too big but I wanted it sized so I could use it on a decent HP petrol 4.5 if I got bored.

Thanks for the info gents- will need to read and digest supplied info. the pumps are still well and truly a black box to me.

[hrt5l]

Interesting info there supercrown, got any links to tech articles on proper manifold runner sizing?

[vet 180]

love it

[vet 180]

love it!

[TD42T]

If you get the runner size right (often significantly smaller than port size) and properly lag them to begin with you will drop spool and pick up HP over a log. Most aftermarket runner manifolds have runner sizes waaay waay too big. This one has runners that are too big but I wanted it sized so I could use it on a decent HP petrol 4.5 if I got bored.

Thanks for the info gents- will need to read and digest supplied info. the pumps are still well and truly a black box to me.

Yep, I understand your thinking and I viewed it the same also.
I have a mate that is a anal perfectionist engineer, god love him, and td42 nut. He has sat down and crunched all the numbers, built many various manifolds and tested the lot. In the end he cast his own manifolds to get what he wanted, admittedly this was 20yrs ago. To get maximum spool at close to the max torque point, 2200rpm the runner length needs to be around 200mm long. Not possible with a fabricated design. His conclusion for the best possible compromise was the short cast log style. He has explained to me the science of it all, being diesel, effect of EMP and density etc on the turbine, maintaining the temperature, it does my head in. Google "OldMav manifolds" .
I have spent hours on the phone to him in the last few days trying to sort out some exhaust housing issue with my latest escapade, great info, just can't understand half of it. LOL.
I'll have my Ute on the dyno again tomorrow with some results for the current billet wheel setup, but I have fucked the exhaust housing up, so not expecting great results, infact it has gone backwards badly. The joys of playing I guess.

Marty

[da9jeff]

Was reading a yankee thread on a boosted D40 the other day, 2.5L, GT28XX something turbo, 31psi, some sort of tunable chip and a carter black fuel pump for a lift pump (which allowed him to wind a little more boost in) - made just over 300hp @flywheel. The poms and thais are getting even more again out of the CRD's.