Michael1

Our housings came from Holset or KKK, the inlet of the exhaust is divided - one side goes to small dia of turbine wheel the other goes to the large dia of wheel. We are only talking .750 difference from outer to inner, the wheel itself it machined with a step in it. These are not the typical housings you find in the automobile field. Our housings can from Holsets race program and they are similar the housing that a low 1,800 rpm L-10 truck engine would have.

Yes, the friction part you are corrrect, there is friction, my point was simply it is less than packed sealed bearing and will last longer.

The water cooled housings, if you don't have ample exhaust gas flow / temperature you just need a smaller dia inlet housing which usally has a smaller dia wheel.

The point was to say "I know turbo engines last longer, but the blower gasoline engines are better suited for offshore performance".

I guess I took the long way around , huh?

Ever since the Rooneys moved down to Long Branch the restaurant hasn't been the same.....:(

BTW, that was my Apache on the lift....:drink:

dont remember for sure but isnt that on the compressor end?
All the stuff my company did with varing the geometry on the compressor end didnt workk as well as the turbine end.

Panther - I see you on the river then sometimes!

I have an all seafoam green 32' SeaCraft with Bahamas registery on it. I'll wave when I see you this spring/summer!

Donzi - the reason you see no or little differenrce is simply what you run is very low HP/CUI. When you run high HP engines you will see a slight difference. Our production engines were about 1.1 hp/cui while race engines could be 1.67hp/cui. Don't forget when using closed cooling your water temp is a constant deg also and that is around 220-230 degress up around a turbo. We ran both closed and seawater cooled engines, there with 70-80 deg water coming in you would see a very slight difference. But, I agree with you it makes no difference. I was just responding to someone saying "what about?"


VGT turbos are the mature version of we wroked on almost 20 years ago. It is varing the amount of opening on the turbine side of the turbo to keep exhaust manifold presure high enough the spin the turbo at slow speeds. You need to understand Holset used to build us special stuff years ago just to test and we would have lengthy calls with engineering. What we made was crude and rude but provided test data and worked well for what it was.

Ever hear of compressor stall? We were running an engine at Cummins Eng Co one time and when the boost came up about 62 psi - we heard a boom!!!!

After shutting down and find no damage we tried it again and again and again. It made booms everytime the boost got that high and we would notice the boost would drop in half and if we throttled back and then just brought it up to 60psi it ran great?????

We got Holset on the phone who just overnighted us that turbo and they said "can't be, impossible". Cummins engineers got on the phone and said look "this is happening".

It took Holset 3 days to find someone that relazied that are compressor tips were exceeding the speed of sound, causing sonic booms and going into a stall mode just like a jet engine!!!

I'm going to dig up some old dyno sheets etc and post them here, you guys will be amazed what was being done almost 20 years ago!!!

Full on compressor stall is unbelievably violent. You've just got to cringe at what the thrust bearings are seeing when that happens.

What teams did you work for back then Joe?

Habana Joe: Thanks for posting your insight. This is what the tech section used to be like on OSO. Thanks also to the others who I know have done their homework on this subject.

We have been working with a well known engine builder and racing team this season. I believe this is the first time that a Class 1 boat has been campaigned with a belt driven centrifugal blower on the engine. This is sometimes very rough ocean racing, but lag has not been a problem, because of the belt drive. Under these throttling conditions you might expect belt problems, but they have never broken or thrown a belt.

My point is you can have the efficiency of the centrigual compressor without lag. What you give up in power potential (compared to the turbo) is not as important as the ability to throttle and besides, the maximum power in the class is limited in two ways, by a restrictor and by the threat of dyno testing by the sanctioning body. You also get to have a huge intercooler on top of the intake, since the blower is mounted in front of the engine. This is important since octane is also limited in the class.

Turbo vs. positive displacement blower? Maybe the belt driven centrifugal can bridge the gap. Depends on your application.

Tom

Who is actually making that turbo Cummings or Borg Warner??

Guys thank you also, very nice to talk to a group that understands technology (even if it 20 yrs old, ti still the same problems)

Who did I work for - I started a company called AMT which did hi-po work for Navistar on the 6.9 L, then we did the 7.3L and we marinazied both of them as well. We then moved over to Cummins who had just started to marinize the B 5.9 engine.

At that time Yashiro Kitami started a boat company called Super Hero and wanted some hot rod diesels for smaller boats. They took over my AMT gave me % of (the only person with a peice other than Kitami) Super Hero Racing Development. The rest is history, I will upgrade my memebership tonight and post interesting reading from years ago!!!

Our job was to push the diesel envelope with current production iron so to avoid the high cost of the Seatek engines. At that point Cummins wanted to market the hot rod engines as baby Seateks. Well you know how that went, lot history behind closed doors!

Cummins 5.9L - the best, we had 600 hp versions with the 2 valve heads!!!! Two major problems with hot rod B's:
1) oil cooler is mounted on the side of the block of clylinder between#1 &#2, it restricts the flow of water around that hole causing over heat. Every overheat score will be either number 1 or 2. Remove the cooler and mount remote, it is very hard to do but saves alot of blown motors. That lesson took 3 engines to figure out!!!!

2) the head gasket was very thick and the pistons actually cleard the block deck. Fire got around them and caused swelling of the piston top. The pistons tops would hit the deck when they rocked o the down stroke - that first knick would spell the beginning of the end!!! take the pistons out and cut a 10 deg tapered going .200 down from the top. The piston can rock and swell but never hit the sides. That costs several engines as well!!!!

Someone asks about the overdrive boxes. We made them from scratch but later played with a very cheap easy version of them. Lenco who makes the planet gears sets all the drag cars have in them has/had an in-line reduction unit. Take that and turn it around it's now overdrive!!!! It is a closed box, so make a hole in the bottom and use a reseve oil tank with a little 12 V pump to circulate the oil and run it through a cooler!!! It worked like a charm!!!!

Now to dinner with the kids and talk to you guys later -

Hey - thank you all for listening. I've moved to a fishing boat the last 6 years with the kids and just can't shake the desire to go fast in big water again - someday!!!

Hi Tomcat,

The problem with using a centrifugal blower in a driven (rather than turbo application) is that the boost is proportional to speed, this means that the low speed boost is poor when compared with a conventional supercharger.

You are right in that the efficiency of a centrifugal blower when on boost is significantly better than any rotating lobed supercharger but you do lose out on low end boost unless you have a variable speed ratio to drive your centrifugal blower. I'd imagine this would affect your on to plane performance compared with a coventional blower.

Variable drive ratio blowers are being developed (we're developing one at our company at the moment) but these are all being aimed at downsizing engines in the European market. eg 2-3l high boost and fast response.

On the variable turbo point: you need to have a variable area turbine so that you can get the power out of the turbine over a range of gasflows (so you can improve the boost in the low speed region) but it helps if you have a variable compressor too otherwise your shiny new high power variable turbine just pushes your big compressor straight into surge at low speeds and high boost pressures. Ideally you need to have balanced turbine and compressor capablities.

Hey Joe,

Great to hear the racing stories, look forward to hearing more!

Yes the new VVT technology makes a huge difference in turbo performance

Ok, here's two little peices about some of our old projects keep in mind this was 1990. I hope this works?

No Komatsu - sorry

These were our production B's from 1989

Very true,

When you mix dual VVT with GDI you can do a lot of fun things esp with regard to anti-det and anti-surge.

Seems to post fine Joe.

The 5.9L Cummins question, just found some old dyno sheets, check the dates. Also, I was wrong about the 10 deg taper it was 2 deg - I see it on notes at top of the sheet - wow this brings back many days of inhaleing black smoke!!!!

Last thing for tonight. Here is our truck for the 7.3L Navistar race boat. Note the cut away Navistar 7.3L for display, it was able to rotate if we wanted it to, this was cool - people would gather to see inside an engine! The boat was a Maelstrom 23 built as a race boat, I believe the only one?

Which model Holset is used on that engine?

Michael

Michael1

Holset H2C

Don't know if their made still?

Habana Joe, I see you tested in a 34 Super Hawaii. That's what I have. Did you have the engines in a staggered setup like the standard gas setup was? What kind of speeds did you get?

Thanks for sharing your knowledge.

Oh yes, my old company and the 34', wow what a boat!!!!

The engines were side by side with Arenson drives, direct drive 1:1 no reduction. At 3,000 you ran 76 mph and cruised at 55-60 mph all day every day. They were 380 hp Cummins B's.

I took Craig Barrie & Bud for a ride at the Ft Lauderdale show in 1990 and they could not believe it, it was unstoppable. Our exhaust were underwater when ideling or running slow so it was very quite. When it poped up and the exhuast roared (no mufflers) the two of them thought something exploded!!!!

I bulit a test 34' and 40' for myself. The 34 was kept up here in NJ at the diesel shop and I had 2 guys that tested it everyday. They would leave Morgan creek and run around Staten Island for 6 hrs a day, 5 days a week at 55 mph steady. On nice days we would take the boat to AC and back, sometimes Cape May and back just to not look at the same scenes.

Let me find a picture of it, I'll post it ASAP

Here's the 34' and my old Maelstrom at the World's in '89. It was very rough for little boat like that, real rough. I believe it was Kevin Brown that stuffed that day with his Skater, well you know what happened. John A from Spirit of America broke his back. These were ocean races!!!

Amen, your right on with that one!!!!! It amazing how people love to look inside?

Ruaraidh: When McCullogh first introduced the centrifugal blower that became the Paxton, it came with a planetary transmission that was downshifted by engine oil pressure when the accelerator was depressed at low RPM. This was necessary because the impellers weren't that good yet. The transmission was bigger than the compressor. As impellers improved the transmission was dropped.

I saw a two speed transmission for that small compressor from Denmark at PRI two years ago. Is that yours? Our problem is we would need the transmission to handle about 200 HP for our twin blower system. For us it makes more sense to put a transmission behind the engine.

We have put centrifugal blowers in boats that are going 160+ mph with one speed. You are not going to win a drag race with this setup but that isn't how the boats are used. Class 1 boats run between 4500-7500 RPM during a race. Poker run boats typically line up at 100 mph. In both scenarios low RPM response is not an issue. I would still like the transmission though.:D

Tom

You're talking about Rotrex.

I see what you mean, if that's the case and performance out of the hole is not an issue then definitely there would be no disadvantage to using a centrifugal device with a single ratio. That said, you're still giving away a little boost at lower speeds if the ratio is set only for max power.

The device we're developing for smaller cars (we're calling it boosted hybridisation) is SuperGen, see here. Not really applicable to large powerboats but interesting all the same as it shows what can be done. We can generate full boost from idle at 1500rpm in 0.2s.....

Of course the ultimate here is the centrifugal blower that was fitted to the Messerschmidt ME109 (yes really) it had a variable drive (essentially a small torque converter) to the blower where the oil level (and thus boost) was varied as a function of altitude. Automated boost control all the way back in the 40s and it had gasoline direct injection... Wonderful thing about engineering is there's nothing new under the sun!! This is a fun thread!

Have never raced a boat from a stand still was always on plane. Dont think it will be necessary for my initial build but I can drop it into 1st gear to get on plane or spool up the turbos.


I did do an air impringement turbo were a shot of compreses air was aimed at the compressor wheel to help speed it up quicker. Also eliminated smoke. There were some that used oil shot at a paddle in the bearing hsg to help with spool up also.
We did the first ceramic turbine wheels too. There big issue was back spacing of the turbine wheel had to be increased to keep particulates from damaging the wheel which reduced efficency. We didnt realy want the warinty issues incured with the ceramic stuff on over the road trucks.

Ah, WWII now we're really talking! Your right they were engineering marvels! All the things we talk about here are nothing more than rehashing some things first done 60+ years ago.

This really is great!

Do any of you remember the Cummins Hyper-Bar 903 engines for the Israeli tanks many years ago? I want to see if anyone knows them before I spill my limited knowledge of them. They were very cool!

Cool thread. The only thing I know about a turbo or supercharger is how to spell the words. I love big hp and find this thread to be very informative.

Were they were the twin foot turbos if so I designed them back around 68 69. Did some redesign on them in the late 80s

The reason I mentioned those 903 tank engines was because there was mention here of shooting the turbo with air or oil to make them spool up quicker.

Now think about this - your sitting in a tank all hunkered down pretty much buried in sand with camo on top of it so the enemy can't stop you. Your just waiting out in the sand.

Your engine is turned off because the heat trail will give you away, but you need to run all the electonics.

Your radar picks up an incoming, you go to start the engine and if it starts because your running everything, like any other big diesel it takes a moment or two to build up boost which you can't build until you put a load on the engine. Well that extra time makes you a sitting duck and the missle hits you - you're all dead!!!!

I only seen one of these one type out at Columbus outside the dyno alley and this is how it worked. The turbo had a very long shaft with a small turbine engine driving it. They would ignite the turbine and run that while they were sitting still. The trubine would drive the trubo charger and keep boost on the engine while it was off. The turbine also dove a small hi-hertz generator that would keep the tank supplied with power because batteries go dead quickly. The heat trails from that could be ducked down and were small enough not to make a real differnce.

When they spotted an incoming they could hit the starter and the engine fired up with near full boost to get instant power to pull it ouy of the hole and away from the incoming.

When I looked at it all I could see was piping all over the place, but Carl Kuner if you guys know him from Cummins was explaining it and I just was like "What?"

Almost 15 years later and those little mirco-turbines made it into production. Elliot Magnetek build a plant is Stuart, Fl to build these things around 1998 and these were directly from the 1100hp Cummins 903 tank engines.

There are a few missing deatils here but its the theory and application that matters.


turbo2256b who did you work for? I don't know what twin foot turbos are unless they are compounds?

Turbos are the way to go:cool-smiley-011:

WOW, need I say anymore?

Worked for Schwitzer did the air imprgment system for those tanks. Also did the turbos for them. Wish they were still in business they wold hire me back in a second

turbo2256b,

I have not heard that name in many years. They were on Cummins truck engines years ago, correct? If not someone big used them, didn't they?

I love turbo's and think they are the way to go, but for the average guy the supercharger is much cleaner to install, look at the pipes in the JC pics. That spells nightmare to the average person.

I'll give my feelings again.

Turbos make a lot of power. Have throttled race boats with both blowers and turbos in open ocean racing. I feel you can not match the response of the blower engines.

Watch a tape of the old Gancia dei Gancia running like in Cowes in the rough. The throttleman (Buzzi or Stefano) will always be pumping the throttles like crazy when the proprs are in the air.

Why, you ask? When you unload the engine (props get air) the govenors automatically pull the rack into a low fuel position - no fuel, no heat, no boost. Second when you pull the throttles back because you don't want to over rev the engines when you see air, you loose fuel - which looses heat and looses boost.

By pumping the throttles like crazy when in the air you keep bumping the injection pump to "Full Throttle". All those little bursts keep the engine burning fuel, keeps some heat and some boost so when you re-enter the water the engines don't just die.

Like those engines that JC put up there, I'm sure the power they make is insane, but I doubt they can be throttled as efficent as a blower engines. Also, all that pumping bouncing up & down is sure to break or leak after some time.

I'll sound real old here, but look at the pics everyone posts of how Offshore Racing was back in the day. It was rough sometimes, big swells (AC '89), lots of hardware hanging on an engine spells trouble. Remember why racing is the way it is today,
- something for spectators to see from land
- the hope that it can be covered on TV like a car race
- to control the costs so there are more boats

I'm glad to see P-1 in Europe it's open ocean racing, that's why I was drawn to the sport age a young boy - that flying from wave to wave, running to turn bouys miles away with a compass and a chart, endurance, etc, etc.

That's me, what can I say!

Some of the system's are getting cleaner with time.
The picture's JC posted are a quad turbo hence double the plumbing. I attached some pictures of some of the engines Tommy at Chief Engines built. The components for this Turbo system were designed by Tom Gentry. Since his passing Carson Brummett has aquired all the tooling to keep producing these component's.

Jon

couple more

Some really nice iron - thank you! Remember Charlie Marks with Erics Reality? That boat was so big, so powerful that Bobby Moore didn't even have to run those engines, they were almost idleing!!!!

I lived in a different world then most of you, I started on gas engines and then moved to diesel for a simple reason. In the old days if 30% of the boats finished a race you were doing good. I remember getting trophies not because we were fast but we finished!!!!

I watched all those Euro boats with their big diesels and thought this is the way to go! We had a large coast to coast trucking company then and our trucks averaged 240,000 miles a year each. I went to school for engineering because I loved mechanical things and wanted to understand how to run ur trucks better - every .005 cents a mile was big money in our pockets.

Cummins, Spicer, Eaton, Holset, Navistar all used us for testing equipment because no trucking company, fleet wise could match us in miles per year, per truck. Once we started playing with making hot rod diesels these companies threw parts, engines, etc at us just to test. We became very tight with them and we exchanged many things - well mostly giving them broken parts back. That lead to other things and so on.

My buddy is coming out w/ a new turbo kit for 03-04 mustangs. It's a twin turbo setup blowing thru the eaton supercharger. It simplifies everything, low end of supercharger w/ big hp of turbos. He has allready put one on his personal car & it is insane power !!!!

We did turbos for most all of the truck market, heavy equipment, gen sets etc. I started in on the Indy engines. My first contribution was the idea and design of the first adjustable waist gate used in the 500. I was 18 years old at the time.

Carson Brummet has nice equipment and I have spoken with him many times a very nice man, he has smallblock kits too!