Banks Engine At PRI Show
 

I was not there to see it, but here is the press release.

Gale Banks Engineering’s return to the Performance Racing Industry Show in Orlando, Florida on December 9-12, 2009 will see a number of very new and exciting ready-to-install, high-performance diesel engines from the company that's recognized as the industry leader in aftermarket diesel technology.

BANKS SEQUENTIAL SUPER-TURBO DIESEL

First on the list is the incredible Banks Sequential Super-Turbo (Marine Version) Diesel. Yes, that's a powerfully efficient sixth generation Eaton TVS supercharger topping off that Twin-Turbo 6.6 Liter GM Duramax-based V-8. It's pretty easy to note that "Boost Guru" Gale Banks has combined the best of both (extra-aspirated) worlds to produce a mind-blowing marine engine. The idea here is to combine the best of the two 'charging (super and turbo) systems for lightning-strike responsiveness and the very broadest possible power band on the water. Here's where great low end supercharging blends perfectly into top end turbo-power all seamlessly controlled by Banks/Bosch electronics. We're looking at 600+ very husky horsepower at only 3800 rpm here, and "over 1,000 (that's horsepower) with the addition of a competition-tuned nitrous oxide system along with upgrades to some key engine components."

He is over driving the living dog chit out of that blower. That thing is pretty cool looking.

crank pully is a tad small lol otherwise koool

It would be cool if it were price competitive with a gas engine

I love the idea of true diesel performance :coolcowboy:but hope that the fuel savings and life expectancy of diesel motors doesn't get lost here.... that's how I'd justify the cost difference...any idea on these tow issues????

Awesome motor!! :eek: I would like to see how they plumbed that charger with the turbos. BUT I've never heard of a nitrous system that could add 400hp. And yes diesels need multispeed transmissions.

Volvo had a diesel (KAMD) with both a turbo and a blower. They were plumbed into a Y that went to the intake. The blower had a clutch on it like an a/c compressor in a car. At about 1800 rpm it would kick in. It was a really noticable difference when it came in. They both fed into a common intake tube. It was pretty cool and worked very well.
Eddie

Don't forget , a Diesel engine doesn't turn the rpm's a gas engine does ...

Ah Ha! That is very interesting!

Wow id say!

Its most likely to pick up the lag. Anyone know the rpm range?
If its like other deisels that would explain the serious overdrive.

I think the blower disengages after a certain rpm. The way I've seen these twin charged systems work is the blower takes up the boost in the low rpm range. That allows you to fit bigger turbos with no lag. The supercharger boosts the low end, and then once the turbos are spinning, the S/C is disengaged and bypassed completely.

So why not go this route and have ZERO LAG ?

Boost comes on under 1,800 RPMS


Thanks
Jon

Wow,
Wild looking engine, Who build it and what power is it making?
thanks,
Dean

How much does it weight?

because they wanted a diesel.

Tom Earhart ( Michigan )

1,500 Hp

1,200 F.T LBS. of Torque at 2,200 rpm's


Thanks
Jon

[QUOTE=cougarman;3003384]Tom Earhart ( Michigan )

1,500 Hp

1,200 F.T LBS. of Torque at 2,200 rpm's


Thanks
J

I wonder if these are going in a big Cougar.:eek:

Sean,

I brought the question about cause not everyone has the no turbo lag figured out. Tom Earhart does.

I respect Mr. Banks and his accomplishments, and the engine is a nice looking piece. However it's that much more to maintain with two different rotating induction systems.

Anyways there was plenty of people on this thread asking about comparison's to gas, carrying the RPM's out furthur etc.

Not looking to take away from anyone, but rather show the options out there. A cleaner option, a much less complicated option. The technology is here also, fully computer controlled, fuel injected etc.


So take it for what it's worth, cause I think in the near future you will see more and more of these :drink:


Take Care

Jon

[QUOTE=KNOT-RIGHT;3003393]

Hey Gerry,

This is in a single engine application, 30' with a #6 drive. And 35 mph to 109 mph in about 12 seconds with the latest testing in late November. There's more in it, but they were running out of lake real quick :drink:


Would be Trick for the Cougar though.


Jon

It's been a long time since I agree with anyone's attempts to make a practical performance marine diesel.

I wrote about similar on here a couple times, blowers on top of 7.3's, it's nice to see the Banks team finally address the low end power problems.

FYI, it's not lag that the blower solves it's lack of heat to be able to spool up any type of turbo charging starting from idle with a large load on it.

You guys make these comparisons to gas engines and you simply can not do that. The diesel has to be geared much taller than a gas engine to get equal prop speed because the top end rpm's are so much lower. Therefore the load on the engine coming off of idle is much greater.

Put anyone of your turbo charged gas engines in a car, put the car in high gear 1:1 like a diesel would be and punch the gas from idle - the engine dies if not stalls. That is how it is for a diesel in high performance boat with a fully submerged surfacing propeller.

Great idea,- Banks hasn't shipped any product. Its only a protoype.

Not only is this engine not available, from what I can tell banks hasn't shipped the unit they showed in Miami last year.

I cant get a price on the unit that was shown in Miami so right now its all vapor-very cool vapor but vapor no less. Happy to rettract, but Ive left several messages at their place and the marine guys are nowhere to be found and never give a ship date or a price. - NICE.

Earhearts Engine is "Uber" cool... but its not a diesel.

Uncle Dave

Jon are those the smaller Turbos? still impressive as when I saw it the first time, Glad your posting pictures of it finally!!

Hey whats the intake weight, looks secretive:eek:

I'm ready for some more ribs:drink:

Rob:ernaehrung004:

I was able to get through to the Marine guy and he told me the 500hp twin turbo motor was a test bed. He also said GM was not shipping Banks any more motors because of a production freeze. Now this was in early March so things may have changed by now. Of course this could be the same motor with the blower added, no way to tell for sure.

Like Eddie said my first thought was Volvo. Doug

Nice look but I wonder how much power is lost with the 90* bends on the intake after the throttle bodys. Should be one straight in the front and one in the back....just a thought.:angry-smiley-038: Just looks a little tight.

I have a 1 to 1 gear ratio in my 42' 16000 lb cat and I have ran a 5 blade 17.5" dia. 36 pitch prop and still had enough torque to pull the boat from idle to 138 mph in one mile.

How to turn 5 pounds of pig iron into one pound of Gold!!
 

I know Gale Banks and have had several meetings and discussions with him over the last 5 or 6 years. He is a brilliant performance businessman and his accomplishments manufacturing, marketing in many forms of racing and the aftermarket performance industry over the years speak for themselves.

As for his Duramax diesel ventures, he has proven he can build and race expensive Duramax race prepped engines and get big power and torque from them in non-marine applications.
He has however been showing and talking about and trying to market a marine performance version of the Duramax diesel for over 6 years. Problem is some expensive , pretty high tech prototypes have gotten built, shown at a few boat shows and even been somewhat touted by GM over a few years, BUT, a real working engine has never made it in a boat, complete with a drive system and pushed any performance boat thru any paces or extended use.

Bottom line is that his type of marketing helps companies like Banks sell their diesel tuner stuff, chip boxes and such and thats where they are making the bucks!

As someone else here said in this thread, I also think GM (IZUSU) has not been willing to turn loose of enough base Duramax diesels for a moderate marine production scenario. I am sure with all the internal mods needed to make a stock Duramax become and endurance Duramax marine diesel this package with appropriate drive and tranny would be so off the chart expensive that no successful boat builder or engine company is going to log any reasonable sales to justify the investment and effort.

One offs, will not sustain or carry this industry!

My closing statement here: When someone, anyone qualified and capable in the industry comes out with a 600HP-700HP diesel performance engine that can turn a reasonable rpm (3800-4500) range and provide good acceleration and top end speed 70-80mph and not cost more that Obama's Tarp bailout, then:
PIGS WILL FLY!!!
Especially in the current and near current future of the marine performance market!

It may be COOL and Fun to wow over this stuff, but my prediction, It Ain't Gonna Happen! Actually I hope someone proves me wrong, the industry could use a great, affordable marine performance diesel with these capabilities! and when I say affordable I am taliking about a $40 - $50K package! that weighs less than 1800lbs, not a $80-100K package that weighs about 2000lbs and will only push the boat big enough to hold it and reach 65mph!in about 2 minutes. There are already 500HP diesel high torque engine and drive packages that can do that and have already been use in very limited high dollar custom built boats.

Best Regards,
Ray @ Raylar

I know in my area finding Fuel will be a issue for a diesel. At least as things are now.

Chief engines has a twin turbo motor. Their website is down right now but there's a pic on the homepage;

www.chiefengines.com

The bends don't look as sharp as the ones on the Banks motor.

We might go to the show on Sat, to check it out. I'll take pics.
Dean

As someone who made the move from gas to diesel, let me share what my goals were ( are ) and a bit of my experience since the switch.

As some will know, I went from a 50 V Nor Tech that had trip gas 850's ( yellow / orange boat in my avitar ) to another 50 V NT with trip Yanmar 480 diesels's ( blue boat in my avitar ).
In the gas boat I would have a range of 200 miles with a 400 gal tank or .5 miles per gallon. With the same 400 gal tank in the diesel boat I can go 400 + miles or 1 mile per gal.
In the gas boat I would be rebuilding all 3 engines after 225 to 250 hrs at a cost of $ 60 - $70,000 +, if I did not break anything. This became almost an annual expense with the amount of boating I do. The diesel boat now has almost 300 hrs on it, and a rebuild is no where in sight. I am hoping and expecting in the 4 years I will own this boat, that there will not be any rebuild cost. Maybe some sort of freshening on the eventual sale but maybe not either.
In summary I have cut my annual operating and maintenace costs by a huge amount, the boat is much more reliable, I can go further distances opening up new boating destinations that I could not think of with the gas boat and I can still do poker runs and finish ahead of 1/3 of the pack.
What did I give up? I can only run in the mid 70's instead of 100 MPH but I can do that all day long without breaking.
Not for most maybe but works very well for me.
I should add that if there was a performance diesel option available to me that would push my boat along at 90 MPH I would take it in a heartbeat. With the savings I described in annual op and maint costs, a person can easily justify putting more into the initial purchase.

Yes these pictures do not reflect the larger turbo's now in place :drink:

Intake weight ??

Ribs sound goooooooooood :eek:


Jon

When I was on the boat at Party On The Pond with that engine in it, it idled around like it had a Merc 330. That engine is pretty impressive.

3 - 850's as they exist now would not fit in my engine compartment and if they did would sink the ship with the weight. I expect you mean if some of the current light weight offerings could somehow be cranked up to 850 HP what would happen to efficiency and longevity? I expect they would start to look like a gas engine where reliabilty becomes an issue with parts failing and the economies no longer being there. There is always a trade off it seems. BTW, I would think that just 2 - 850's would give me the speed myself, Jassman and others are looking for.

No to 2 or multi speed trannys.

Bob

Wildman,

I give you the facts on what were the reasons people raced or wanted to race diesels years ago.

Bob, is right on all accounts, last longer, more miles to gal. Bob's points are so true, if you were in a true old school offshore race I wonder if the speeds we see today would still be there, if the boats raced 175 miles in open ocean in the rough and everything else could we have 130 mph, 150 mph - probably not, they would down in the lower 100's at most again????

Look at diesel vs gas in fuel to make 1 hp, a diesel usally burns about .33 lbs of fuel per Hp/HR. A gas engine generally
.4 to .5 lbs hp/hr so right there no matter what for equal Hp the diesel burns less fuel.

We looked to racing our Navistar & later Cummins diesels not because they were better but like Buzzi, there was a old loop hole in UIM 1 & 2 rules that were carried over here to APBA that had not been updated to reflect how much more power people were getting out of diesels compared to when they were written.

The old diesel rules were from the time when people like Roger Penske wanted diesels in offshore raceboats. That old cubic rule meant you could out Hp a gas boat now, that in part drove performance diesels back in the 80's.

The other factor was a more practical one where when a race started a gas boat was heavy with fuel and therefore would not run wide open (remember the races were all 150 miles plus). The diesel boats would run wide open from the get go and try to make the gas boats chase them down, to stay within striking distance the gas boats ran harder than they wanted and if you look at the older races almost 50% plus of all the boats that started did not finish!

So, yes diesel dependablity was a factor but after the rules changed and you needed to make more powerful diesels the dpendability factor was not so great.

As far as Banks goes, everyone that read what was posted here and saw the pictures should have enough sense to know like Ray says this is just Banks being a great marketer. Banks is no different than manufacturers going to any other car show, they build concept or racing product to bring and get some buzz going?

At a dry weight of 3500-4000lbs per side I would think two of them would create a bit of a problem as well. Your boat is pretty darn big so I don't know about you, but being 5+ feet long and around 4 feet tall would mean "packaging" issues for many.

Seatek makes 850-925 HP diesels that burn less fuel than the same HP gas engine. You also get nearly 2000 ft/lb of torque with it. Yes they are heavier. They also have a 1000 hr TBO.

But in a boat like Bob's, he could run 2 Seatek 825-950 and have more HP with the same engine weight (less overall weight with the third drive not needed). Throw in some 2 speeds and you really got something going.

I agree. I should have more clear that when I said putting 2 - 850's in my boat would do the job, I was referring to one of these phantom super duper lightweight diesel engines that we all dream of but do not exist yet.

Bob

Thanks for putting that in terms that we can all understand, Joe...... well most of us anyway. LOL

:eek: You are correct,......and that is the beauty of the system seriously over looked :drink:



Jon