Diesel Power Gets A New Toy

[Optikalillushun]

the link i posted was of an 87 F-250 ext cab 6.9/C6/2wd with *i think* bad injectors. he's a friend of mine and i always bust his chops because his truck is an automatic and mine is a 5 speed.

for those who didnt look, he said it put down roughly 105hp and 210tq.

 

[seawalkersee]

For those who do not subscribe or read this, they put the new Aurora on the IDI this month. I was/am kind of disgusted at the low level of output by this. Maybe it is just me, but for 3k ish, I would expect more than 123hp/244. I think there is a problem with the fuel, but I do not know what they are using as far as the dyno goes. Also, the torque curve sucks. It tarts near 220ish and is fairly good till about 2250rpms when it srarts to fall out of the sky. The HP continues to raise so again, I think there may be a problem in the system.

Depends on what is done in the futer if I actually get a subscription or not. At least this is a step in the right direction....kind of like owning a fox body mustang and looking at magazines with all of the new (05ish) articles.

SWS

 

[GRU]

ya i agree. i was rather disappointed when i saw the numbers too. i woulda thought theyd have been better. i am still excited to see them tinkering with an IDI though!

 

[6 Nebraska IDIs]

There's gotta be something wrong with it. Timed wrong or something. It should be in the 150hp range.

 

[seawalkersee]

Yeah, I do not care so much about the HP table as it remained pretty flat. There should have been enough HP to keep a flat TQ curve through the RPM band though.

SWS

 

[hesutton]

I wish that rig had made it to the rally. We could have timed it and gave it the once over. Plus, it could have dyno'ed with the rest of the IDI crew.

Heath

 

[Chevyboy_0]

I just picked up the issue and I gotta read it now...

 

[Agnem]

The dyno event at the IDI Weekend was a great opportunity to see a wide range of trucks and how they turned out. The torque curve does indeed seem to max out at 2250 and that was no matter what configuration the engine had. Some of the trucks that we expected better numbers for on the dyno actually didn't do so well. Chris' Moose Pump equipped IDI was decompressed, and we found that his particular Moose Pump was not putting out enough for a decompressed engine. Consequently, he was not putting in enough fuel and could not turn numbers as easily as a normal compression IDI. Lesson learned.... decompressing takes power away unless you have the fuel and air to cram in the extra space. Heath's Moose Misters gave him more boost, and a smoother idle, but he lost 10 HP. This continues to mystify, but we believe the DPS pump may not be a good match at this time. Matthias high milage IDI was the lowest HP wise, possibly due to it's wear levels. It seemed with every truck we had more questions than answers. Several were set up very much the same, and still had a good bit of deviation to them. Whatever the article says, it probably lacks sufficient information to really understand the how and why of the numbers that they got, just like us.

 

[david85]

Why do dynos have to be so damn expensive

What we are getting into here is supertuning and its hard to do that without access to a dynomometer for more than a few minutes.

I remember on FTE there was a thread where they were examining the possibility of using the glow plugs as sensors for the purpose of supertuning. Basically, you hook up a volt meter to each individual plug and compare readings to see if all the holes are burning at the same temp. More equal and lower across the board relative to the amount of power produced resulted in the best MPGs.

At least that was the theory. The original poster had plans to make a custom timing map for the injector pump with the help of a machine shop but life has a way of getting in the way of projects like this and I haven't heard of him for months.

A few posters were able to get some volt meter readings on the thread and there did seem to be real correlation from one engine to another. I wasn't able to get mine to work though and different brands of glow plugs gave different readings (though what you were really looking for was comparing on cylinder to another in the same engine).

 

[91f2504x4]

Why do dynos have to be so damn expensive

What we are getting into here is supertuning and its hard to do that without access to a dynomometer for more than a few minutes.

I remember on FTE there was a thread where they were examining the possibility of using the glow plugs as sensors for the purpose of supertuning. Basically, you hook up a volt meter to each individual plug and compare readings to see if all the holes are burning at the same temp. More equal and lower across the board relative to the amount of power produced resulted in the best MPGs.

At least that was the theory. The original poster had plans to make a custom timing map for the injector pump with the help of a machine shop but life has a way of getting in the way of projects like this and I haven't heard of him for months.

A few posters were able to get some volt meter readings on the thread and there did seem to be real correlation from one engine to another. I wasn't able to get mine to work though and different brands of glow plugs gave different readings (though what you were really looking for was comparing on cylinder to another in the same engine).

Are you sure that they weren't taking resistance readings? It seems that the Glow Plugs would work the same as thermistors when they are not actually being powered. The warmer the plugs gets the less resistance there is and therefore you could tell the temp of the cylinder by the resistance shown in that particular glow plug. You could develop a baseline using your particular engine and an IR thermometer using the glow plugs reading to Sync up temps, then you could buy some cheap ohm meters and make a little dash for 8 of them in your truck and take recording for each cylinder. You would have to set up a little wiring to take care of the switch over but it would not be a big deal for on the fly readings. you could even setup a laptop to record the resistance reading and it could record RPMs as well, you could even put a conversion in the program to convert the resistance into temps with a simple formula, that would be similar to Megatune program used with megasquirt, it has really good datalogging capabilities and I used to use it in my truck when it was a turbocharged gasser.

 

[david85]

I see no reason why resistance readings couldn't work, but they were taking millivolt readings in that case and treating the glow plug like a thermocouple.

I think hotter = higher resistance if you were to try and take olm meter readings.

There is a bit of work involved because you have to cold start the truck using glow plugs (or block heater), then disconnect all the GPs to prevent the wiring harness from throwing the readings off.

A bit tedious, but its cheaper than a dyno run.

Never thought of using a recording/tuning software to collect and compile all the data, but it could make one hellova tool chest for the purpose of supertuning since our engines don't have sensors to guide us in the right direction. Data can be compiled from normal driving cycles instead of on the rollers to get the best bang for the fuel burned.

Who knows, maybe this would be better than a dyno run.