Getting the combustion chamber ready for firing up

I have been getting the Combustion Chamber ready for the oncoming fire up. The return nozzle has been cleaned (gathered a fair bit of gunk on the gauze during water testing) and I have fitted the brass nozzle holder to the end of the CC. I re-cut all the threads and De-burred the holes whilst it was all apart and after first tests I will be removing the Flame Tube and tidying that up a bit also. All flat mating steel to steel faces will be Carborundum paste and a glass sheet polished to ensure they are flat creating a no leaks joint. The whole frame, turbo's, Oil tank etc etc will all be dismantled after first testing and all polished and painted up. There is no point in spending time doing it all now until I have found out if the engine is going to run OK and amended any problems.

I have been fitting the fibre optic tacho head sensors to the compressor scroll's and mounting the optical decoders nearby.

The copper pipe will be bent towards the original knurled shaft nut when complete and that nut will be half painted White / Black.

I have decided to run tests on the engine very soon and I will be starting it using 2 modified 16mm 3/8th drive sockets each fixed to a 30000RPM router. The routers will be wired in series so they will both run at 115V as opposed to 230v so they should run approximately at 15000 RPM. The 16mm sockets will be hand pushed onto the 16mm stainless steel domed nuts on the ends of the shafts. At 10RPM the Oil pump will start to ramp up and build pressure to approx 60PSI over a time period of 20 seconds.

And then:

Fuel turns on @ 3000RPM

Fuel turns Off @ 65000RPM

Ignition On @ 2000RPM

Ignition Off @ 20000RPM

The engine (fuel) will run until either the fuel runs out, high temp is reached, Oil pressure drops below a set value or an E-stop is pressed.

If an E-stop is pressed then this will totally shut down everything, even the oil.

A picture of the PRV I will be using and the 2 Temperature controllers that I will be using to keep an eye on 'hot' things :)

Some pictures of the tacho unit as supplied by Russ Moore @ Badbros Racing www.badbros.net

I am going to try a 6 Bar Pressure Release Valve in the oil system line and see what that will do - I will attach it with a Tee junction to the feed out to the oil pressure gauge that way it will not ruin the Speedflow hose set up too much.
90Psi has got to be safer than 200Psi !


I did some more tests last night with the fuel nozzle/proportional
valve set up and found that when I totally removed the proportional
valve from the nozzle return feed there still wasn't enough return
flow to reduce the nozzle mist down to a required level. It seems
the return feed is restricted inside the return nozzle housing. I
may have to drill it out in order to get the required return flow to
be able to have enough 'swing' in the final output fuel levels into
the CC.
I also tried the new 2mm aperture prop valve but it struggled to be
able to hold back the pressure from the pump once opened. Worst
comes to the worst I will run both valves in parallel hydraulically
and electrically, that would then give me 3.6mm of aperture to play
with.

I have acquired 4 stainless castle nuts and am going to try and
manufacture my own Bendix arrangement incorporating the nuts where
the side faces of the castles are chamfered in a way that they will
engage one way and release turning the other.
If the Bendix arrangement wont work then I will have to resort to a solenoid arrangement where the solenoid moves the castle spigots in and out of mesh.

First Oil Test Go Ahead

Tonight, after tightening up all the Speedflow connections and adding an oil pressure gauge, I filled the tank to the required level of oil and added some volts to the oil pump. At 24vdc the oil pressure is around 200PSI which is obviously far too high and I noticed a very small trickle of oil behind the turbine wheel of one of the turbochargers so I quickly switched it off !
I then tried the pump running at 12vdc and was getting around 100PSI which is still too high so I then introduced the ESController into the equation and have now got adjustable pressure from 10-100PSI. The pump at 60PSI seems to only just be ticking over and what I find a little strange is that according to the details on the side of the pump motor it should only be able to deliver 60PSI (4Bar) at 24vdc ?

Oil cooler now piped up.

I got the Oil Cooler all piped up tonight and started to think about proof tightening all the connecting fittings then filling with Oil. I will be using a Synthetic 5W - 40 Oil which I purchased off of EBay.

Speedflow Oil Pipes & Connections

Tonight I have finally got the Oil cooler mounted and the stay mounted for the Oil splitter piping.


I haven't yet piped the cooler up yet. As soon as it is done the Oil will be added and the system tested.


The Oil splitter stay.

I now have the new Proportional valve (2mm aperture). It's a bit bigger physically than the 1.6mm !

If I still don't have enough return flow from this 2mm valve (on testing the return nozzle I found that maybe the 1.6mm aperture wasn't big enough and didn't dump enough fuel back into the tank thus not shutting off enough fuel for idle at the nozzle) Then I will parallel the two together to gain a 3.6mm aperture.

The 2mm valve will work from the same controller as the 1.6mm and paralleling them both together shouldn't cause a problem electrically.