Supercharger stageing, compounding,

[jl222]

JL222,
Right now it is residing in his hanger at the Torrance airport. Back in the early 80s when Hughes AC was sellling the Goose a friend of Harry's that worked at Hughes called him and said the spare engines for the Goose were being "given" away. To qualify you had to be some kind of group that would use the engine for education etc. so Harry became a "boy scout troop"! He and I were sharing a shop on Signal Hill at the time and one day this big flat bed truck pulls up with this giant army green can on it. The motor was in a sealed shipping container. I helped Harry build a stand for it with wheels and he has had it ever since. Still a real treat to look at.

Harry is an old "salt" guy he did several cars with Clem Tebow and Don Clark, I think the 32 roadster with the Ardun  that ran 162 back in 52-53 was his.

Rex

  Thats an amazing story.

    JL222

  I must be next in line because I was a scout ''scouts honor''

[floydjer]

Cool story about the H-K-1 engine. Back to my thought, The turbo(s) would keep constant pressure at the inlet side of a crank driven blower, not really "assist" in any way as far as rotation would go. And didn`t I read some where that a Top Fuel car derives about 1200# of down force from the headers??  J.B.

[Rex Schimmer]

floydjer,
If the turbo(s) are big enough they should be able to actually drive the crank blower and become a compount engine. You can find out by looking at the inlet and out let pressure of the crank blower. If the inlet is higher than the outlet, which can certainly happen, then the crank blower is actually a motor and is driving the engine crank.

Top Fuel headers: I have heard the number of 400-500 per cylinder for zoomies. This is why when a cylinder goes out the car starts to move toward the side that the cylinder is dead. It would be interesting to set one on some scales and wack the motor to see what the down force is, although it would not be as much as during a run when they have both fuel pumps running. I always thought they should take the fuel from the injection return line and split the flow amoung the headers and make them even better rockets.

Rex

[jl222]

floydjer,
If the turbo(s) are big enough they should be able to actually drive the crank blower and become a compount engine. You can find out by looking at the inlet and out let pressure of the crank blower. If the inlet is higher than the outlet, which can certainly happen, then the crank blower is actually a motor and is driving the engine crank.

Top Fuel headers: I have heard the number of 400-500 per cylinder for zoomies. This is why when a cylinder goes out the car starts to move toward the side that the cylinder is dead. It would be interesting to set one on some scales and wack the motor to see what the down force is, although it would not be as much as during a run when they have both fuel pumps running. I always thought they should take the fuel from the injection return line and split the flow amoung the headers and make them even better rockets.

Rex

     

[floydjer]

Rex, If I remember correctly, that`s what Bernstein did. They had his son`s car in a wind tunnel doing some tests and someone said "Hey, Let`s stick some scales under the wheels and wing the pedal a few times" Bet that place STILL smells of nitro.  Jerry

[wolcottjl]

Top Fuel headers: I have heard the number of 400-500 per cylinder for zoomies. This is why when a cylinder goes out the car starts to move toward the side that the cylinder is dead. It would be interesting to set one on some scales and wack the motor to see what the down force is, although it would not be as much as during a run when they have both fuel pumps running. I always thought they should take the fuel from the injection return line and split the flow amoung the headers and make them even better rockets.

Rex

There was a sort of 25 things you don't know about top-fuel dragsters in Race Car Engineering, I think last year.  They did the article for the Formula-1 type crowd that didn't think that much engineering went into a top-fuel dragster.  They did mention the down force from the headers as one of the points.

[John Burk]

In the early '70s  I made a set of zoomies for my friend's funnycar . He forgot to add the braces from the chassis that supported the headers . First run at Englishtown they bent down till they rubbed on the asphalt . To straighten them I put them on my dragster and heated them yellow and lifted with my floor jack one tube at a time . Tried 4 at once and 2 at once and it just lifted the dragster . I'd guess it took 400# to straighten each tube and it took  more than that to wrinkle the straight tube the first place . In about 1960 it was Chet Herbert who came up with the cam overlap that cooled the exhaust valves by letting the blower push air and raw fuel out the exhaust . Ed Iskenderian used that idea and called it a 5 cycle cam which it realy is . That's where all the fire , noise and down force with blown fuel engines comes from . You can't measure the down force with scales because with no load with the throttle is barely cracked there is relatively little exhaust flow . The exhaust valves unblown nitro engines run very hot because they don't have the cooling cycle their big brothers do . 

[Ron Gibson]

I see the Detroit Diesel, DD15, has what they are calling "turbo compounding" to gain 50 HP. Course that's on a 900 ci engine. Gear reduction off the turbo shaft to the engine gear train. Their site show a promo video with the turbo about halfway through.

Ron Gibson, Omaha NE

[jl222]

JL222,

R4360, 4 rows of 7 cylinder. A close friend of mine, Harry Haggard, has one off of the Spruce Goose. He got a couple extra cylinders and heads in the container when he got the engine and we were always going to make a 156 cu. inch single cylinder motor cycle engine with one of the barrels and heads , figured when it would idle the piston would be stopped and the motorcycle would jump up and down!

Rex

Rex, I found a video of the 4360 on youtube.  An amazing engine.  Our first blowers that we used(Mach 2's) had almost the same impeller design as this 4360.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpmOb46bvCs

            JL222

[Rex Schimmer]

JL222,
Thanks!! Pretty awesome! and remember that they did not have numerical control, CNC, digital feed back, no CAD/CAM, nothing but craftsmanship and skill. Those things look like a Swill watch.

Rex

[saltfever]

JL222,
things look like a Swill watch.

gosh darn spell checkers!!!   

[John Burk]

As early as the '50's the Navy had 671 diesels in boats with turbochargers blowing into the roots blower . Paxton experimented with engines with their blowers in series . Never heard any details .

[floydjer]

JL222,
Thanks!! Pretty awesome! and remember that they did not have numerical control, CNC, digital feed back, no CAD/CAM, nothing but craftsmanship and skill. Those things look like a Swill watch.

Rex

Rex, I do all of my machine work with an Index 745 Mill and a 1939 Monarch lathe. The "kids' don`t know how easy they have it. J.B.

[jl222]

JL222,
things look like a Swill watch.

gosh darn spell checkers!!!   

  I spelt awful ''aufull' and spell checker didn't pick it up.

[McRat]

As early as the '50's the Navy had 671 diesels in boats with turbochargers blowing into the roots blower . Paxton experimented with engines with their blowers in series . Never heard any details .

Most (All?) the Detroit 2-cycle diesels I've seen are staged, with a Roots blower and a turbocharger.  But the reason isn't for high boost.  Because it's a two-stroke, they need the supercharger to keep the air flowing in the correct direction.

6-71 means, 6 cylinders of 71 ci each.  Since the early dragsters used the Detroit superchargers, they just called all Roots-style blowers by the size of the diesel they came off of.