Converting a 81 series V12 Detroit Diesel into commonrail.
 

This project is about combining the good old en new to make something special.

As some of you know in Holland or the Netherlands we run loads of semi trucks into several championships of truck pulling.

One of the top class is the VNT 9.5Ton Super Sport series.
There are some differences compared to the Semi trucks in the US. We can only run 2900Rpm max and can only run single stage turbo charging with a max of 2 turbochargers in parallel and we are only allowed to use Diesel as fuel so no other funny stuff.
Maybe to some this seems to be boring not having all the goodies for tuning to the max but the combination of traction/speed/torque make these trucks some of the fasted on the track.

Why commonrail with all the electronics involved? It’s not about getting loads of fuel inside the engine as some teams have fuelpumps that can deliver more than1.6cc per stroke running 16mm plungers or more.
In the past 2 years electronic controlled diesel injection systems have proven that you can make more power by utilizing very hi fuel injection pressures and accurate timing and fuel metering.
The result is that in the top five tree of the trucks use electronic fuel injection.

Only recently in this type of sport we start combining know-how with other companies in the surge for part than can be used for tractor and truck pulling and believe me there is not a lot on the marked that can be used so on this V12 Detroit Diesel project almost all is custom made.

This Truck Pulling team has mange to pull all companies needed together to get it all done.
My part on this project is to build and install all the electronics to run the engine and do all the data logging as well.

Some pictures of the engine during build.
http://www.mijnalbum.nl/Foto-V4ITEKTF.jpg
http://www.mijnalbum.nl/Foto-LLVCRAJI.jpg

Some of the parts for the engine management system.
http://www.mijnalbum.nl/Foto-ZHPTXYWG.jpg
http://www.mijnalbum.nl/Foto-KVAIMH8W.jpg

Later this week when we have all the part for the commonrail system ready we hope to run the engine for the first time.

Will keep you posted.:hellox:

very interesting project....please do keep us posted

Last night we completed the commonrail system and were able to get fuel rail pressure.
Question still is can we crank the engine on full fuel pressure as the hi pressure pump uses a lot of power. We have the possibility to fit an extra start motor

Next step will be timing the engine and fire up the engine.

Link from our truckpulling website, Team FTF is hard aan de slag
It’s all in Dutch but if you use Yahoo! Babel Fish - Vertaling van Teksten en Webpagina’s you can translate some of it and understand what it's about.

I got the V12 Detroit Diesel running on commonrail system. We has some delay due to a broken start motor and we run into some problem controlling the fuel rail pressure.
Later in turned out that the fuelmeteringvalve was faulty or one of the O ring was coursing a leak internally.

Awesome man that Detroit sounds mean!

This is fantastic. You should be very proud of what you have accomplished.

There may very well be a real-world market for this conversion in the maritime industry.

Congratulations!
:c:

sounds like a bloody beast!

The same video as last time from an other angle.


2900RPM limiter run and a bit of ALS. 2Bar boost or 30PSI on the boost gauge


Have fun. :nope::c:

:tu::tttt:

You just made an old Detroit mechanic smile :rocking::rocking::rocking:.

I worked on some wild marine spec 92's in my day but nothing like yours .