The new sound of the new exhaust system demonstrated on the party we have for team members and sponsors.

Next step will be to test it all and make improvement from there. We also start working on a new engine soon that will incorporate not only new type of camshaft but we will try to incorporate all new findings in the new engine as well so chance is that we going to swap engines more often and keep upgrading them.

 

The truck puller is almost ready for the game. The only thing left are the new air intakes to the turbochargers where we remove the air filters and beef up the intake diameter. Will post some pictures when it’s ready.

Parallel to the truck development we are already building the engine for next year.
We are in the process of timing the engine with the new camshafts and it needs a closer look from an expert to verify the correct timing. With this engine and cam followers it’s not that easy.

The main thing why we work one year ahead is that we already done a lot of modifications to the truck that need to be tested and between the championship events there is not a lot of time for testing.

 

Small update. We are well on our way to the first truck-pulling event for the championship.

The engine runs fine with the new hi pressure injectors and we have an EGT that within 5 degrees on all cylinders.

We still have one problem and that’s turbine speed on de co driver side with catastrophic results as you can see in the picture. We suspect the hose in front of the compressor to go flat restricting the air intake under full load but as we have no feedback on turbine speed we have noting to compare to as we run two turbochargers.

What I like to know did someone fit a speed sensor on a HOLSET HX60?

 

Last week we had the second event for the championship and became second place with an engine that did not perform for the full 100%.
The first event did not go as planed as we blow up a turbocharger in the first run and this was already the 4 time we had turbo damage this year during test events.

This is how it looks if you blow up a turbocharger.
There is a big difference between conventional fuel injection that dos not account boost pressure so it always give max fuel and electronic fuel injection that calculates fuel over boost pressure.
The main rezone we get massive turbo damage is that the engine dos not suffocate in it’s fuel so even when a turbo compressor blows it self up reducing boost pressure we still get combustion overspeeding the turbine as it has no power takeoff from the compressor.
In this video the remains of the turbine wheel came out of the exhaust even ripping out a 2x 12mm cross that’s there to prevent that the turbine wheel coming out of the turbine housing.



We made a lot of progress on power output of the engine using the hi pressure injectors but we had to jump back to the injector and exhaust configuration of end last year to prevent turbocharger damage.
The next logical step will be to go for one big turbocharger like a HX82 or HX83 so we can build an exhaust and turbocharger system that can handle the engine power a lot better.
The bad thing is this will need a big rebuild of the exhaust and intercooler system and we don’t have the time to get this done during the main season.

Even more problems.
For some time we had a unbalance in o2 between the left and right cylinder bank of the V8.
We know this as we have o2 sensors in the exhaust.
On the last two events we had difficulty to get boost pressure @ the start of the pull and during the first 50 or more meters of the run we had misfires.
With the electronic activated PDE injectors we do not have return fuel from the injector so if there is air in the injector the only way out is towards the injector nozzle.
The result of air in the fuel injector gives a delayed fuel injection or no fuel injection at all.
We think one of the fuel lifting pumps had a leak so we replaced it.


What saved the day.
On the last event for the championship we had an engine that did not perform that well but still me managed the get the truck past the full pull line with one gear lower as we use to.
The modifications we done last winter gave us a lot more traction on the track so we still mange to get second place.

 

Second time in a row we made second place still moving up strong in the championship after a disappointing first event.

We found the problem of having air in the fuelrail. One of the fuel feed pumps had a bad O ring and we replace the pump.
Finally we had the full power again so we could drop the clutch like silly again.





As we where on our home event the party was even bigger this time as you can see in these pictures.
Load of Beer on the V8 Beer plate al do it can handle loads of other consumptions as well.





Next event we go up to Denmark where a lot of team will give a demo event. For more info visit. Forside - www.truckpulling.dk

 

It has been a while that I posted in this topic.

We had to endure a lot of problems but we are on top of the game currently holding second place in the championship over the last events.

What happened? At the start of this year we start using hi pressure PD injectors that give a lot better combustion in the combustion chamber and a lot less smoke as well as we intend to be green as possible.
Soon we find out that the turbochargers where not up to the job of handling the increased exhaust gas velocity not to be confused with exhaust gas volume otherwise we could have changed the turbine houses for bigger ones.
We try to solve the problems we had with the turbocharger by going back to the low pressure injection system we used end of last year and al do we lost some power we did have more reliability on the turbocharger part.
Soon we did find out that we hade big differences in performance between runs and it took some time before we did find out after replacing the cylinder heads that the exhaust valves where leaking and sticking open due to warn out valve guides and as this problems what getting bigger over time we did not notice it before until we upgraded things for more power.

As a result of all these problems we lost a lot of point in the championship so after solving all problems we decided not to do any upgrades on the engine and go for reliability.
This all did pay of scoring max point over the last 4 events ending up in second place in the championship for now with still 2 events to go.
Al do we did not improve on engine power we did go forward in performance a lot by changing the balance of the truck a lot.

Engineering can be hard. We still in the process of building a new engine and we were lucky with the build that we did not go as fast with the build as planed so we could upgrade engine parts.
The hard part is finding or manufacturing parts as so many say no problem we can do this and never hear from them again or if they do come up with parts or solutions that are under or over specifications, it seems like in the world of tractor pulling they don’t like calculated numbers and act on there experience they have with Pro stock engines and we are running a modern truck engine that’s limed on RPM, turbochargers and no water injection.
So I still have challenge on inlet valve springs and the turbocharger configuration.
We are trying to use OEM parts so we can order and get them fast and have good quality as well.
For the turbochargers we are still looking into a HX82 or HX83 but the main problems is we can not get a billed wheel for them in the configuration I want as I want to make 4.7Bar boost or 68PSI.
For now we going to use 2x HX60 with billed wheels and I want to balance the exhaust gas flow with a bypass between the two cylinder banks that will also make it possible to use one wastegate. I hope to get fast spool-up with this configuration and by using a wastegate I’m no longer having problems controlling the boost pressure as we run the turbochargers close to there max.

 

We finally done it! First time first place during a championship event.

Maybe we had the perfect conditions for our engine as it was very very hot yesterday.
Maybe we did have the perfect set-up. Perfect gear and perfect air pressure in the tyres.



Currently still holding the second place in the championship with a head lead of 16 points to number 3 and with one event to go we can afford to lose some points.

We were planning to do some modifications to the engine and test them today during a demo but due to the very hot weather and the whole team having to part a lot we decided to do some runs with no changes trying to save the engine and turbochargers as air density under these very hot conditions is a lot lower.


Qualification run. Whoops the pulling sled is going sideways don’t break on the end of the run!

Super final run. Pulling sled loaded to the max of over 25Tons still pulling it like it was a toy.

Mega final run. Sorry bit to dark.

Demo test run of today in hi gear.

 

It’s only a small modification on the cylinder head so we could fit stronger valve springs.
As with so many things for this engine a lot of parts are done a lot different compared to other brand of engines so nothing comes close that can be used other than original parts from this engine.
To some this all sounds to easy but in fact finding out that OEM parts are already close to the limit on what can be constructed in the space you have to fit the parts makes it a challenge.





Ok this is me complaining a bit about companies that make parts for tractor pulling where I still have the feeling a lot is done by trail and error not working out the numbers but after a while you get use to it looking in to other options finding solutions and have it made for a lot less so as a team we are doing great saving money in the process and being successful as well and slowly it get noticed by other teams across the big pond as well it seems.

We just sold a ECU system for a CAT C15 for a truck that runs in the Super Street Semi in the US. RPM is only 300 more than we run with the Scania engine and also the injectors are a lot the same so chance is we can do some development on these injectors as we are able to test them and make modifications and we also know how to blow the injector tip off/. So we know the limit as well.
The configuration of a Super Street Semi is a lot different so it would be interesting to know how heavy to pulling sled is to get some idea on traction to set the RPM governor gains, hope to get some reply.

 

Yester we had the last event for the points. This time we had to battle it out on a tuff clay track on the biggest European truck pulling event.

We were last in the pulloff so not very ideal to get traction this time so we end up 3 place of the day but still in a comfortable lead to get 2e place in the championship.

We had our ups and downs this year and in the end we came out stronger than ever before so for next year we will hope to find the power and balance to hit the fist spot more often.
We also proven that electronic regulated engines will have the future as the top 3 has 2 of these engines in it.

Victory round Semi Supersport Truckpulling top 3 champions 2012

Mega final run.


Super final run

Final run

Run 1.

Small move on the CAT C15 project testing the injector set-up.

 

Last weekend we took a Scania 164 cassis a part and cut the front parts off so we can use it as a test bed for the dyno and at the same time have an exact copy of the truckpuller cassis so we can build things like exhaust manifolds and other auxiliary parts on the testbed and test them and later on build them on the truck. The deadline was set original to end of this year to compete the new engine and testbed but if we continuo like this we can fire up the in the next two weeks and have the engine running on the dyno with the old turbo and intercooler set-up to generate data begin December I hope.
What comes next is a new turbo and maybe intercooler set-up or even 44% bigger injectors.

Yesterday we had a government inspection on development projects with subsidies and we passed with no problem. Subsidies where given on engine development for testing new materials and educating for people on the work floor.