Frederic Breitwieser:
My application is more bizarre, however I'll share it with you since its
1. Based on a Buick V6
2. Street able
Here is the "hardware":
1980 Buick 4.1L OEM Block (polished, decked, yada yada)
1981 Buick 4.1L fillet crank (same as the GN, polished with oil holes slightly enlarged)
1986 3.8L FWD heads (polished and ported)
Wiseco Custom pistons
1981 4.1L Rods - shotpeened and balanced
Wiseco wristpins
Wolverine Blue Racer Cam
Compression ratio is 9.8:1
With Sunoco 94 at 85%, commercial isopropyl at 8%, and distilled water at 7%, at 5700 RPM I get close to 700HP / 790 ft.lbs of torque, with out any detonation. I'm using the Haltech racing computer to run the coil pack as well as the injectors, which I have three Ford turbo Thunderbird injectors per cylinder. 2 on each cylinder runs gas, one runs the water/alky mixture. I'm sure this is not good for injectors. I have two fuel tanks, one gas with two fuel pumps, one tank for alky/water with one pump. Three fuel rails, custom long runner aluminum manifold I made out of sheet metal and rectangular tubing, the intake log is a large box with an aluminum oil cooler brazed in, connected to ice cold water, which circulates through an igloo cooler, with a sailboat sump-pump with freezer coils coiled in the tank. The freezer coils attach to a 120V freezer, I haven't adapted this system to a running car yet (I have an engine, a lot of crap, and access to a dyno). I run two turbos TE34 I believe, good to 700cfm or so each, and the engine does very, very well. Its street able, as the power curve is 3000 to 5700, however I managed to get it to idle reasonably well at 1000, which is a tad high for a street car, but not unacceptable considering the power the engine puts out. There is absolutely no exhaust system – after it comes out the turbos, it blows into an H pipe, and out to hoses that go outside the body shop. Haven't gotten that far yet. I don't use waste gates, but instead a HKS blow-off valve that bolts to the opposite side of the intake log, allowing blown air to escape if the pressure exceeds 30 PSI.
I'm putting this in a 2500lb mid-engined sports car I'm just starting to weld together. See the basic concepts at
www.xephic.dynip.com. I apologies for not having my updated engine pictures... haven't had a chance to download them out of my camera. I also must say I had a peak of 840HP and 890 ft/lbs of torque for a brief second (6100 RPM), however the crank/rods gave out and that was that. Currently, building a new engine for further experimentation.
This is probably too radical for you, but being that you asked, I thought you might at least find it interesting and informative.
Oh, the pistons, heads, and valves are coated with Techline, I don't recall which valve was bigger (intake I think) but the larger valve is 1.98". The second one is 1.6" or something in that range, stainless steel Manley valves. I can find out next time I head to my friend's shop. Its all spread out on the shop floor since we are doing a determination of what failed first - the rod or the crank, or the block.
Phil V put together a nice system which I started with, then went a little crazy with. He's a good guy, and came up with a good idea that's not terribly expensive either, unlike my system. Though he's building a street car, I'm building a purpose built race car, so the systems had to be different.
The most important thing about any blown car, supercharged or turbo'd is to eliminate detonation entirely. Any detonation robs power, stresses parts, and leaves them underneath your car rather than in your car. Techline, which is an applicable coating for pistons, valves and the inside of the heads is an excellent solution - think "jet hot" for combustion chambers. It isolates a good amount of the heat from the block and cooling system, the oil underneath the piston, etc, and keeps it in the combustion chamber to make power. Also, the product itself cools off very fast, so when your engine revs down (idle, stop lights, etc), things cool faster than the aluminum pistons or iron heads would. I was able to determine this by having no detonation.
Speaking of cooling, I meant to mention above that I have piston cooling. I have two metal tubes that go across the oil pan lengthwise with small holes, which spray onto the bottoms of the pistons (mostly on the rod unfortunately) to use the oil as a cooler for the pistons. The oil gets a little hotter, but my tests have been with a dry sump system, and a 3 gallon oil reservoir, so there's plenty to go around. My setup can easily reach into the 1000HP I believe, however to achieve that I clearly need stage II block, heads, a 4130 crank, and all the other expensive goodies to go along with it.
I will also say the isopropyl will eat the injectors they go through in time. I'm experimenting, so if an injector dies after 2 months, I don't care. Also, the fuel pump for the alky is from a F-250 Ford Truck, which was Phil's recommendation, as it has stainless internals, rather than mild steel or any kind of composite materials - thus the alky doesn't seem to eat it. at 14V I get a nice, clean, 55psi at the alky fuel rail.
My "battery" source is a 12V 100A workbench power supply. I start the engine using a regular car battery, then its disconnected and the engine runs off the power supply, as there is no alternator, power steering, or anything else. Dyno's don't need steering <G>.
