Water brake dyno setup

[Garwood]

I bought a 1200 lb/ft Go-Power turbodiesel water brake dyno awhile back. Finally getting it setup to use.

I'm going to use it manually to start. Not worried about data acquisition yet.

How big of a water tank is needed? How important is feed water temp control. Or is the water usually recycled or just dumped?

Is a radiator/fan a bad idea? Or would a tank setup be required?

I will be breaking in mechanical diesels. I need a throttle. Was thinking just buying an old boat throttle off ebay. Is there anything better? It crossed my mind to mount a dirtbike twist throttle on the water valve lever- Dumb idea?

If anyone's setup a dyno and has any tips I'd love to hear them!

 

[moonlight machine]

I bought a 1200 lb/ft Go-Power turbodiesel water brake dyno awhile back. Finally getting it setup to use.

I'm going to use it manually to start. Not worried about data acquisition yet.

How big of a water tank is needed? How important is feed water temp control. Or is the water usually recycled or just dumped?

Is a radiator/fan a bad idea? Or would a tank setup be required?

I will be breaking in mechanical diesels. I need a throttle. Was thinking just buying an old boat throttle off ebay. Is there anything better? It crossed my mind to mount a dirtbike twist throttle on the water valve lever- Dumb idea?

If anyone's setup a dyno and has any tips I'd love to hear them!

The last water brake I had anything to do with was Heenan Froude, it was good for about 800hp, it had a 2000 gallon water tank. It had a huge radiator and fan with about a 2-3hp circulation pump. They tried to keep the inlet water temp to about 32 degrees C. If the water gets to hot it can cause cavatation. Have you ever been to Ford's R&D campus in Dearborn? There is a outdoor pool that looks like it is just landscaping, it is about 300' x 500', 20' deep. It is the water tank for the dynos. It never freezes. Is GO Power still around? What do they say?

 

[Garwood]

The last water brake I had anything to do with was Heenan Froude, it was good for about 800hp, it had a 2000 gallon water tank. It had a huge radiator and fan with about a 2-3hp circulation pump. They tried to keep the inlet water temp to about 32 degrees C. If the water gets to hot it can cause cavatation. Have you ever been to Ford's R&D campus in Dearborn? There is a outdoor pool that looks like it is just landscaping, it is about 300' x 500', 20' deep. It is the water tank for the dynos. It never freezes. Is GO Power still around? What do they say?

Go Power is Froude and they're still in business. I'll call and ask.

 

[Brett W]

If you want to do a total loss system, just hook it up to city water and let it dump. Realize its going to use a TON of water during your testing. If you are talking a tank a pair of 1500s or bigger, you may be able to mitigate the tank size with an externally mounted heat exchanger. Something big and outside the cell. Having a fan mounted on the dyno stand inside a cell will just circulate hot air. It would be best if you just put the heat exchanger outside the cell.

Look about for a control center from a Land and Sea. Ours has a throttle lever with some basic gauges. How are you gonna control the rate of ramp up (water valve controller)?

 

[Garwood]

No cell yet. No city water. Just set the skid outside on a nice day for now.

The water valve is controlled with a knob on the console currently. It's a hydraulic pilot valve.

 

[gbent]

A former boss had a Heenen Froude. ISTR from the stories after the reserve water got to about 150 degrees it was pretty easy to flash to steam with a 600 hp engine. It doesn't take much math to convert your hp*hr into increased water temperature. If you are on well water, I see a warm pond in your future.

The Ford headquarters lake isn't just a lake, but also has fountains for cooling.

 

[triumph406]

Have you ever been to Ford's R&D campus in Dearborn? There is a outdoor pool that looks like it is just landscaping, it is about 300' x 500', 20' deep. It is the water tank for the dynos. It never freezes.

Presumebly one of these 2 lakes

 

[PackardV8]

Slightly OT, but I remember Jack Roush using large generators as power absorbers and selling juice back to the utility.

 

[Garwood]

Slightly OT, but I remember Jack Roush using large generators as power absorbers and selling juice back to the utility.

I don't think I need to worry about that. I just need good, complete, drop in and go 12 valve Cummins engines. I have tried lots of West coast builders and some national ones. 90% of the time there are unacceptable problems. 10% of the time there are catastrophic failures because of really stupid mistakes. That's 1 in 10 are built with major oversights like wrong piston protrusion, timing gears installed wrong, standard bearings on an undersize crank. I'm not kidding! Very simple engines. This should not be hard. I've assembled over 100 of them myself with some leaks here and there and one time I did forget a galley plug. Figured that out when priming the oil system so no big deal. I got too busy to build engines and started farming it out. Now it's time to bring it back in to keep customers happy.

I want to break in the camshaft, fully seat the rings, do a few heat cycles, get the fuel system 95% dialed in, fix any leaks, etc. So the engine is a 100% drop in, turn the key and go. A rock solid drop in and go 350HP/800 lb/ft 12 valve should be achievable for $15,000 100% of the time. Not 10% of the time.

 

[henrya]

Sounds like a good plan.

 

[paulz]

Presumebly one of these 2 lakes

View attachment 386389

The two parking lots dead center of this screen shot used to be cooling ponds.

 

[Glug]

Do you have a load cell to measure force on the dyno? Cobbling something together to measure and maintain load, adjust valves and record values should be fun and not too difficult.


The ponds were there in 2016 and gone in 2017. That is the dyno facility to the south. There is so much history in that area, not even including the Henry Ford just across the road.

 

[Garwood]

Do you have a load cell to measure force on the dyno? Cobbling something together to measure and maintain load, adjust valves and record values should be fun and not too difficult.

Yes, it has a hydraulic load cell to a gauge on the control panel that reads direct in ft/lbs. I have full instrumentation- six egt probes, fuel, oil, water, manifold pressure and temps, rpm and torque. It's just all analog.

 

[Turbowerks]

I had a 3500 hp dyno used on pulling diesel motors, got rid of it before someone got killed on my time. I had a 1500 gallon tank underground and it would only get warm to the touch 95deg i would guess after a few break in passes and some full power tuning passes. Break in might last 5 min passes at 200 hp or until motor was up to full operating temp. Then shut down cooled and run again, most of these were dry, no coolant ones with coolant treated the same way just longer.
Full power passes never ran over 8-10 seconds for a sweep from 3000-5500 rpm.
I switched to a 500 gallon tank overhead and used the inground for storage. (Dyno dumped back to it). We always monitored the out water from the brake keeping it below 135 deg any warmer and cavitation could rear its head. The founder of depac controls set me up on that. It works. Use a gate valve on the outlet and count turns to set temp and hp settings. A free drain either to tank or drain works best. Make your fill plumbing as large as possible and for good working affordable control and data Performance trends racing software has you covered. Steve morris uses it on his 4500 hp turbo drag motors.
A old semi radiator and fan setup would go a long way in keeping your water cool. I had a land and sea and 2 Saenze water brakes the land and sea was always broke never had a problem with the Saenze

 

[BT Fabrication]

being in oregon, it gets cold in the winter and hot in the summer.
winter you wouldn't have to worry much as long as you don't run it for hours. I would be saying in the 1000+ gallon size min. Most water pumps push if i remember correctly about 55 gal a minute.
if ran often enough then you dont need to worry about freezing and can have it tanked outside, then during the summer months you can always have an external radiator and fan to keep it cool. Only need one as large as trucks are to keep it down, probably pull one from a transport truck and use an electric fan.
Throttle control you can easily adapt a boat throttle over to work, other then running anything that needs an electric throttle pedal, most use a GM from a 1500.

 

[JoeE.]

A friend of mine built a dyno room at his shop. The water brake he had originally used at a farm implement place for doing work on Tractor engines, so capable of absorbing lots of horsepower.
I watched him run some engines through their paces. I remember asking him how he determined how much power the engines were making...and he showed me the torque arm hanging off the side of the water brake, which pressed down on a solid state load cell that sent a signal to a desktop computer where he could read measurements and figure out torque and horsepower and all that stuff..
It had a large flexible duct that hung down off the ceiling and would be connected to the engines carburetor... with an instrument inside the duct housing that could sense the amount of air the engine was sucking in...

He used the total loss method. It didn't really use that much water, and water is only running when you're using the machine.
As the engine was roaring along in testing mode, there was a valve he opened on the control stand that let more water flow into the brake.
I asked him "how does the water put a load on the engine?" His explanation was that the "brake" was similar in construction to a torque converter, with a rotating assembly and a fixed assembly... which were in close proximity to each other. As the rotating vanes spun and water was introduced to the housing, it created friction between the rotating and fixed "vanes" in the brake.
All he had was a garden hose connected to the system to feed it water...as it exited the brake, it ran into a drain in the floor. The water was warm to the touch upon exit.

 

[magneticanomaly]

I would use a radiator and fan from a big truck, or maybe two in tandem.
Here is the logic. A good Diesel engine wiill be 30-40% efficient, so the cooling system has to be able to dissipate heat energy equivalent to twice the engine's rated output. Rate of heat tranfer is proportional to temperature difference, so a lot of compactness is gained by operating at higher temperature.
It sounds like you want to be able to run for extended periods, so you want a system that will operate in a steady-state...a tank that is mostly just a heat-sink, not a dissipator, will eventually overheat. A total-loss system will waste a lot of water and also will not allow you to treat the water to protect your system from corrosion.

 

[EmGo]

Here's another method ... look into four-square test stands. They are used on huge horsepower motive power that's way too big for a dyno. It's basically two gearboxes loaded against each other, with your prime mover being the input. So, for instance, if the counter-acting gearboxes gobble up 900 horsepower, you can feed it 1000 horsepower but only need a 100 hp brake.

In your case, that'd mean way less water.

It's been decades since I was interested in this so the particulars might be off a mile or two ... or three or ten ... but that's the basic idea. Two nice things for you would be, much less water use and you could run the engine in for much longer - say even half an hour if you wanted, because most dynos are really intended/designed for short-preiod use.

 

[gbent]

Here is the logic. A good Diesel engine wiill be 30-40% efficient, so the cooling system has to be able to dissipate heat energy equivalent to twice the engine's rated output.

The radiator has to dissipate about the same amount of energy as the brake. Your energy balance is neglecting the energy out the exhaust.

The 4 square is only for testing horsepower through a gearbox, it doesn't act like a dyno. Yes, it takes some power to turn, but allows you to test a gearbox to whatever power level desired with only having to input the power losses.

 

[David_M]

A total lost system of another kind: