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How useful is a manual engine dyno?

Garwood

Diamond
Joined
Oct 10, 2009
Location
Oregon
I picked up an older 500HP @ 4k rpm turbodiesel waterbrake dyno system. I plan to use it for breakin, but wouldn't mind having some real numbers too.

This is a Go Power Systems DT1000 DT1000 Dynamometer - Go Power Systems. It's got hydraulic cylinders actuating a mechanical display. Probably early 1980's would be my guess. The display and controls all need a little work. Just taking apart and resealing/adjusting it all. Looks simple enough I can get it all working again. The brake itself is in excellent shape.

At the same time I'm wondering if the time and effort to go through the old stuff wouldn't be better allocated to updating it with strain gages?

High-precision, affordable dyno instrumentation - YourDyno.com

Anyone used anything like what this guy is selling? I'm thinking very entry level would be fine for me, but I don't know because I've never used a dyno before. I do have friends that got started with a Stuska very similar to this machine so I'm not completely helpless, but I don't know what I don't know.

Thanks!
 
I picked up an older 500HP @ 4k rpm turbodiesel waterbrake dyno system. I plan to use it for breakin, but wouldn't mind having some real numbers too.

This is a Go Power Systems DT1000 DT1000 Dynamometer - Go Power Systems. It's got hydraulic cylinders actuating a mechanical display. Probably early 1980's would be my guess. The display and controls all need a little work. Just taking apart and resealing/adjusting it all. Looks simple enough I can get it all working again. The brake itself is in excellent shape.

At the same time I'm wondering if the time and effort to go through the old stuff wouldn't be better allocated to updating it with strain gages?

High-precision, affordable dyno instrumentation - YourDyno.com

Anyone used anything like what this guy is selling? I'm thinking very entry level would be fine for me, but I don't know because I've never used a dyno before. I do have friends that got started with a Stuska very similar to this machine so I'm not completely helpless, but I don't know what I don't know.

Thanks!

Very useful article to get folks started, regardless!

Thanks for that!
 
I picked up an older 500HP @ 4k rpm turbodiesel waterbrake dyno system. I plan to use it for breakin, but wouldn't mind having some real numbers too.

This is a Go Power Systems DT1000 DT1000 Dynamometer - Go Power Systems. It's got hydraulic cylinders actuating a mechanical display. Probably early 1980's would be my guess. The display and controls all need a little work. Just taking apart and resealing/adjusting it all. Looks simple enough I can get it all working again. The brake itself is in excellent shape.

At the same time I'm wondering if the time and effort to go through the old stuff wouldn't be better allocated to updating it with strain gages?

High-precision, affordable dyno instrumentation - YourDyno.com

Anyone used anything like what this guy is selling? I'm thinking very entry level would be fine for me, but I don't know because I've never used a dyno before. I do have friends that got started with a Stuska very similar to this machine so I'm not completely helpless, but I don't know what I don't know.

Thanks!

Have you got a good source of a lot of water? Or a 2,000 or so gallon tank? With a chiller? The water brake dynos at Ford in Dearborn use water out of a pond, 4 or 6 acres about 25' deep.
 
Have you got a good source of a lot of water? Or a 2,000 or so gallon tank? With a chiller? The water brake dynos at Ford in Dearborn use water out of a pond, 4 or 6 acres about 25' deep.
They run theirs all day though. Web ran Awfulhouses in the yard on just a big hose. Made the neighbors real happy :) Totally manual, just some valves and a spring gauge. 'course he only qualified three times out of twenty-three tries, maybe that was the reason ...

Go-Power kinda sucks tho. They are more interested in giving big numbers than accurate information.

Oh, the question ? Real useful if you do engine work or sell bs accessories. First you do your normal quick-and-dirty job, then you put the thing on the Go-Power dyno and get some huge numbers, then you inflate the price about 30%. Pays for itself in six months, easy.

Or you could skip all the rebuild work and just put a computer inside that would spit out the desired charts. Then you don't have to worry about water or parts prices or anything.
 
Just make sure that those parts to increase Hp are made of billet or carbon fiber so you can charge more.
Bill D
Would a lump of coal in my stocking count as carbon fiber?
 
A friend had a gopower dyno in the 70s. He fed the pump from 2 275 gallon tanks of water with a BIG water pump. Cavitated and broke the brake twice because he didn't have a big enough pump to keep it full, kept putting bigger pumps on it. The tanks got hot enough to heat a big shop in winter.
He had a hydraulic load cell and a gage about a foot in diameter to read torque. He put a pushbutton thumb switch on the throttle handle, when he had an engine stabilized at max rpm under load, he'd gradually increase the water to pull it down, at every RPM that he wanted numbers on he'd push the button which lit up a 100W bulb over the dyno desk, and a half dozen watchers would record the reading on the gage that they were assigned to read while he held the load steady. Had some trick micrometer adjustable valves on the water.

Should be fine for break in. If you really want to develop and test HP stuff, go computer!.

(Also once saw an old dyno for flatheads that measured torque with a Fairbanks-morse weight scale like on a feed scale - didn't see it run :) )
 
(Also once saw an old dyno for flatheads that measured torque with a Fairbanks-morse weight scale like on a feed scale - didn't see it run :) )

Classmate of mine, HS Science, his own car a 1950 Mercury flathead, did a presentation of how automobile brakes can be rated for "horsepower". He used a similar approach.

It has crossed my mind that a clutch/brake and a one-foot arm off the chuck, bathroom scale, should be able to manage a 3 HP "large frame" Reliance 10EE motor's calculated torque of around 23 foot/lbs.

And.. the 4, 6, as much a NINE times rated torque, per a Reliance "white paper", that a shunt-wound DC motor "can" deliver - if only for 90 seconds or less before "wedging" its commutator bars - at or near "locked rotor".
 
Beyond the theory I don't know much if anything about these dynos. With that I don't know the NPSH requirements to avoid cavitation.
What I do know is that if you plan to run it for a long period of time you're going to make even a fairly large amount of water a whole lot warmer, and that is easily calculated.
Here's one such online calculator (first search hit, I didn't check their math, although it's just some multiplication):
Water Heating Calculator for Time, Energy, and Power

If I was looking for a cheap way to store that much water indoors I'd buy a few IBC totes.

Cheapest way to cool that much water down between runs is going to be time. Next is going to be a DIY chiller tower which might look a whole lot like some fabric or sheet metal baffles and a fan.
 
They run theirs all day though. Web ran Awfulhouses in the yard on just a big hose. Made the neighbors real happy :) Totally manual, just some valves and a spring gauge. 'course he only qualified three times out of twenty-three tries, maybe that was the reason ...

Go-Power kinda sucks tho. They are more interested in giving big numbers than accurate information.

Oh, the question ? Real useful if you do engine work or sell bs accessories. First you do your normal quick-and-dirty job, then you put the thing on the Go-Power dyno and get some huge numbers, then you inflate the price about 30%. Pays for itself in six months, easy.

Or you could skip all the rebuild work and just put a computer inside that would spit out the desired charts. Then you don't have to worry about water or parts prices or anything.

oh yeah, his parts will be junk because he used a "high reading" go-power. Yeah if you knew much about them you'd understand why a gopower won't read high unless you make it do it......Blame the dyno instead of the guy calibrating it.... Seems legit.
 
Beyond the theory I don't know much if anything about these dynos. With that I don't know the NPSH requirements to avoid cavitation.
What I do know is that if you plan to run it for a long period of time you're going to make even a fairly large amount of water a whole lot warmer, and that is easily calculated.
Here's one such online calculator (first search hit, I didn't check their math, although it's just some multiplication):
Water Heating Calculator for Time, Energy, and Power

If I was looking for a cheap way to store that much water indoors I'd buy a few IBC totes.

Cheapest way to cool that much water down between runs is going to be time. Next is going to be a DIY chiller tower which might look a whole lot like some fabric or sheet metal baffles and a fan.

Unless you are trying to run steady state it's not a big deal. We run 2000hp duramaxes on a dual superflow 904 setup, 2 1000gal tanks, made 30 hits one summer day, tanks were not hot to the touch. 1hp will raise 1lb of water .7*f in 1 sec. Do the math from there, it's not a big deal.
 
I ran a Clayton dyno for years testing DD 6-71's. They are similar to your go-power. They are simple and work very well. They need a lot of water. I fed mine with a 2" pump from a water tank 5' x 5' x 10'. In 30 minutes under full load the tank would be almost boiling hot. Your biggest concern will be the shaft seals. They are rotary ceramic and have a tendency to leak and are very expensive.
 
Hence “if you plan to run it for a long period of time.”
The calculator above includes time as an input. I prefer to think in gallons rather than pounds, but a simple 8.3 will solve that issue.
 
One solution - or at least a partial solution - was to use hydraulic fluid at high pressure instead of water. Company somewhere in the upper Midwest did that .... Hartzell ? But that's not going to help Gar, who has picked up an old GoPower :(

For running as a breakin machine, seems like you'd want some sort of computer control to vary the speed and load and measure the running temps and maybe do some recording, as well. Sounds like kind of a fun project, actually.
 
I don't make any power adding products. No performance parts at all.

I don't need a dyno to prove my parts work. I don't even need a dyno at all for the engines I make internal parts for.

The purpose is 2 fold- In a given year I usually assemble 3-6 12 valve Cummins engines for my own projects. I would like to be able to break the cam in with some load on the engine and then do some 200+HP extended loads to get everything up to temp, seat the rings a bit and get blowby down. My projects are usually an entirely modified drivetrain and it's kind of a bitch to keep an engine under load while you're tuning a transmission and troubleshooting various things. I used to do a lot of engines. I stopped and went to outside vendors. I'm beyond done with that. Way too much bullshit and stupid mistakes that fuckup my schedule. As far as getting numbers goes, I don't care about some fantasy land big numbers. I want consistency more than anything. Say I'm building a 12 valve to replace a 6.0 or 6.4 Powerstroke in a Superduty and want to run it in front of the Ford 5R110. I know from experience I can build and tune a 350HP 12 valve that will work great with minimal trans tuning, but sometimes that tuning part can be a real bitch to get there. If I can duplicate the performance life gets easier.

Most of the time I buy a vehicle, do a bunch of drivetrain mods, probably some product development and then I sell it. I feel if I have a dyno stand in my shop and include a graph of engine power it gives an added level of credibility to a build I do. Many guys say they want a 750HP electronic engine. I try to explain a 400HP 12 valve is a pretty wicked amount of power. More than most people would want and way more than you need. I take them for a drive in a 300-350HP 12 valve powered vehicle, they shit their pants and forget all about those big stupid numbers and I get paid.

The other purpose is I'm involved in an opensource CanBus development project. We're not far enough along yet to know what we need exactly, but there's a good chance solving a few mysteries is going to involve forcing conditions on a vehicle drivetrain while sniffing things out. Water brake could be real handy for that, especially a portable one like this Go Power with a standard 1550 series driveline spline input.

I don't follow the accuracy part. Dyno is just a load. You can't fake that. The instrumentation and correction factors can easily give wrong numbers.

I guess the part where things are fuzzy for me is how you would best utilize a manual dyno- You have one hand on the throttle and one hand on the valve control- To get real numbers. My friend that ran old Stuska's says they just did it incrementally every 500 RPM on gas engines to plot points and connect the dots. I see that being iffy to do with a turbodiesel, but I have no real world experience.
 
I don't make any power adding products. No performance parts at all.

I don't need a dyno to prove my parts work. I don't even need a dyno at all for the engines I make internal parts for.

The purpose is 2 fold- In a given year I usually assemble 3-6 12 valve Cummins engines for my own projects. I would like to be able to break the cam in with some load on the engine and then do some 200+HP extended loads to get everything up to temp, seat the rings a bit and get blowby down. My projects are usually an entirely modified drivetrain and it's kind of a bitch to keep an engine under load while you're tuning a transmission and troubleshooting various things. I used to do a lot of engines. I stopped and went to outside vendors. I'm beyond done with that. Way too much bullshit and stupid mistakes that fuckup my schedule. As far as getting numbers goes, I don't care about some fantasy land big numbers. I want consistency more than anything. Say I'm building a 12 valve to replace a 6.0 or 6.4 Powerstroke in a Superduty and want to run it in front of the Ford 5R110. I know from experience I can build and tune a 350HP 12 valve that will work great with minimal trans tuning, but sometimes that tuning part can be a real bitch to get there. If I can duplicate the performance life gets easier.

Most of the time I buy a vehicle, do a bunch of drivetrain mods, probably some product development and then I sell it. I feel if I have a dyno stand in my shop and include a graph of engine power it gives an added level of credibility to a build I do. Many guys say they want a 750HP electronic engine. I try to explain a 400HP 12 valve is a pretty wicked amount of power. More than most people would want and way more than you need. I take them for a drive in a 300-350HP 12 valve powered vehicle, they shit their pants and forget all about those big stupid numbers and I get paid.

The other purpose is I'm involved in an opensource CanBus development project. We're not far enough along yet to know what we need exactly, but there's a good chance solving a few mysteries is going to involve forcing conditions on a vehicle drivetrain while sniffing things out. Water brake could be real handy for that, especially a portable one like this Go Power with a standard 1550 series driveline spline input.

I don't follow the accuracy part. Dyno is just a load. You can't fake that. The instrumentation and correction factors can easily give wrong numbers.

I guess the part where things are fuzzy for me is how you would best utilize a manual dyno- You have one hand on the throttle and one hand on the valve control- To get real numbers. My friend that ran old Stuska's says they just did it incrementally every 500 RPM on gas engines to plot points and connect the dots. I see that being iffy to do with a turbodiesel, but I have no real world experience.

Don't listen to the contributors in this thread that have never run a manual dyno. For your purpose, you are right on track. Running a manual dyno does take a little skill, but you soon get a feel for it and it's a lot of fun, at least it was for me.
 
If you are just looking for a simple load you could do what Bobby Allison did. He ran a shaft outside and put an airplane propeller on it.
 
Say I'm building a 12 valve to replace a 6.0 or 6.4 Powerstroke in a Superduty
Oh, the horror! People still do this? Just joking, and my machinist will agree with you. He likes the antiques.

jack vines, who drives a 6.0 and wouldn't take a 12-valve as a gift.
 








 
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