Big Blue24
Comp Diesel Sponsor
- Joined
- Jan 5, 2008
- Messages
- 6,320
Recently Todd and I had the opportunity to help tune and modify the 4bt Cummins powerplant inside a Dodge Dakota land-speed Bonneville race truck owned by Tom Sauter.
The fueling setup is a 13mm p-pump built by DPE before Seth Farrell left and started his own shop. With the guidance of Seth over the phone, we made some modifications to the pump holders and springs while it was still on the truck. The 5x.018" injectors originally built by another shop were modified in-house at Power Driven Diesel with custom needle work, and raised pop pressures to take advantage of the 13mm pump. We also swapped out the small delivery valves for some Power Driven 7mm +100 cc DV's.
Todd spent the better part of a day chasing boost leaks and touching up old leaking welds with his tig welder as well as installing a prototype Power Driven in-cab fueling adjuster and panel mounted knob so fueling adjustments could be made on the fly at the dyno and also mid-run at Bonneville. We also advanced the timing another 7 degrees prior to hitting the rollers.
After spending a couple days giving it the once-over, we headed down to the Big Rig Taylor Water-Brake dyno at PDI in St George, UT for some simulated 2-3 mile long runs. We weren't trying for short term max power like you'd want on a drag strip, we were tuning for one to two minute long full power runs where high EGT results in a melt-down.
It was a challenge getting the relatively big 66mm turbo to spool on the little 4bt, didn't really make boost till 4000 rpm and would often fall under the charger on the WOT 3-4 gear shift. Towards the end of the dyno session we started making headway in the tune-up after the instrumentation started working and providing valuable EGT, Boost, and Drive pressure information. Our several hour dyno session was ended short when an injection line broke at the #2 injector but we still were able to get a few glory pulls in between the max useable power tuning.
The best run was 477 HP on this known to be stingy Semi-Tractor Trailer dyno so this little 4bt is making good peak power, just too hot without the water injection to help keep things cool on the combustion side and airflow to keep things cool on the engine coolant side.
The video is a little rough but it's better than nothing.
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvudM8YxWpc"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvudM8YxWpc[/ame]
This truck is the current record-holder in it's class with a 152 MPH speed record. We hope the current setup will be enough to raise the record another 10-15 MPH and then future plans include a compound turbo setup with a goal for 650-700 useable HP, enough power to push this Dakota into the 200+ MPH range.
The fueling setup is a 13mm p-pump built by DPE before Seth Farrell left and started his own shop. With the guidance of Seth over the phone, we made some modifications to the pump holders and springs while it was still on the truck. The 5x.018" injectors originally built by another shop were modified in-house at Power Driven Diesel with custom needle work, and raised pop pressures to take advantage of the 13mm pump. We also swapped out the small delivery valves for some Power Driven 7mm +100 cc DV's.
Todd spent the better part of a day chasing boost leaks and touching up old leaking welds with his tig welder as well as installing a prototype Power Driven in-cab fueling adjuster and panel mounted knob so fueling adjustments could be made on the fly at the dyno and also mid-run at Bonneville. We also advanced the timing another 7 degrees prior to hitting the rollers.
After spending a couple days giving it the once-over, we headed down to the Big Rig Taylor Water-Brake dyno at PDI in St George, UT for some simulated 2-3 mile long runs. We weren't trying for short term max power like you'd want on a drag strip, we were tuning for one to two minute long full power runs where high EGT results in a melt-down.
It was a challenge getting the relatively big 66mm turbo to spool on the little 4bt, didn't really make boost till 4000 rpm and would often fall under the charger on the WOT 3-4 gear shift. Towards the end of the dyno session we started making headway in the tune-up after the instrumentation started working and providing valuable EGT, Boost, and Drive pressure information. Our several hour dyno session was ended short when an injection line broke at the #2 injector but we still were able to get a few glory pulls in between the max useable power tuning.
The best run was 477 HP on this known to be stingy Semi-Tractor Trailer dyno so this little 4bt is making good peak power, just too hot without the water injection to help keep things cool on the combustion side and airflow to keep things cool on the engine coolant side.
The video is a little rough but it's better than nothing.
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvudM8YxWpc"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvudM8YxWpc[/ame]
This truck is the current record-holder in it's class with a 152 MPH speed record. We hope the current setup will be enough to raise the record another 10-15 MPH and then future plans include a compound turbo setup with a goal for 650-700 useable HP, enough power to push this Dakota into the 200+ MPH range.
