Newsgroups: wiz.hotrod
Subject: Re:: Diesel turbocharger comments 
Date: Friday, Jul 24 1992 19:29:12
From: Dan Malek <emory!hri.com!dwm>

> Date:  Fri, 24 Jul 92 16:54 EDT
> From:  hotrod@Dixie.COM (The Hotrod List)
> 
> 
> -> Oh, btw, I agree with Mike, if any other readers are getting tired of
> -> hotrod-Diesel discussion, we will move to private email...

>  I assume John will drop you a note if you get on his nerves.
> Otherwise, I'm learning from the discussion.  Never can tell when I
> might want to give up hotrodding lawnmowers and hop up a FIAT-Allis, you
> know...   <grin>


Since I don't have a lawnmower story, I will pass along my diesel hotrodding
experience.

I grew up on the farm, so the big attraction every year was the tractor pull
at the local county fair.  We could only run "mostly stock" tractors, and to
most people it meant changing the tires, moving weight around, and taking the
muffler off.  Well, a couple of us thought of just a few more things.

We took our early 70's John Deere big in-line 6 (somewhere around 600-700
cubes), turbo with water intercooler and made a few more changes.  The most
obvious was the screwdriver to the injection pump rack and just crank that
baby up.  Make sure it gets more fuel than it could ever burn.  These
tractors also have a starting fluid line that runs from some convenient
place (like the operator console) to the intake manifold.  Well, we got the
propane tank from the gas grill and hooked it up here.  After some
experimenting we found that it worked better when injected ahead of the
turbo.

You hook up to the sled, place the tractor into the highest gear (road gear,
about 20 MPH), wind up the turbo by revving it up for a few seconds, back
the throttle down to about 1500 RPM for just a split second while you dump
the clutch.  Then run it wide open (about 2700 RPM) and kick open the LP.
Dirt flying everywhere, you rip that sled down the track in about 10 seconds.
The tires never stop turning, you just end up standing still and digging
these big holes in the track.  The best part is about 12 inches of this
red-orange flame coming our of your chromed 6-inch exhaust pipe.

I'm going to have to go back home and farm again one of these days.......


	-- Dan

From: John De Armond
Newsgroups: wiz.hotrod
Subject: Re:: Diesel turbocharger comments
Date: Monday, Jul 27 1992 02:39:11

>>  I assume John will drop you a note if you get on his nerves.
>> Otherwise, I'm learning from the discussion.  Never can tell when I
>> might want to give up hotrodding lawnmowers and hop up a FIAT-Allis, you
>> know...   <grin>

Sounds like fun to me.

>I grew up on the farm, so the big attraction every year was the tractor pull
>at the local county fair.  We could only run "mostly stock" tractors, and to
>most people it meant changing the tires, moving weight around, and taking the
>muffler off.  Well, a couple of us thought of just a few more things.
>
>You hook up to the sled, place the tractor into the highest gear (road gear,
>about 20 MPH), wind up the turbo by revving it up for a few seconds, back
>the throttle down to about 1500 RPM for just a split second while you dump
>the clutch.  Then run it wide open (about 2700 RPM) and kick open the LP.
>Dirt flying everywhere, you rip that sled down the track in about 10 seconds.
>The tires never stop turning, you just end up standing still and digging
>these big holes in the track.  The best part is about 12 inches of this
>red-orange flame coming our of your chromed 6-inch exhaust pipe.

In the early 80s when I was at TMI, we used to go over to the pro
tractor pulling track about twice a month (near York, Pa)  This was
before TV and Army Armstrong so the gimmicks were not present.
HP was!  There were two classes.  Pro stock and modified.  Pro stock
had to be a production tractor with mods :-)  modifieds were
generally dragsters with flapper wheels and either 2 or 3 alcohol 
drag engines or Allison V-12 aircraft engines.  The guy who usually
won the modifieds ran an Allison.  I ended up being a weight slinger
for him for most of a season. He ran 8000, 10,000 and 12,000 classes.
That meant we had to load 2 tons of weights during an evening (groan!)

This Allison was 2000 cu inches after being bored.  It had a custom
hilborne methanol injection system with two HUGE turbos feeding the
stock supercharger.  About 4500 hp at 4000 rpm!  Can we say torque?
I knew we could. :-)  Whereas the drag engined tractors had one
chance to do it right and if they closed the throttles, the run
was over, this old Allison could be throttled down, the vehicle straightened
out a bit and when the throttle was hit, the sled jumped back up 
in the air.  They ended up running 80,000 lbs on the sled with 
the jacking set to be full forward at 50 feet and 10,000 extra lbs on
the skid just to stop this thing.  Wow!

The real show was the pro-stockers.  "Slight modifications" included
three turbos in series, inter- and aftercooling, water and alcohol
injection and around 225 PSI (!) of intake manifold pressure.  These
little 200 cu in or so engines would crank out ~1500 hp at 4000 rpm.
They looked and sounded like a steam locomotive when on boost.
I've heard that state of the art is now >300 psi manifold pressure and
4 turbos.

John