gilaphreak

Man, that's outstanding!

Glad to see such drastic results, and I'm definitely going to look into this for my truck.

Thanks for the write up on it!!

I saw your thread for staged cooling systems. Very interesting to see the science behind it.

EdmontonCanada

I have some additional gauges coming: two dual-boost pressure gauges. One gauge will read pressure from each of the top two turbos, the other gauge will read the boost on the high-pressure turbo and drive pressure in the exhaust manifold. These numbers should help me identify if I ever need to modify the turbo system, keep an eye on the proper functioning of exhaust brake, and detect leaks in the exhaust manifold system.

The current boost pressure gauge is as per usual, post intercooler which will then show me how efficient the intercooler is and may help identify IC leaks.

Then I have a dual intake temperature that monitors the temperature after the first boost stage and after the second stage. Then another dual temperature sensor that measures the air intake temperature and air temperature just before it hits the engine - again, efficiency of the intercoolers. In all: 14 aftermarket readings (new gauges add to existing EGT, transmission, oil temperature, oil pressure and fuel rail pressure)

I'm not saying this for show but it's about studying what's going on under the hood. My truck has been an experiment for some time. I like the science behind it all and I would love to take an in-depth turbo course someday.

For me it's not about besting some other truck enthusiast… It's the journey in getting the truck I enjoy. Lots of errors. Lots of success.

rock crawler

Looks very cool. What is the difficulty level when it comes to removing the filters for cleaning?

EdmontonCanada

Couldn't be simpler. For me, I detach the housing from the turbo and upstream piping, then there are 6 to 8 socket cap screws that open up the housing exposing the filter. Takes only a couple minutes to access.

The only thing I would forewarn people about is that the filters are not huge, but they are conical in shape (airflow is more in line to direction of flow) so I'm not sure if this helps.

So I probably wouldn't use these filters for a drag race set up but daily driving around town and towing... they've worked awesome for me.

As a side note I just discovered I have an exhaust manifold leak so my mileage may even improve once I tighten up the manifold bolts - they hadn't been retorqued since installation.

gilaphreak

It is very interesting! I love the technology side of diesel engines. So much more complex than your standard gasoline engine.

You might check out Coursera.org periodically. They have a lot of different free online courses from known universities around the world. Classes vary depending on what the different universities decide to offer, so you may very well find a course on diesel engine technology some day.

They are completely free and online, and you get a nice little official certificate at the end of the course.

I poked around in their engineering courses there and found an 8 week thermodynamics course that might touch on turbocharger technology. At the very least, you'll walk away with an understanding of the heat transfer side of things.

https://www.coursera.org/course/introthermodynamics

Not sure about your academic background, but you can probably scrape by with an understanding of algebra. It recommends a background in calculus - but in my experience, you can get around a lot of that stuff if need be. Most of the time, they recommend it so you can understand how the different formulas are derived.

EdmontonCanada

Thanks so much for the link!! I've been looking around the Internet for courses on turbochargers, so your post was greatly appreciated. Next year I plan to build my own triple turbo system - so I wanted some ideas of how to pair them up according to their maps

I do have a background in calculus. I've taken a few years at University when doing a bachelor of science in chemistry, so that should help!

EdmontonCanada

On another fuel economy note, I finally located someone here in Edmonton to do my differentials at a reasonable cost - next Friday is D-Day. With my 35 inch tires a stage 3 cam and 3 turbos I'm moving up to 4:10s from 3.73. Everything begins to light at 1600 RPM. Right now my truck is only at 1300 rpm at 100 km/h. It doesn't sit in the fuel economy zone unless I'm well over 120 km/h, which is not so good for highway towing at that speed. So this too will be very interesting to see the change in fuel economy.

Nsomniac05

Do we have any research on Spectre filters? I remember a few years ago an independent filtration study of various filter manufacturers was made public by S&M. I know Spectre was not a part of that because I have used them in the past, and I used this study to guide my purchase at the time. I removed my K&N as a result.

EdmontonCanada

As part of tuning my truck for EFI Live I had to do a couple of WOT runs with the laptop connected. Just because boost was running high I thought I would slap on my big filters. I was shocked at how my daily driver performance went downhill: truck became sluggish and boost pressure was also down significantly.

Again, I wouldn't recommend using the inline Spectre filters for drag racing, but a small filter that is completely isolated from engine heat is proving to be far superior to a open air large filter. I attached a photo to show you just how dramatic the difference is. It looks almost silly to put such a small filter on such a large turbocharger system. But again, that's how dramatic sucking cold air can be versus hot engine air.

So my next step now is to custom fabricate a large sealed container to hold the biggest S&B filter I could buy.