The Silver Buick's 1969 Firebird OHC six project.

[TheSilverBuick]

On march 18 Brian ran a video of a Oliver inline six tractor engine that had been hot rodded. It has an intake similar to what you are doing. Interesting they did nothing to smooth out the pipes where they go into the plenum. Might be worth a quick look. Nice work love your posts.

I went back and watched the video and they just barely balled open the entrances, which was something I looked at doing, but my runners are not round so not as straight forward, plus the port pairing made the flares interfere with each other.

[TheSilverBuick]

Tonight I made a USB power supply for the Raspberry Pi monitor, so now I can use the 2.1 amp two USB plug car adapter to power on the Pi and screen together, and eventually hard wire it in.

[TheSilverBuick]

I've been doing some research for a turbo and have a rough idea of what I "think" I can use, but I've never actually bought a turbo and put it on an engine for practical experience. So looking for some guidance and thoughts for choosing one.

Some guidelines, I expect to "grow" into the turbo as needed by changing and upgrading various parts of the engine after initial installation, but the general goal I'm going for is 600 flywheel horsepower, and peak around 5,500rpm with a slightly bored over 250cid (4.1L) engine. A broad boost curve would be nice, but given the HP goal, I wouldn't expect boost to really come on down low, but if it can, great! I'm expecting to need around 20-24psi of boost to accomplish that goal.

Based on some estimations/calcs/scenerio's I've ran it appears around 21psi at 5,500rpm would get me to the goal and using a t4 flange, 70mm wheel with a ~.80 a/r turbo. I found one turbo with close specifications, but cannot find a compressor map for it, grrrr.

[TheSilverBuick]

I got the raspberry pi to start up to Tuner Studio now. Takes a minute ten from power ON to ready to go, so a bit on the slow side. I'm going to try it in the car tomorrow. The mouse cursor unfortunately starts right in the middle of the screen and the "normal" way/program to hide it won't download due to website errors, so still sorting that out.

And the damn remote desktop program has quit working again.... Spent an hour today trying to figure it out and once again, there isn't a damn reason it shouldn't be working, but yet it has quit working again.

There are a few other things I want to try to see if I can get it to boot faster, but before I get creative with it I want to back up an image of the SD card in case I toast the start up.

[RideTech_Ryan]

I like the thought process behind this build going smaller engine with a turbo. Cant wait to see the finished product.

[TheSilverBuick]

Thanks, me too!

I did the first in car test with the Raspberry Pi, and other than the expected slow boot up and the cursor in the way, the test was successful! I need to solve the cursor issue and I still want to work on the boot up time, but I think this is a pretty good test of the proof of concept. I will probably try and make the desktop background black so it shouldn't flash so white on start up.

https://youtu.be/PuRptJNBIMA

Going for this:

[TheSilverBuick]

Drove into Salt Lake City this morning (~250 miles). Not sure what fuel mileage it is getting yet as I haven't put gas in the car yet, but it seems like its going to be over 25mpg, despite driving 80mph for ~100+miles of the trip.

Flying by the Bonneville Salt Flats.

[DanStokes]

Hey, I've been there! I'll miss it this year but hopefully next year.

Dan

[TheSilverBuick]

All is not as it seems it seems. After tallying up the numbers I'm getting the same 19mpg (13 around town) I was getting with the 4.56's =P Its the same story with the Skylark, I've tried a variety of gears from 3.08 to 3.89 and the car gets the same mpg. I'm guessing though the 80mph plus some pretty high winds offset any likely gains of a lower cruising rpm.

I'm going to try some different fueling strategies with the injection. I've switched it to finish injecting fuel just before the intake valve opens at lower rpm and throttle. I've been running only injecting fuel when the intake valve is open and as much as possible while the exhaust is closed. I also re-ran the compression tests, and the worse one is 12% off, but its always been that way (not surprising how crappy the bores and valves look), but I decided to take those numbers and put some minor fuel trims in each of the cylinders figuring if they are not all pulling the same amount of air they don't need the same amount of fuel. I'm tempted to wing in the ignition timing trims too. Its practice if nothing else.

I also noticed I had my TPSdot(sensitivity) set at a ridiculously high 120, so I lowered it to 20 and not surprisingly it got more zing off idle.

I'll do some datalogging this week going to work and see if I can further optimize the tune at cruising speeds.

[G-Motive]

I jealous, I burn up an eighth of a tank just going around the block.

[CTX-SLPR]

Very interesting. Makes you think how well modern aerodynamics are considering the weight of the cars and the power of the engines and they are still getting very good mileage. At 80mph steady state, makes sense that your major power consumer is aerodynamic drag.

Keep up the good work!

[TheSilverBuick]

Worked on the intake some more today. Still needs lots of finishing work, but it's progress!

First my template for drilling and eventually holding the injector bungs. The two ratchet straps and the claps working together held the angle iron in place surprisingly tight.


Drilled out the runners and fit the steel injector bungs. It took a little finishing grinding to get the shape needed to actually fit them in to place.


I will have to cut the angle iron up in a way that I can remove it after tack welding the bungs to the runners.


At a 45º angle the injector bungs fit very well.


More clean up work will need to be done after they are welded in. I may to a rough cut on the bungs before installing them to reduce the amount of grinding required in the port.




I also bought a bulk supply of the sealer I'm going to slather over all the welds =P

[TheSilverBuick]

Very interesting. Makes you think how well modern aerodynamics are considering the weight of the cars and the power of the engines and they are still getting very good mileage. At 80mph steady state, makes sense that your major power consumer is aerodynamic drag.

Keep up the good work!

Thanks!

I just kept thinking about how much wind I could hear whistling around the drip rails on the A-pillars and a comment from Milner351 about how much less wind noise new cars/trucks have going down the road.

I want to get rid of that rear spoiler too, but can't really do it until I'm ready to paint the car or put something in the holes to keep water out.

[Beagle]

Well, my looks like a velveeta box style Escape has a CD of .29 according to "them" and it's pretty quiet, but damn is it ugly and slow. It takes about 1% per MPH above 60 hit on economy and it's finally back in the "sweet" part of the power (HAHAHAHA) band by 80. I wonder if getting the air out from under the front of the Pontiac would be where a lot of the money is? They put pretty big air damns and straightened and smoothed out the pans on a lot of the new cars...

[TheSilverBuick]

So my old '69 Firebird, with a very mild, low compression 400, 700r-4 and 2.73 gears used to average right at 25mpg on the highway. It had no spoiler on the front or rear. Had low end torque for days and could easily pull the 75mph at 1800rpm and still have over 12inHg of vacuum. The high vacuum and low rpms net some good mpg's. I think the rear spoiler isn't doing me any favors.