Project Thread Supercharged Supra

The 1UZFE EGR Delete Kit is available for sale here.
Thanks Steve; my goal is only 500 HP with this motor, but as you pointed out, I wanted to do a few things differently. Being a naturally curious engineer, I tend to get hung up on details and will spend an inordinate amount of time & money trying different things until I find "the" solution. This is what makes this such an interesting and rewarding hobby.

Dennis had already mounted the motor to the dyno yesterday, and finished up all his loose ends, so it was completely ready for Mitch & me today. Mitch arrived from LA this afternoon, and we spent the evening at Dennis' shop, checking all the sensors, injectors, and coils. We spun it a couple of times without fire, fuel, or spark plugs, and noticed the serp belt was walking a bit. Will have to sort that out in the morning. Except for the serp belt alignment problem, we should be ready to fire it up tomorrow morning.
 
cribbj,

Beautiful project. Thanks for taking the time to share so much of your enjoyment of such a great hobby.

I joined this forum simply to post a thank you.

Regards,

Adam
 
cribbj,

Beautiful project. Thanks for taking the time to share so much of your enjoyment of such a great hobby.

I joined this forum simply to post a thank you.

Regards,

Adam

Thanks for the kind words; as we all know this "hobby" can be very rewarding, as well as very frustrating. Right now, I'm going through another frustrating stage.

We got the motor running & dynoed a bit yesterday and the engine just isn't making the power we'd like to see. Two things are holding us back - the intake air temps are getting up close to 180-190 degrees F (even with methanol/water injection), and we're pulling timing because of it. Currently we're only running around 10 degrees @ 5500 RPM and are making around 250 BHP @ 15 psi of boost. This is around 160 HP less than we made last time, but of course we blew the head gaskets then too.

Today I'm going to get a jug of pure methanol, and will try to inject that, instead of the 50/50 M/W solution, and will get some fresh, 110 octane race gas.

One thing - I'm injecting the M/W straight into the intake of the supercharger, and my intake air sensor is mounted in the manifold, so the M/W system may not be as effective as injecting into the manifold. I have a spare 1/4" tap in the manifold, so I may try putting a nozzle there and seeing what that does. It's that or perhaps my air temp sensor is just picking up too much heat from the metal manifold, and that's affecting it.

We're also seeing some weird stuff with the air distribution, but don't have a real clear picture what's happening. Will post more when it becomes clearer.
 
John,
What do you think about the air over water intercooler that Andrew sells? I have ordered one to try on my project. Please tell me more about the odd air distribution deal.
Also I sent you a email, dont know if you check that often or not.
 
Scott,

I'm looking at the W2A Richwood intercooler as well.

I don't have much faith in meth injection and would just be "happier" without it. I could still use it pre blower and benefit from the lower intake temps.

John,

Having the temp sensor in the manifold (post blower) makes sense. It will see the real temp of the air in the manifold (after heating by the blower) so it should be correct.

Interseting comment on gathering heat from the manifold.

I'm still looking into phenolic spacers with the help of one of our Melbourne based members. My guy went very quiet so I geuss I can wrote him off.

I love the help we give each other on this Forum.
 
Scott,

I'm looking at the W2A Richwood intercooler as well.

I don't have much faith in meth injection and would just be "happier" without it. I could still use it pre blower and benefit from the lower intake temps.

Well I have mine ordered so we will see how it goes, I do have a Auquamist set up setting in the shop but I would like to avoid using it if I can. How soon are you thinking about trying it?

John,
I am on the edge of my seat awaiting todays testing results!
 
I would consider just using race gas and no meth/water to simplify the whole thing (for now). 190 degrees is a little on the hot side, but IMO not enough, with the right octane gasoline, to be such a problem. There has to be something else going on.

Is it possible to run without the supercharger and still run the fuel injection? I'd want to know exactly what this thing can do without the supercharger first. With cams (I think you added cams, right?) I would expect 300 BHP. If that can not be done, do not move forward until the HP is addressed in that configuration.
 
My gut feel is it's a false air temp reading. Supercharging these engines has been done many times with some very basic control systems with good results.

Can you put an air temp sensor pre supercharger and swap between the two, theoretical compression temperatures are available for this supercharger so you could base your manifold air temp on these. I understand why you are measuring post supercharger but many people don't bother even when turbocharging and only pull timing based on actual ambient inlet air temperature.
You may be being over cautious and pulling timing early, are you running knock sensors and pulling timing based on knock? All the extra fuel (meth) will also be making you chase your tail and soaking up dyno time.

Turboandrew's comments about going back to basics and getting your base point is also very valid, being an engineer root cause analysis and standing back looking at the big picture is the first tool I use.

It's not my engine on the dyno or nuts on the table or wallet paying for dyno time just my two cents worth of input from the other side of the world.

There is a lot of people that appreciate your dedication and are learning a lot from your build you will get there in the end with a big grin when you drive that suprcharged V8 Supra.

Stick with it John I know you will win we are all behind you.
 
John, quick question, how did the motor seem to idle, was it rough or lopey? If so check to see if the int. and exh. cams are timed correctly to eachother, i.e. not off a tooth or two or even possibly more and this might explain the extremely low power for running 15psi and also the strange distrabution issues especially if the distrabution issue is different from bank to bank and thus might be a head that has the cams wrong.

I bring this up cause I say a similar situation on a 1MZ-FE that had a TRD supercharger on it, and the guy had the heads rebuilt and mildly ported and the shop that did them put the cams off on one of the heads. Basically, they had the exh cam on the one head IIRC retarded by two teeth and thus created a pretty substantial amout of overlap and thus the supercharger was blowing a large portion of the A/F charge straight out the exhaust and thus that bank was down on power. That bank for was also not burning the fuel properly from looking at the plugs when we pulled them looked almost like they were fuel fauled (my guess was because more air charge was leaving out the still open exhaust valve then fuel thus leaving a rich condition). This is all just an idea though for you....
 
Thanks everyone for the encouragement; it's 11PM and I'm normally in bed by 9, so I'm feeling pretty shagged right now, but stoked as well, as we got the HP up to 437 and the engine is sounding & running really sweetly. We discovered and sorted many issues and misconceptions on the engine dyno today. Too many to discuss right now, so I'll post more in the morning.

I think we'll hit 500 tomorrow without any problem.

What I'd really like to know, is if anyone has a HP loss curve for the Opcon Autorotor 422 supercharger. I thought I had one, but it's only a capacity curve, and doesn't indicate how much HP the blower is consuming.
 
... Currently we're only running around 10 degrees @ 5500 RPM and are making around 250 BHP @ 15 psi of boost. This is around 160 HP less than we made last time, but of course we blew the head gaskets then too..
Please tell me it's the typo. 15 psi with 250 bhp. That number is without any boost at all. But 437 bhp sounds more reasonable. 500 bhp is still a little shy for 15 psi of boost. But it's nice to know your engine is "BOOSTING". Hooray!
 
Thank god for that last post of yours John....i was well worried at the earlier low hp result.

So was the 437hp with WI or without?

Sounding promising amd regardless of total hp i bet the curve is fat :) congrats and here's hoping you can squeeze a few more hp out of it yet
 
John: really glad to see the new 400+ HP figure...Man, I was hoping you would not have a similar problem as your last engine. I am looking forward to hearing what tuning aspects you found were issues, and how you addressed them. Looking forward to seeing the curve as well...

BTW, get an MPEG posted up if you can...

Ryan
 
Just got back to the house after dropping Mitch off at the airport and thought I’d write an update. It’s going to be long, as usual, so apologies in advance.

The dyno session was very successful after we sorted through all the usual issues. And although, we didn’t hit my personal goal of 500 HP at the flywheel, we did make 498.3 HP @ about 6800 RPM, so we were close enough to 500 to taste it. What a fantastic learning experience that engine dyno provides! But before I jump into the lessons learned, first, here's a summary of my motor build and the initial setup we had for this dyno session:

The motor is out of a 1993 SC400, and it’s been built with Lextreme forged rods, forged & coated Wiseco pistons, 9:1 compression, 460cc injectors, Lextreme Stage 1 cams, Manley SS valves, street ported heads, 2UZ piston crown oil squirters, and 12mm ARP head studs. Ignition is a wasted spark COP system of my own design, using Toyota Tundra coils. We’re exhausting through a set of S&S headers, and going into twin 2 ½” straight pipes out of the dyno cell.

The forced induction setup is an Opcon Autorotor 422 supercharger on a Richwood manifold, driven from an 8 rib serp belt. Crank dampner is a 157mm Richwood unit, and supercharger pulley is 91mm (15psi). Throttle body is a bored out GM LSx with a 78mm butterfly.

There’s no intercooler, but we initially were injecting a 50/50 methanol water mix straight into the intake of the supercharger, at a rate of around 500ml/min (375ml/min Snow nozzle running at 175psi via a Shurflo pump) at WOT & 15psi of boost. M/W injection is linear according to boost (PWM controlled from the AEM EMS, and we're running a maximum of 75% duty cycle.)

Engine management is an AEM PnP Supra unit, tuned by Mitch Pederson (ex-AEM & ex-EFI Technologies design & support engineer)

The engine dyno we've been using is a Superflow SF-901 at Faerman Racing Engines in Houston TX. (713) 686-7909. Dennis Faerman has been a master engine builder for 35 years, and a personal friend for the last 8.

For this dyno session we were initially running VP Racing fuel type C14, and then finished this afternoon with C16.

OK, here's some interesting things we've learned about this setup on the dyno (keep in mind that Mitch is a degreed mechanical engineer and has been involved with engine theory, development, and tuning before, during and after university, and has had both lab and racetrack tuning experience, and it definitely shows in his methodical process for the setup, tuning, and problem diagnosis.)

Air Distribution Problems:
As the Opcon supercharger's air discharge is directly above cylinders 1/2/3/4 we found these front cylinders were robbing the rear 4 cylinders of intake air at idle and low load. This situation smoothes out somewhat once the manifold is pressurised. A normal tuner probably would not have noticed this as Mitch used some unique techniques to pinpoint the problem and he had to richen up the front injectors by about 15%. Those of you who are running ECU's with individual cylinder injector trims can compensate for this, but those who are running batch fired injectors, well good luck. You'll probably need to fabricate something to help distribute/diffuse the air going into the cylinders better. This is not a criticism of the Richwood manifold, as it does not pretend to be optimised for every supercharger, but is a "one size fits all" manifold and owners should take this into account when using it. Any other supercharger manifold I've seen on this forum would have the same problem. Interestingly, once the manifold pressured up, Mitch had to take out this extra fuel, because the front 4 cylinders were then running too rich.

M/W Injection:

In theory, injecting the M/W straight into the supercharger should have helped us approach a very efficient case of isothermal air compression, however this did not prove out on the dyno.

We found that injecting the 50/50 M/W mix pre-supercharger did very little for our intake air temperatures, as we were seeing nearly 200 degrees F in the charge air at 15psi of boost. We changed to straight methanol, still injected it pre-supercharger, and still saw 180-190 degrees. This was with an ambient temperature of around 90-95 degrees in the dyno cell. This high charge air temperature was keeping us from running any timing, and hence we made no power.

We then pulled the manifold & charger off and relocated the main (375ml/min) methanol nozzle to the front underside of the manifold so that it's spraying the methanol vertically, straight into the discharge of the supercharger. Then we added a 2nd (225ml/min) nozzle at the rear of the manifold, so it's blowing the meth forward. Ideally we would have mounted this one in the underside of the manifold as well, but the starter motor blocks this area. Both methanol nozzles produce a cone shaped pattern, which is fine for the vertical nozzle, but probably isn't optimum for the rear mounted one, and I'll need to change that one to a fan pattern.

With this setup we were able to cool the charge air to within 10 degrees of ambient, and after a couple of light load pulls, we actually saw a "bounce" in air temps to 20 or 30 degrees below ambient.

Supercharger Drive:
With the 91mm (15 psi) supercharger pulley, the 8 rib serp belt arrangement held up fine, although we were getting a fair amount of belt "flapping" on the slack side. To be fair, we don't have any of the "normal" accessories installed, so we had probably 18-20" of unsupported belt there. Too, we only had perhaps 140 degrees of wrap on the charger pulley for this test setup. Still, a 10 rib setup would be preferable, or possibly a dedicated 6 or 8 rib drive belt "just" for the supercharger as Zuffen is doing for his setup.

Outstanding issues:
We didn’t make my personal goal of 500 BHP, even after changing the 91mm charger pulley to a 78mm (18psi), however with the 18 psi pulley, we did find the limit of the 8 rib serp belt setup, as it was consistently slipping over about 16-17 psi of boost. I am now thinking that to run higher than 15psi, even with these efficient twinscrew chargers, will require at least a 10 rib serp belt setup (if shared with the other accessories), or a dedicated 6 rib belt just for the charger, or a toothed Gilmer belt setup.

We did find that with the 18psi pulley, the charger was working so hard above 470 HP, that it was way too hot to touch following a dyno pull, so I’m thinking that it should still have a meth nozzle at its intake, just to keep it cool.

We had some inconsistent fuel pressure issues, which I think we can safely blame on a worn out SX fuel pump that just couldn’t deliver the goods at 60 psi.

The 460cc injector duties approached 90% as we hit 498 HP, even with us dumping 600ml/min of straight methanol into the system, so to go much higher than 500 HP even with meth injection is going to require larger injectors. This could be a bit exaggerated, however, considering the unstable fuel pressures we were seeing.

We were blowing the dyno cell’s exhaust pipes off the headers no matter how well they were clamped on, so we seem to be moving a lot of exhaust energy! Dennis commented that in all the years he’s been running this dyno, he’s never had the exhaust pipes consistently blow off a motor like they did on this one. So for the next run, I think I’ll have to have some special headers with larger primaries and collectors. The S&S units are great for a naturally aspirated street motor, but I don’t think they’re large enough to handle this blown UZ.

Our compression tests produced some odd results. The left bank of cylinders consistently gave us 160psi of cranking compression, while the right bank produced 175psi. While a number of things could cause this, both Dennis & Mitch felt it was probably coming from an intake camshaft that was indexed or ground slightly off. This was borne out by comparing the actual injector duty cycles of both banks in order to achieve the same AFR’s.

Summary:
I’ll put up some videos, photos, and curves of the HP and torque tomorrow (I left Dennis’s shop in such a rush this afternoon to get Mitch to the airport, I forgot to get the dyno sheets!), but I think it’s safe to say that if you want an engine with balls and balls of torque, a supercharger setup will deliver it, however if it’s peak horsepower that you’re after, you may be better off with a turbocharger. 498 HP is certainly nothing to sneeze at, but when you consider the engine is really producing that 498 HP, plus another 80 HP or so to drive the blower, you start thinking “hmm, I could have that missing HP back, if I put a turbo on this motor.” But then with a turbo, you wouldn’t have all that wonderful low end torque that the superchargers produce, and it’s actually the engine’s torque that presses you back in the seat, not its HP.
 
Your dyno and engine details should have turned on every folk. Congrats!!! To me, 498 hp is the same as 500 hp. I'm imagining how the competition between your car and the Ford GT will turn out. What's your next major step? Putting it in the car?
 
Very nice John. Glad you got it worked out. The meth injector after the charger makes much more sense.

If I recall, that manifold has a universal plate, in which one cuts a "hole" to match the supercharger. I wonder if that plate can be raised up with a spacer, allowing much greater plenum volume, so the air can distribute a bit better.
 
Much better results John, everything really has me thinking. I really need to absorb all this info and see which way I should go.
 


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