VGT - Blaylock Switchblade

[forcefed86]

I'm in for results...

Just out of curiousity, what are we looking at cost wise for a switch blade turbo and controller combo?

 

[nicknorth11]

Don't hold your breath for any updates real soon guys, its been two months since they've even posted in this thread.

 

[renovatdkitchen]

I wonder if it would be worth a try contacting their shop?

 

[jongraack]

Don't hold your breath for any updates real soon guys, its been two months since they've even posted in this thread.

Yea I passed out a while ago Just playing...I'm sure it's going to be a while as they don't have unlimited funds and endless time. They are making a huge breakthrough here and it's well worth the wait. I just hope they go all the way through with this and don't give up.

 

[nicknorth11]

One of their posts back in the beginning of April, and I think one or two before that, implied we would have seen results of some sort by now. I'm assuming things didn't go as well as hoped with this turbo on our high heat gasoline engines. Either that or something else is slowing them down more than anticipated.

 

[NHerron]

A part of me wants to see this so I can show the guys at the shop what a 4 banger can do with something that normally belongs on an ISX engine driving a fully loaded semi.

The other part don't care, it just wants to hold on to a steering wheel for dear life. Hehe...

 

[casuprock]

Hey gents, it has been a while. Haven't been religious about updating partly because my wife and I had a baby and he's been a more important project than this the last few months.

We did test the Switchblade on a DSM and determined that the design of the vane derived for diesel engines was tailored to the viscosity of diesel exhaust. It got into boost between 4500-5500RPM on a DSM but we would obviously like to see that much lower. We're making progress towards a version of the switchblade that tackles both diesel and gasoline applications with a single vane design. Lots of design engineering.

We are working with Blaylock Turbo and we are making this happen. When closed this vane can build boost during cruise on a level road at 55mph.

The results are exciting since this is such as huge turbo the vane is able to make more than 1-2 second improvement on turbo speed when the vane control is active. On smaller lighter turbos than the S300, this translates to significantly larger gains since the inertia is lower.

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The results of the turbo speed can be seen in how fast this large turbo enters boost while maintaining the boost/drive pressure at 1:1 after the turbo is up to speed. Notice the vane affects drive pressure while the turbo is accelerating and the drive pressure becomes 1:1 once the turbo has reached it's target. The time measured from throttle input (exhaust pressure starts to rise) to steady boost target is only 4.25 seconds.

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[renovatdkitchen]

Congratulations on the boy! Hope he's all healthy


If you can get that spool down even further, that would really be super. If you can get it lower, I wonder if it would be quick enough to use it on a road race car.

 

[casuprock]

As Kevin Thackston always points out, the rotating mass is everything. The effect of the variable vane is amplified by having a small inertia. Torque on the turbine wheel equals inertia * angular acceleration. Our job is to increase the torque the flow exerts on the wheel at low speeds. We are working towards a superior vane on the S300 (just the test platform until we get this perfected) and thereafter it will be applied to faster turbos like ball bearing Garret center housings with light wheels.

 

[NHerron]

What's the ideal top end flow? As in, what youre basing off of. Would it be realistic that in the future you could downsize the wheel (at the expense of top end flow of course) so the customer could have very little lag but still more flow than say, an HX40?

This is just in the case of not being able to accomplish the less lag goal that you're working on now.

Or would that be a complete redesign and not worth the expense?

What's the ideal top end flow? As in, what youre basing off of. Would it be realistic that in the future you could downsize the wheel (at the expense of top end flow of course) so the customer could have very little lag but still more flow than say, an HX40?

This is just in the case of not being able to accomplish the less lag goal that you're working on now.

Or would that be a complete redesign and not worth the expense?

 

[casuprock]

Vane increasing turbo speed at idle:
[ame=http://youtu.be/UWJhnlA8bkU]Switchblade II vane control increasing turbo idle speed - YouTube[/ame]


Vane building boost at 60mph cruise on level surface:
[ame=http://youtu.be/xOX9lExSq6w]Switchblade II building boost on level highway cruise - YouTube[/ame]

 

[casuprock]

Lots of design and development happened. Major results. Turbo was a Blaylock Switchblade. Test was conducted on a Cummins 5.9L (DSM will follow).

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Dyno compares the vane control versus open housing (no vane).

This is what the boost looks like with vane control active and not active. This is a gigantic turbo, so the difference made by the VGT is shown on a 75lb/min turbo. Also note the (cummins 5.9) engine is mostly stock with the exception of an edge fuel control which was set the same for both tests.

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[NHerron]

Thanks for posting the latest news, I'm always interested in your guys' work.

 

[casuprock]

Back to the dyno! The improvement and optimization continues. Here is an overlay of the dyno run from last week and another from this week's test:

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At this point, we've gone from 500 ft*lb at around 5 seconds to 500 ft*lb at around 1.5 seconds ON THE SAME TURBO by means of proper VGT actuation.

 

[bastarddsm]

Those charts are pretty meaningless.

 

[NHerron]

Why? Not arguing, just asking.

 

[WES_393]

Why? Not arguing, just asking.

Probably due to to lack of RPM, MPH, EGT, AFR, Airflow, or any other constant spool-altering variable. Not to mention the spool time ad resulting HP/TQ of a 5.9L diesel are hardly an accurate representation of what we should expect with high revving, small displacement, Gas/E85/Meth/H20 fueled engines.

With my HX40, if I'm going 20mph in 4th gear and drop the pedal, it's going to take quite a while to light the turbo. But if I'm WOT going 70mph in 3rd and just shifted into 4th, the turbo is going to hit full boost again in just a fraction of a second. So I could get a substantially faster spool with pretty consistent TQ/HP levels. Yet that doesn't prove anything since there's numerous variables unaccounted for. That example may be a little extreme, but you get what I mean.

Don't get me wrong, Switchblade is something I've been following since I became interested in Holset turbos. Reaching 500 ft/lbs 3.5s faster is no small accomplishment! But how does this apply to us? How does this stuff perform when bolted to other engines such as the various 4g6X setups? While impressive, those current numbers don't mean much to me. Bolt that Switchblade housing to a standard 2.0L 4g63 and lets see what it'll do!

(BTW, if you need a DSM lab rat let me know. )

 

[bastarddsm]

Probably due to to lack of RPM, MPH, EGT, AFR, Airflow, or any other constant spool-altering variable. Not to mention the spool time ad resulting HP/TQ of a 5.9L diesel are hardly an accurate representation of what we should expect with high revving, small displacement, Gas/E85/Meth/H20 fueled engines.

Exactly. You can see it comes on harder with the switchblade on, just by the slope of the lines. But it is also a MD, and I don't trust them anyway. As you can change the load, ect. It would also be good to show a s366 or what ever this is supposed to replace So you can see where the advantages are.

 

[casuprock]

Exactly. You can see it comes on harder with the switchblade on, just by the slope of the lines. But it is also a MD, and I don't trust them anyway. As you can change the load, ect. It would also be good to show a s366 or what ever this is supposed to replace So you can see where the advantages are.

This is an S300 frame turbo with a 63mm compressor and 0.86AR turbine housing. The open housing runs are equivalent to a stock S300, so that is the baseline- the vane is retracted entirely out of the flow. You can refer to the performance of an S300 63mm on a 5.9L, typically they're laggy with good towing and EGT performance. Which Turbo Is Best For You - Upgrading Your Diesels Turbocharger - Diesel Power Magazine

Each test was conducted back to back on the respective day with identical settings (mph, gear, RPM trigger, etc). The improvement of the vane control is far beyond measurement error on both sets of tests. The delta between open housing (i.e. standard S300) and vane control is the objective measurement, with all else held constant.

Bolt that Switchblade housing to a standard 2.0L 4g63 and lets see what it'll do!

Believe me I would like nothing more and it will get there as soon as the lab rat car is ready for a go. The furlough from focusing on the turbo 4 is because Blaylock Turbo has a primary market in diesel turbocharging. The fluid dynamics are also different since the velocities and viscosity of diesel is very different from gasoline. This required modifications to the vane design and selection of a more appropriate turbo frame than the heavy-wheeled S300.

 

[donniekak]

I'd like to see dyno pulls, with the standard rpm, and horsepower/torque axis.

 

[casuprock]

I'd like to see dyno pulls, with the standard rpm, and horsepower/torque axis.

Sure. Here's a pair of the 10-10 runs with engine RPM on the X axis. The dyno folks printed these with time on the graph too hah. I will get a better printout with both runs on the same axis. The torque and power curves are clear though. the other thing to look at is the min/max/avg torque and power between the runs.

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[bastarddsm]

Sure. Here's a pair of the 10-10 runs with engine RPM on the X axis. The dyno folks printed these with time on the graph too hah. I will get a better printout with both runs on the same axis. The torque and power curves are clear though. the other thing to look at is the min/max/avg torque and power between the runs.

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How about on an engine dyno. Ya know where anyone doing any real rnd work experiments.

 

[RWD4G63]

Wow the level of condescension on this forum is crazy. The man has shown you back to back to back dyno results, why are you all nitpicking? He's come through on everything he's said so far, so I think he'll come through on testing on a DSM.

There is simply no need to be condescending. Not everyone has access to an engine dyno, or the money to buy 10 cars to test with.

I'd also like to point out that a turbo serves the same purpose on a diesel as it does on a gas engine, it's not THAT hard to extrapolate the data. You all are acting like he's testing it on a steam engine or something sheesh.