Superflow SF902 Fuel Turbine

[jcisworthy]

Anyone have knowledge on the units used with the SF902 dyno. The one that came with my new to me dyno has 1/4 NPT in and out. Seems small to me. Any possible upgrades out there other than Superflow?

[PRH]

I wonder how the flow compares between the ID of a 1/4” pipe fitting operating at 28psi vs 4 x .120” needle & seats operating at 6psi with the floats still sitting reasonably high in their bowls?

[Charliesauto]

Anyone have knowledge on the units used with the SF902 dyno. The one that came with my new to me dyno has 1/4 NPT in and out. Seems small to me. Any possible upgrades out there other than Superflow?

The Superflow supplied turbines are made by Flo Scan, they are used primarily in small aircraft and marine applications. If I recall correctly, they only have two or three versions.

[jcisworthy]

The 902 manual shows three versions, basically small, med, large. There is not a lot of info in the manual about them. There are no markings on this to identify it other than Floscan and made in USA.

[PRH]

Couldn’t SF tell you which one the machine was built with(and it’s capacity) based on the serial number?

Edit- you’ve probably already looked, but digging around on the Floscan site it appears the unit with the 1/4 NPT is the standard sensor....... rated up to 48gph.

[PRH]

I was looking around on line and found a site that had SF fuel system trouble shooting info.......

In one section they were saying how the fuel flow sensors were rated at 50gal/hr, but that with the big pump(magnafuel 500) they would flow 95gal/hr each, flowing through both sensors simultaneously.

[jcisworthy]

I did not find that. I have an Aeromotive A1000 before it now. I reconfigured the fuel setup that came on it. I will post before and after pictures when done.

There is about one gallon reserve from the as purchased configuration I am using with the single fuel turbine that was also in the system. The way I am setting it up will flow from the pump, through the regulator, to the turbine, into the top of the reservoir, out of the bottom of the reservoir with two 6AN lines.

The fuel reservoir has a Holley fuel bowl on either side that was fed to keep the tank full just as they would on a carb. I have a regulator with two springs to go from 0-20 PSI and 20-60 PSI so the fuel bowl float setup would not work some of the time. I am capping off the fuel bowls an feeding it as described above.

I figure, for now, if it does not keep up it will be fuel starvation safe with the reservoir no matter what I have on the dyno. If the turbine is maxed with a particular engine, I suppose the BSFC reading will start repeating the same number for the rest of the pull.

I did receive a second turbine with the dyno but it is a three wire where the one I believe he was using is a four wire. The tower has a four pin fuel port. There are two four pin fuel ports on the tower but I do not know it the system is configured for two turbines. I am going to probe the two ports tomorrow or Monday with a meter and see if I can figure anything out. I will also call Superflow next week and see if they can give me anymore info.

[maxracesoftware]

what's the maximum HP you think you will ever Dyno test at ?

just test how many Fuel Lbs/Hour out of each line
by putting the 2 lines in a 5 gallon jug and turning on the Dyno's Fuel Pump
and looking at the SF Console's readings on Lbs/Hour

then you can divide the Fuel Lbs/Hour readings by for example a BSFC number like 0.400 and see how much HP
that would be , or even 0.340 BSFC

[jcisworthy]

I am going to do that test. The manual says to calibrate the machine that way using a .060"-.100" hole in a cap.
If the console is able to read two turbines I will add the three wire turbine that came with the machine and see what happens to the lbs/hr. Whatever the reading is I can adjust it on the console to match the actual, try it again, and hopefully it tracks

As of now, max anticipated is 800hp with what I have here. Most of the engines I have here will make 4-500. I am going to promote the dyno locally when it is up and running so I want to have it capable of the advertised 1200 with the water pump I have now. There are engines locally that make over 1K.

[PRH]

We use a 6an hose with a small ball valve on the end, with a gauge right before the valve.

We match the pressures on the two lines by the gauge on the hose flowing a minimal amount of fuel. The gauges on the regulators don’t exactly agree with each other, and this way both regulators are set off one gauge(one at a time).

For the system flow test we open the ball valve enough to have the gauge show 1 psi less than the pressure setting(set at 7psi, open valve to read 6psi), then read the fuel flow while maintaining the 6psi.
Test both sides make sure the readings are very close.

Personally, I wouldn’t want any type of reservoir/tank/accumulator in between the flow meter and the carb. It would expect that to dampen the instantaneous flow fluctuations happenening at the carb.

Maybe steady state it might be okay, but during a sweep test it just seems like it would add a variable that doesn’t need to be there.

[jcisworthy]

I may end up agreeing with you on the tank. I have some testing to do this week and come up with a final plan.

[PRH]

Just curious as to the vintage of that machine.
It seems strange that they sold an SF-902 that only had a single flow sensor/single channel.

I seem to remember there was a brief period of time when you could get a pretty stripped down unit........ it had some hand held interface thing to connect with a computer.

[jcisworthy]

Not sure on year produced. The tower has two fuel ports and the pins electrically measure the same on both. I probed them with a meter today. The owner is deceased so I cannot get information out of him.

The dyno came with two fuel turbines but only one was installed on the fuel cell cart setup he had. As stated earlier, one is a four wire, the other a three and both ports have four pins.

His son was the last one to run an engine on the dyno which was his boat engine. I do not know if he changed anything around. Something was done because the A1000 pump did not have a connection on the inlet while the outlet was attached to the 10AN fitting on bottom of the small tank. His son is a pilot and never around.

The way it was configured on the fuel cell cart, it looks like the turbine was original to the way the owner was using it and a single only. I need a few more fittings before I can test both turbines. Hopefully they both work and read properly so I can use one on each side of the carb.

[jcisworthy]

Here is a couple pictures showing it as purchased.

[PRH]

Whew...... that sure looks a lot “busier” than what came on the 901 here(bought in 1997).

It looks like that could be simplified.