homemade dyno's ?

Belgian1979vette

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Me and one of my friends have been discussing wheter or not making a homemade dyno for american V8 power would be possible.
We have been thinking of using an old torque converter with the transmission side blocked or mounted to some torque measuring device, being used as equipment to load the engine.

Would this be possible. The torque converter has a lot in common with the water/oilbrakes that are used in dyno's.

Thanks for the input
 
I read a page once about a Swedish guy who built a water brake type dyno with a torque converter. I'll see if I can find it.
 
I think you don't really need a torque converter for a water brake!

It is allready a slipping unit..... you don't need more losses to be calculated.
 
Well actually paolo, after the stall speed, it locks up completly and for the being used in a dyno, it needs to slip to a certain %. You just need to be applying some load on the engine. A torque converter can do just that. You just need to apply some load that the engine with a certain throttle opening starts dropping rpm. At that point it is under the maximum load it can take. You can then measure it, or you can start tuning a EFI. That is what I want to do. I want to finetune my efi and measure the torque that it produces.

However the point that I have not figured out, is how to add oil to the converter, when in use. It's the amount of oil in the converter that gives a certain load.
 
Ok, i disassembling the trans i have here.
IMG_0716.jpg


This is what I'm looking at now. You have the inputshaft that is attached to the engine side of the converter and the pump that is attached to the transside.

For this thing to work, I would have to be able to control oil flow into the convertor, it would have to drain via some other way than thru the shaft. This would only leave the body of the convertor at the bottom, which is spinning in the way it is configured..

Anyone any idea's ?
 
A water brake..... works like your torque converter.

The only difference is the fact that you can continuosely change your fluid keeping it as cold you can (to be more accurate in the measures).

In fact the troque applyed is related to the quantity of water you have inside the brake.... a load-cell connect the external housing of the brake to the frame.... and the load will be converted in torque moment (very easy task).

Then, assuming you know the RPM of the engine you can calculate th power.

I'm quite sure.... you don't need any other slipping unit between the engine and the brake.
 
I know, but it's not that easy to get a waterbrake and then the ones that I saw are pretty expensive. Not something when I only need it once.
 
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