Harrop 2300 supercharger to Optimiser 6500

[PeeBee]

Plassy, the first trip in anger unfortunately resulted in the Supercharger failing, however the car and systems all performed at a really high level of reliability. The vehicle is now updated to adopt any weaknesses that i can correct, - cooling is the focus. The info that comes out of this craziness might assist someone else down the track or inspire them to take a leap of faith and look beyond the mediocre. In all honesty I cant see too many people chasing these issues as I do, but that is the challenge and dilemma of the engineer - we believe there is a better widget and spend a lot of time sometimes polishing and honing to get there - oh and cash! Glad to hear that someone out there is reading this stuff as well.

[Plasnart]

Haha yeah mate this is an engineer’s wet dream in overdrive. I’ll let you in on a secret. My father is an engineer, and is brilliant in mechanical design, electronics, fabrication, thinking outside the square, adaption, planning, fault finding, critical thinking etc etc. I’m always impressed by his capabilities but the constant analysis, thinking, changing and improving drives me nuts. I’m a simple guy. I subscribe to the K.I.S.S. principal. Always have. Never had anything outlandish, never built a beast like yours. I did have a factory TD42T wagon which I refused to significantly modify, and certainly nothing under the bonnet apart from a second battery, and which took me up and over, down and through, across and around and back home again without ever missing a beat. Sold it because I stopped using it. But as I said, I love reading your story for the ups, downs, innovations, alterations, successes, losses, wins and hardships it has been giving you. You are our resident soap opera Phil and keep on keeping on mate!

[Brissieboy]

Guys, information is power, to monitor and make informed decisions. I know, 40 yrs ago we had a speedo, fuel tank and temp gauge, and it was sufficient. I am running some trial work to establish if the cooling concepts are working. Once i get the data and am comfortable, the gauges will blend into the background, but now they are key to the on-going project I guess.

When I first did this conversion, I monitored a lot more, ie gearbox and transfer oil temps, oil temps and water temps on and off the radiator, as simply had no idea if the system supplied was going to be problematic in te long run. As it stands I dont monitor these variables nnymore and the information checked out within ranges acceptable.

Just in case you did not realise, my original comment was very much 'tongue-in-cheek'. Totally agree that information is key to making good decisions.

[PeeBee]

Just in case you did not realise, my original comment was very much 'tongue-in-cheek'. Totally agree that information is key to making good decisions.

All good, I can read the play. I appreciate the feedback as at least the reporting isn't going to waste. Keep up the feedback, its valuable to me also.

[PeeBee]

Haha yeah mate this is an engineer’s wet dream in overdrive. I’ll let you in on a secret. My father is an engineer, and is brilliant in mechanical design, electronics, fabrication, thinking outside the square, adaption, planning, fault finding, critical thinking etc etc. I’m always impressed by his capabilities but the constant analysis, thinking, changing and improving drives me nuts. I’m a simple guy. I subscribe to the K.I.S.S. principal. Always have. Never had anything outlandish, never built a beast like yours. I did have a factory TD42T wagon which I refused to significantly modify, and certainly nothing under the bonnet apart from a second battery, and which took me up and over, down and through, across and around and back home again without ever missing a beat. Sold it because I stopped using it. But as I said, I love reading your story for the ups, downs, innovations, alterations, successes, losses, wins and hardships it has been giving you. You are our resident soap opera Phil and keep on keeping on mate!

Plassy, spent the last 2 days in Melb heat working on the beast - unbelievable to see a stock standard vehicle, and so easy to work on, however every damn nut and bolt required a liberal dose of RP7 to get it un-done - man alive the tailshaft bolts did a number on me - they were locked up and needed a hercules like @Rossco to break the buggers. Giving @MB a hand.

[Rossco]

Plassy, spent the last 2 days in Melb heat working on the beast - unbelievable to see a stock standard vehicle, and so easy to work on, however every damn nut and bolt required a liberal dose of RP7 to get it un-done - man alive the tailshaft bolts did a number on me - they were locked up and needed a hercules like @Rossco to break the buggers. Giving @MB a hand.

Haha don't think it was Hercules me more like Hercules power of your ugga dugga lol

Sent from my SM-S711B using Tapatalk

[Plasnart]

Plassy, spent the last 2 days in Melb heat working on the beast - unbelievable to see a stock standard vehicle, and so easy to work on, however every damn nut and bolt required a liberal dose of RP7 to get it un-done - man alive the tailshaft bolts did a number on me - they were locked up and needed a hercules like @Rossco to break the buggers. Giving @MB a hand.

You bloody be gentle and kind please. Still in love.

[PeeBee]

Latest installment in the quest for reliability.

The truck became a resistant starter 3 days ago, cranking over and taking maybe 3 minutes to actually catch and fire up, which then removed the southern suburbs of Melbourne from my viewpoint with the black cloud. I thought it was a fuse blown as found 3 that had left the chat, one of which powered the glowplug timer circuit. So replaced the fuse, no joy. Opened up the glowplug timer, the after market PowerTrain unit supplied as part of the conversion. No lights coming on for the pre het and the after glow, so re-programmed the unit, increasing pre start glow to 20 sec and the same for after glow. No joy. So chasd the world for a supplier of the unit, eventually made contact with a mob in NZ who stock them, but wanted $160 for the delivery charge on a $50 item. That ended in tears, and I decided to buy an OEX timer as they are widely distributed in Aust, for $185 from Repco, had it 6 hrs later.
Around this time I persisted with the starting analysis and it was getting longer and longer to fire up. I rewired the glowplug circuit to a manual over ride, added a piezo buzzer to indicate 100% when the timer was powered, bingo, the timer pre and aft led's fired up, but still no glowplug joy.
Last thing on the list was the glow plug timer relay. I have a spare - safely packed away in that secret spot in the garage, never to be found again, so rang PAP, and there are two units avail, the direct part number replacement at $99 or an absolutely identical unit with a different Nissan part number for $84, so as recommended by Dave at PAP, go with the cheaper one, save the $15, which I did, picked it up this morning.
Arrived home, attempted to swap out the old for new, one terminal decided it didn't want to leave and thats the one in the pic, the terminal is welded onto itself. So I cut the wire to the 'lets stay here' terminal and attached it to a spare pigtail connector that isn't used in the loom. Instant gratification, pre glow and after glow fully operational, motor kicks off in under a second.

What a cluster, but I guess I learnt a few things and followed a process to resolve.Hooray 1.jpg relay.jpg

What do the gauge numbers tell us.
Ambient temp is 22 degC in the airbox, and confirmed by the air temp sender inside the front guard.
Interchiller water temps are 2degC - did drop to 1 degC - these were 73 degC on the Madigan Line trip
Fuel Temps dropped from ambient to 9 degC - did drop to 8degC - these were 50degC on the Madigan trip
Air temp post the barrel intercooler with the interchiller water drops to 12degC,
Air temp post compression and in the inlet manifold is 27degC, instead of circa 85degC
So the net gains result in denser and cooler air to the s/c'r which will deliver lower egt's ultimately.
The fuel typically sits at ambient plus 10degC so this is now controlled by the interchiller circuit heat exchanger, resulting is a stable and higher calorific value for the fuel, and I dont expect it will get near to the drop off point of 48degC where the calorific value starts to rapidly drop off.

[PeeBee]

I took some brain relief time out yesterday and added a 'Demon' aluminum Catch Can between the PCV valve and the s/c inlet. the Demon unit is of very high quality and small in size. the only issue for me was the 3/8 and 1/2" hoses as the PCV hoses are 1". Anyway, all mounted and very neat. Took about an hour as i sorted out the parts in advance.

Last item on the list is getting the cruise control to work, sort of like the issue you have avoided at any opportunity. The fault finding is not disclosing a solution to get the vacuum actuator, but I will follow this thru to conclusion.

[PeeBee]

Arrived home after a week away without any maintenance charge going on , and must have caught @mudski disorder as battery was at 0 volts. I tried to couple it in parallel to get a base voltage of at least 10V - didn't work, even with thwo chargers in play. This is one of the Optima Blue units and first time this has happened. Anyway rang up Battery World where I bought it 2 yrs ago - 'bring it down, we will have a look at it', so big shout out, they put it on their commercial charger and it started to take charge so left it with them for the day.

They rang me at 3pm and said it started out at 25amp rate and was now sitting at 2.5amps, so its good to go, just discharged badly. Anyway, I decided to buy another 10amp charger as they didn't want to charge me for the reconditioning, to replace the Cetec 10amp unit that 5 yrs old and gets very hot when charging. Decided to also buy a mechanical terminal isolator for use n the neg terminal, rated at 1200CCA, so fitted it all up this arvo. Big shout out to this branch, helpful, not pushing anything, recommended items of best value, give them a go if in the area, they have a wide range of stock.

Interesting though, they used to do a heap of the Optima range until maybe 5 yrs ago when the manufacturing base changed to Mexico. Since then they had so many batteries returned under warranty so only hold a couple as emerg stock for like for like replacement. I asked what he could recommend and it was a local made battery in Australia, $200 less than the Optima, has the dual terminals as well.