DIY Flowbench project

[Bearded Baldy]

Any progress? Making a steady collection of parts here for my project bench.

[Roman]

Unfortunately not, as I'm moving house and so I'll not have any space for something like this for quite a while. 

After I've built another shed and have the Carina running I'll get back to this.

[Bearded Baldy]

@Roman i bought the plans for the PTS bench. Then looked up the price of importing all the gear, exchange rate is murder. 

Current stockpile list is

3x ali ex motor controllers

6x vac motors

2 access ports

Few little bits and pieces.

And today finally got around to finishing the pressure/vacuum pickups.

Prototype on left to see if i could do it. Thread too shallow and i snapped a drill bit in the end....amateur

[Roman]

Oh awesome! Keen to see how this goes.

[Bearded Baldy]

The speed i progress a project it is about time to procrastinate for a few years. I prefer working with steel opposed to timber so might take a prolonged breather before i build the box haha.

[Bearded Baldy]

Unintentional semi threadjack.

My goal is to reach 400cfm at 28 inch test. Most of what i plan on using it for will be under 250cfm so it should would out ok. I have a couple of alloy heads for my falcon of different styles i want to play with, and i have access to a few ca18 and mx5 heads.

Once it is up and running i want to write a logbook of stock head flow levels of pretty much any head i can get my hands on. 

I will also send a calibration plate to various places to get their readings with. Without knowing if there are discrepancies (there always are, like dynos), it is impossible to know how any headwork would compare to someone elses.

[Gravity Sucks]

Wondering where you've got to with this project ?

Like so many others, I've dreamt about a flowbench for ages. I've acquired an industrial 3 phase centrifugal pump which will pull over 100 inches water vacuum thru 2" pipe. I'm sure that's enough ? It's all the offer stuff that I'm interested in. Many benches use the orifice system which is the way I was headed but it seems clumsy. I've looked many times at engine inlet air flow meters wondering if they'll work or how accurate they are?  I also built a pitot in a plastic pipe but never had anything to measure it against so was never convinced it would be usable? 

What news do you have to share ?

[Bearded Baldy]

Not sure how far @Roman has gotten with his, i have managed to import a set of calibrated orifice plates and the pts digital manometer.

Could have gotten a cheaper manometer but the pts one is a nice bit of kit, and has its own software program for easy datalogging. Have not cut a single board yet as far as building it goes.

[Roman]

On 17/04/2025 at 18:59, Gravity Sucks said:

Wondering where you've got to with this project ?

What news do you have to share ?

I ended up moving house and not having any garage space any more.

There is an fb group for diy flow benches though, and using a MAF is a popular option.

Might get back to this one day, but not any time soon

 

[R3spct]

Maf sensor on SR20 stuff used to be a good indicator of power for us Sr20ve tuners back in the day as they all used same maf.  4.2v max was ok (115kw atw), 4.3v to 4.4v (120 to 130kw) was a good tuned engine with cams headers and such, high compression and head work could break 4.5 to 4.6v (140 to 150kw).  Was very comparable when we used Torque perf dyno.

[Muncie]

The MAF sensor on holden Ecotec engines output in hz would be a good unit of measurement if your just comparing before and after results on your own stuff.

You could of course calculate it in to CFM etc with some maths that my Neanderthal brain doesn't care for. 

The way I would do this is crank blower till it got to a stable pressure then take a Hz reading so you had a datum to compare to when you stick the next sample on bench. 

Caveman 2c

[Roman]

Or if you can find an ecu for cheap, and an obd2 reader.

If you keep the MAF in the standard sized pipe the ecu's MAF scaling will tell you grams/sec airflow.

[Muncie]

Have I got a solution for you!

Tunerpro a Delco PCM and that would actually be a piece of cake.