Filter Minders for Dummies

[Arcticdude]

Dayum! 1170 at full tilt. That thing sucks!

[al perna]

"Now, what WOULD be interesting is know which year LXI had the "cap" on the inlet and look at those engineering prints for that year to see if the change was written there either in the form of a handwritten EC or a new exhaust print. If it was, then that would support your supposition that the factory was told about an air inlet issue and was trying to re-engineer the inlets on 500HP s60's to find a better mousetrap. "

Pete . the cap was on the 2001 , I find it interesting that your FM is in the green when I hear most are in the yellow or red . I wonder if there were changes made on later year S60 ?

as to paying Johnnie for a history lesson , why not ? I often pay a doctor to tell me what I know allready . LOL .

[pgchin]

(03-26-2013 23:57)al perna Wrote:  "Now, what WOULD be interesting is know which year LXI had the "cap" on the inlet and look at those engineering prints for that year to see if the change was written there either in the form of a handwritten EC or a new exhaust print. If it was, then that would support your supposition that the factory was told about an air inlet issue and was trying to re-engineer the inlets on 500HP s60's to find a better mousetrap. "

Pete . the cap was on the 2001 , I find it interesting that your FM is in the green when I hear most are in the yellow or red . I wonder if there were changes made on later year S60 ?

as to paying Johnnie for a history lesson , why not ? I often pay a doctor to tell me what I know allready . LOL .

Hey Al,
I know of others that do not have an FM issue. It is NOT that prevalent to have issues. Some are 8v's or 500hp s60's DDEC IV, remember mine is a 475 DDEC III.....not sure what the differences are but David B and I once counted 150TSL's between his year and mine when the DD site was open to mere mortals. The only other 475HP I know of having issues is Kurt H's and he runs a stainless exhaust with a straight pipe so I'm not surprised. I learned a long time ago from some professional tuners that engines are nothing more than big air pumps, you can port'em, polish intakes, mess with jets or ECM's, chip'em, flow the heads,etc but it always boils down to one thing, the factory setup is designed to work in a "multitude of temps, altitudes, atmospherics, and use case scenarios. And the drive train it has. Every time you "touch" one of the parameters like intake, exhaust, etc you mess up another parameter in the factory use case. Air flows better in the area you touch, but NOT in the other areas. If it does flow better through the engine, then some other engine design parameter is out of whack like fuel starvation, fuel richness, air temp too hot, burn a valve, throw a rod, throw a crank bearing etc and so on. Example dragster run flat out, nothing else. Class 8 sled truck pulls, etc......... These are single tasks use cases, not everyday driving. Also the "guys" you Know having issues run with the "wick up" most of the time, I only know of 2 guys is those cases who run like grandma, all the others run flat out and driving style is a BIG deal here. Why are SAME guys having the SAME FM issues on multiple platforms when others are not? The only common denominator in this use case is the driver and his / her style, this is NOT rocket science, just common sense............the s60 ECM and most ECM's can accommodate small changes but the software has a limit and when you hit the limit, then issues arise. There is an old saying you don't kick a sleeping bull in the family jewels, you leave it alone, hence you feel his wrath! The wrath of an s60 can could cost you 30 large if you are not careful! I grew up on long island, NY and the "tuners" who taught me the business when I was kid lived in my home town and are legendary. Every time one of their cars come on the block at Barrett Jackson, the Limits come off and the American Express black comes out ..... Baldwin Motion COPO's Chevy's........ big time dudes back in the day! They'd help poor gas station kids like me tune small block Chevy's, obviously smart guys given what their COPO Chevys go for now! Those 340 Mopar guys were tough to beat back in the day, that thing was built from the factory to kick butt and required very little tuning. My best friend ran a 340 cuda and his ole man was "connected " to a Mopar performance dealer. Us Chevy and Ford guys needed help from Motion, other tuners AND geld to get it done and compete!Gas, Diesel, water, who cares.....always the same thing.......ya wanna run the factory use case, leave it ALONE!!!! Now, doing David's test would validate, invalidate the use case, history, the doctor deal is funny, thanks for the chuckles but go ahead and pay Johnnie and please let us know what you find out! Thanks for volunteering!!!!!!!

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(03-26-2013 22:59)travelite Wrote:  Ms. Bee,

I don't want to speak for Pete, but to me it sounds like Blue Bird gave some leeway to the factory staff on certain build assemblies. The tip of the intake inlet may have been one of those items. If there were several options that fulfilled the requirements for an assembly then the choice may have been left up to the factory staff. Just a SWAG.

Thanks David I appreciate it!,
Jen, yes David is correct, the birds are up to snuff, but in any manufacturing process you have "tolerances", leeway, flexibility, judging by the various reports of air inlet pipes, this appears to be one area they took liberties with. If I was being "inspector clueso" and reverse engineering the factory engineers, I'd speculate that BECAUSE they gave the factory build line flexibility in air inlet pipe tips, the engineers felt that there was NOT an air inlet issue so go ahead and be flexible. You know this as you are married to one but engineers are trained from birth to focus on Problems and finds solutions, when things work we ignore them because who cares, it works as designed!!!!!!! :-) If something isn't broke, we aren't happy because we have nothing to fix. You can see how I came to my "speculation", there is no air inlet issues as the engineers gave the factory line flexibility, they were focused on other things, REAL PROBLEMS, who cares the air inlet is more than capable and works as deigned. David's expert technical paper exercise points that out and backs up my speculation as well as the diesel traders engineers point of view David was kind enough to go research for the team! :-) thanks David! Short of installing the differential pressure gauge David suggested earlier, there's really nothing else we can do scientifically, that info would be data FACTS and we could then react to it. By the way, if they had found issues, then they would have made a hand written change to the inlet / exhaust prints for the line. As I already stated, no EC's on my prints on my 95 so 90-95 shows NO air inlet issues. I have both 8v and s60 inlet / exhaust prints in my factory deck.

[davidbrady]

For completeness I called Racor Parker and spoke with them about the air filter used on my LXi. I'm running an ECO-SM 099842007. Racor gave me the following restriction specs for that filter. The DD S-60 has a full tilt flow rate of 1170 CFM:

4 in of H2O at 1120 CFM
6 in of H2O at 1400 CFM
8 in of H2O at 1630 CFM

So adding the filter into my previous calcs gives us an overall restriction that's probably half DD's clean air filter requirement of 12 inches of H2O. I think we're good.

[Itchintogo]

This is a great thread. I have been quietly reading for a few days now. What a great resource WaGu is for real data and real science. Only here can you get that. With a variety of engineers and their time, patience and expertise we have come to a solid fact based conclusion that no modification is necessary to the intake air on a 500 HP S60. And it has been proved out with real science.

Many thanks to Pete and David for being so generous with their time and expertise and actually calling the FM people and filter people.

You know countless times over the years we hear about these products and mods that will improve our vehicles in some way or shape. Around the late 90's there was a box people installed on their cars and put water and some silver fluid (can't remember what it was now) in it and it went through your air intake as well. Supposed to improve your fuel mileage. Where are they now? Naturally it really did not work out or they would be a multi billion dollar company today with fuel prices.

My point is it was "red neck engineering" just because someone "thought" it would work and found they had a product to sell as a result. Funny how functionality becomes far less important when there is money to be made by selling parts and fluids. Happens every time.

Pete and David you guys have probably saved countless Bird owners thousands of dollars with your expertise. And you ask nothing in return and sell nothing. Only on WaGu ladies and gentlemen.

[davidbrady]

Thanks Gary, I really appreciate it. For the icing on the cake, I still plan to instrument my intake system for validation of my calculations. We can all put our wallets back in our pockets though, because we're well within DD's specs. For those who still wish to spend hundreds to shave a few inches of water off, it may take quite a bit of driving to earn your money back. A few inches of water off our already free flowing intake systems will net less than 1% improvement in fuel mileage. Folks will need to do the calculations based on purchase price and gallons of fuel purchased to see where the brake even point is. For instance, I get 7 mpg now (which I do). If I improve my mileage by 1% and spend $400 doing it, and at $4.00 per gallon of fuel, I'll need to drive 70,000 miles to hit a break even point.

Here's an album showing pics of the bell tip on my LXi's intake system inlet:
https://picasaweb.google.com/dmb2000/Int...fHsnfGu6AE

[pgchin]

Thanks Gary for the kind words and David for all the research. Anything to help fellow birders in these challenging economic times for ALL of us no matter your station! Now I think I'll take my saved money, head over to Kentucky to Knobb Creek distilleries and buy a BARREL of 120 proof single barrel bourbon and get all "gassed up"! Hahaha, I hear they are only 5-6 large a barrel!!!!!! Right, only in my DREAMS!!!!! A guy's gotta dream !

Update, thanks for pics David, excellent!!!! FWIW for other members, I have the same size and box " air grates" for the coach inlet as David but a straight pipe cut at a 45 degree angle, low side facing the road, high side facing the curb side. My low side cut is about the same length's as David's all around height. For completeness I'm a 475HP DDEC III one of the very first s60's out of BB and David is a 500hp DDEC IV well into the BB s60 build cycle.

[Itchintogo]

After some thought I have been remiss. I need to correct that.

I forgot to thank Al Perna as well because with out him playing devils advocate and making some assumptions the true value of WaGu would not have been so transparent.

So a "Thanks" to Al as well for helping make WaGu the best open unencumbered information source available for Wanderlodge group of owners. This thread has really made that shine for all to see.

[davidbrady]

(03-27-2013 13:28)pgchin Wrote:  Thanks Gary for the kind words and David for all the research. Anything to help fellow birders in these challenging economic times for ALL of us no matter your station! Now I think I'll take my saved money, head over to Kentucky to Knobb Creek distilleries and buy a BARREL of 120 proof single barrel bourbon and get all "gassed up"! Hahaha, I hear they are only 5-6 large a barrel!!!!!! Right, only in my DREAMS!!!!! A guy's gotta dream !

You crack me up Pete! LOL Thanks for everything brother!

[pgchin]

FWIW, for those interested in hop up SOLUTIONS and a little FACTUAL information for small diesel engines, take a peak hear:
http://www.bankspower.com/products

Dial up power and efficiency systems in the left navigator and and then select the "git kit" the most economical kit price wise they have for any engine they support. Notice it has EXHAUST parts and ECM tuning parameters, these are ALL turbo diesels and NO AIR filter upgrades to K&N UNTIL you go to a higher cost kit and change more parts, then does air inlet become an issue along with more ECM tuning, a newer turbo, newer bigger CAC for cooler air, etc. They START with exhaust and ECM, then add AIR INLET LATER FOR MORE BUCKS.

My point, simply GAS OR DIESEL, they are ALL AIR PUMPS AND THE SAME, how they are feed and controlled both air and fuel mixture, yes very different, but they are ALL air pumps. They also HOP UP the same WAY from an engineering principles standpoint! Different parts to get you there yes, but the same engineering principles can be applied to ALL ENGINES, BIG or SMALL! Engineering principles exist solely to define the behavior patterns of a use case scenario like AN ENGINE. It's called PHYSICS! Although you can have various use cases (types of engines) its engineering design principles are common to all use cases of a family or quite simply it is NOT AN ENGINE. That's how physics defines the UNIVERSE and structures sound engineering principles and guidelines.
Now, I know the membership could probably care less about small diesel engine hop ups, BUT here is a perfect example of an engineering company that took SOUND engineering principles, spent a lot of dough to get this off the ground and now makes BIG BUCKS. With 1 million s60's on the road, you can bet that there are guys in the mid west and elsewhere that could do this for you on the s60 if you so desire and had deep pockets. My point, NO ONE starts with air inlets on a diesel hop up. Later, YES, but NOT first and only! Stock Diesels breath JUST FINE! And if you look at the types of diesel engines Banks supports and added up how many are on the road from a marketing potential / selling user base potential standpoint, you can bet your bippie that its way more than a million engine install base and they are killin it! :-)

Here's another example of engines being based on all the same engineering design principles that hit birders a little closer to home irrespective of fuel choice. When Coachworks took over the factory from Ceribus they changed engine configurations to Cummin's from CAT C-13's. When I toured the build line of Wanderlodges and commercial buses, 3 favors were being built. High and lower HP diesel buses and natural gas. The lead engineer told me they issued a RFQ (request for price quote) to suppliers. They wanted an engine that could use either natural gas or diesel. They wanted NO HARDWARE changes, the SAME HARDWARE CONFIGURATION ( ENGINE PARTS). They wanted to make use of the ECM programming / tuning to handle the various hp configurations and fuel types. Cummin's was chosen. See, sound engineering principles applied to a use case resulting in product for sale to a vendor! The engine hardware was IDENTICAL. The ECM's were programmed on the line based on bus choice. Now, the ONLY hardware change was the high HP diesel cummins they put in the wanderlodge and it was 1 part! :-0....... they wanted Wanderlodge owners to feel special so they put a Chrome valve cover on it to look cool!!!!!!!!! :-) BTW, the air inlets for all 3 models were EXACTLY THE SAME whether it was high or low HP diesel or natural gas..............