diesel

20 Articles

The Most Powerful Diesel Engine

June 1, 2016 by 71 Comments

Ever. Literally.

A gearhead friend of ours sent along a link to a YouTube video (also embedded below) promising the world’s most powerful engine. Now, we’ll be the first to warn you that it’s just an advertisement, and for something that you’re probably not going to rush out and buy: the Wärtsilä 14RT marine engine.

A tiny bit of math: 96 cm cylinder diameter times 250 cm piston stroke = 1,809,557 CC. And it generates around 107,000 HP. That’s a fair bit, but it runs at a techno-music pace: 120 BPM RPM. With twelve cylinders, we’d love to hear this thing run. Two-strokes make such a wonderful racket! Wonder if they’ve tried to red-line it? It’s a good thing we don’t work at Wärtsilä.

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Simple Fuel Pressure Alarm Averts Diesel Disaster

May 6, 2016 by 42 Comments

If you could spend a couple of bucks on a simple project that might prevent a $2000 repair bill on your vehicle, you’d probably build it, right? That’s the idea behind this simple low-pressure alarm for a diesel fuel system, and it’s so simple it makes you wonder why the OEM didn’t do it.

We normally see [Bob Johnson] coming up with nifty projects (like this claw or this camera slider) that more often than not combine woodworking and electronics. But no tree carcasses were harmed in the making of this project. [Bob]’s goal is just to sound a warning and flash a light if the output of a pressure switch goes to ground. That indicates the lift pump in his Dodge Ram’s fuel tank has failed, which could lead to the sudden failure of the downstream injector pump for lack of lubrication by the fuel itself. His simple ATtiny85 circuit lives on a small perfboard in a 3D printed case and taps into a $30 fuel pressure switch. The microcontroller code enables a short delay to prevent nuisance alarms, and if the pressure drops below 5 PSI, [Bob] gets a chance to shut down the engine and disappoint his mechanic to the tune of $2000.

Maybe it’s planned obsolescence on the OEM’s part, or maybe it’s not. But kudos to [Bob] for a simple hack that averts a potentially expensive problem.

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An Open Source Two Stroke Diesel

April 8, 2016 by 42 Comments

With a welder and a bunch of scrap, you can build just about anything that moves. Want a dune buggy? That’s just some tube and a pipe bender. Need a water pump? You might need a grinder. A small tractor? Just find some big knobby tires in a junkyard. Of course, the one thing left out of all these builds is a small motor, preferably one that can run on everything from kerosene to used cooking oil. This is the problem [Shane] is tackling for his entry to the 2016 Hackaday Prize. It’s an Open Source Two-Stroke Diesel Engine that’s easy for anyone to build and has minimal moving parts.

[Shane]’s engine is based on the Junkers Jumo 205 motor, a highly successful aircraft engine first produced in the early 1930s and continued production through World War II. This is a weird engine, with two opposed pistons in one cylinder that come very close to slamming together. It’s a great design for aircraft engines due to it’s lightweight construction. And the simplicity of the system lends itself easily to wartime field maintenance.

The Jumo 205 was a monstrous 12-piston, 6-cylinder engine, but for [Shane]’s first attempt, he’s scaling the design down to a 50cc motor with the intent of scaling the design up to 125cc and 250cc. So far, [Shane] has about 30 hours of simple CAD work behind him and a ton of high-level FEA work ahead of him. Then [Shane] will actually need to build a prototype.

This is actually [Shane]’s second entry to the Hackaday Prize with this idea. Last year, he threw his hat into the ring with the same idea, but building a working diesel power plant is a lot of work. Too much for one man-year, certainly, so we can’t wait to see the progress [Shane] makes this year.

The HackadayPrize2016 is Sponsored by:

The DMCA May Have Allowed Volkswagen To Hide ECU Software From The EPA

September 29, 2015 by 102 Comments

A lot of questions have been raised by the recent “dieselgate” scandal. Should automakers be held accountable for ethically questionable actions? Are emissions standards in the United States too restrictive? Are we ever going to stop appending “gate” onto every mildly controversial news story? But, for Hackaday readers, the biggest question is most likely “how did they get away with it?” The answer is probably because of a law a lot of hackers are already familiar with: the DMCA.

If you haven’t seen the news about Volkswagen’s emissions cheating scheme, we’ll get you caught up quickly. In the United States, EPA emissions testing is done in a very specific and predictable way. Using clever ECU software tricks, Volkswagen was able to essentially “detune” the engines of their diesel vehicles when they were being tested by the EPA. This earned them passing marks, while allowing them to provide a less-restrictive ECU profile for the normal driving that buyers would actually experience.

How could they get away with this simple trick when a brief look at the ECU software would have revealed it? Because, they were able to hide under the umbrella of the DMCA. The ECU software is, of course, not intended to be user-accessible, which means that Volkswagen is allowed to lock it down. That, in turn, means that the EPA isn’t allowed to circumvent that security without violating the DMCA and potentially breaking the law. This kept the EPA’s hands tied, and Volkswagen protected. They were only found out because independent testing (that didn’t follow EPA procedure) revealed vastly different emissions levels.

Is your blood boiling yet? Add this to the stack of reasons why the EFF is trying to end the DRM parts of the DMCA.

[via /.]

Ethics In Engineering: Volkswagen’s Diesel Fiasco

September 23, 2015 by 360 Comments

Every so often – and usually not under the best of circumstance – the field of engineering as a whole is presented with a teaching moment. Volkswagen is currently embroiled in a huge scandal involving emissions testing of 11 Million diesel cars sold in recent years. It’s a problem that could cost VW dearly, to the tune of eighteen Billion dollars in the US alone, and will, without a doubt, end the careers of more than a few Volkswagen employees. In terms of automotive scandals, this is bigger than Unsafe at Any Speed. This is a bigger scandal than the Ford Pinto’s proclivity to explode. This is engineering history in the making, and an enormously teachable moment for ethics in engineering.

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Trying To Set Things On Fire, You Know…for Science.

July 25, 2015 by 26 Comments

This video from [Just Think] caught our attention for open-flame testing of 6 different commonly used liquid fuels: Jet-A, diesel, heating oil, kerosene, avgas (100LL), and gasoline (or petrol, for our international readers). We love his low-tech approach to testing – just some mason jars and a back yard. The results are quite interesting.

He starts with testing Jet-A fuel. Yep, the same stuff you’d fill up your Boeing 737 with. We flinched for a second as he drops a match into it – then nothing happened. It’s a common misconception that jet fuel will sustain a flame by its self. It needs to be atomized to burn, as he shows in the video. He moves on to test both diesel and heating oil – making note that both are exactly same, except for color. Heating oil has a red dye added to it, to mark it “not for sale” for cars and trucks, as it’s not taxed. Neither would keep a flame.

Next up is kerosene, and it would just barely keep a flame. kerosene is commonly used as a replacement for diesel in extremely cold climates, were diesel fuel would gel and clog fuel systems. Finally, he tests avgas and gasoline. Both would sustain a flame quite well.

We think this small experiment is interesting, in that the results are kind of counter-intuitive. All these different fuels are used in different applications because of their different properties, and of course there is some really interesting science behind that, if you want to learn more.

We don’t need to tell you to be safe when working with fuels. Even though something like Jet-A fuel won’t carry a flame in a container on its own, doesn’t mean that it won’t burn aggressively when combined with other things (like clothing) and in other situations. So we’re filing this one under “don’t try this at home” – instead, sit back and enjoy the YouTube video after the break.

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Hackaday Prize Entry: Open Source Diesel

May 9, 2015 by 72 Comments

There are plans for open hardware farming equipment that can be brought to third world countries to relieve the beasts of burden and increase the production of fields. Want an open source car? You can 3D print one. Just about anything you can strap a motor to has been replicated in open hardware; all you need to do is buy a motor and bolt it on.

But what about the motors themselves? For his entry to The Hackaday Prize, [Shane] is designing an open source engine. It’s small, it’s a two-stroke, and it’s diesel, but it’s completely open hardware; a great enabling project for all the open source dirt bikes and microcombines.

The design of [Shane]’s engine is based on the Junkers Jumo 205; a weird engine that had opposing pistons in one cylinder. This allows the engine to have variable compression, allowing for a wide variety of fuels to be used. If you have kerosene, that’ll work with this engine. French fry oil will as well. It’s exactly what you need for an engine that could be used for anything.

The 2015 Hackaday Prize is sponsored by: