Here’s the aforementioned dyno starter drive sysem! Now we can remotely start engines from either driveshaft. That’s a Polaris sled ring gear bolted to a custom fabbed aluminum flywheel. Gone is the $550 German overrunning sprag clutch (that needed relacing every few year$) that used to belt-drive the right hand shaft from the original Cummins diesel starter seen mounted below.
Now I’ve converted the original big starter motor to being a “booster” to help small, or poorly carbureted race engines spin the shafts/ dyno absorber up to whatever RPM they begin making power at! Those who have tuned small engines on big dynamometers know how critical part throttle tuning is to get the engines to spin themselves along with the drag/ weight of a big absorber. And some 340/440 race engines might not even “come on the pipe” until 7-8000 RPM. Sometimes, out of desperation, we would squirt N2O into small race engines to get them to rev up from idle on the dyno. But now, I have mounted a small 5-rib Whipple supercharger pulley onto the main dyno driveshaft (seen close to the guard near the absorber). That pulley is driven by a serpentine belt/ belt tensioner and larger 6″ diameter ribbed pulley mounted on ball bearings below. That large ribbed pulley is driven by the big original starter vis a small driveshaft, and is engaged with a magnetic clutch. Now, when the big starter button is pushed, it will overdrive the dyno absorber and shafts up to 9500RPM. Bring on those little vintage race engines!
Also note the slick machine-lettered aluminum plate fitted with Jiffy-Tite fuel quick-couplers, showing fuel in and out of each flowmeter (meters won’t read if plumbed backwards!), organizing that awful rats-nest of hoses, making EFI hookup to sleds with bypass (requiring subtracting bypassed fuel from gross flow) easier than ever.
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Here are the three walkin freezer compressor units that are thermostatically operated from the dyno control room. Below is a photo from inside the cold room, showing the three condenser units–each connected to one of the compressors outside the left wall. Just visible behind the condenser stack is a 10″ diameter air intake pipe that draws “makeup” air from the roof of the building. As the engines consume air (via an insulated duct from the opposite wall to the engine’s airbox inlet), replacement air is drawn in to the area directly behind the condensors. Note the PVC pipes from each condenser which carry away the water that condenses as humid air is cooled.
