B4204 with Vipec 88 on crank dyno

[OttoB]

I thought share this student engine project that was made during this semester at Aalto university in Finland. Idea was to give kids hands-on experience without boring reports and stuff. Just mechanical work and planning engine stuff. We did similar project with B230F+T Mitsu 16T last year and students liked it a lot.

This year we selected whitefour B4204 and a bit bigger Garret 30. Exhaust manifold is from Opel 2.0LET and needed only new holes for studs. Port spacing was only couple mm off. Thanks to chinese labor, price was under 200 euros. Engine is MY 2001 with solid lifters and VVT on exhaust cam. We took engine apart, measured clearances and put in H-rods from Parner.

Ecu is Vipec 88, and to rise bar we added electronic throttle from Audi (55 mm), VVT control and boost control with Volvo solenoid.

Dyno is Schenk W260 (eddy current) up to 320 hp@ 7200 rpm. It can be run on torque or steady state mode. Very fine instrument especially for mapping ignition.


Data acquisition is done with Labview CompactDaq. Rpm, torque, intake and exhaust manifold pressures, fuel mass flow and 16 tc-channels are measured at 1 kHz. Air mass flow is measured with big Audi AMM and restriction flange. We have U-tube for IC pressure drop. And LC-1 WBO for AFR, for lab exercise our 3" exhaust pipe have spot for 3-way cat, and AVL emission analyser (HC, CO, CO2, O2)

For B230 we have cylinder pressure sensor on spark plug, but it doesn't fit on white. Might drill a hole to combustion chamber for sensor, but needs more practicing on that.

First run was today! After minor adjustments we reached 320 Nm 4500 rpm 0,5 bar (7 psi), and run out of gas. There is quite much room for development and new group will continue from here next autumn after holidays.

Thought this would fit best here.

I have some pictures if interested

Building engine mount for dyno. Dyno is that big gray round thing. It used to have scale on those rubber isolators, but now force is measured with strain-gage sensor.

E-throttle visible, "gaspedal" or perhaps "accelerator" is tandem-poti.

Tried to find pictures of B230 but they all were crappy.

 

[oldschoolvolvo]

sounds interesting! please post pictures.

 

[JW240]

Sounds very good. We had an older MAN truck diesel and gas turbine for similar tests at the uni I worked. But this sounds like more fun!

 

[bobxyz]

Wow, that looks like a great learning experience. What class are you teaching, and where in their studies are most of your students? If you were local, I'd love to audit your class as a really interested but most definitely non-graded student.

[Somewhere recently I read that VVT engines are setup to provide the equivalent of EGR, but just by varying the timing instead of all the extra recirculation parts. Makes sense but sure would make tuning much more difficult.]

 

[gross polluter]

Makes sense but sure would make tuning much more difficult.]

It doesn't. Take overlap out where you want more cylinder pressure and life is good.

BTW, ViPec 88 is an awesome ECU.

 

[OttoB]

Yes, learning curve is kinda steep when you start from zero. Kids have 3-4 years studies behind at university level, and it is mainly theorectical courses. Engines give great examples for teaching. Thermodynamics, combustion, lubrication, materials, electronics, well only nuclear is left out, all those can be learned from engines.

VVT on exhaust helps with spooling turbo and heating cat. Intake VVT is more performance thing to increasing volumetric effiency. To make our engine double-VVT it needs little machining to cylinder head. Maybe with "hotter" N/A intake cams.

 

[OttoB]

Damn phuget.

Here is short video:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BVbyRCoD9XM/

 

[Meatball]

To make our engine double-VVT it needs little machining to cylinder head. Maybe with "hotter" N/A intake cams.

So, I started looking at the B4204 after you left your comment in my thread about the B6304T4 and then I noticed this comment.

I noticed this about the B6304S and the difference in the B6304T4. There are unmachined bosses in the head differentiating the two. Is this what you are referring to? Because I was wondering if machining these bosses would allow for more control on the B6304T motor.

Volvo calls the solenoids that sit in those bosses on the S motor "cam profile solenoids" and the actual VVT solenoid is refered to as "VVT reset". From the theory of operation in VIDA, it is clear that the VVT reset valve simply allows oil to return from the cam phasor at a higher flow rate than bypass allowing it to relax the advance.

 

[OttoB]

What I have discussed with big boys the exhaust VVT does rather small influence on engine performance. On the intake side the effect is huge. At 3500 rpm 200 HP vs 400 HP, when the engine is producing 520 HP at 5600 rpm. With VVT the boost pressure rises faster but it doesn't explain all of that difference. Volumetric efficiency is also much better.

 

[Jussi Alanko]

I guess that you are running og camshafts, because of low rpm:s at peak power, 5600rpm.
I myself am designing a hybrid white four-cylinder, 81mm bore 90mm stroke, b4204s cylinder head with 34mm base circle cams and solid lifters.
I have calculated and kind of designed intake ports at some degree.

In stock form cylinder head has a max CSA of 1396,5 mm^2 and with 2* 31mm intake valves it has CA/Curtain area of 1070 mm^2 at 11mm lift.

With 'little modifications' you can put 33mm valves to cylinder head, then at same 11mm lift CA is 1139 mm^2 and with a little bit of porting, actually you had to make intake ports a little bit bigger, in stock form port size is 30mm high and 46mm wide, if you grind them to 35mm high and 50mm wide you can grow CSA at the port "starting point" 8% bigger and with 33mm valves CA is 6% bigger, which means that if in stock form the intake port is too little in relation to CA of 31mm valves, When used bigger port with 33mm valves your CSA grows bigger than your CA, which is exactly a good thing.

Especially with turbo motors with relatively high compression ratios, especially dynamic one that is what actually matters more in these engines. But rising static from 8.5:1 to 9.5-9.75:1 is very easily doable even when you are driving in pump gas( i had to install water-meth system to this engine, because high dynamic compression).

Then when you had a 34mm base circle cams you can regrind them to a certain specs with a little bit of limits what is doable and what is not.
For example if you just want 1.5mm bigger lift with og valve events and duration: impossible to do, but if you keep lift at stock state you can very easily add duration/change valve events. With valve events you can play with them to a point, usually they came at least close to optimum.

I had to made cams like this, with roughly specs like: Lift 11.5mm both sides, duration 260/230 in 1mm liftpoint, both sides.
Valve events 5/45 and 45/5, this makes right away 11 degrees earlier closed exhaust valve, which makes dynamic cr bigger.

In stock cams both sides had a 110 centerline, in intake side valve opens 12 BTDC and closes 44 ABDC, exhaust valve opens at 44 BBDC and closes at 16 ATDC.

Stock intake cam had a duration of 196 degrees at 1mm liftpoint and a valve lift 8.45mm
Stock exhaust cam had a duration of 208 degrees at 1mm liftpoint and a valve lift of 9mm

With this kind of briefly summarized cylinder head/cams combo can go to 8000rpm with ease and you can put a rev limiter somewhere at 8300-8500rpm, and you still have a very drivable engine with some 3071r sized turbo, and of course this shouts for a exhaust reversion stoppage. In another words you have just grind your exhaust manifold/header 3mm bigger at all points compared to a exhaust ports of cylinder head, which by the way i do not recommend any porting of exhaust ports themselfs, but what had to be done is good bowlwork/pocket porting. If you had enough room you can grind your exhaust headers even bigger than 3mm bigger than ports in the head, with this kind of design any possible exhaust reversion is typically coming back to combustion chambers at top of the port but when it hits the "wall" in your cylinder head it go very turbulent from a very laminar flow and it makes a lower pressure spot in there, and because overall trend is of course away from combustion chambers those gases fill lower ps spots and take with them any excess reversion gases. Even with a straightforward 4-1 exhaust you do not need twin-scroll, at least from this reason, if you make a decision a go with twin-scroll you will benefit for some 300-500rpm earlier boost threshold and also lag is going to be smaller.