Porting Diesel engines

[GT50]

Is there any benefit in porting the intake and exhaust ports of a NA Diesel engine. This is a Lombardini and the ssr has 90degree turn and there are some sharp places in the port to be radius that is the inside intake port the exhaust also needs some blending. My idea is not to disturb the swirl affect. Thanks for any help.

[rebelrouser]

Its easy to get fuel in a motor, much harder to get in air. My main experiments in porting a diesel is my personal 99 dodge cummins 24 valve. Never ran it on a dyno, but from the way it ran, yes it helps. The 90 degree intake air tube, and the exhaust manifold, I ported both. I ported the exhaust after I had to replace a cracked manifold. On the way home it set an overboost code, which tells me the extra airflow made the turbo spin harder. I ported the elboe adapter just to see what would happen, seat of the pants it made a difference. Fuel mileage also picked up a little.

[Newold1]

Do a little reading on some diesel guru's like Gale Banks and his people who did some serious head work and development on the Duramax's and the diesel engine shops that have done a lot of tractor pull work can probably help with some of their developments. The difficulty today is almost all diesels are using turbos and that changes the dynamic a lot. N/A diesels are getting rarer all the time.

Some of the European offshore racers back a few years did a lot of upgrade work on the Lamborghini diesels for the offshore groups there and you might chase one of those shops or people down who can better inform on that engine than anywhere else. Fabio Buzzi was the big gun back then.

Another thought is to look into putting turbo or turbos on that beauty. Easier to extract more power there. Lots of power hiding there in my opinion.

[Newold1]

I am sorry for my previous post. I thought you were possibly misspelling Lamborghini. I see with a little lookup there is a Lambordini diesel and I guess the largest one they make is a 4 cylinder turbo charged unit with about 135 HP. Is this the engine you are asking about?

[mag2555]

I have seen a lot of industrial motors where , yes the runners could use improvement without question , but the Intake runners / port area is where the main restriction is.
Also note that with no throttle blades on the Intake side of a Diesel they run at there max VE for whatever rpm they are spinning!

[kirkwoodken]

Here is some perspective on blown diesels:

http://www.trucktrend.com/cool-trucks/1 ... ed-puller/

I have an acquaintance who was building turbo diesels 20 years ago. At that time, he was using 120# boost. Said the most critical tune was cam timing, with just 1/2 degree making a big difference with extreme boost. The Europeans have 2 liter diesels which drive average cars surprising well and they are clean. Maybe Straub could expand on the diesel cams.

Another acquaintance in Tucson runs his turbo diesel Ford pickup on used and filtered ATF. Runs great and running ATF drain oil doesn't cost much.

[GT50]

Thanks every one for the help provided.

Newold1 The engine is a one cylinder Lombardini model 3L510 it powers a little tractor, since the engine is dissasembled and the intake and also the exhaust don´t look very good I would like to do some mild porting to it.

mag 2555 Have you done some porting on these industrial engines? If yes, could you share some pictures from what you have done to it.

[SmokinCummins]

Most diesels will benefit from porting. I think this is especially true on N/A applications. Diesel ports are usually pretty sorry.

[SmokinCummins]

Here is some perspective on blown diesels:

http://www.trucktrend.com/cool-trucks/1 ... ed-puller/

I have an acquaintance who was building turbo diesels 20 years ago. At that time, he was using 120# boost. Said the most critical tune was cam timing, with just 1/2 degree making a big difference with extreme boost. The Europeans have 2 liter diesels which drive average cars surprising well and they are clean. Maybe Straub could expand on the diesel cams.

Another acquaintance in Tucson runs his turbo diesel Ford pickup on used and filtered ATF. Runs great and running ATF drain oil doesn't cost much.

Your are correct, very little change in valve events can make a big change in power. I got back into diesels about 5 years ago after a couple of customers asked me about them. After getting some OEM cores and putting them on the cam doctor I could not figure out why the early intake opening in a boosted engine, unless they just took an NA combination and put a turbo on it......it worked and from there went into production.

I had to start with new cam cores. Take my Duramax cam, it is smaller then the OEM camshaft duration and lift, but the LSA after the events is a 112 and the OEM cam is a 104.5. The Duramax is also a reverse split, more duration on the intake then exhaust with a 12 degree split.

The valve events are critical on these and can make huge power gains.

I'm glad to see this. The new trend from the keyboard commandos of Facebook will tell you the best cam is the stock cam. I just scratch my head and think to myself -- this is why your stuff runs marginal at best. I have played with a lot of different sizes in Cummins applications. Cam events make all the difference between a killer build and a so so build.

[Cubic_Cleveland]

Thanks every one for the help provided.

Newold1 The engine is a one cylinder Lombardini model 3L510 it powers a little tractor, since the engine is dissasembled and the intake and also the exhaust don´t look very good I would like to do some mild porting to it.

mag 2555 Have you done some porting on these industrial engines? If yes, could you share some pictures from what you have done to it.

You should concentrate on the seat profile, approach to the seat, and chamber/top cut profile. You can’t usually do much with a diesel combustion chamber, but there will be gains to be had. Have a search on here for pressure recovery and there will be days worth of reading!

[modok]

The port is probably aimed to make swirl.
If you can make it flow more, and swirl more, SURE.
But it's a little different.... what you are aiming for. Diesel is likely not limited by breathing as much as....being a diesel, so, maybe you run higher boost and better intercooler....... then you are needing more flow due to to the charge being colder.....(lower speed of sound).

And the exhaust side too, tho it requires some different thinking. One idea is you want to maintain the velocity from the valve to the turbo inlet without having it slow down and speed up much on the way, or cool down.
Anything that can be done, can probably be done better.

[mag2555]

The first thing to do like in any Intake or Exh tract is to break out some inside snap gauges and find out where the main restriction is port area wise.

Reworking the valve and valve seat area as in most non performance developed flow systems is normally where some 15 to 20% more flow can be picked up across a 3/10s inch lift range , but unfortunately from what I have seen many Diesels heads do not have much room to spare to get even a real nice 2 angle valve job going no less 3 without going to a larger valve or risking running narrow seats!

Post up some pictures of what you are dealing with.

[CGT]

The port is probably aimed to make swirl.
If you can make it flow more, and swirl more, SURE.
But it's a little different.... what you are aiming for. Diesel is likely not limited by breathing as much as....being a diesel, so, maybe you run higher boost and better intercooler....... then you are needing more flow due to to the charge being colder.....(lower speed of sound).

And the exhaust side too, tho it requires some different thinking. One idea is you want to maintain the velocity from the valve to the turbo inlet without having it slow down and speed up much on the way, or cool down.
Anything that can be done, can probably be done better.

If you ever have the chance to see an IH 7.3 (7.3 Powerstroke) you will see where GM engineers, MO, where the GM "SBC intake bowl swirl" came from.

Are you referring to the 1987-1995 5.7K L05 swirl port heads that preceded the Ford Powerstroke?

[naukkis79]

After getting some OEM cores and putting them on the cam doctor I could not figure out why the early intake opening in a boosted engine, unless they just took an NA combination and put a turbo on it......

Most diesel are meant to run at full power forever. Cold air pushed through at overlap will cool things down, specially exhaust valve.

[4vpc]

When tuning diesels do you lift the max RPM much? I'm thinking if that isn't going to change then there isn't much to be gained from porting.
I know my Euro thing hits a limiter at 4k rpm, fuel cut presumably?
I recently rebuilt it and wish I got you guys some pics, it has a 16v head and to induce swirl one intake port takes the usual route through the side of the head, the other one goes down the top by the side of the injector and glowplug, this makes one port longer than the other to create the swirl.