My vw project

[dgardner]

I always liked the hammertone look, never saw a TM with that finish until now. Nice!

 

[TConway]

Okay started putting my face Panel back together today here I think it is coming out really good!! I can't wait to get here back together.

 

[TConway]

My progress was slow today had to make a new blower mount for one of the blowers, just wasn't happy with the first one, so I only got this far today and late when I took the pic

 

[BradFenstermaker]

Just read this whole thread. Nice very Nice!

 

[TConway]

Here is a picture with some sunlight on it. I got er fired for a moment today... not one muffler or silencers on er that didn't last long
It is taking a little longer than expected just because I am finishing things up this time.
Had to cut a special engine shroud to cover my exhaust header to separate the fresh cool intake air. Came out really good... till it was time to put my starter on....had to cut my wrench in half to get to the bottom bolt.... Now I know how it happens when you are working on something and you yell out WHO THE FOOK DESINGED THIS THING!!! and you have to buy some special tool to get to some dang bolt or nut!!!!

 

[Larry Cobb]

Engineering a TM is not as easy as some think . . .

Lots of details that can require rework . . .

The finished product looks good . . .

Larry

 

[TConway]

Just read this whole thread. Nice very Nice!

Thank You it has been a blast, I have put off some work this week to try and get her done. I just got some wands and I can't wait to fire her up and put them to the test.
Made some adjustments to my preheater and the final will be the Exhaust heat exchanger. I am going to go ahead and keep it on my original design.
On my next one I would more than likely design it so that I would have two HX's one on each side just below the two cylinders, this would keep the exhaust headers very short and would help bring down the exhaust air temps around the machine itself.
The guy that gave me some pointers is the owner of Wolfgang VW in Redding, He is a record holding 1/4 mile vw dragster owner/driver. He wanted me to run a tuned header for better performance but it made me have to deal with the whole header and it puts off a lot of heat, heat that could be taken and dumped into a hx that would only be about 9" away from the head were its nice and hot.
My current set up my oil cooler is in water box and is easily getting my water pre heated to 145-150* so I only need to get a 100* and that is a little of a concern as we may get to many ss coils in the exhx, being in CA I really don't want to be dumping tons of hot water. We have talked about just adding another radiator to actually cool the water back down to keep it in a loop, I have plenty of room to do it but it is just another thing to have to deal with and keep maintained.
The throttle down feature is going to help because it won't be producing high btu's when I am moving hoses or furniture so it does give me a little breathing room for water temp increase when I am taking time to take care of things on the job.
I have used it on some customers homes just prior to take down and the throttle idle down was really awesome, I was shocked at how often it dropped down making me realize how hard my Legend is working ALL the time when your on a job.
I have no doubt that PRO CHEM is onto something HUGE with there E IDLE it REALLY will make a huge difference for guys that get this feature, busy companies will see the biggest gains for sure.

 

[TConway]

Engineering a TM is not as easy as some think . . .

Lots of details that can require rework . . .

The finished product looks good . . .

Larry

Thank you Larry
and yes it is a bit of work, and there is a lot of things that come up for sure on the first build.....just because you DON'T know what to expect.
But when it all starts to come together it is VERY, VERY rewarding.
Also very eye opening at really how powerful our units are, a blower is a very powerful piece of industrial equipment. Most don't understand, just go turn the key and go to work, but there is some massive and very heavy pieces of metal spinning at very high rpm's it is pretty scary really, a open blower intake spinning at high rpm's is very freakin scary. Could easily suck your hand in and would never jump a tooth with no vac relief they are NO JOKE.

 

[TConway]

Got her going again, lighting was just out of the way to show off her true colors, used her today to do a little wand test with my WP Ti. Had to do a little throttle linkage adjustment but she was sucking it up today. Going to finish up with the EXHX. Already pre drilled for mounting, I think she is going to produce a ton of heat I am actually kinda scared at how much really. Have to wait and see.

 

[GeneMiller]

Nice thread thanks for sharing. I have great ideas but my engineering sucks. I can't imagine the problems I would have designing a truckmount. Probably run backwards and blow. Lol

Gene

 

[TConway]

Nice thread thanks for sharing. I have great ideas but my engineering sucks. I can't imagine the problems I would have designing a truckmount. Probably run backwards and blow. Lol

Gene

That is really part of the fun of it, and not everyone will agree with what you come up with, or like your design, but it really is a lot of fun, can be a little frustrating at times....and you do answer the question WHO THE HELL DESIGNED THIS IDEA!!! it just happens sometimes and the fix is just too far back to correct... fix cut a wrench in half so you can tighten that nut that you are never going to get to in a million years no matter how hard you try
It really has been fun sharing its stages of progress and hopefully it will encourage some of you on the fence and thinking about doing it...it can be done

 

[Dolly Llama]

between working on your Vee-Dub-O-Matic, hope you made time to box up a filter and get it shipped to Ohio

.L.T.A.

 

[Desk Jockey]

So would you say its twice as powerful as your Legend or more than that? Do you plan on running two setups off it or one?

 

[TConway]

So would you say its twice as powerful as your Legend or more than that? Do you plan on running two setups off it or one?

I would say yes because we can dual wand with it no problem, so in that view yes.
I really really thought that it was going to shatter the widows from wand noise, but this was the BIGGEST eye opener of all, and one of the reasons I wanted to build a larger TM.
I posted many years ago some videos of my PC Legend and it was pulling 350 cfm at 100' so what would a larger machine do?? Even though my pc can hit those numbers it is OPEN HOSE numbers and once you put the wand on the carpet all that changes, the PC L has a hard time HOLDING 10-12 hg on most carpet, the blower is just not taking a big enough bite of air for the amount of air that leaks at WCI so it struggles to to get much more lift than that.
Now VW TM open hose.... this was another shocker 2.0 hose is only going to flow so much and it must be somewhere between 350-400 cfm because the lift the vw generates when adding the 2.0 hose goes up a lot, my wand is louder but not like what I was expecting because the wand is the same as 2.0 hose they can only flow so much air period.
The biggest change was my evo 16 wand on my PC L is was very reasonable, with the VW it is actually making a very high pitch whistle it is kinda disturbing really.
Now on the carpet there is without a doubt a huge difference if I go for a week or so just using the PC L ( it is in my van vs vw in trailer) due to my jobs and parking the van is just a no brainier. But when I use the vw I will actually get very sore from the amount of lift it generates on any type carpet, it holds at 15 hg pretty much no matter the carpet, and I believe this to be because the twin blowers (larger single included) can overpower the WCI wand leak due to the bigger bite of air per blower(s) revolution.
So when you here guys say the power of a bigger blower is just different....it is hard to really explain but it really is different, you DO NOT really wait for the lift to build it is like it is always there it is just a different feel and kinda hard to explain it right. This is the best way I know how to.
What it did help me with is really being a little more able to relate to guys with bigger TM's than my PC L and our Devastator Filter and what REALLY is better for them, I have had guy call and say... I am running 600, 700 cfm and I had a real hard time because I honestly didn't know how bigger units worked.
But this is the kicker it all really comes back to the hose 5,6,700 cfm what ever when guys say this and then state I have a whip of 1.5 to my 1.5 wand all of that is....useless it really doesn't mean a whole lot because the hose and the wand are the choke in the system.
What I have to worry about in my filter is only the lift the bigger machines produce and the force they can put on the HD Filter bag in the filter itself.
So after all that crap I just wrote yes it is MORE but not like you would think. The truth is the bigger blowers are really just for more tools...dual,triple wand and being able to pull enough air to do it.
The 2.0 hose is really what brings them all back into the same ballpark,and a # 4 blower is really a decent blower size for most carpet cleaning hooked to the right motor that can generate enough btu's to heat your water would be more than enough for most guys really.
The problem is most # 4's are mated to 20 hp and they just can't produce enough heat to move or clean at a faster rate, and I have a real hard time when guys say they are HOLDING 15 hg with a #33 #36 blower ON THE CARPET maybe CGD carpet.

 

[SamIam]

pretty cool. now your set up to do a test I always wondered about. Try hooking the blowers up in series and see how high of vac you can pull. If I am not mistaken you can increase max hg's when you do that. My dream machine would be 400cfm single wand machine that pulls 22 hg's

Ya cause not being able to push a wand or have your rotary's motor burn out is such a plus. I personally wouldn't want those specs. My back and wrist are in enough pain.

 

[SamIam]

I do like the dual wand possibility diesel fired heat or heat exchange?

 

[bob vawter]

OK...time to step that VW build up a tad.........

 

[TConway]

That is pretty awesome you have to admit.

 

[TConway]

Okay,
Well I broke my Vwtm trying to reach 20 Hg, I don't know if I really hit it or not but the good thing is... The tank, Dev, 4 drive belts, survived. What didn't make it was my custom aluminum pulley I had made. It broke the center right out of it... it was a little on the thin side @ 1/2 thick so.
I had to come up with a new way to mount the Pulley and this time a real pulley with a bushing just like what we all have on our Tm's now.
I did get it done but the pulley I had was 3.95" kinda small and only one belt per blower so I had to see if it was going to work and yes it did fine.

So I found a place on line that sells pulleys up to 10 grooves!! if you needed that many. I picked a pulley that was 4 groove( belts) and a diameter of 5.95.....
OMG!!! uumm, the power difference is crazy
I will post some pics of broken pulley, new one and the cfm I didn't have time to last night.
I have a old school Dev that I hooked (2) 2.5 ports on the back and (1) 2.5 out the front....took CFM reading at my filter and I am at 700 cfm at 1900-2000 rpms,
Now this all goes down the toilet as soon as you hook up 2.0 hose and a 2.0 wand to it, but it is pretty crazy how much cfm is at the front of the Dev it really is starting to get to the dangerous levels any animal if it were to get to close would be dead NOW....I don't think it would happen just cause of the noise going through the 2.5 port, but it is no joke.
So you rocket scientist out there can you tell me what my drive ratio is 5.95 Vw pulley and 3.95 blower pulleys 2" bigger drive pulley

 

[dgardner]

Share your secret pulley source?

 

[Lee Stockwell]

Drive over driven.
5.95 /3.95
~6/4
1.5:1

 

[TConway]

He is my cfm now after pulley, when I adjust throttle towards the end my motor is still only 2400 rpms this is about where it goes to when we put it under vac load with 2 wands.

 

[TConway]

Share your secret pulley source?

Yes I sure can do that for you all they were very good taking order and getting it to me in a decent amount of time.

http://www.electricmotorwarehouse.com/index.html
http://www.electricmotorwarehouse.com/pulley/pulley_sheave_menu.htm

 

[Captain America]

Gotta get a hole glide wand on that there machine or you'll wear your arm out,
Also a zipper or rotary with hole glides.
In my opinion you can't get too much vac or too much heat just increase the jets and water flow and increase your cleaning capacity.

 

[Captain America]

Ow long should that vw engine last approximate and and how much do the engines cost??
Great machine...

 

[TConway]

Well got my new pulley done yesterday and installed, she is running very smooth. We will see how she does today, I am going to go clean my sons house today and get her dialed in again.

 

[dealtimeman]

Why did you mill down the pulley?

 

[TConway]

Ow long should that vw engine last approximate and and how much do the engines cost??
Great machine...

How long will vw engine last? This is a good question, One of the problems vw motors have that causes them to fail is the clutch pressure plate when they are in a car. The in out movement and force of the clutch puts a ton of stress on the crankshaft, and back bearing, it actually over time pushes the crankshaft back into the block....this is called end play on the crank, as these motor get older the end play can go from say a 1/32" to well over a 1/4".
Being that I am not using the clutch there is no in out pressure on the crank like that, My sources have told me they have used vw motors in Napa Ca in the wine fields to turn props to move air and help to keep the frost from colder temps from happening.....they have been running for 10 years now.
The motor is @ 55-60 hp and prices very, but I believe you can get them for @ 1600-2000 dollars.
I bought 2 motors on CL for 500.00 both ran, I took the best of the 2 and used it to do the build, the other one I took and had it reworked, I still need to assemble it, if this new pulley works out I will complete the other one and have it ready to install, the one that is in the tm now is doing fine so far.
I also came up with a different way to tighten my blower belts, because I am running dual #4 blowers I made a adjustment rod the spreads the blowers from the center hub/pulley, this should cause even tension from each blower as they are pushing outward from each other.
My old set up I was pulling each blower outward, this caused uneven pull on the hub/pulley so we should be good.

 

[TConway]

Why did you mill down the pulley?

I had to because it was a weighted pulley and the added thickness was interfering with my belt clearance, I was just really after the center portion of the pulley so we could mount the drive pulley for the blowers
About 3/8 thick steel vs a normal vw pulley of 1/16 aluminum to much flex

 

[TConway]

I am setting lift at 13-14" Hg and that is it, no more monster lift, shoot I might drop it down to 12" Hg we are playing around with a new glide design right now and I want to see how low of lift we can go and still get decent dry times.
The cfm out of the vwtm is crazy so this is going to be fun as long as she holds together (knock on wood)