Jan
26

Blue Thunder II Status Report 01-20-15

By Tom McNerney | January 26, 2015 | News

Press release: For immediate release.
“Blue Thunder II Status Report”
Tuesday, January 20, 2015
www.BlueThunderAirRacing.com

Now that we are three weeks into the New Year, We’re hoping everyone had a joyous holiday season.

The picture above is of our September engine installed on the Exotic Engine dynamometer. The power transmission is bolted directly to the crank shaft at the front of the engine without the PSRU installed. The headers were built just for the dyno so that the exhaust could be directed out through the roof of the building and making possible the use of lambda sensors. The oil tank can be seen to the left and the Thunder Mustang “rams horns” attached to the throttle bodies upside down, with a tuba shaped funnel on top to smooth out the airflow into the engine. The wiring harness and ECUs are hanging on chains from the ceiling.

Jim Horn from Exotic Engines; Fred Roscher, CEO of 51 Aero; Mike Cummings, Blue Thunder II crew chief and I spent two full days tuning the MoTeC program for maximum engine performance at a maximum 6000 RPM . I can conclude that we all learned a lot and achieved my most optimistic horse power expectations for this engine, but had to back off from this peak because the EGTs were exceeding 1400 degrees. On the final dyno pull, the horse power was still climbing at 6500 RPM and was quite fuel efficient at .45 BSFC.

From the cam shaft serial number I found that it was manufactured by LSM Systems Engineering and when they were contacted, they were very helpful with the information about the cam and sent me a copy of the cam card. Mike and I have a policy of “Trust but Verify” so this last week we spent a lot of time verifying that the cam was installed per the cam card specifications and installing the PSRU.

The Blue Crew would like to highlight our newest sponsor, RC Engineering, http://www.rceng.com/ . We recommend them for all your fuel injector needs. We again thank all our fans and sponsors for their support without which this testing would not be possible.
John, Jan and the Blue Crew.

Blue Thunder Air Racing
5805 Alpha Avenue
Reno, Nevada 89506
(775) 677-4860