Electric waterpump project
Turbo Mini Forums

Saul Bellow - "A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep."
Stephen Hawking - "The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge."

Very interesting thread. It isnt unussual to find lumps of sand casting crap in the waterways and 30 years of crude build up. The Hi Torque Starter does indeed look exactly like a Toyota one, which is a Denso starter, a separate thread might be useful to find out or work out which one and whats required to make which ever is the best Denso Starter onto a mini. If you could pick up a used Toyota Starter and someone did a alloy adaptor plate and drive gear that could be a cracking little MOD. So Evans is basically snake oil...

has anyone ever done what paul has taken a pic of
that is drive the std mini pump with an electric motor via the correct size pulleys and or a viable speed motor?

http://www.shengineering.co.uk/sh/sites/de...ts/DSCF0571.JPG From SH website, huge water pump pulley and Crank Pulley... Reason? perhaps by increasing pulley diameter the amount of surface area of belt in contact with pulleys will stop it slipping?? or is there other thoughts?

I'd have thought they have some new crank damper with a large diameter housing needing a big pulley, but didn't want the water pump turning at 12000 RPM. It does look odd though.

What I can't figure out, is WTF is going on with the water pump pulley bolt at 3 o'clock. It looks like it's hanging in fresh air....

Edited by TurboDave16V on 5th Nov, 2013.

I think only 2 bolts have been tightend.

If i have more toys than you when i die, I WIN

The idea of that pulley must be for the likes of 16v minis that are revving to 10k I'd have thought

Utterly non-scientific, but the two engines I've fitted Dowty fans to felt like they revved up and down faster than with a std fan.
It was more noticeable on the Elf which swapped between a 16 blade metal fan, the Dowty and back again.

Metric is for people who can't do fractions.

my thinking is that that ratio of pulleys for engines spending there life at like 7-10K and thats slowing the fan and pump to the point where they come back into there efficiency range

what about using the smaller impellor pump instead of the larger one?

If the traditional cooling system is used, with a thermostat ot blanking sleave, surely the smaller pump would work better at the higher rpm's. since the thermostat or blanking sleave restricts the coolant flow at high rpm causing the pump to 'stall' (which is what I think is happening rather than cavitation)sooner, the lower efficiency of the smaller pump might make see it stall higher up the rpm thereby absorbing less power. Obviously we are also talking about power absorption in the drive belt too.

Looking at Paul's idea with the starter motor, if we were purely looking at driving the mechanical pump with an electric motor, assuming 1.5hp required mechanical power, the electric motor current might be in the region of 75 amps.

Thats a lot for contuous operation requiring a bigger alternator which then saps more mechanical power from the engine.

You only have to turn on a pair of 130watt driving lamps at idle to hear the alternator load up and see the idle rpm drop.

As Turbo Dave said, it will be a good way to measure the power absorption of the mechanical pump set up.

I don't think that the choice of pump would help much other than to limit the maximum flow.

From the Minispares website photos it looks like the small impeller pump uses the same housing as the large pump and an impeller of the same diameter but shorter blades. This means that it has the same shut-off head and suction performance, just pumps less at a given speed.

A couple of pictures to illustrate:





I'm hoping that I will never have to run the motor at full wack, else I will run into overload on the electrics. As well as the injection load, I'm also planning on driving a 200psi water injection pump.

Saul Bellow - "A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep."
Stephen Hawking - "The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge."

I used a Corley Conversion pump on my KAD engine in the early 90's

I think KAD started selling them after we had good results [they used 2 on their 1st 'fastest mini' race car]

another thread - http://www.turbominis.co.uk/forums/index.php?p=vt&tid=420176

So....I got taken over by work the past few months therefore it has taken me a while to get back with any significant updates.

I got the mini running during Easter, everything worked a treat....all electronic systems performed faultlessly The electronic waterpump controller modulates the pump perfectly to a fast warm up, after which it uses full power and if necessary fan assist to keep a stable temp, even when idling for longer periods.

Mission accomplished from a technical standpoint. As far as performance goes, what is immediately noticeable is the absence of fan (and pump?) noise. Futhermore, the engine revs much more freely which I am surprised to say is already very noticeable when pulling away / driving from very low revs.

I haven't put the car on the rollers yet, but am very happy with the way things feel in the butt dyno department!!! Finished the car over the weekend, here are some all important pictures:

Sorry if it's already been mentioned but does the pump controller also switch on the fan or is that on it's own thermostat?

i like that rocker cover :)

Yes i moved to the darkside

Instagram @jdm_brett

The controller activates both pump and fan, it is able to modulate pump voltage between zero (completely off) and anywhere between 6volt and 13volt.

In addition it activates the fan when the target temp gets exceeded by 3degC. When switching off the engine it keeps the pump/fan running for at least 2 minutes to prevent heat soak.

The controller gets its readings from the sensor plugged into the top of the 'thermostat housing' (which doesn't actually house a thermostat since that function has been taken over by the controller)

Edited by Evoderby on 5th May, 2014.

Old post revival!

Did this setup keep the mini cool?

My build thread..

http://www.turbominis.co.uk/forums/index.php?p=vt&tid=542985

And did you ever dyno it to see how many ponies you saved?

Op de bank beleef je geen avonturen

Well doing a good bit of thread digging here......

I'm looking at sorting my intercooler and rad setup, after a load of head scratching, I'm looking at a front mount rad and lecky (BMW) pump, due to Paul's coment below about a 2 core possibly being close to the limit, and moving the inter cooler to where the Rad used to be, and ducting to it....

...which raised the thought, how much heat does the intercooler give off in comparison with a Rad... and after a bit of head scratching for somthing like a 16v running 20+ psi or around 250 hp... I make it 25kw. not far off what the cooling system outputs, albeit at a much lower duty cycle....

does that sound about right?

From the sims, I was seeing heat given off by the intercooler equivalent to about 10% of brake power. That's based on 20 DegC ambient, 85% Efficiency cooler.

So your 25kw is a bit high.

Saul Bellow - "A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep."
Stephen Hawking - "The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge."

Cool, so about 15-20 kW ball park, that should work.