- Arguably one of the most recognisable names and faces when it comes to the aftermarket
diesel tuning world is Gale Banks from Banks Power.
In particular we're big fans of Gale's YouTube channel, we love his analytical approach to
analysing certain aspects of diesel engine performance and the way he develops
his products.
While the power's one side of the coin, particularly ere in the US where the EPA
are really cracking down on emissions in particular, making sure that you're
making good power with reliability but also remaining emissions compliant is quite
important and of course on the diesel engines, modern diesel engines,
we've got diesel particulate filters, you've got diesel exhaust fluid injection
into the exhaust system for catalyst effect so how much can we do while retaining
that equipment?
I know a lot of people want to take all of that away and throw it away.
- That's over, those days are gone.
Full deletes are so illegal and now the EPA is on the purveyors, the guys who
have provided the electronic aspect of that.
We've never done that aspect, because we have our own ECU, if we want to build
an emissions free engine for racing we do it.
But the average truck driven on the street, and this depends on the level of enforcement
in whatever state you live in.
It used to be, and still is very tight in California but now I think 14 or 15 other
states have adopted California but the big dog EPA is all over this and they're taking
out the people who have done this because it's criminal.
So at the end of the day we look at, like the DPF,
much of the aftermarket tuning provides additional fuel, some of which does not
get consumed in the cylinder.
So if you do a smokey diesel tune you're putting smoke in the air rather than using
that fuel energy in cylinder.
We don't go there, we have an AVL device that measures the micro soot going
into the DPF.
We also can look at soot loading in the DPF so when we do a tune, we accept the fact
that there's back pressure because of the oxy cat, there's two catalytic devices and a DPF.
So it adds up to four or five pounds of back pressure.
Also on the Fords and the GMs, from the DPF out, they're blending cool air with hot air.
So you don't put out extremely high temp 1100 degree exhaust out of the tail pipe
tip during regen.
- So there's a lot going on there and I think one of the aspects is before these diesel
particulate filters were commonplace, we did see a lot of smokey tunes and rolling
coal was pretty commonplace, a lot of people want that, however we do see that in simple
terms, very very simple terms, adding additional fuel into a diesel engine,
to a degree is going to increase the power but the problem with the DPF is if you
aren't really aware of what's going on, you can be creating a smokey tune
pre DPF and then essentially making more power but just filling up the DPF?
- That's why we use the micro soot analyser.
- So that micro soot analyser, you're looking at the soot output straight out of the
engine basically pre DPF so you know how much extra load you're placing on the DPF?
- Yeah and you don't want to regen it constantly.
The back pressure across a DPF is a function of its soot load.
So we don't want to have it regening all the time, we don't want its average back
pressure to be higher than stock so we really watch the regen cycle rate on a
stock truck is our bogey, we don't want additional regens.
- Now I probably should go back there because a lot of our viewers may not
actually even know what a regen cycle is so essentially that DPF collects the
particulate matter in the exhaust and it will fill up over time so the regen cycle
is used to essentially super heat the DPF and burn off that soot.
Basically freshening is ready to collect more, is that a simplistic enough way of
looking at it?
- Yeah but you burn fuel to create that heat.
- So that also reduces your fuel economy so it's not a win win situation.
- No so we tune our inline devices to honour a specific air/fuel ratio, a specific
soot output.
- So essentially you've got it as good as it can possibly be with the DPF in place?
- So we're diminishing the pumping losses as the piston rises on the exhaust stroke
by reducing back pressure, we don't get rid of all of it but we get rid of a
significant percentage so we combine better air density in, less restriction out
and that allows us to tune more aggressively.
And makes the engine a hell of a lot more efficient.
- Now another thing I want to touch on there, you're sort of just getting towards that
anyway is the diesel engine tuning, I've sort of mentioned before, in broad terms we can
add fuel, we're going to end up making more power, we're adding fuel ending up with
a richer air/fuel ratio.
Of course the aspect of that is we do end up creating a lot more heat and this is where we
need to manage that heat with the diesel engine tuning in order to remain reliable.
The problem with a lot of the diesel trucks, particularly here in the US is they are used
for towing very heavy loads and we can get into a situation where you can create
a tune that's perfectly safe and very powerful on an unladen truck but then go and put
a very heavy load on it, tow it up a hill and it's a very different situation.
How are you managing that when you're deciding on where the safe area is
for your tunes?
Is it through monitoring and controlling EGT directly or do you have a benchmark?
- First of all we're keenly aware of constant duty.
Our military engines have to pass a 400 hour NATO test 85% of which is at full
torque or full horsepower.
Two hours full torque, two hours full horse, that's everything the engine will do.
You'll never see that in a pickup truck.
So we engineer all of our tuning to do exactly what you just talked about at any
altitude with any air inlet density you come up with.
If you're a cowboy and you do the old smokey tune and try to push it through
a DPF, you'll soon plug up that DPF but secondly the heat, you mentioned heat
a minute ago.
We're looking at EGT of course but we're looking at air/fuel ratio and air/fuel ratio is the prime
thing here.
If the OEs at 18:1 air/fuel, that's our bogey.
So how do we get more air into the engine, how do we get that compressor to produce
more air density so we can mix that air mass with fuel mass.
Same EGT if you're at the same air/fuel ratio, it's pretty, they relate to each other.
- So essentially while you're adding more fuel, you're also adding more air so you're getting
a larger combustion charge inside the engine but maintaining essentially an OE air/fuel
ratio target?
- That's it, exactly.
My goal is with intake, exhaust and tuning, to 70 to 100 more horsepower and torque,
120, 140 pound feet and stay within the design of all the major components on the engine
and the exhaust system.
I'm a racer.
Holding back like that is tough to do.
I get the idea of why guys want a full delete 'cause now you can just blow smoke.
I've never ever had a diesel record holding vehicle that smoked and we've held quite
a few so that being the case, including Bonneville, we ran that first common rail
Cummins, no smoke, 222 miles an hour.
- I think it's reasonable to say that with the continued drive towards improved or reduced
emissions, we're going to see less and less smoke and more and more people focusing
on making sure that the tune will work with all of those emissions components in tact.
Look Gale it's been great to get some insight into that, I think it's fair to say we live in a
pretty exciting time with the current crop of diesel engines, the amount of performance
that we are able to get out of them so hopefully you guys will continue producing
great products so thanks for the chat there.
- Thank you.
- If you liked that video make sure you give it a thumbs up
and if you're not already a subscriber, make sure you're subscribed.
We release a new video every week.
And if you like free stuff, we've got a great deal for you.
Click the link in the description to claim your free spot to our next live lesson.