- Hey guys, Andre from High Performance Academy here, welcome along to another
one of our webinars.
Today we're going to be diving deep into the world of PDM CAN communication and I know
that probably sounds first of all completely dry and boring and also a touch scary.
I know a lot of people that are installing power distribution modules into their cars tend to
stay away from the CAN side of things and stick to wiring in conventional switches and
while yeah it's going to work, it's going to get the job done, you really are leaving a lot of
the power and capability of the power distribution module on the table if you don't
use the CAN communication functionality.
If you're sitting there wondering what on earth I'm talking about, don't worry, everything is
going to become clear as we go through today's lesson but before we do that, just to get you
back up to speed on what's been going on over the last couple of weeks.
First of all, we've got about 7 or 8 hours left of our MoTeC giveaway left to run.
So one last opportunity, let me just get this big bad boy up here and it kind of dwarfs
me, this is MoTeC's largest, biggest, baddest display that they create.
This is the MoTeC C1212 dash unit.
And you can use this for so many purposes, not only is it a driver display, we are also
including with that giveaway their reversing camera so you can have part of that display
essentially work as a reversing camera.
Obviously great for your street car but if you happen to have a GT3 style race car and you
want to know what's going on behind you, you can incorporate that too,
you see that on most of the GT3 style race cars already, pretty commonplace.
Now while the C1212 does come with a range of pre configured display options that
are going to suit most people, you can also use the optional included Display Creator
upgrade that we're offering with this giveaway.
And Display Creator essentially allows you to make your own displays and you can
really configure that to your heart's content, only limiting factor there is your imagination.
It's not included with this giveaway but of course as with all of MoTeC's dashes you
can also add the logging option and then it becomes a complete central logging hub,
you can use MoTeC's advanced i2 data analysis software to help improve the
driver, the engine and the chassis.
So a really really powerful dash display unit.
On top of this we're also including our VIP membership as well, so that gives you access
to every course that HPA currently offers.
You're going to get free priority access to every course we ever produce in the future
forever as well as free lifetime gold membership giving you access to our webinars, like you're about
to watch here, as well as our private member's only forum.
Total deal package is a touch over $6000 USD so this is a great one to get your name into
the draw for.
So if we just quickly head across to my laptop screen for a moment.
This is the page you'll come through to.
If you click the link that Scott is going to drop into the chat, you can look at everything
that's included in that package deal, there are a few different options there as
well to give you a few more entries into the draw, completely free to enter,
no strings attached here and we will also ship that free or charge to your door,
no matter where abouts in the world you are watching from so don't think you're
going to miss out, we've got you covered.
Again only 8 hours left to go on that giveaway so make sure that you do get your name into
the draw and if you are watching this later on in our YouTube, sorry you missed out but we
do run these giveaways fairly frequently so check hpacademy.com and you'll see if we're
running a current giveaway.
Right now I wanted to bring you up to speed with a project that I did introduce quite a while
ago which is our FJ40 fuel tank build.
Now traditionally so far, High Performance Academy has been best known for our courses
related to engine tuning, engine building and wiring but we have branched out over the last
couple of years and specifically cover race car development, race driver education, we are
also covering motorsport fabrication as well because this is another area that we know
there is a lot of misinformation, we've got a lot of members and a lot of enthusiasts out
there who want to learn these skills so they can do more themselves so we decided to
take the plunge and move into fabrication as well so we've already got our Motorsport
Fabrication Fundamentals course, that's been out since around about the start of this year.
We are very close to launching our motorsport TIG welding, practical TIG welding course,
this should be out within the next week so particularly if you are watching this later
on on YouTube, it's definitely already going to be in our course archive.
One of the last parts before we could launch this was a worked example that we're going
to add into our library and this was an aluminium welding worked example which we know a lot
of even professional fabricators do struggle a little bit to lay down really good quality
consistent welds on aluminium.
So we decided to show you exactly what's involved.
So if we jump across to my laptop screen, I'll just take you through the project.
I have as I said introduced this briefly in a past webinar but we'll go over it.
This is the fuel tank design.
Obviously when it comes to designing components like this, there's a variety of ways we can do it and
there's absolutely nothing wrong with your old fashioned sketch book, pencil and a ruler
you can get a great job done.
These days with the accessibility of products like Fusion 360, it does add a lot more
flexibility to what we're doing and namely in this one as well, this design here, Brandon
who drew this up in Fusion 360, then allows us to basically send off the file to a local
sheet metal working company and then they can laser cut the parts out of aluminum sheet
so essentially it should, fingers crossed, all working properly, fit together exactly as per
our plan.
Before we jump too much further into this, that's the basic design and particularly in this
shot here you can see that internally we've got some baffles that are designed.
And there's two purposes for those baffles.
One is to actually add some rigidity and strength to what otherwise would be a
relatively flimsy tank.
Particularly if you ended up putting a bit of pressure down in the middle or from the
underneath, it's obviously going to move around and bow.
So the internal baffles stop that but obviously the other aspect with those internal baffles
is to help reduce surge or fuel slosh.
That's going to go so far but with an EFI vehicle, obviously we need a constant
supply of high pressure fuel.
So that is where the Radium fuel surge tank comes in as well.
I've got this sitting beside me, it's probably going to be a little bit hard to get too much
detail into it but this is a unit that runs the industry standard bolt pattern at the top here
so this will bolt into essentially any existing fuel cell and it contains a lift pump which we've
got here, as well as a 2 litre surge tank with a high pressure lift pump in it.
I'll get that out of the way for now but as well as that it's also got a fuel level sensor
so it's a nice compact unit and that's what we incorporated into the design there.
Now back to my laptop here, I'll just go through the process here.
So some of the parts, obviously as delivered from the laser cutter and again the ability
to send those files through, yes we could have hand cut these but honestly, the time saving
of having them laser cut it, if you value your time at all it's almost certainly going to be
cheaper in the long run to actually have a company laser cut this, it's not a huge amount
of money to get that done and the accuracy of the finished product is going to be a lot
better.
Except for in our case, the first time they sent through the parts cut from steel.
Turns out that they didn't actually read the information we provided them so you know,
accurate to a point but we still couldn't fault the actual product they delivered, even if it
just was in the wrong material.
Anyway, second time was the charm and we ended up getting them delivered in alloy.
There you can see the baffle section all assembled up.
Now there is this angled section here on the tank so one of the really key aspects with
aluminium welding is really the preparation and the parts fit up.
That's really the key to getting a good weld and anyone who's good at aluminium welding
will tell you that most of the work actually goes into the preparation.
If you get that all right, then the actual welding process should be relatively straightforward.
This parts preparation starts by preparing the edges that have been laser cut.
And here Jimmy's using just a simple hand file to get back to the nice clean bare aluminium
beneath where it's been laser cut.
Finishing that off as well with a deburring tool on both edges, that just removes
any swarf that is left.
Next step there is to just scour the surfaces on both sides of the material with a scotch
brite pad and then finally we'd go over this with a clean rag with some acetone.
And this just removes any potential contaminants from the surface, any oils
or anything of that nature and gives us a nice clean surface to start the welding
process with.
Once everything's cleaned, again it's just some basic fit up here and one of the problems
with aluminium of course is it's not magnetic, it's non ferrous so this means the typical
fabricator's magnetic clamps aren't really going to be that useful.
Fortunately this particular tank actually sits together quite nicely so it's pretty easy to get
everything fitting up.
Jimmy then got into some tack welding and what we're trying to do here is just provide
some tacks around the perimeter, enough that we can just get everything aligned, make sure
that there's no gaps between the components and make sure everything's where it should be.
Little trick here, when you're got a panel on an angle like this, what we've found works really well
is kapton tape which actually comes from the wiring side of HPA.
It's a high temperature insulating tape and it's good for just holding components in place
while they're tack welded.
Nice thing is it's very heat resistant and it doesn't leave a residue on the surface
which is really important for TIG welding.
So you can see, we've got tack welds on the corners and perhaps every couple of
100 mm in between, again just to make sure that nothing moves around.
One of the parts that's a little bit trickier with this construction is with the top of the fuel
cell, we've got this machined alloy plate that is tapped and threaded, drilled and
threaded I should say for the bolt pattern for that fuel surge tank.
As you can see though, it is quite thick and this can be a bit of a stretch for some of
the 200, 210 amp motorsport TIG welders.
It's going to take a lot of heat so one of the tricks that you can apply here is to actually
pre heat the thick material just using a butane torch.
Doesn't need to be given a massive amount of additional heat, 20 odd seconds with that
butane torch is just enough to bring up the surface temperature enough to make
it much easier to get a weld pool forming.
And once that was all set up, Jimmy could then weld the top in place.
Now there's slots here where everything slots together so we can see one of his finished welds
here and if you have done everything right, this is the sort of surface finish that you should
be able to achieve with your weld.
Everyone wants that nice stacked dime appearance but again with welding aluminium,
there's a lot that goes into this.
Primarily in the preparation as I already mentioned.
Obviously your welder settings are critical and what we've done within this course is we have
a material specific section.
And for each of the common materials you're likely to come across, we've got a range of
base settings that you'll need to use including what sort of amperage you want to use,
your gas flow, what sort of cup size, your tungsten, tungsten angle, filler rod,
basically everything you need to get yourself up and running.
Now once the top was welded in place, Jimmy could start laying down the external welds and
there was about 6 metres of linear welding on this tank so sufficed to say, pretty good
way of getting a lot of time on the TIG torch.
Another aspect that's really easy to overlook with a job like this is to make sure that you
handle the cooling of the finished product.
Obviously aluminium is very conductive material so it does tend to heat up.
We simply used a fan that we use for actually cooling our workplace and placed the tank
on top of that for a few minutes in between welds and that was just enough to get it back
down to a workable temperature.
So if you are interested in learning more about TIG welding, and we don't just cover
aluminium, basically all of the materials you're likely to come across, mild steel, chromoly,
stainless steel and even titanium are all covered, you'll learn how to use gas lenses, you'll learn
about back purging as well.
Obviously very very critical for the more reactive materials like stainless steel and
titanium.
That course should be out within the next week so you can check back at hpacademy.com/courses
and if you are watching this in the future on YouTube, we'll chuck a link in the description
you can follow in order to get to that course.
Alright moving on, our latest episode of the HPA Tuned In podcast is now live and this is
one that I was really excited to do.
This is an interview with John Shepherd who is probably one of the reasons that I actually
got into drag racing in the first place and back in the days, John Shepherd was really well
known for his Talon Eclipses, DSM Talon Eclipse, we'll jump across to my laptop screen.
A really pixellated of that Eclipse just about lifting the front wheels in the air.
Now I will apologise I actually forget how quick John actually ended up going but deep into
the 7s with that Eclipse from the best of my memory, it's something like about 193 mph,
now yes there's cars that are much faster, Boostin Performance in particular with the
4G platform are knocking on the 6 second door at well over 200 mph but John set these
times back when no one was anywhere close and he was definitely an inspiration
to me, one of the reasons why I started getting involved with import drag racing
and ended up building my own Evo.
Never quite managed to break into the 7s but we did go 8.2s at 180 mph so I don't
think we were really mucking around.
Now John is probably these days best known for ShepTrans which builds all manner of
high performance transmissions for just about any fast car that is currently popular.
Big movers in his shop are still the Mitsubishi and DSM brands but moreso these days the
Nissan R35 GTR platform as well as more recently the Audi R8 and Lamborghini Huracan
platforms as well with their dual clutch transmissions.
So really interesting conversation with John, one of the takeaways for me was we talked about
his own Audi R8, makes around about 1700, 1800 wheel horsepower, runs into the high 7s,
yet is completely streetable and to me that is just nuts.
The ability for a car making that much power to still be 100% streetable, still have air con,
still have leather interior, still be able to rock through your local McDonalds drive through,
absolutely insane.
Anyway, if you want to hear more from our interview with John, check out the HPA Tuned In
podcast, you can head to hpa-tunedin.com to find out more but also search for HPA Tuned In
on any podcast platform that you're currently listening to your podcasts.
Alright we'll just finish off with a last reminder, that MoTeC C1212 giveaway, 8 hours left to run.
Not much time, absolutely free to get your name into the draw, $6000 USD worth of value.
Not only do you get the dash, you're also getting HPA VIP membership, it is an amazing deal,
we'll ship it free of charge straight to your door so please head to the link in the chat to make
sure that you get your name in the draw and don't miss out.
Alright thanks for watching, give me a few moments here and we'll get started with
today's lesson.
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