darrenjlobb's Rolling Road Chassis Dyno Project

[darrenjlobb]

After taking them away, I decided to see if welding the stators up would be an option, as I didnt have much to loose, and after doing so, decided that although not pretty, the repairs should be fine, and should hopefully last for some time to come yet...

Built up with weld (roughly at this point in time):



Also noticed the bearings were bad in one unit, and wanted to strip them right down to check the heat exchangers and mechanical seals that prevent water from reaching the bearings, so tore into the rest of the unit (took a while to figure how it all came apart, sadly damaged a housing in the process, but got there in the end):



Center shaft, as you can see, runs normal generic bearings, so no issues replacing them



Bare shaft:



Cleaned up center core:



I then discovered the reason for the bearing failure, the mechanical seals were totally shot in this brake. allowing water to get from the stator housing into the bearings, this, and the wear to the stator were obviously the reasons this thing was abandoned.

The dyno uses a ceramic mechanical seal to run against another ceramic face on the shaft to stop the water, the seal is as below:





Now for anyone that knows me, this seemingly small / simple mechanical seal, has been the vane of my life for the last couple weeks..I am un-able to source a replacement anywhere, seemingly due to the strange arragement of sprung part in the housing and a simple single ring as the stationary on the shaft collar itself...I have a few companies working on it, but as of yet, no real answers (if anyone has any ideas, please do get involved!)

But otherwise both brakes are stripped, cleaned up, stators welded, and ready to re assemble, bar these two seals....so thats really the hold up for the time being.

In the mean time i figured I would test out the water pump, which is three phase, and we are single phase only, so bought a VFD to allow me to run the 3 phase motor..

Wiring the motor for 240v delta 3 phase rather than star config:



Setup outside using bulk water storage tank, vfd and pump to circulate water for 15 minutes to ensure everything is ok



All seems well and seems the pump is working perfect.

Thats as far as things have progressed so far, but below is the first of a series of videos, and any ideas / help on the seals is most welcome.

Thanks for reading

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxUN4Nks...e=youtu.be