Building Homemade Jet Engine...Project Pics inside!

[ILLS]

I have talked about it once or twice to a few people but I finally had a little free time to bust a little work out on the homemade jet engine I will be making here soon. Why, may you ask, am I building my own jet engine??? I ask; why not? I do not plan for it to go into anything as of now. Depending on the thrust I am able to generate with it I maaaaay put it into a custom go-kart I plan to make. We will see but that is a ways off. As some of you may know, I am into custom modification of sleeper vehicles. I rarely go for the easy kits that just bolt into your run of the mill muscle car. I like a challenge and what better than a DIY jet turbine engine to showcase another side of that. I have a pretty large personal vehicle project I am doing right now so it will be a little while until I am able to put some real heavy work into this jet engine project but I do have a few progress pics for you to see. It is just a start but not a bad one. I machined my own turbo flanges out of some thinner stock. It does not really need the thicker stuff that you find in a normal turbo flange. I also welded the thrust/afterburner cone up the other day real quick. The reducer nozzle turned out better than I had planned for just a 30 minute hack and weld job. The top pipe you see going into the turbine housing will be cut down a little and expanded on out to about 6" in diameter and about 12" long. That section will be the combustion chamber and hold the flame tube. Then the compressor outlet will feed high pressure air into that chamber. I plan to use propane as my fuel for now because of the ease of use with is being pressurized. Once I do get it finished up and it is running well I might have a small get together if anyone wants to see what this thing is all about. Even a smaller jet engine like this one will sound MEAN AS HELL!!! Maybe roast a few hotdogs behind it or something.

I am looking for a little assistance with this project. I am asking anyone that can possibly donate a few small spare parts you might have laying around that could help me out. I have a small list of items I still need to procure.

#1) Oil pump. I need an electric pump that can handle pumping oil through the turbo bearing housing to keep it lubed and cool. An intercooler pump may work though I haven't tested one pushing anything more viscous than coolant. I tried to cheap it out and use a stocker fuel pump I had laying around and while it did push the much thicker oil it didn't flow nearly enough to keep the engine lubed and cooled.
#2) Angle iron or square tubing. Any kind of spare square or angle stock you might have laying around. Needed for the table I will build to mount this onto.
#3) Gas regulator. Similar to to what you find on an oxy acetylene torch assembly. I need this to regulate and monitor how much propane I am injecting so I can "tune" the air fuel mixture.
#4) Electric leaf blower. This is needed to get the turbine fast enough to allow proper ignition.

If anyone has any of the above items laying around I would really appreciate it if I could get them from you for real cheap or even free if you can do it? I can fund this stuff myself but after spending all the insane amount of money on that vehicle project I mentioned earlier I am running pretty low on "fun" funds to make this happen anytime soon.

Once I get a little extra time and maybe some more parts gathered then I will keep building the engine and post pics as I go. This should turn out to be a fun little summer project. Let me know what you think and especially if you can help out. Thanks.

 

[KD00LS]

How many turbos do you have sitting around? Make me a beer bong out of one.



Looks like a fun project, good luck man. Hook that up to the LS and try and make it into the 10's

 

[chicken]

How many turbos do you have sitting around? Make me a beer bong out of one.



Looks like a fun project, good luck man. Hook that up to the LS and try and make it into the 10's

forced alcohol induction, but that would make the beer all foamy :yuck:

 

[glanga]

If you have extra I'll take a beer bong too, hold the beer part

 

[chicken]

If you have extra I'll take a beer bong too, hold the beer part

now thats forced induction!!!!

 

[glanga]

now thats forced induction!!!!

:bowrofl: :bowrofl: :bowrofl: :bowrofl:

Yeah, I'm sick of going naturally aspirated :nos:

 

[ILLS]

How many turbos do you have sitting around? Make me a beer bong out of one.



Looks like a fun project, good luck man. Hook that up to the LS and try and make it into the 10's

Beer bong turbo??? Hmmm, Boozeturbo...interesting.

I have a few turbos and usually a few nitrous systems sitting around at any given time. This is all personal stuff not customer stuff; which I do not count.

If this little fella produces enough thrust I will put it into a custom go-kart. If it does not then a GSXR motor will go into the planned Kart project. If that is the case then the Jet engine will be just for the fun and sound of it.

 

[glanga]

Join the bandwagon and throw it in a Smart Car!

I've always wanted to see a gas powered Segway too so one up that and make a turbo jet engine Segway

 

[ground_zero298]

looks like a high performance meat grinder. Can't wait to see the video of this.

 

[ILLS]

Update

I had a little free time to work on the GTR-1 Project this evening...

Since the last update I have built the frame to house it all into and mounted it onto my engine stand for mobility and ease of work since I can flip the entire jet assembly 360 degrees on axis. As you can see I also did some work on the combustor too which included machining a few custom flanges. I always look for an excuse to work with my mill and using a regular T3 turbo flange as a base to work off of just seemed too easy.

Next I will machine the top flanges which will attach the flame tube and fuel nozzle assembly into the combustor before it is done. After that I will be able to test the combustor assembly by itself to see what kind of flame it will output. The name of the game here is to get FULL combustion in the combustor itself. If any flame hits the turbine wheel it will make the EGT's skyrocket and will have much higher chance to coke the oil onto the turbo bearings.

I still want to revise the thrust nozzle. Even though the welds were pretty decent I want to revise the shape of the cone itself and re-weld it so that it is smoother overall. Attractiveness in addition to function is the focus here.

After the metal hard parts are done I can focus on the next hurdle which is designing a miniature ignition. There are multiple ways of doing this but I am thinking of probably going with an automotive ignition coil and its own controller box. I am pretty good with electrical work but not a wiz by any stretch of the term so I will need to really contemplate how I will go about this to keep things simple and small yet effective for igniting the air fuel mix.


Till then...

 

[Roadboss]

Glow Plug, nice machine and fab work

 

[Markviiiedrea]

If you have any tech Q's here is my e-mail LVNmarks_2002@yahoo.com. I have worked on many jet engines including a complete overhaul and assembly of a J34 turbo jet. I am an aircraft mechanic, at least I was. Damn airlines!

I would be interested in the actual thrust; most homemade turbo/jet engines are nothing more then show.

If you have more turbo's I would try to compress more air in the combustion chamber to really get any kind of results. You should also shorten your exhaust and have it narrow and not expand and narrow.

How are you introducing fuels into the chamber? I wouldn't run with a filter either; it will just choke the system.

What are you using to start it? Air or electric? I would rig up a way to use shop air to spin the compressor.

You should find a way to put vanes on the inlet duct so it will control airflow with fuel. Try to use an A/F ratio of 13.1.

You shouldnt be using LP. Jet A is the cleanest and will burn the best but you can use diesel if you cant get Jet A.

 

[ILLS]

Glow Plug, nice machine and fab work

Nope, just plan to run automotive spark plug with its own coil driver. I only need to fire the plug during the startup. Once the engine self sustains then it is not needed.

 

[ILLS]

If you have any tech Q's here is my e-mail LVNmarks_2002@yahoo.com. I have worked on many jet engines including a complete overhaul and assembly of a J34 turbo jet. I am an aircraft mechanic, at least I was. Damn airlines!

I would be interested in the actual thrust; most homemade turbo/jet engines are nothing more then show.

If you have more turbo's I would try to compress more air in the combustion chamber to really get any kind of results. You should also shorten your exhaust and have it narrow and not expand and narrow.

How are you introducing fuels into the chamber? I wouldn't run with a filter either; it will just choke the system.

What are you using to start it? Air or electric? I would rig up a way to use shop air to spin the compressor.

You should find a way to put vanes on the inlet duct so it will control airflow with fuel. Try to use an A/F ratio of 13.1.

You shouldnt be using LP. Jet A is the cleanest and will burn the best but you can use diesel if you cant get Jet A.

Thrust. Yes this one right here does not use a large enough turbo to get allot of thrust. I did some thinking since I started this project and I will probably build this one and then convert it into a free-power unit versus a thrust based unit. The second one I build will use a MUCH larger turbo and produce just thrust power. To produce good thrust the correct turbo and combustor for it must be built, otherwise thrust will not be optomized. When built properly these turbo based units can do allot.

The exhaust does narrow. You can see it sticking out parrellel from the turbine housing. Now the compression tube going into the combustor does open up once inside the combustor but that is how it will have to be so that proper mixture will have to take place. That is one major difference between industry built jet engines and homebuild ones. The industry built ones have one hell of allot more time and research put into them so their combustors can be built smaller and more efficient. Homebuilt ones do not have that advantage so the combustor is built larger to compensate for that.

Don't take this the wrong way but this thread was more for exhibition purposes I wasn't exactly asking for tech advice as I am locked on for that anyways. I already have a solid plan for all the answers you tried to give. I appreciate your attempts to assist me but I really don't need it. While the theory behind industry based jet engines and homebuilt ones is the same, the application of it will need to be very different at times.

Fuel (propane for this engine) will be introduced under pressure and through a nozzle at the top of the combustor inside the flametube. The reason propane will be used for this engine is because it is simple and already under pressure which means that I will not have to build a real fuel system. I have built many custom fuel systems for vehicles so the building isn't as much of a problem as the money. I do not plan to put allot of money into this particular engine. Diesel, and thus a different fuel system will be used for #2.

In regards to your comments about AFR... The stoich AFR you reach for will depend totally on the fuel used. Different fuels require different stoichs.

It will be air start. Already have something easy and simple in place for this engine. The next one will be compressed C02 start so as to save space.

 

[fossten]

I have talked about it once or twice to a few people but I finally had a little free time to bust a little work out on the homemade jet engine I will be making here soon.

 

[ILLS]

Wile E. is a good friend of mine. I get all my tech advice from him. Too bad ACME a$$rockets aren't cheaper.

 

[JDS353]

keep plugging just by a billastic jacket to contain the sharpnal. safety safety safety. need expermenters not dead expermenters. jd