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MCI 102-C3 coach to RV - Engine Bay

Elwenil said,

Does the stock pump have a bypass hose? If so, would it be possible to plumb in a "auxiliary pump" in the bypass? Not sure how that would work, but it seems plausible. Stick some sort of agricultural water pump in there or something.
 
Elwenil said:
Does the stock pump have a bypass hose? If so, would it be possible to plumb in a "auxiliary pump" in the bypass? Not sure how that would work, but it seems plausible. Stick some sort of agricultural water pump in there or something.​
It has the ports for the bypass hose. Only 1/2"NPT, it looks like. There's a port on each side of the engine block towards the back. Both are 3/4"NPT and supply the OTR heat along with the air compressor coolant. The pathways in the floor equate to 3/4" and the ports on the Meziere 20GPM pumps are -12AN which is the closest equivalent to 3/4" hose. Figured I'd stick with the same size all around for the floor in case I do need to flow it that much. I think I'll be plumbing the cold outlet of the floor to the block and draw from the crossover between the heads to return to the pump(s), flow through the heater and then circulate through the floor. Flowing floor heat through the engine is wasted heat, of course, but should be easier on power draw than an electric oil heater.
 
CarterKaft said,

Thought...

Since cooling fans for the radiators are going to be high current draw and several of them what about using a load sensing hydraulic pump off the engine to drive the various fan motors and the mechanical water pump?

PWM control over the fans and pump should be fairly simple and with emergency over ride solenoids can run without electricity entirely.
 
CarterKaft said:
Thought...

Since cooling fans for the radiators are going to be high current draw and several of them what about using a load sensing hydraulic pump off the engine to drive the various fan motors and the mechanical water pump?

PWM control over the fans and pump should be fairly simple and with emergency over ride solenoids can run without electricity entirely.​
That crossed my mind briefly, but my experience with hydraulic radiator fans has been reason for switching to clutch or electric. Throw in some parts links if ya got any. I'd like to browse the option. Having removed almost every OE electrical item and replacing all lights with LED, there won't be much load on the 270 amp alternator. I'll be bumping the voltage regulator up to 29 volts if we get the Braille batteries and they crank this mother over without a problem.
 
CarterKaft said,
JNHEscher said:
That crossed my mind briefly, but my experience with hydraulic radiator fans has been reason for switching to clutch or electric. Throw in some parts links if ya got any. I'd like to browse the option. Having removed almost every OE electrical item and replacing all lights with LED, there won't be much load on the 270 amp alternator. I'll be bumping the voltage regulator up to 29 volts if we get the Braille batteries and they crank this mother over without a problem.​
My thinking was really that with the super thick cores as OEM you are going to have use some bad ass fans to make work correctly, or if switching to thinner cores you will have to increase the core count and thus fan count. I am not aware of any bad ass (industrial) DC fans although I am sure they exist. Electric Fan Engineering seems to have some but no idea on cost or efficiency.


Concentric Hydraulics has a brochure that might help explain the system.
 
The fans I'll figure out when we get some radiators here. I won't be using the stock rads. They're way too thick and don't have enough surface area. I get an email back from Luke today. Going to borrow the wife's phone tomorrow so I can get right to the point of getting prices on the radiators I sent him links to. He didn't make any mention in his reply of either unit I asked about.
 
CarterKaft said:
My thinking was really that with the super thick cores as OEM you are going to have use some bad ass fans to make work correctly, or if switching to thinner cores you will have to increase the core count and thus fan count. I am not aware of any bad ass (industrial) DC fans although I am sure they exist. Electric Fan Engineering seems to have some but no idea on cost or efficiency.


Concentric Hydraulics has a brochure that might help explain the system.​
Checking out EFE. Their hydraulic fan list has a picture of a Detroit 8v92 at the bottom. How about them apples? I'll be in contact with them soon.
 
CarterKaft said,

I suspect EFE will be pricey as they seem to be about problem solving in industrial/transportation applications but maybe they have useful info.

I have tried to dig up some CAT 3408 cooling BTU info to use as a comparison (we don't have 2T engines...) but so far no luck.

I did find this generic brochure about coachs/rv's that might be useful.
https://prevostcommunity.com/PDF/Mot...%20economy.pdf

This doc pertains to genset design but might at least help in some way.

This the manual I was looking for. from the list here
 
Those are pretty sweet references. I like me some in-depth technical reading.

I spoke with Luke at US Coach. He still didn't give me quotes on the radiators I asked for, so I'm waiting on quotes from the retailer I got the links from. We discussed the problems I ran into and went over the list of things to check. I explained how our VIN shows that our bus came with the 8V92 and Allison HT740, but the bus was built from the factory with a manual trans and the hack automatic swap was terribly obvious. He wasn't sure how this came about either. In his email he said that the only time customers have gone to larger radiators is when they installed a turbo on their 6Vxx or swapped to the 8V92. I said we have the 8V92-TA and Allison four-speed. Lots of heat to get rid of. We do have the dual oil cooler installed and plumbed. He gave me a phone number to a radiator builder in Chicago that he uses. They expand the stock MCI side radiators with more rows. After that, we concluded that someone had swapped in the turbo 8V and left the low-capacity radiators in it. The high-capacity radiators are $1,500 each. I'd still rather a thinner radiator with more surface area and equal or greater volume.
 
CarterKaft said,

Have you seen folded core radiators? They are common in the larger equipment I work on, no idea if it is applicable in your application but it might be away to increase surface area without thick cores.
 
I've seen those in passing but never realized what their design consisted of. That'll be some reading for tonight. If you're working on large industrial equipment with radiators like that, the powertrains probably have higher output and load than what I'm dealing with. In that case, a folded core must be a pretty good design. Looks physically stronger, too.
 
CarterKaft said,
JNHEscher said:
I've seen those in passing but never realized what their design consisted of. That'll be some reading for tonight. If you're working on large industrial equipment with radiators like that, the powertrains probably have higher output and load than what I'm dealing with. In that case, a folded core must be a pretty good design. Looks physically stronger, too.​
Yes exactly, allot of earth moving equipment I work on has large high horse power high loads but relatively small radiator area. They use serious fans and creative radiator designs. They are finally using Hydraulic fans and it makes servicing the engines allot easier than with the older belt drive fans.

Another system is called AMOCS. These cores are very thick and are two pass with staggered cooling fins and a common tank on the bottom.

Neither of these systems might be the right thing for your bus but I like to learn all I can and you seem to be like minded.
 
CarterKaft said:
you seem to be like minded.​
I second that. Some good convo going on here.



I'd totally take the hydraulic fan drive efficiency if the price is right and the reliability sticks around. I may call EFE this coming week to see if I can squeeze a price tag out of somebody and what kind of life theirs fans have in them. If the price is outrageous, (which there's a good chance it is) a modified shop fan with a hydraulic motor from McMaster would almost be the same.

Starting out my folded core search and see that Northern Radiator sells individual cores. How friggin' cool is that? Provided the design offers some customizable assembly, I could put together some cool units for the perfect fit. This gets my LEGO fancy rocks off lol.
 
bdkw1 said,

Those folded core radiators are pretty neat. Even better if you get one custom sized to fit where you need it.
 
bdkw1 said:
Child labor FTW!

Those folded core radiators are pretty neat. Even better if you get one custom sized to fit where you need it.​
They are. I'm still deciding between the folded core and AMOCS style. Folded core is probably the most suitable for the funky airflow to deal with in a rear engine bus. Wife and I did a bunch of cross-referencing over a video call last night and found a bunch of cores that would fit great. And they're really easy to make a custom assembly. Great price, as well. I found that Micon Industries has a warehouse in Denver that is run by Serck Sevices. Gonna pay a visit if they have some in stock. I need to know the rest of the dimensions and get an idea of their fluid volume.

The modular design is exactly what I was trying to get at with the multiple Champion radiators. Super happy that CarterKraft brought them up. Being an industrial design, they're far stronger than some Chinese race radiators and I can assemble them to be able to swap individual cores out within minutes and even make the radiators expandable. It's on!
 
CarterKaft said,

Hope you can get something out of it.

Here is a interesting "calculator" of sorts. You might have already seen it but it looks pretty interesting for reverse engineering what you have.

https://www.maplesoft.com/applicatio...6403&view=html

I think designing something that on paper will be better than what you have is going to be key, determining whay you had in the terms of heat rejection might be the hard part.
 
That’s nifty. I’ll play around with it when I get back home. I called Serck about the Micon cores yesterday. They have them and gave me prices on a couple. In the next week or so, I’m going to arrange a Denver run to get my hands on them. Nobody lists any other dimension aside from core length. Perhaps I’ll throw together a few quick CAD shots to discuss the options.
 
The radiator debate is definitely taking some room on the thread and certainly fulfilling interest and curiosity. Always a good thing on the PBB. I'm planning to head up to Springs with the boys this coming Monday to meet up with the wife (money source lol) so that we can stop in Serck to get some hands-on views and measurements. Before that happens, I want to pin down a few part numbers. Here's some pics and quick reading material if'n you like. https://worthyparts.com/service-dire...0618122550.pdf

What I'm looking to achieve is a dual pass radiator with ample flow. These industrial cores do just that. The AMOCS cores being dual pass in their OE design, and the folded cores being easy to interconnect so that coolant passes through a pair of cores before returning to the end tank and engine block. Minimal coolant loss in the event of a core replacement is also of interest. Mainly because I care not to dump a bunch of coolant in general, but of course, also because wasting $50-per-gallon coolant makes sad face.

To my eyes, the folded cores appear to be the top choice for excellent air flow while taking advantage of superior heat exchange due to their shape. The square AMOCS cores look as though they could inhibit some proper air flow when the ram air effect is taking place at highway speeds. As their literature states, these were designed for equipment that had little to no ram air and high load, so they definitely rely on the fans themselves.

With the modular design, being able to replace individual cores is outstanding. Though, from what I can tell, the industrial radiators require an end tank to be unbolted so that either of the cores can be removed. What I have in mind is perhaps a full-flow poppet valve for each core that pushes open when a core is inserted. Very little coolant loss and, for the most part, no engine operation down time. I'll be constructing the end tanks myself so that I can design this around unmolested cores and not have to deal with labor cost or objections to the layout.

As far as core part numbers go, they're generic across the board. I can request the same number at any supplier and get the same core. Same goes for the gaskets.

383.jpg
384.jpg
 
CarterKaft said,

I think the Evans is a bandaid, we've discussed that before...

As far as changing cores on the fly I wouldn't even consider it a possibility or likely. Even on extreme environment equipment we don't really have to change cores often, even then it's usually due to plugging from wet material or improper cleaning.

I would design the tanks to be disassembled but stop there with the creativity. These radiators just don't have allot of issues and like I said usually fail under Operator induced circumstance. I don't forsee your bus encountering allot of bad air.

Fans are really going to make this system perform. Core area efficiency etc. are air flow dependent, I can possibly get some air flow CFM specs if you have a core part # narrowed down. Most every configuration of these radiators is using a shell/tube transmission oil cooler with a conventional torque converter that generates a ton of heat, should be similar to your Allison if it doesn't have a lockup converter.
 
I still hem and haw over the Evans. The pro's and con's of it are kinda balanced. My wife already got a second box of it. Eight gallons, now. One great appeal to it is the lack of an oxidizer. I couldn't come up with any good coating to protect the inside of the steel floor. If it blows, I know several guys that would definitely buy it at a discount.

The one and only reason I want radiator cores to be quick to replace is damage from road debris. If I'm building the radiators to go in the engine bay and build scoops to force air in, the odds of a rock or stick poking a hole in a core gets concerning. I've had it happen. I've had friends who've had it happen. Ain't no fun. Shouldn't be a worry if they're up higher.

So far, the core options are the 32" 2W5536 folded and 34" 113-9539 AMOC. I can fit those with end tanks in the engine bay pretty easily. To mount any of these cores up top, they'd have to be oriented horizontally unless I cut out the stainless pans where the original radiators sat. Either is an option. Hydraulic fans would take care of lacking air flow up top. Gotta get more measurements. While perusing fleabay yesterday, I did find one listing with some dimensions. Ports are 1.33" and pins are 5.125" center to center. I still need overall width and depth to know how many I can fit.
 
87manche said,

just put some screen over the intake air and don't worry about road debris.

first of all it's a bus, so you're already above the road a significant amount more than your average car.
secondly, your radiators are at the back, if you run something over it's not going to get sucked up there, it's gonna get sucked up by the front wheels.
 
aczlan said,
87manche said:
just put some screen over the intake air and don't worry about road debris.​
This, some mesh to keep the big bugs, small birds, etc out of there would be a good thing.

Aaron Z
 
Expanded steel in the scoops. Even that stuff has some insane wind drag. I’ll run the mesh flush with the body like it is now which should do well with scoops over it.
 
87manche said,

I would consider something more akin to plastic grid.

it may help to straighten out the airflow and be less turbulent than just an expanded mesh screen at 90 degres to the air flow.

fluorescent light grids work well for this and are dumb cheap.
 
87manche said:
I would consider something more akin to plastic grid.

it may help to straighten out the airflow and be less turbulent than just an expanded mesh screen at 90 degres to the air flow.

fluorescent light grids work well for this and are dumb cheap.​
Hadn’t thought of that. I was just thinking of something like welding in teardrop rod/tube slats.
 
87manche said,

I love summit.

they back products too. I had a cheapish fuel pump on a jeep with a fuel cell, it was maybe 2 months old. I drove it around town a weekend before a trip to make sure all was well, pump died. Summit didn't have it and it was backordered. I explained to guy on the phone that I was leaving to go wheeling at the end of the week. The next day there was an aeromotive pump at my door. It was like $80 more expensive, dude told me to go have a great weekend.
 
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