Performance Trends, Inc.
Producing Quality Computer Tools for Racers and Engine Builders since 1986
Customer's Flow Benches
Our Port Flow Analyzer software has options making it ideal to work with custom, DIY (do it yourself) flow benches. You can also add our Black Box II electronics to give you the accuracy and testing efficiency of benches costing $10,000 or more.
We have improved the testing capability of hundreds of flow benches over the years, many of them DIY benches. Here's some pics of just a few of these customers' DIY flow benches, which may give you ideas on how build your own.
Bill Khamis of Indianapolis, IN Bill built the "mother of all EZ Flow systems", a 6" system head adapter with an 8" flow tube. Bill's impressive and professional system is capable of 600+ CFM.
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Anthony Mangano of Cairns Australia Anthony can answer some questions at this email address: admin@pdacnc.com
- Room for 7 1000 Watt Motors in separate "blower box" to left of bench. Each motor can draw up to 4+ amps at 240 VAC.
- Using just 5 motors gives 300 CFM at 28", drawing around 20 amps total at 240 VAC.
- Each motor is started separately to avoid all motors drawing a large surge at once for starting.
- Crank handle on separate "blower box" adjusts gate valve for flow control.
- Switching from intake to exhaust flow direction done by changing rubber coupling between bench and "blower box".
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Brent Kasper of BAK Engineering (www.bak2135.com) in Zanesville, OH Brent built this professional looking 4" EZ Flow for doing lawn mower racing engines, as well as many other engine types.
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Alex Hledin, Eric Theobald, Tony Gravina (Performance Through Research www.ptrengines.com) of Point Claire, QBC Canada
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The team build an EZ Flow System for flow testing their 2 stroke engines. Two (2) stroke engines present some special issues for flow testing.
- Instead of valve lift, you use Piston Position, which is also crank degrees. PTR used crank degrees divided by 1000, so 77 degrees would appear as .077" lift in the software.
- There is no exact 0 lift position with the valve seated. Instead some particular crankshaft position must be used as zero lift, where the piston is still covering the port, but just about to start opening the port. This is harder to repeat from test to test, and makes it more difficult to check for leakage.
Still the PTR team was able to produce extremely repeatable results as shown below.
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Click on the blue link for a Movie File Showing the PTR EZ Flow System running a test.
Jerry Luke, Sun Engineering, New River, AZ USA Jerry has built a very powerful bench with some new technology, highly efficient blowers capable of 900 CFM or more. Jerry has built a bench using most of our EZ Flow System parts, but included the ability to switch between 5 different flow orifices. Jerry can answer some questions at this email address: sun_eng@msn.com
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Steve Adkins, Big "G" Carbs, Kansas City, MO USA Steve has built his bench based on our EZ Flow System specifically for flowing carbs, flowing only in the intake direction. This particular bench has 4 2- stage motors, is on casters and weights about 100 lbs. Steve takes this bench to shows, where he flows carbs for people. Pictured on the right is one of Steve's other "powerheads" where he ganged up 8 3-stage motors for lots of flow. Contact Steve if you want a "powerhead" for flowing in the intake direction. He may have something to sell. biggcarbs@aol.com
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