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Last night, I turned my adapter plate so that the Corvair impeller would be recessed and locked into a concentric position. It turned out really well. It was to large for me to get an accurate measurement on with the calipers I have, but I was able to slow remove material until I got impeller to "snap" into place.
Today, I mounted the PSRU in the drill press, put the blower on it, and got it to spin up to 3000rpm. At least I can only assume it was 3000. That number is from the speed chart on the inside of the drillpress' belt cover. My drill's top speed is 4300 RPM, but that setting caused the 1 Hp motor to blow the 15amp circuit breaker. The short video is one of the sample runs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADIuZw_Vn9U
I've not done anything to spin balance, and I was impressed with how smoothly it ran because of that. Nearly all of the noise is from the drill.
I did try to put the shroud on and get a static pressure at speed. Since the engine blocks air escaping from the back of the blower, this wasn't very successful, and I just gave up. I'll get real numbers once I have the engine running.
So far, this experiment will have me hauling 2lb 10oz of impeller around, and a 2lb 14oz shroud. Some of the weight of the adapter plate should be included in this cost, but it is currently serving triple duty. It adapts the clutch plate to the flexplate, and it provides a mount for the generator's rotor.
The monetary cost has been $7 for the impeller (and $13 to get it shipped to me), 3 cans of spray foam, some epoxy and a couple yard fiberglass. The fiberglass work would have gone a lot faster if I would have had a clue about what I was doing. This one may very well get thrown out in exchange for one built with all the lessons learned. I'm excluding the cost for the failed impeller. That expense is going in the lessons learned category.
I've spent a LOT of hours on this. I don't want to even count them all. But again, this wouldn't have been nearly so painful if I knew where the failures were going to be when I started.
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