Nerd’s Eye View: Mike Ryan’s Banks Super-Turbo Powered Pikes Peak Freightliner
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Nerd’s Eye View: Mike Ryan’s Banks Super-Turbo Powered Pikes Peak Freightliner
Khiem Dinh is an engineer for Honeywell Turbo Technologies at the time of this writing. All statements and opinions expressed by Khiem Dinh are solely those of Khiem Dinh and not reflective of Honeywell Turbo Technologies.A 2008 Freightliner Cascadia is usually not the first choice when deciding to build a Pikes Peak Hillclimb vehicle. Mike Ryan is not your ordinary racer though and he likes his big trucks. This truck is unlike any other truck in the world, not even like those racing trucks out of Europe. Your basic semi-truck uses a turbo that most time attack cars would laugh at for being comically small. Not this truck, no siree Bob! To make this truck exceptionally special, Mike Ryan enlisted the help of Gale Banks to boost the power to hill moving levels. It’s not easy making around 2400hp and 4000+ lb-ft of torque, but we’re going to show you how it was done along with the tricks and components required to make a 5-ton semi-truck turn and stop.
Your basic Detroit Diesel Series 60,
6-cylinder, 14L engine starts off life at around 575hp and 1850 lb-ft of
torque. Banks Power went in and designed a custom compound setup using
an 8.3L Whipple supercharger and a Borg Warner S510 turbocharger. Making
the engine run with the new forced induction setup is a custom
calibrated Detroit Diesel ECU. To maximize air density and intercooling
efficiency, a lot of water and methanol injection are used. A suite of
Banks advanced injection systems are used as well. The Banks injection
systems consist of a Straight-Shot, Double-Shot, and Triple-Shot. In
this picture, you can see the solenoids of a Banks Double-Shot system
injecting a water/meth mixture into the inlet of the supercharger. To
maximize compressor efficiency, you want to perform your ‘intercooling’
DURING compression. So as the air is compressed, heat is being extracted
simultaneously. Spraying the water/meth pre-supercharger achieves this
by having the liquid evaporate during the compression of the air. The
phase change from liquid to gas absorbs a tremendous amount of heat
acting to intercool the air during compression in the blower. My 10th
grade Chemistry teacher would be proud that I learned something applied
in the real world.
The air is fed to the blower through this
intake featuring three air filters! With as much air as the engine is
sucking in, maximum filtration area is required to minimize pressure
drop. As the stickers show, when the engine is at full-tilt, it can do
some serious suckage.
The compressed air
leaves the blower and enters the turbocharger to be squeezed even
further. How does this relatively small turbo push enough airflow to
generate 2400hp? Remember our Turbo Tech lesson on generating compressor
maps? The maps show a corrected mass flow value with the inlet
condition corrected to atmospheric pressure. But what if you increase
the pressure at the compressor inlet of the turbocharger as is the case
with this compound setup? The compressor wheel can then flow much
greater mass flow. In this case, the supercharger compresses the air
enough for the turbocharger to push 2400hp worth of mass flow.
Feeding exhaust gas
to the turbocharger is this super-sexy manifold fabricated from Burns
Stainless components. You’re not going to find any better merge
collectors than the ones Burns Stainless make. Dual Tial wastegates are
employed to control turbocharger speed. Take note of the compressor
outlet pipe being wrapped in insulation as it snakes its way past the
exhaust manifold. While the compressed air is hot, it’s not nearly as
hot as the heat coming off the exhaust manifold. Lastly, big turbos are
heavy. The team wisely designed some supports to take the weight off the
exhaust manifold.
The upper and lower
ports on the Tial wastegates are utilized to maximize boost control.
Hard lines are used to maximize durability. Also note the extra few
bends in the hard lines to help prevent failure from vibrations. I
learned this trick from my days of fabricating HVAC systems.
The wastegate signal
is controlled with this MAC solenoid.
The turbo and
wastegate exhaust flows exit through this triple-shooter of an exhaust.
Back on the
compressed air side, two Tial BOVs are used. 2400hp worth of air mass
flow is a lot! As the engine is pushing somewhere around 60psi of boost,
all of the intercooler tubing joints are fortified with these bars to
ensure a pipe never blows off. Two hose clamps on each side are also in
place to help prevent leaks.
The IC piping snakes
its way from the engine’s mid-engine placement to the front of the
truck where a fairly large IC is mounted. Take note again of the bars
used to prevent the IC pipes from blowing off. Wait, maybe the IC looks
kinda small for 2400hp you say?
A Banks Double-Shot
Auto-Chiller system is used here. It’s a two-stage system with the flow
being tied to the intercooler outlet temperature. The first three
nozzles spray a mist onto the intercooler when the intercooler outlet
temperature reaches 100F. The second set of two, making for a total of
five nozzles, come into play when the temperature exceeds 150F. Again,
evaporative cooling is the basic operating principle in play and used to
externally cool the charge air flow. For anyone living in dry and hot
climates, this is basically a swamp cooler for the intercooler.
The intercooler and
radiator are stacked vertically side-by-side. Proper shrouding was used
to force as much air through these heat exchangers as possible.
The front-end
opening is massive.
The
fully-pressurized air finally makes its way to the polished intake
manifold. Here, a Banks Triple-Shot system using six 5 GPH injectors
sprays water/meth into each individual intake runner of the manifold.
The flow is provided by a staged two-pump system which is computer
controlled for optimum delivery. Above the intake manifold are the
custom fabricated brackets for the blower setup.
The supercharger
requires a lot of power, so a really strong belt is used. There are a
lot of teeth on that wheel working hard to help prevent belt slippage.
Here is another look
at all the CNC’d goodness required to mount the supercharger.
Mounted low in the
rear flanks of the truck are the fluid reservoirs for the water/meth and
pure water. They are labeled and color-coded to ensure that the proper
liquids are filled for each.
A Fuel Safe fuel
cell contains the diesel liquid. The fuel cell is also labeled to
prevent putting in the wrong fluids because who knows, someone might try
to fill it with oil or something.
Transferring all
that torque and power from the engine to the massive rear tires is a ZF
(it’s a European company, so you have to call it Zed-F) HP 600 5-speed
automatic transmission. I wonder if this is the same transmission used
for semi-truck racing in Europe…
Holy rear-end
Batman! That appears to be a Speedway Engineering rear anti-sway bar
sitting atop the frame rails.
The Optima batteries
are mounted low and as far rearward as they can be to put some weight
over the rear tires. King Shocks provided a custom coil-over setup for
the big truck and the remote reservoirs are mounted on the brace going
across the rear of the frame rails.
Look at the size of
the rear differential! It’s a Meritor RS 17145 unit. Look at the size of
that U-joint on the driveshaft! In case you didn’t see what the license
plate says in the previous picture, it says, “size matters”. As for the
straps, I’m assuming they are used for the same purpose as on off-road
racing trucks which is to limit droop travel. Thanks to our super smart
readers for teaching me that one.
There is some
adjustability designed into the solid rear axle suspension design.
The rear King Shocks
damper uses a tender spring setup. 4-piston brakes are used on the rear
with 15.1” diameter rotors.
About those rear
tires… they are Michelin XDA-HT's in 445/50 R22.5 with a road racing
rubber compound. A whole lotta bolts are used to keep the 15”x22.5”
Accuride wheels attached to the hubs.
The rear tires leave
a substantial footprint on the ground. Because no one really makes
racing wings for a Freightliner, a wing from a Stearman bi-plane was
repurposed.
The rear wing is a
triple-element design to generate downforce as efficiently as possible.
What else is in the
rear of the truck? A handful of heat exchangers to keep the various
fluids cool are placed in available spaces. I can imagine the
transmission fluid getting quite toasty. A Racepak system with a lot of
channels is also mounted back there.
Mounted on the other
side of the truck under the intake manifold are another pair of heat
exchangers.
Right, now back to
the front of the truck. The King Shocks front damper also uses a remote
reservoir design and Eibach springs. The front Michelin XZU2 is ONLY
305/70R22.5 on a 9.25” wide Accuride wheel.
There is some
awesomeness associated with the front suspension. There appears to be a
solid -3 degrees of camber, if not more!
The front brakes use
Meritor 4-piston calipers clamping 17” rotors. This truck weighs in
around 5 tons however, so brake cooling front and rear is achieved using
a Banks Straight-Shot system which sprays water into the center of the
rotor. Remember those labeled fluid storage containers? I imagine it
would be bad juju to spray meth at glowing hot brake rotors.
The steering system
is not simple. Quite a few bends are required to transmit the driver's
inputs from the steering wheel to the rack.
A Howe Performance
rack and pinion steering system is used to turn those massive front
tires. This is a good view of how low the engine sits in the chassis to
reduce the center of gravity as much as possible. Tucked behind
everything somewhere in there is another Speedway Engineering anti-sway
bar.
At the opposite end
of the steering shaft is where the steering wheel would typically
reside. However, it has a quick release on it to allow for easy
ingress/egress. A Racepak dash feeds info to the driver.
A few gauges are
mounted in the dash to keep tabs on the various Banks fluid injection
systems.
Mastercraft 3G seats
keep the occupants in place along with DJ Safety seat belts. No one
likes fires in their race vehicles, so a DJ Safety fire system was
installed just in case.
Foam padding is used
all around the cage in the cab to prevent injury. All of the fancy
cage, chassis, and frame work were performed by a volunteer force of
fabricators and engineers.
On the outside of
the cab is this roof scoop. Looking back at the previous picture of the
cab interior, it does not appear to feed into the cab. So where does it
lead to?
I think the roof
scoop channels air to this dump behind the cab. What’s the purpose of
it? Maybe it’s to get some more cooling air around the engine and
turbocharger. It may also reduce drag by filling the void behind the
cabin with some air thereby reducing the size of the wake. It might also
improve the effectiveness of the rear wing. The rear edge of the roof
on the cab appears to have vortex generators which are also used to
reduce drag and possibly improve the effectiveness of the rear wing. You
know those vortex generators on the back of the roof of the Evo IX?
Yeah, same idea.
This truck has a supercharger. This truck has a turbocharger. It has lots of pumps and spray nozzles. It’s so big and goes so fast, it needs water cooling for the brakes. It’s so big it needed a wing from an airplane. It has ten times the horsepower of my S2000 and about twenty-five times the torque. This truck is so awesome that Optimus Prime keeps a poster of it on his bedroom wall. Chuck Norris doesn’t drive this truck, this truck tells Chuck Norris where to drive. Bruce Wayne wanted the truck to use as the Batmobile, but Mike Ryan said no.
Good luck
trying to catch this truck.
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