Hi folks,
Having polled the members and found that most seem to be interested in this project, I am going to use this topic as a diary to detail the building of our new 4wd dyno cell, from empty unit, right up to installed and functioning.

So...
After years of waiting, the unit directly opposite us finally became available and a plan was hatched. We have spent far too much time and money over the years hiring other peoples dynos as and when required and also, with us doing more development on new models than tuning older ones nowadays, a dyno is a really useful tool to have at your instant disposal due in no small part to the fact modern OE ECU's cannot be emulated and mapped live, so require a lot of back to back testing which takes up a lot of time. Since this unit is next to ours and is the ideal place for us to put one, we snapped it up and got to work.

Now, having operated a dyno professionally ourselves prior to opening MSD, having over 100 installers of our own around the UK, many of whom have dynos and also having visited and used most of their dynos for one thing or another, we are in a pretty ideal position to understand what does and doesnt work, so we can use not only our own knowledge of the subject but also the knowledge we have acquired from owners of dynos spread out across all apsects of the tuning arena from diagnostics to race teams... and we can apply this knowledge to our installation. This way, funds permitting, we can ensure we get the most useful dyno environment we can afford to build within the constraints of our new building.

So, to begin planning, we need to look at the aspects that must be covered as the project progresses. So we build a checklist of requirements.

The dyno only really needs to perform 3 duties.

• Hold a 2 or 4wd vehicle securely.
• Read the tractive effort the vehicle has at its wheels.
• Supply all necessary data to the operator.

The dyno CELL however, has to do a lot more. It needs to:

• Provide an easy access environment for the dyno.
• House the dyno cooling system.
• Provide a cooling airflow to ensure the heat is removed from the engine and drivetrain.
• Provide enough additional airflow to turn over the air in the cell at least 300 times an hour but preferably 600.
• Provide extraction of exhaust gas seperately... ideally 100% extraction leaving no exhaust gas in the cell.
• Maintain a constant cell ambient pressure identical to that outside the building, neither negative nor positive is acceptable.
• Provide any necessary soundproofing if required. (Our biggest headache)
• Provide a safe customer viewing area.
• House any cameras etc used to record the runs.
• House any connectivity that the operator may need to perform the job. (PC access - monitors - Tools - etc)

The Dyno choice itself was tricky, there are quite a few good ones out there within budget and functionality seems to spread out from very little, to far too much. Wideband AFR for two seperate tailpipes was a must of course, but as we tend to develop for newer platforms, we really wanted OBD2 monitoring and graphing functionality as this gives us the ability to monitor such things as engine knock, fuel rail pump pressures, boost and Airflow meter outputs, EGT, spark and injector duration, to name just a few of literally many hundreds of parameters alongside power output etc on the dyno screen in real time, and that is absolutely invaluable when creating new calibrations in vehicles you have never seen before. To have this all from one OBD socket will be perfect.

This aspect narrowed down our search quite a lot and, sadly moved my search away from the DD DS450 that I was initially opting for... But after long discussions with DD themselves, we ended up opting for their as yet unreleased Dynotech 4wd fully digital platform. They demonstrated the 2wd unit in our new building and, satisfied all was well, we signed up for assembly of one of the first 4wd versions to leave their factory. In fact, ours will be the first 4wd Dynotech in Europe to be up and running. Lets hope we don't have to iron out any "teething problems" for them.

So, the Dyno choice is sorted, that was the easy bit. Now how do we create an environment that it can perform its best in?
Well first I figured it wise to spend some time brainstorming with the staff and friends and building up my list of common dyno cell problems to avoid, and in doing so i came up with the following requirements for my own cell.

• The engine cooling fan must NOT just be circulating room air around.
• The cell extraction fan must not just be circulating room air around.
• The engine must not be allowed to see any exhaust gas at its inlet.
• The customers and operators must not be subject to any exhaust gas.
• The engines inlet air must be as close to outside air ambient temperature as possible.
• The various atmospheric pressures etc must be accurately set and programmed into the dyno for every single run.
• The cell must be self contained and as small as possible.

Allied to the above criteria, I also had my own list of things I wanted to incorporate into the cell such as:

• HD video recording form various angles.
• The ability for customers to watch us run their car via their smartphones or PC.
• The ability to burn that run to a USB key for a small fee for the customer.
• Maximum soundproofing to keep the neighbours happy.
• A stockroom / packaging room to ease the burden in my other unit.
• A training room to give 1on1 and maybe group training to our installers.
• A seperate area that can be developped into an engine dyno cell at a later date

With the above list of aims for the project, we began work.
It's going to be tricky to achieve as the unit space we have doesn't lend itself at all well to the above criteria... But we are going to do our best.

 

So...
Here is the new unit that will become the dyno cell.









First job, is to get the dimensions of the dyno and draw it all out on the floor to see what we have to play with.







It immediately becomes apparent that we are going to have to move the stairs, and the current front office. Doh.




So, we move those as necessary, and book a demo with dyno Dynamics and they bring their 2wd unit down for us to play with for the day as planning via specifications is all well and good, but there is nothing like the real thing and it certainly has us thinking of a few things we had not considered.








Sadly, ceiling clearance being one of them.
That upstairs is going to have to be ripped down and moved backwards a few feet to accommodate commercial vehicles. Nothings ever quite as simple as first perceived...
Anyone know a good reliable steel worker? Ah, Andy Cross... (AJC) So Andy comes in, we brief him and he gets to work and does a bloody good job in record time.





Meanwhile, we start to fix the stairs in their new position, initially, not quite to full building regs it seems...



When Andy Cross has finished, we have an upstairs structure that will support a space shuttle and a downstairs area that has enough height for the commercials we often work on.
Bloody brilliant work, well pleased, thanks Andy.





The pictures get sparse from here as we all work into the night every night turning this building into 6 separate areas:

• Dyno cell
• Reception
• Office
• Fan Room
• Training Room
• Mail Order Room

And of course occasionally stop for a refuel...



Now the main structure is up, its time to consider soundproofing, and that, is where the headaches begin.

 

Await the images

 

"Big Brother voice on"

Day 1, Steve fell though a big hole in the floor.

 

Did he call injury lawyers helpline ?? Lol

 

Images and story added to post 2.

 

looking good,well planned out.

 

Nice build youve got going on there, looking good soo far

 

Great thread,

 

This is becoming a very good read

 

The Decibel challenge.
As most of you will know, dynos create huge amounts of noise and sadly our new unit has 2 direct neighbors, neither of whom we want to be complaining about us, so we had to figure out how best to stop transmission of noise to the surrounding units. After much research, umming, ahhing and head scratching, I finally settled on the following system.

• Wooden stud walls
• Accoustic grade rockwool
• Genie clips
• Resiliant bars
• 2 layers of 15mm Acoustic grade drywall
• 4mm accoustiblock sound absorbtion mat in between the drywall layers.
• Accoustic grade sealant at every joint, so no panel or wall touches any other directly.

This is an interesting system that's normally used to assemble cinemas and recording studios etc and it uses a special vibration damping clip to secure a furring bar to a wooden stud in such a way as to decouple the boards away from their mounting studs. It is a lot harder to explain than to show you, so here is a picture or two...

The genie clips.
These screw to the wooden studs...


The furring bars mounted into the clip


The first layer of acoustic grade 15mm plasterboard mounted to the furring bar.


Once the wall is built in this fashion, it is then covered in rolls of this stuff...



And then a 2nd layer of 15mm acoustic plasterboard is fitted on top of it, to make an ultra dense sound absorbing barrier.

We also need to extract the exhaust gas and its associated din as quietly and efficiently as possible. Now this really can be a headache, especially with high power diesel vehicles, so we got the specialists in to spec this system for us and agreed a pretty rare deal... If we can measure any exhaust gas in the cell while the dyno is running, we don't pay a penny until its fixed by them at their cost. You cant say better than that I reckon, but as with everything in life, it comes at a price... a big price.

More pics later... comments and discussion most welcome.

 

Looks really well thought out, I'll try and come up for a run at some point as I suffer badly with high IAT's on dyno's normally so it would be interesting to see how your's copes.

 

looking real good so far i look forward to the updates .

 

looking good

 

looking awesome and making good progress stu.

good luck with it i look forward to seeing it in person soon

 

loving the thread some serious thought going into all aspects of the build.

think a big passionford rr day will be in order next year

 

Looking good Stu

 

The Exhausting challenge...

Make no mistake...
Exhaust gas management is one of the most common dyno cell failures in the world.

The amount of times I visit an installers facility and see people stood choking to death on fumes astounds me. Not only do humans not operate well on exhaust fumes, neither do engines! Even 1% of exhaust gas will have a negative effect on your engines power output, but even worse, if its mapped with it, chances are it will detonate itself to death when used out on the open road due to the increased oxygen content the engine will see compared to its dyno tuned environment. Oh... and its bloody bad for your operators and customers health too!

Secondly, exhaust gas not being vented properly will also increase the cell temperature very quickly because, as we all know, its extremely bloody hot!

So... after some in depth discussion with the three big extraction companies in the UK, I settled on one so sure he could do the job that we have agreed he doesn't get paid if we can measure any exhaust gas while a 1000bhp vehicle is on the dyno.. (Can I borrow you please Rod? )

The system is somewhat bigger than I envisaged... as you will see!



I originally planned to put the 5000cfm Exhaust fan up in the roof space. James is well pleased as you can see...



I relented, and found a better position for it...



241mm pipework throughout.


Some ugly asshole posing next to my shiny new silencer.






We have 2x 241mm up stands, one either side of the cell.
These go up through the ceiling and then meet in the middle, where they then branch off into one and head through the training room.










This silencer seems to attract ugly twats don't you think?



The silenced exhaust gas finally goes to atmosphere pointing across the industrial roofs, directly away from the closest units, so hopefully wont create too much noise.



The business end... these are the two exhaust collectors that will sit behind the exhaust and hopefully scavenge all the exhaust gas. (What is it with Exhausts and posers?)



To give you an idea of their size behind a car...



And there you have it...
The next mission is going to be wiring up the control system and networking as this dyno is going to be 95% wireless... Stay tuned for tomorrows updates. LOL

 

Good read stu. And happy to be of assistance.

 

Get much heavier bases for those so they dont blow over.

 

Not a chance, they are MUCH heavier then they look, they are weighted underneath and weigh a good few kilos each.

 

Good write up so far mate

 

Very interesting. Looking forward to seeing it all come together.

 

Interesting read.Theres more to it than i thought.

 

they are fairly heavy we have one at work but without the extractor fan its useless

Looking good stu

 

Great read!

 

I'm loving being part of this new venture,
I love learning new things and being part of this build, having input into it, and being part of the build team has been hard work, trying to do as much as I can, and also still get all the workshop work done has been a big challenge but I love challenges

I think it will be one of the best cells out there when its all done, no expense has been spared anywhere and we have all given it so much thought and effort to make it Work and be worth having.

One things for sure, my body is sore and aching from work I'm not used to, like building walls and soundproofing but its great to see it all working and coming into place.

So when the challenge of building this beast is completed, land its all up and running, I'm lucky enough to be using it, and the challenges start again, learning how to use it and utilise all the features to ensure not only is it the best dyno, but it has the best operators too!

 

good work chaps!!

if the price of pizza will get work done, ill get you lot round to help me finish off my extension lol

 

That is actually tempting. I love pizza lol

 

well i need some studs and a shit load of plaster boarding doing lol...

just say when you have finished the dyno cell and ill get you down lol

 

Throw in some chicken dippers and ill bring nici to decorate aswell

 

Dyno's are for queers!

Looking good so far chaps!

This may have already been discussed, but have you calculated exhaust air (as in air out of the dyno) flow compared to inlet air (as in air pumped into the dyno)? I had one instance recently where a dyno cell was being pressurised that much by the fact that the exhaust couldn't get the air out quick enough, which was actually backing up the inlet fans, pressurising the cell and actually stopping the inlet fans from doing anything.

Easy fix was to open a rear door in the dyno cell. lol

 

Your jumping the gun lol. The pics of the parts required to stop what your on about happening will come along soon lol,

 

Better to be jumping the gun than be hit by the speeding bullet on the back of the head.

 

great work chaps

 

Subscribed.
Looks like it's gonna be a 1st class setup.

Looks like you're doing everything you can acoustically. Have you highlighted this to your neighbours?

 

I think what is really great about this thread is the team (MSD) are building as much as this by hand albeit parts bought aswell, so come the time a problem happens it gets fixed quickly and efficiently.

Keep up the good work, look forward to the updates.

ps, would Kingspan help with noise reduction?

 

we can see that lol x

 

get a chilli con carn pizza and he will do ANYTHING you want!!! lol

 

Its nice to see what goes on behind the scenes in a well thought out cell, rather than a shonky lock up with noise and fumes like most, liking the extractor fan exhaust is it magnex