300/440/550 550sx Hull Modernization Build

[Mobile Chernobyl]

For anyone that has experience -

How prone are the Ocean Pro Vortex mikuni 38 style flame arrestors to absorbing water in the bilge?
(This is not the exact model, but the same style)

Also I have a chance to get two OEM 550 flame arrestors like this one


How would these fair? I assume the OEM flame arrestor would be a better choice to avoid water ingestion, but how are these particular OEM flame arrestors in terms of air flow?

I'm looking for the best balance of air flow, and ability to resist excessive water ingestion, so I'm looking for peoples opinions!

 

[High Speed Industries]

For anyone that has experience -

How prone are the Ocean Pro Vortex mikuni 38 style flame arrestors to absorbing water in the bilge?
View attachment 194075(This is not the exact model, but the same style)

Also I have a chance to get two OEM 550 flame arrestors like this one
View attachment 194076

How would these fair? I assume the OEM flame arrestor would be a better choice to avoid water ingestion, but how are these particular OEM flame arrestors in terms of air flow?

I'm looking for the best balance of air flow, and ability to resist excessive water ingestion, so I'm looking for peoples opinions!

I used to run the ocean pro f/a but I didn't like how they would react to water.
What carb are you running? On my 550 I'm running a mikuni sbn 44. I just used a stock flame arrestor off of a Yamaha 61x engine. All I did to increase airflow was remove two layers of the wire mesh that is in there. It works great. Plenty or air flow and almost no water in the engine and it was free. In my opinion stock arrestors are fine for most applications, sometimes you can modify them to make them work better. I don't buy aftermarket arrestors unless I'm running a ton of mods. Hope this helps.

 

[Mobile Chernobyl]

I'm running dual 38SBN's on a mariner intake.

 

[the WaTeRhAwK]

This setup seems to work really well. I use it with a carbon OP vortex and an Outerwears cover.

 

[Yami-Rider]

This setup seems to work really well. I use it with a carbon OP vortex and an Outerwears cover.

haha. That looks kinda funny, but if it works hell ya!!!

 

[the WaTeRhAwK]

I borrowed the idea from Andre (rotaxgrenade). He uses a square tupperware box with two large square holes cut on one side (engine side). I just went the cheapo rout with the ziploc box. The ziploc box coupled with the outerwears filter eliminated water intrusion from subs, etc.. no more hydrolocks. It also brought the decibels of the engine down quite a bit.

 

[Mobile Chernobyl]

Hahaha... crazy thing is tupperware did cross my mind when thinking of the 100% homemade variety. I would probably splurge and get the "lock'n'lock" since it's a virgin build!

The question remains though - would two OEM 550 flame arrestors work better than two OP Vortex flame arrestors? Even with the "sandwhich box" mod?

 

[the WaTeRhAwK]

Personally I would run the vortex's, as they are less restrictive, but you have to run a lower popoff pressure than standard stock settings or the popoff will be too high for the less restrictive cleaners.

 

[Mobile Chernobyl]

I think that is the route I'm going to take - the only problem is that the dual carb manifold on the 550sx has the carbs sooooo close! 4.15" Center to center I measured. I need to make sure that the vortex's wont interfere with eachother if they are this close.

My plan is to buy this set here:
http://www.davescycle1.com/servlet/the-5659/PWC-Vortex-Flame-Arrstr%28Ocean/Detail

But I just need to make sure that they are less than ~4" wide, as this will dictate how close they can be!

I'm going to try and get a hold of Ken at OP today and see what he charges and if he has dimensions. At this point in the build, every $100 more I spend is like a cigar cutter to another finger... Shoulda... Just... Bought... ahh you know the rest!

 

[the WaTeRhAwK]

Yeah, the 44's I think can be mounted sideways for extra clearance between them. Not so for the 38's though.

 

[loictahiti]

as some guys on X says, about the obsession hull, your 550 updated hull, seems to be a XFS copy hahahahhahaha

nice job , keep us update with lot of pics ;-))

 

[Mobile Chernobyl]

This hull is a copy of a lot more than just the XFS! lol... The only difference is I plainly admit where my inspiration came from.

 

[loictahiti]

ahahaha

 

[Mobile Chernobyl]

Chine mod - Done!

Time to get this bad boy ready for primer! I'll be doing some finish sanding and one more small reinforcement layup of the new nose and the hull beneath tomorrow.

Laying out the strips to see how they fit, fits well! just one layer of 1208 for this.

1208 wetted out and laid up, looks good, curves and lines have been maintained pretty well!

I made sure there was a good amount of overlap on the front side to ensure that everything is sealed!

Now I need to finish designing the little things - flame arrestor is one of them.

Not satisfied with anything out there, and having very little to choose from for this little old engine led me to design something I'll try and fabricate myself.

I was going to buy a sea poo 580 twin carb flame arrestor and try and modify it to fit my needs - which is a very low profile design with OEM like sheilding. After seeing the Wamilton's composite dual carb flame arrestor cap for the superjet, I decided to try and design something that was low profile, and I could lay up with glass! Here is the inspiration:

So I decided not to stray too far. I'll be getting the mesh from Mcmaster - I haven't speced out the size yet, but it is cheap enough that this won't be a complete waste of money and time. I'm going to to measure the screen size and spacing on the standard superjet F/A screens and then basically make one big one of the sandwiched meshes. They will sit in between the top and bottom portions of my flame arrestor assembly which will look something like this:

I'm currently planning on adhering the screens to the top portion of the flame arrestor by 5200'ing them with a fat bead, which will also serve as a "sealing" gasket somewhat between the top and bottom portions.

Anyone think I'm crazy yet?

 

[Sanoman]

No not crazy at all.One of the more interesting builds on here! Keep going

 

[Mobile Chernobyl]

Well I took the home made flame arrestor project on... turned out to be pretty tricky! I ended up gettin it done, but I would have loved to have a vacuum bag setup for it!

I had to abandon adding the little lip on the top part, wont be a big deal, only reason I wanted it was because of the way the wamiltons is constructed. This was pretty much impossible without a vacuum bag setup or proper mold making though lol.

I decided to get more structurally fancy with the way I laid these components up, since they would be their own structure and not depended on something else as a backbone. To accomplish this, I went with either a 0deg/45deg offset on the fabric, or a 0deg/-30deg/+30deg offset depending on the amount of layers I used.

Example:

Starting the shaping of the foam:

Test fit:

Plug making (note - the top on the far right has what was the lip addition, this just made lay up nearly impossible so I abandoned it and the layup method)

-For this, I put a base down of the foil tape, double sided taped the foam shapes down, then used the "cling" variety of saran wrap to cover everything, this worked pretty well.

The new top part layup involved a piece of 1708 for each flat surface (except the front which will be cut) and then a 0deg/45deg layup of 10oz to tie everything together. It really doesn't need to be structurally strong, but I want it to hold it's shape and this should accomplish that:

I stillllll couldn't get the 10oz layers to hold shape, not a big surprise given the hard angle at the bottom they needed to hold. To fix this, I came up with a decent idea to ghetto vacuum bag it. Saran wrap over the whole thing, then I would slide a hoop around it that was tight to the fit.

On top top of the hoop, I put weight. anything I could find really!

We'll see how she turns out tomorrow! Really hate doing this ghetto method, but if it works, that's one less thing on the list of many things to do!

 

[the WaTeRhAwK]

lol force that damned thing into existence!

 

[Jhucke]

Love your work.

 

[MCrider]

i would have never thought of doing that! Nice work.

 

[PWCSAR]

Very inspiring build