Ford Power Stroke Nation banner

How Injectors Effect Oil Consumption and Other Ramblings

9K views 42 replies 14 participants last post by  theSLEEPER  
#1 ·
Disclaimer – I’m in the fields making hay and didn’t devote a lot of time to this…. I think all the numbers are correct but if you find a math error – well that happens – this is more about the concept than anything.

Ok guys – it seams as if there has been some confusion about injector oil consumption and I hope that the following series of posts will help shed some light on this. Starting out I’m going to go slow and keep it simple and build upon the concepts. All of the data starting out here will be best case scenario and in the real world is subjected to inefficiencies inherent in each of the subsystems

Lets start out by looking at a simple set of 238cc hybrid injectors with 80% tips. Here is a graph showing the fuel injection for these injectors based upon ICP and PW. As a standard disclaimer these injectors were flowed using a “Gen3” style gear pump coupled to an electric motor spinning at 1750RPMs???? – I think. This will become important later and will fill in more details.



Ok now comes the simple part – we know that it is a hybrid injector and that for every cc of fuel expelled the injector HAS to use 5 times that volume in oil. Picture the above graph with the volumes multiplied by 5.

Now using this data we have the actual oil consumption for the injectors – now lets take a closer look at pump used to produce these actual flow rates – remember I said these numbers were produced on an injector flow bench running the same basic gear pump that is used on the Gen3 system – that is 0.61 c.i. per pump revolution or for those metric gurus 9.99cc per revolution – since the pump is spinning at a known 1750 RPMs (I need to verify that…) we know its flowing 17482cc of oil per minute (or 4.71 gallons per minute). For arguments sake I want to convert this oil flow rate to something that we care about, say a standard 17* pump that displaces 7.2cc per revolution. Straight up we get to 2428 pump RPMs. Considering the pump on a PSD (single stocker lets not complicate things further….yet) turns at 85% of the crank speed we get an engine RPM of 2856 RPMs. If you take into account some inefficiency in the system, we will just round it to a nice clean 3100 engine RPMs to produce the same result as found on the bench. (RPMs get rounded up due to inefficiencies because of the reduced the cc/rev that the pump puts out).

Now here comes the rub – suppose you want to run that 3.5ms of PW at 2000 RPMs and 3000psi - you might not be able to do so…. How about at 3500 RPMs? – now that is still possible….. Let me elaborate a little….

We know that the 17* pump WILL work at 3100 RPMs because that is basically how these injectors were tested. At 3100 RPMs the 17* pump will produce 4.71 gallons per minute. At 3500 RPMs that 17* pump will be putting out 5.15 GPM (considering inefficiencies). That is more than enough to supply the injectors based on the flow sheet – in fact the duty cycle of the IPR will be lower to be able to achieve the required pressure than it was at the lower RPMs.

Lets look at 2000 RPMs – the 17* pump can only supply 2.94 GPM at that RPM! Now you ask – “But is that enough for these injectors?” Lets find out that answer. We know we want 3.5ms of PW and we want 3000psi – a quick lookup at the graphs and that determines that we want to inject 238cc of fuel (per 1000 shots for those that do not know). This means that we need 1190cc of oil per 1000 injection events –or- 1.19cc of oil for one event. This event takes place in 3.5ms. This gives us 1.19cc of oil in 3.5ms… that right there is a flow rate. There are 12 crankshaft degrees per millisecond at 2000 RPMs – or 42 degrees of crankshaft rotation – or 35.7 degrees of rotation of your 17* oil pump. So 1.19cc per 35.7 degrees of crankshaft rotation is 12cc per pump revolution! Guess what – BAM P1211! That pump will NEVER keep up at that pressure with tuning that calls for fuel like this. In fact at that RPM I would be surprised if that 17* pump keeps up calling for 1000psi with 3.5ms. (coincidentally that is 142cc of fuel at 2000 RPMs – which should be good for about 280-350 HP at 2000 RPMs…..)

Lets talk about the IPR for a moment. Everyone talk about how important it is, and talks about taking it out and cleaning it, etc… but few talk about how it actually works. Think about it like this – it is basically an electric solenoid that is being fed a signal from the computer. This signal is a series of high and low voltages that dictate the strength the magnetic field contained within the solenoid. By varying the strength of this field the IPR is regulating the amount of oil that can bleed off from the system. A strong field is trying to hold as much oil in the system as possible; a weaker field is trying to bleed off more oil through the IPR to help maintain a pressure. So when comparing injectors, HPOPs, tuning, etc… that is why everyone talks about the duty cycle of the IPR – that duty cycle is basically how strong the IPR is. So in essence if you swap nothing else but pumps – and your IPR duty cycle drops under similar conditions – then your new pump has a higher volume output than your old pump –OR- something about the pump/setup has less of a pressure drop.

OK so far we have looked at a WOT scenario and looked how many different variables effect the pressure (volume) of oil available to the injectors at any given time, engine RPM, IPR Duty Cycle, Commanded PW, Commanded ICP, etc… but unless you’re a competition rig – how does this effect you? Lets take a look at what goes on when you are hooked to a trailer pulling a grade. To save a little time I am going to borrow some work from Charles done in Smack Talk – some things have been changed to protect the innocent and it has been cleaned up a bit, but none the less it is still his scenario:

For an example of work, take a scenario of an PSD pulling a trailer climbing a 6% mountain grade for 6 miles with a loaded trailer behind it as would be the case pulling Mont Eagle grade in Tn.

There is a specific amount of work involved with that task.

Lets say the GCVW is 20,000lbs. Now if we forgo the complications of friction, wind resistance and all that for the moment, we can figure the primary force acting on this truck and trailer which happens to be gravity.

A 6% grade is a 2.7* angle. From this we can figure the component of gravity that is acting on the vehicle attempting to pull it down the slope.

We would have 20,000lbs straight into the earth and a component of 942lbs headed down the slope.

So the force involved here is the 942lbs, or 4190 N (Newtons).


The distance is 6 miles, or 9504 M (Meters).


Knowing this we can calculate the work required to move this vehicle to the top of Mont Eagle.

Since Work is Force x Distance, it's as simple as 4190 N x 9504 M = 39,821,760 NM (Newton Meters, units of work).

So that's your work. That's literally what must be done. Any engine can do it, the only question is how long will it take. That's where power comes in.

For instance....

Lets say you managed 45mph up this pass in this truck. Traveling 6 miles at 45mph would take you 8 minutes from bottom to top. Now we have our Time value. The important one...

8 minutes is 480 seconds.

We know that Power = Work / Time, so it's as simple as 39,821,760 NM / 480 s = 82,962 Watts of power required to do that task in that time.

What is Watt you might ask? It's a unit of power, just like kilowatts (1000 watts) or Horsepower, or Joules per second, so on and so forth.

So how many Horsepower is 82,962 Watts? Well it's 112 Horsepower.

Now lets say – I don’t want to go 45mph up that hill…. I want to do 70mph up that hill!

The only thing that changes is the amount of time it takes to climb the hill – only 5.1 minutes to reach the summit or 308 seconds. That boils it down to 129291 watts or 174hp.
Now you might want to know where I am headed with all of this and how it applies to what injectors, HPOPs, tuning, etc….

Lets examine the situations just discussed – 112hp at 45mph and 174hp at 70mph. Looking at some gear ratios – lets just say it’s a 6 speed truck to eliminate any of the argument for the TC slippage, etc… it can also show that things like the P1211 code can be as much of a driving style and tuning as it is an actual problem. The truck also has 33” tires and 3.73 gears.

First the 45mph scenario – in OD this can be done at about 1300 RPM, In 5th gear you will see it about 1725rpm, in 4th gear you can see it 2225rpm, and not practically done in 3rd gear by a “stockish” truck running a set of hybrids and a turbo towing a trailer. For arguments sake I’m going to assume 2.2hp per cc of fuel injected. So to make 112hp we will need to inject 51cc of fuel. At 500psi ICP that’s about 2.75ms, at 750psi that is about 1.75ms, at 1000psi that is about 1.5ms, at 1250psi that is 1.4ms, at 1500psi that is 1.3ms at 2000psi its 1.2ms, at 2500psi its 1.1ms, at 3000psi its about 1ms.

For the most part the goal is to inject fuel at the highest pressure possible to get the best atomization possible – but this is also a balance of being able to produce the pressure, as well as inject the fuel in an appropriate time window for a controlled burn. That is an entire thread all by itself – maybe some other day…..

So now I have all these data points of pressures and PWs that can inject the fuel I need to do the task – and a handful of RPMs where I can meet my speed goal. So now what…. Well those RPMs dictate the flowrate of the pump in a volume per time – those PW numbers dictate the rate that oil is required to use the associated ICP – Basically what that means is if the oil flow requirement for the injection event of a certain PW is not met by the pump – then you can’t maintain the pressure that is called for and BAM – the dreaded P1211…

Lets look at these data points – given some inefficiencies in the pump, max possible IPR duty cycle, etc…. at 1300 RPMs we can not inject fuel any faster than about 1.5ms and maintain 1250psi, at 1725rpms we should be able to manage in the 1.2ms with about 2000psi, and can do pretty much anything we would like to do in this scenario at the 2225rpm mark. Asking for any more than about 2000psi at 1750rpms is just going to result in popping a code – at 1300rpms don’t think about any more than 1250psi or expect a nice yellow light on your dash.

The 70mph scenario yields about 2025rpms in OD, 2650rpms in 5th gear, and is not practical in 4th gear. To make the 174hp we will need to inject 79cc of fuel. At 750psi that is roughly 2.5ms, at 1000psi its about 2.1ms, at 1250psi its about 1.9, at 1500psi its about 1.6ms, at 2000psi its about 1.5ms, at 2500psi that is 1.4ms, and at 3000psi that is about 1.25ms. Looking at these data points at 2025 we should be able to run about a 1.5ms PW at 1000psi, at 2650 rpms we can hit any of our targets.

Its important to note that for any of the above data we can extend the PW longer, lower the ICP demanded and inject the same amount of fuel required for the task with no risk of not being able to meet the commanded ICP. None of the above takes into account anything with your turbocharger, or any other variables of driving up and down the road – but it does go to show some of the requirements that the injectors can exert on a high pressure oil system. There are lots of variables and this does not hold perfectly true in every case due to some of these variables – I hinted here and there about some things that can make these numbers seem out of place.

That’s the quick and loose version of how the injector setup can place demands on the high pressure oil system. It will be a few days before I can take this to the next level and show the effects of different injectors and different pumps on this system that must work together – For arguments sake I will stick to only 238cc hybrids for now – I will just change tips around – or pumps around – not total injector capacity. The moral of the story will be the faster injectors demand more oil (because they can expel more fuel per time) and the larger the oil pump the lower in the rpm band you can hold pressure on a set of injectors. Additional food for thought – just because you can dump all your fuel at full ICP pressure just off idle, doesn’t make it a good idea….
 
#4 ·
Do you have a particular scenario in mind? Or something specific that your looking for? Generally speaking the higher displacement per revolution pumps will give you more oil volume at any fixed RPM - pumps like the modified 17* produce the same volume of oil as a standard 17* - but yet are capable of performance gains by reducing pressure drops and pumping losses within the pump itself. If you take a look at the pump that Swamps use for thier Gen3 its not very good at making pressure at low RPMs - thats why the Gen2 (I think...) which was a large gear pump had some hot start issues - the Gen3 couples the gear pump that doesn't necessarily like to build pressure at cranking RPMs with a factory piston pump that is more than happy to get your truck running and idling up where the gear pump can do what is needed.
 
#8 ·
The only good way is actual test data - but you could approximate the ICP and PW based on a similar hybrid injector (check the injector standards thread for info) and just up the oil volume required - this will probably put you in the same city block as the ballpark that contains the hot blonde. Not perfect, but we have to work with the data available to us.
 
#9 ·
Jason, Ive always thought about this in a much simpler way on road trips...I try to keep RPM at 1750-1800 on the highway. We all know switching to a single shot injector helps mileage, but what about oil?

Would we benifit from say running 3000 psi oil pressure at 1750-1800 rpm's?

I know when I switched to b-codes and a stock pump my mileage went up, but it seems from what your saying it could have improved greatly if I would have had more oil?
 
#10 ·
There are as many different philosophies in tuning as there are tuners - Some aspects of changing ICP and PW around are better for milage and some are better for horsepower, some burn cleaner, some produce better cylinder pressures - and right now for the purpose of this thread - I just want to talk about the injectors and how they can place demands upon the oil system for any given task.

Experience has shown us though that increasing the output of the oil pump or decreasing the amount of oil required can lead to better fuel economy. Is it safe to assume that you went from A-codes to B-codes? Any specifics on each set of injectors to get a better idea of how they compare?
 
#12 ·
I wouldn't want 3000psi when cruising down the road, but that brings up another subject that is on topic... transient states.... suppose you are cruising down the road and a vette comes flying up behind you and your in a playfull mood.... you might want that 3000psi when you mash the go pedal.... even if you don't want that 3000psi when your cruising. That is why there is an IPR in the system and the duty cycle changes - at cruising RPM and throttle position your duty cycle is fairly low - mash the pedal and most likely you want your ICP and your PW to climb in some combination. Anything beyond this gets more into tuning theory - and every tuner has one of those....
 
#20 ·
I narrowed this thread down a bit to make it easier to read in the long run. I am sure this thread is going to be one of those threads that will be huge. If anyone has heartburn over anything that is missing PM me. All that is soft deleted are the great thread kind of posts. This message will be gone eventually too.
 
#24 ·
Is it possible in a not too difficult way to convert the information that has been collected in injector flow rates to gallons per minute of oil required using excel?
 
#30 ·
If you carefully read HRT's post or my previous post on how to calculate oil usage you will find that no, that is not correct. The reason being that the injectors are only accepting oil for a portion of the engine cycle. The rest of the time that little IPR regulator is working it's butt off to bleed off all of the excess oil and that oil is not used by the injectors. So you need enough oil volume to feed the injectors during the pulse width that the injectors are actually accepting HPO. Then you have to look at the reduction ratios that the HPOPs are running out to see if they have enough ass to get that done.
 
#27 ·
If I knew more about Excel I would try to work on this but that part of it is over my head. I do not know how to do the formula stuff. The excel files are attached to the posts in the stick about injector flow rates.
 
#28 ·
Intrestting thread in theory cept.
Int the first post your saying
An injector calling for 142 ccs at 2000 (a lowly 275+hp) rpms is. Too much for a 17?
Seems like even if they were 200 hybirds, plenty of people have run them on just a stock 17
And no real complaints.....sure better with big oil but everyone used to say ya don't need it.

When ever I saw a cel and it was a hpop I was at high rpm, holding wot for 7 sec or more.
Granted that is on an awe inspiring mighty setup of ab code sticks and a 15 hpop.

But seems that sumt'n is a lil on the high side butthen again my mind wants to say where is the x8 multiplier for having 8 sticks.
 
#29 ·
That post is not intended to be the end all be all guide to HPOP sizing to match your injectors - the previous thread had brought up some points about how much of a demand certain injectors can put on a high pressure oil system - you do bring up a valid point about that data point and I am surprised that someone hasn't brought that up already - I purposefully put that there to be questioned.

That is definately into the "grey area" of HEUI injection - where things are not what they seem on many levels. I can assure you that a 17* pump will not hold 3000psi for 3.5ms of PW - and the numbers say it will be close to holding 1000psi - but I am sure if I look around I can find data logs of these injectors doing better than 1000psi at that RPM - but I bet they are not operating at 3.5ms either. You see we are dealing with a computer that is averaging all this junk over a period of time - so there is a bit of leeway here and there and different faster acting sensors begin recorded over a period of time would show the pressure spikes in the oil rail every time an injector shuts off - those recordings would show that the rail pressure drops everytime an injector fires, etc.... Well if you get the "on time" of the injector to be short enough and the "dwell time" between firings long enough you can make the computer believe almost whatever you want it to.

Your check engine code could have happened because it didn't meet the required pressure for a period of time, because you ran out of oil in the resevoir because your LPOP couldn't keep up, because you were in it long enough for the programming to build up to max fuel, etc.... lots of reasons to pop the P1211.

Oh and the "x8" portion of your comment is totally wrong - you will NEVER see a 7.3 PSD have any more than one injector firing at a time using a single IDM - and thank goodness too! If two injectors were firing at the same time we would have just doubled the required output for the HPOP!

I just want to empahsize that this thread was not about exact numbers and sizing parts - my intent was just to get people thinking about what is going on in the system and how different things interact in the system. All too often I see guys that think there is a magic bullet to high performance and I can garantee them that there is no single part that will get the job done by itself. It is a system that must work together and the HPOP and the injectors must work together with the tuning and the turbo, and the camshaft, and the.... well you get the idea.
 
#33 ·
I thought it was time to bring this back to the top with another installment - and since I blew an intercooler boot last night at somewhere north of 70psi (estimated 60psi gauge rapped back around to zero... :evil) I had a little time to add to this thread.

Lets talk about pump differences a little bit and how that effects your need for HPO output. This goes for comparing any set of pumps that might have the same displacement, but has “other features” that allow them to operate better for several reasons I will outline.

Now I have never had my hands on a modded 17* pump or on an Adrenaline that is not installed in a truck – I make no presumptions to tell anyone what these pumps are – but this is what we do know about them: the modded 17* pump is just that – it has the same volume output per revolution as a standard 17* pump but has modifications that can do things like increase efficiency, decrease pressure drops internally, etc… The Adrenaline has some displacement increase (not publicly advertised) plus some “similar” mods to the 17* pump.

Using one of my scenarios from the first post lets take a look at climbing that hill again and the power needed to do so… specifically lets look at pulling the 6% grade at 70mph at 2025 engine RPMs using 1.5ms of fuel at 1000psi. A 17* oil pump is spinning at 80% of crankshaft speed, so its spinning at 1620RPMs. Using 7.1cc/revolution, the pump is putting out 3.04 gallons per minute of oil at 1000psi. Using those numbers and running some quick and dirty calculations show up at about 1.8Hp being consumed just by the HPOP to be able to produce those numbers in a perfect world.

Now here comes some theory because I really don’t know how much of a difference these pump mods really make – Your ICP sensor is in the oil rail in the head of the engine. At 1000psi on the injectors in question the injector is actually consuming oil at a rate of 2.6 gallons per minute. 2.6 gallons per minute of flow through the pump and out the fitting and through each line and into the head is sure to create some pressure drops – so in essence while your head is seeing 1000psi your pump might be making say 1200psi (WAG for illustration purposes) to over come those particular losses. Say you do some internal pump mods and you can get that down to a realistic pump output of 1100psi with 1000psi being seen in the head – although minor you will see a little bit better output.

Taking this same concept and moving over to the inlet side of these pumps we need to think about getting the oil into the pump better. Pump cavitation occurs when the inlet of pump is creating enough vacuum to cause the fluid to boil (in this case oil). If I can do some modifications to the pump that will allow it to draw similar amounts of oil while reducing the vacuum (increasing the pressure) then the pump will get better filling and is less likely to cavitate under high demands. This actually gets the oil volume marginally closer to what the mechanical displacement of the pump is. It improves the pumps efficiency and can show improvement in an application such as ours.

The question still remains since I have no first hand data at all on any of this – is how much of a difference does any of this make? I know there are many that say that a modded 17* pump is the chit and is really the only pump that people can show back to back data on compared to a 17* pump to show the merits of the modifications. I also know that its data like this that keeps Stealth and Dieselsite from publishing exact displacement numbers – because of this extra piece of info about additional modifications beyond the displacement can show some additional improvement – and need to be considered when choosing a HPOP for your application.
 
#37 ·
I thought (in my dense head) that a modded 17 was simply changing the swash plate angle to 20 increasing the stroke of the pistons????
That's more or less what the adrenaline is. The modded 17 is just a few tweaks to the pump.
 
#38 ·
Think in terms of porting. Heads are ported to change the flow into the heads. The same thing can be applied to almost anything on the engine. Sometimes for the better, and sometimes for the worse.
 
#39 ·
The form of cavitation that we are most concerned about is suction cavitation. If we think about it this way - the HPOP is looking for a certain volume of oil - it needs to pull this from the front cover - through the hole in the cover and into the front of the pump. Suppose for a second that your at WOT and your LPOP is just barely keeping things happy say 5psi in the resevoir for the sake of this example. Your HPOP is drawing say 10 gallons of minute (possible flow rate with a set of twin pumps on a common truck at realistic RPMs) of flow through that little hole in the cover and into the pump. The pressure drop from the resevoir to the actual inlet of the piston drum in the pump very likely is producing a vacuum on the oil (negative pressure, below atmospheric pressure, whatever you desire to call it). If that vacuum is great enough it will lower the temperature point at which the oil boils, if you get the oil hot enough, and pull enough of a vacuum you will begin to vaporize the oil. It starts as little air pockets along the walls that start forming, getting larger, and then eventually collapse. This constant creation and destruction can starve pumps of oil as well as erode the surfaces where the creation and collapsing are taking place. If you port this entrance area so it is larger, flows more smoothly with less transitional areas, then it could very easily not drop the pressure as much as it did before and will very likely improve pump efficiency at that RPM.

Now that is just a simple outline and an example of one area where say some porting on a pump and the rest of the system might be able to help. I have no idea exactly what specific improvements any of the vendors are making to thier pumps.