My First Flowbench - But certainly not my last!

[Ken73]

Hi guys, I finally came back around to learn more about building my second flowbench! Bruce helped me ages ago build my first, which was more experimental than anything at the time. Unfortunately because of constraints (i.e. I left my ex, and the flowbench was built in place) I didn't take it with me. It was built over 4 years ago with some of Bruce's help. Here's a few pics;


(Pardon the mess, this was the garage as well as the shop I had.)


I realize it was a strange beast, but it did the trick. Yes, my test pressures were extremely low (3"!) because of the motors I was using. (They were free, what can I say?) I still managed to pull numbers, even though they weren't super accurate, I still managed to "come close" with this bench. It flowed both exhaust and intake. The bottom tube had the pitot in it;



I even made a simple manifold for switching out the lines when I swapped from intake to exhaust;



Alas, this bench is long gone and has been for over 3 years now. I now have a full blown shop (not just a small section of my garage) and a dedicated area for my NEW flowbench that I have yet to build - which brings me back here! I've been reading posts galore and have been formulating a new design. I'll probably be posting some design pictures to get opinions on here soon.

I have already picked up 8 vacuum motors off Ebay (they are some cheap made in China ones, but I think they will work.) They pull 90" of static when blocked off entirely but I have no specs on them further than that. If I can get 300CFM @ 28" of test pressure out of them I'll be happy at this point.

[larrycavan]

Going pitot again or orifice?