Smoke machine

[normspanners]

Hi all after putting my two pence worth on another post,it made me think about another project, as my hearing of high freq sounds ie air leaks, is crap has anybody made a smoke pump machine for inlet leaks ? I tried making a steel container which doubled as a hose bung for using smoke matches etc but they dont last 30secs when air is blown over them, it worked but not long enough.
My idea was a cheapo sand blast pot drill the ally pot and fit a couple of old style heater plugs in, by putting nuts either side of the wall of the pot, remove most of the 'dip' tube then put hyd oil mixed with diesel, in it, connect air line (through a adj reg) and where the grit normally comes out connect a tube to connect to your manifold.
Then a push button 'starter' thumb switch (maybe relayed), for the heater plugs, you would have one handed control over each process.
The idea being as you boil the small amount of oil with the heater plugs it would smoke like a b******d the smoke would get drawn out and into the air stream, then forced into the manifold.
Any Ideas?

 

[rikrobson]

surely it would be easier to paint on some soapy water on all suspect joints?

 

[normspanners]

You cant always get to them and sometimes the leaks are in obscure places, like in front bumpers, behind head lights, inside innerwing covers etc . better just to pressure it and look for smoke curling up it can save hours of stripping to find it is the other side!
Snap-on do a kit/tool but it is about £400

 

[Windy Miller]

I wonder if there would be loads of soot in the smoke to gum things up?

 

[normspanners]

not unless you set it on fire, I think, because if you just heat oil/diesel it smokes with a white grey smoke, and stinks, maybe another clue ?
If Andystobbs is reading the Jag I was doing in Crewe turned out to be a split intercooler inside the matrix that only opened when a fair pressure was exerted,
but you couldnt hear it it took a smoke machine to find it!! Looks like it was a manufacturing fault on a seam.

 

[MattF]

You could use one of the heater elements out of, or even the full unit, a discotheque type smoke machine for doing what you want. They can, (and probably the manufactured solution is similar), generate smoke using a veg oil type solution, if I recall. They're just a standard 240V heater element in a block of aluminium with the fluid feeding around a spiral rod in the centre of the block. I might even have one or two of those blocks knocking about somewhere.

 

[AndyStobbs]

not unless you set it on fire, I think, because if you just heat oil/diesel it smokes with a white grey smoke, and stinks, maybe another clue ?
If Andystobbs is reading the Jag I was doing in Crewe turned out to be a split intercooler inside the matrix that only opened when a fair pressure was exerted,
but you couldnt hear it it took a smoke machine to find it!! Looks like it was a manufacturing fault on a seam.

I'm reading yes. I had a firm demo'ing a smoke machine last week, just under £700 - a large investment but that included all manner of bungs and they claimed enough smoke for 2000 cars.
Glad to hear you got the Jag sussed in the end, as you say, short of having the IC tested in a water bath it would've been impossible to find without the smoke.

At £700 it would seem that there is scope for a DIY set up.

Andy

 

[normspanners]

You could use one of the heater elements out of, or even the full unit, a discotheque type smoke machine for doing what you want. They can, (and probably the manufactured solution is similar), generate smoke using a veg oil type solution, if I recall. They're just a standard 240V heater element in a block of aluminium with the fluid feeding around a spiral rod in the centre of the block. I might even have one or two of those blocks knocking about somewhere.

I had thought about a disco smoker but wasnt sure if you could / how to put pressure through the unit so that it would force it down a hose at pressure taking it into the manifold. because I think it is the act of spraying the oil onto the element that forces it out? it looks like there is pressure but in reality only very low whereas we need I would say 20psi to test/ open the system up coz some hoses wont leak until they are fully expanded at full boost which can be 2bar !so a pin prick at 5psi will hardly show up, in the same way that a bike tyre will not keep the pressure at 50 psi and soon go down but will stay all day at 5psi coz of a thorn prick.
Yes Andy the jag to put it in his words is like a racing car now, it was hard to even see the IC let alone find a leak inside the unit.
I pressume the tool you had demo'd had all manor of isolating internal external bungs with it. I suppose that is the hard bit it can take 10mins to make summat that is in the kit and takes 10 secs to fit.

 

[normspanners]

You could use one of the heater elements out of, or even the full unit, a discotheque type smoke machine for doing what you want. They can, (and probably the manufactured solution is similar), generate smoke using a veg oil type solution, if I recall. They're just a standard 240V heater element in a block of aluminium with the fluid feeding around a spiral rod in the centre of the block. I might even have one or two of those blocks knocking about somewhere.

If you have one could you have look at the make up design for me I have used loads of them but that is it used not stripped /fixed them
I was thinking of using 12v coz there is no chance of a shock it is relatively instant coz of the low voltage high current, you have it there with you in the field as such and heater plugs are relatively cheap to replace.

 

[the snooper]

You could use one of the heater elements out of, or even the full unit, a discotheque type smoke machine for doing what you want. They can, (and probably the manufactured solution is similar), generate smoke using a veg oil type solution, if I recall. They're just a standard 240V heater element in a block of aluminium with the fluid feeding around a spiral rod in the centre of the block. I might even have one or two of those blocks knocking about somewhere.

matt is correct with his description, they are very simple and could be built into a test unit especially a small wattage unit as you wouldn't need masses of smoke all you would have to do is connect up with a gate valve, open it up fill the system with smoke close valve and pressure up.

most fluids are made from glycol and water

 

[robocog]

Veg Glycerine is the stuff I use in my elecric fags to produce thick fog like "smoke"
cheap from boots the chemist - IIRC sub £2 for 200 ml - and I tend to water it down to thin it by adding about 15% water - just to aid wicking

my rebuildable elecric cigs "devices" use heating wire (kanthal or Nichrome) wrapped around wick made from silica (fiberglass) or very fine stainless steel mesh (oxidised)

For scalability - I tend to use a 3.7v battery and wrap a coil around a 3mm wick (4 to 5 wraps- loose enough not to strangle the wick) which comes out at about 1.6 ohms
produces a good thick fog when a light breeze is blown across the exposed coils/wick (could use a small PC fan?)

Regards
Rob

 

[mike 109444]

Mug a bee keeper

 

[Robotstar5]

What about an old wallpaper stripping steamer? 3kw element should produce some smoke.

 

[normspanners]

Thanks all good ideas I did find one leak one time by my mate who smoked to get two fags going and to blow it into the manifold for a minute or so then quickly put the bung in and pressure it and sure enough we got a wiff of smoke and found the split pipe but it was a big leak and easyish to find but there was only a slight wiff of smoke after all that puffing.
It is weird I had a v6 rover once with the management light on, that had a massive piece of plastic manifold missing about 30 x 60mm and it was hard to find apart from a slight increase in idle and a little low speed hunting it ran fine, oh and a bit of unsilenced roar, it had dropped into a default setting but they do have various butterfly valves in the manifold controling the direction of the air.
The point I am making a large leak can be hard to find because you dont get a vacuum hiss but with a small amount of smoke it would show up quickly but with a small hole it can need quite an amount of consistent smoke to detect a leak that might only be a slight little wisp.

 

[MattF]

Not had chance to look for the blocks, but this is the part which does the work in one, so to speak. It's approximately 9/16" diameter by 4" long.

All the heater is which this fits into is a block of aluminium approximately 6" to 8" long and around 2" high and 3" wide. There's a hole bored through the block, lengthwise, which the above core is a tight push fit into, with an inlet and outlet connector threaded into the block at the ends. There's then a heater element in the block just to get the block hot. All the above does is to force the fluid to take a convoluted path through the hot block of metal so that it gets heated up enough to evaporate/burn. The channel the fluid runs through is approximately 1/8" diameter.

 

[normspanners]

Cheers for the picture how does the fluid get to the spiral is it pumped or just gravity then is it as I said, just the heat that expands the fluid and then creates a mist that forces it through the unit?

 

[MattF]

They have a little fluid pump in the units. It's only a low rate thing though. The basic setup of those machines overall is a little plastic tank into which you pour the fluid, the pump unit then plumbs directly into the side of the tank via a rubber seal, (it's only a push fit seal), and then pumps the fluid into that block where it exits as smoke. The plunger on those pumps was less than 1/4" diameter, so as you can imagine they didn't shift copious amounts. I'll see if I can dig a photo out of one of the pumps, as I don't have any of those knocking about.

 

[AndyStobbs]

I think for an automotive application requiring pressure, it would be best to let the smoke generate under atmospheric pressure, then suck it out of that chamber, though a compressor and into the manifold.
Would be a much easier set up to make at a diy level. Some of the el-cheapo compressors for tyre inflation have a digital target pressure,set it to 15psi and smoke away. I like the glow plug idea.

 

[the snooper]

here is one of the typical pumps from a cheap smoke machine

 

[normspanners]

I think for an automotive application requiring pressure, it would be best to let the smoke generate under atmospheric pressure, then suck it out of that chamber, though a compressor and into the manifold.
Would be a much easier set up to make at a diy level. Some of the el-cheapo compressors for tyre inflation have a digital target pressure,set it to 15psi and smoke away. I like the glow plug idea

Good idea re sucking into compressor inlet but the problem as I see it is the sheer volume of air required for one of those small 12v compressors would take forever, plus it has to keep up with the leak which could be more than the compressor can give,
But you have given me an idea of a small diaphragm spraying compressor they move huge amounts of air but only to 20 30 psi, and self regulating I think, ideal, so make smoke thats drawn in the inlet filter then output direct to the manifold through hand valve and maybe a regulator of some kind for low blow applications.