locomotive turbocharger

Does anybody know where we could get a turbocharger possibly from one of the old SD40's or even just from an old 645 engine?

We want to make a jet engine

hahahhahah thats great

My buddy would love to put on in his 1987 Grand National!!!

Me, I would make it into a coffee table - hahahhahha

lol

no seriously, you can make jet engines out of truck turbchargers, so we wat to try a loco turbo...

I made a silk purse, out of a sows ear once..........

Now that we've all had a good laugh, the answer to your question would be:

Have you tried asking the various companies that sell used locomotives and locomotive parts?

Ah, well, you hit exactly on my problem there, I would have asked if I knew where such companies were, or that they even existed!

Fair enough!

Here are a few that come to mind off the top of my head. This list is by no means complete; these are just the ones that spring to mind immediately.

Larry's Truck & Electric (A.K.A. LTE Rail, A.K.A. LTEX)... located in Ohio, I believe?

National Railway Equipment (NRE)

RELCO (located in Iowa)

CEECO (located in Washington state)

VMV-Paducahbilt (Kentucky) (They're owned by somebody else now... I want to say NRE...?)

Beacon Locomotive Services (located in Texas)

Ozark Mountain Railcar (located in Missouri)

Western Rail (located in Washington state)

And dozens of others that I can't think of at the moment... not to mention the hundreds of railroads that would surely have a few turbos in their spare parts warehouses.

Also try the classified ads on www.RailSwap.org

The EMD turbocharger & housing is not very configurable as a jet engine. Look closely at the arrangement on the back of the engine. The fresh air goes in the back and out the sides pointing down, perpendicular to the rotor axis, as it goes to the Charge Air Coolers (aftercoolers). The hot exhaust air from the diesel engine pistons comes in the front and goes through a custom distribution fitting to enter the turbocharger and discharges out the top of the housing. Plus there is the clutch arrangement and the mounting to the back of the engine attached to the shaft.

The entire arrangement is based on compressing air for Charge Air Cooling, quite different from a jet engine which in line, compresseses the combustion air, fuel is injected, then a special housing allows for proper expansion as the fuel is burned, heating the air. The shape of the EMD turbo just won't do that.

Truck turbos suck as 'jet engines' too. This isn't because of all the bends and all, but the rotors just aren't optimized for the use - there have been a number of small jets built for various purposes that look a lot like a turbocharger (externally).

Most conversions I've seen have poor burner designs, people seem to think that flames out the exhaust are 'good', but in reality, you want to burn the fuel and heat the air up BEFORE it reaches the turbine, where it does work.

But, seriously, I wouldn't even recommend trying such a thing unless you had experience in building smaller turbo->engine conversions. Even still, I'd be weary. The consequences of such a large device coming apart at high RPM are NOT pretty.

This isn't something you're gonna be able to test in your typical suburban subdivision, anyway.

I'd imagine EMD engines have turbos that spin at a good clip, I've seen larger engines that spin their (larger) turbos at well over 10,000 rpm...

the sd70 chargers spin at about 18,000rpm full load. they go boom at ±22,000 rpm.

if you were going to make a jet engine out of a loco turbo, i'd be looking at an FDL turbocharger.. no big hole in the back with exposed geartrain, and symmetrical compressor housing would let you have 2 mirrored burners that loop back into the back of the charger.. all it would be good for is noise though, as your thrust would all be going up into the sky [axial inlet turbocharger like the emd] unless you built a nozzle to redirect it back to the rear