The Banderlog Water Injection Valve
History. It all started one day when I was getting a ride in Keith
Zellmer's old Eliminator Daytona lake boat. To clarify, this was a
"lake boat" that could do the 1/4 mile in 11 seconds. He had this
nifty little switch that shut off the water to his headers when he
wanted to race someone. Now, I'd seen some of the headaches that my
Jetboat buddies had been going through getting their cooling systems
working properly. Too much pressure and they'd end up with water in
the oil. Too little, blue headers. Too early? Hydro locked and wasted
engine. I started thinking, if I could hook that switch of Keith's to
something that would read the RPM of the engine. Well, I might just
have something there.
I decided to see if I could do just that.
The Lab:
First step was to design the electronics to measure RPM and
control the valve. In order to do this we had to build an engine test
stand to run the lab tests on.
The Lab testing is finished up. Everything seems to work great. Next
phase is initial lake testing.
Lake testing: Once the valve works in the lab, its time to try it in the "real
world". This means setting up everything in a boat with water
injected headers, going out to a lake and see if we can make it all
work.
Once again, a simple job took way longer than expected. Seeing that the boat was now running, the familly and myself
decided to take it to northern Iowa to go jetting on the Mississippi
river. (From California) There was a meeting of some of the local
jetters out there and we wanted to go meet up with them. Seeing that
the prototype valve was in the boat at the time, this ended up
supplying quite a bit of testing for it.
The lake tests are now finished up. Ready for the next phase.
Prototype production run and Beta testing.
Prototype production & Beta
test: Meet. The Banderlog Beta Test
Team
| | Fred (nelsonf) Nelson 1973 18' Blazer Jet
455 Olds
Berkeley JG-A Jet drive. Modesto, California |
| | Bruce (RatSquirt) Von Drashek 18' Hondo
454 BBC Chevy
Jacuzzi WJ Jet drive. Prior Lake, Minnesota |
| | Pat (SLOTRACER) Oneill 1975 18' Tahiti
454 BBC Chevy
Berkeley JG-A Jet drive. Stockton, California |
The Beta Test Team Boys were great! These guys risked blue
headers, hydro locked engines and who knows what else to test valves.
As the testing went on, I growled, snapped and otherwise pushed them
to run their boats every weekend that they could. "I want results,
and I want them
NOW!" Fred had the longest path, his boat was
all over the garage when the testing begin. Putting the entire boat
puzzle back together and then getting it on the water first, was an
amazing feat. WTG Fred!
During Beta, most of the other bits were finished up. Things like
brochures and manuals.
Beta is wrapping up now. All of the issues brought up by the beta
testing have either been corrected or are close to being corrected.
Next step is to have a product launch and build the initial
production run.
Initial production & sales.The product was launched at Tower Park II. (This was a hot rod
boat meet in the California Delta)
Well, so much for initial development. Its a shipping product
now!
I'd like to thank everyone who helped to complete this project.
Some donated engine parts, some donated time to fabricate stuff, some
donated engineering time. There was endless help and information from
the boards. As the song goes, "With a little help from my friends."
But I find, without a lot of help from my friends, I'd just get
nowhere.
Thanks Millions!
-jim lee
Phone : (650) 365-9303
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