Monitoring Aerovee Turbo inlet temperature (TIT)

[Rynoth]

Turbine inlet temperature (TIT) is basically a measurement using an EGT-style thermocouple of the exhaust gas temperature just before it enters the turbine blades of the turbocharger. It's important for protecting the turbocharger itself. It's a very different measurement than EGT since it's downstream of the exhaust manifold, thus measuring much smoother gas flow that has been mixed between cylinders.

I just wanted to broach the subject and get people's thoughts about adding A TIT gauge to the Aerovee Turbo. I have not heard Sonex make mention of it and am curious if it's something worth having.

[Gunther]

Ryan, I'm glad you brought this up. I'm planning to install temp and pressure probes at both the turbo inlet and outlet. Down the road, I may want to experiment with pitot induction to the Aerocarb and I will need the data.

In the interest of avoiding turbo heat and de-cluttering the firewall, do you think there's room to mount a small super-battery on the forward face of the spar tunnel? Any other suitable aft locations? If the battery can be moved aft somewhere, there may also be space for a manual battery switch and manual push-button starter switch.

Gunther

[marsolgp]

Oh, never mind..... :D

[MichaelFarley56]

Ryan,

Good question. If it were easy to add a TIT gauge somewhere in the system I would certainly consider it, but I'm not going to loose much sleep over not having one. Back when I was flying turbo Cirrus SR-22's I would watch TIT but never had an issue keeping them well below redline, and that was running much higher EGT readings as compared to where I run my AeroVee. If we ran EGTs over 1400-1500 for long durations then a TIT gauge may become important, but we run so much cooler I doubt it's much of an issue.

I've done a little research on the model of turbo we use, and in racing automotive applications this turbo can run up to around 240 hp, so I really doubt we will work the turbo that hard.

Just my two cents of course!

[marsolgp]

I went ahead and installed a T.I.T. probe (had a spare Alcor from a PA31-350 from way back). It's interesting to watch, but don't know what's it's supposed to be. It runs about 200 degrees higher than the EGT's, and has never gone above 1650 deg F. I have MGL Xtreme so this was tapped into RDAC as #5 EGT. The probe is mounted about 1.5" below the turbo mount flange.

[MichaelFarley56]

I'd guess this is an apples to oranges comparison, but the Continental TSIO-550 in the SR-22 had a max TIT temp of around 1750 deg F. Normal high power cruise and you would see around 1600 deg F as a normal indication.