|
Alexis Kit Installation on a Ford F350 Power Stroke We highly recommend Alexis Cell HHO Kits by Hydroxy Technologies. Click on a picture above for a higher resolution image! I recently installed an Alexis X100 HHO Kit on my 2004 4x4 Ford F350 Super Duty pickup truck with the Power Stroke® turbo diesel engine. It was actually not me doing 95% of the install, rather I was at a local garage. The shop owner, Pete Lauritsen, did a fine job. He is very meticulous with the way he installs the electrical wires and terminals. He also made a simple custom platform to hold the PWM (blue boxes) in place. I will be telling the folks at Hydroxy Technologies that they should send a small slab of ABS plastic to make installation a snap like Pete did. I think the pictures speak for themselves on the way the wiring is neat and well-protected. Mr. Lauritsen also added a nice custom look to my truck. He had some small lights that he chose to install inside the grille of my truck to make it shine at night. The Alexis HHO Kit by Hydroxy Technologies appear to shine as it bubbles away with a happy glow. | Square tubing is used as bracket holder | I will say one thing about this installation that must be done differently next time. When I was trying to find some mounting hardware for the Alexis Kit's brackets, I chose aluminum square tubing in 36 inch pieces, which I purchased at a Lowe's home improvement store. Bad move. Although aluminum has excellent workability for making a simple bracket mount, is light, and is easy to cut and drill, it is not the right material to use anywhere near potassium hydroxide or anything with such a high pH. The KOH attacks the aluminum instantly on contact. We should have either used galvanized metal and some paint, or we could have at least painted the aluminum. Perhaps a powder coat would look nice, but that’s not exactly ideal for a custom installation like this. If anyone else has to do a similar install on a Ford Super Duty truck or van, I will measure the square tubing and see which sizes we used. The large tubing laid at the bottom and we attached each stainless steel bracket to the top of it. The small tubing was placed on top of the foremost radiator brackets (this truck has about 5 radiators: in this case, the air conditioning radiator) and we cut the corners at 45 degree angles to affix the square tubing to those brackets. We then attached each Alexis kit bracket to the front of the square tubing. | | Epoxy Technique, a la Elmer's K4 | Inside brass fitting | Since we used aluminum tubing on the top and the bottom of each Alexis bracket, the cells and bubbler/concentrator are very secure in the brackets. The only additional add-on was to use a cable tie around the top of each Alexis cell and bubbler to ensure they stayed vertical during certain 4x4 road excursions. For the air intake, I was the man with the plan. I purchased some cheap 5-minute epoxy gel that listed both metal and rubber as compatible bonding surfaces. My idea was to use a unique 3-piece design. On the inside, there is a brass nipple with a ¼” NPT thread. On the outside, I used another brass nipple having a ¼” NPT thread. Attached to the outside nipple is brass a ¼” x ¼” NPT elbow. Using Rector Seal No. 5 thread sealant, I connected the outside brass fitting together, put a little thread sealant on the internal brass nipple, and then I mixed up the 2-part epoxy. As you can see, my epoxy technique is reminiscent of a 4-year old learning to use Elmer’s School Glue, but I digress. I think it’s obvious that I smeared a healthy portion of the gunk on the hole and between the interior NPT fitting and exterior NPT fitting, making an air-tight seal in the process and drawing some jeers from Pete, whose neat electrical work I have aforementioned. I must point out that all of the drilling and epoxy work should be done with a short section of air intake piping removed. This will allow you to ensure that all stray fragments of rubber and epoxy are not accidentally ingested by the engine, or in my case, the turbo charger. I let this one dry for about an hour, which curiously enough is the specified wait time for 5-minute epoxy. I need to point out a few things about my truck. First off, I have installed a 200-amp alternator in place of the original 110-amp stock alternator. I got a pretty good deal, but when I bought it, it came with the wrong pulley, so I used my old one. I found out later that if I cut off the nose of my alternator, I could put a smaller pulley on that would allow me to get better voltage performance at low rpm. I was also told that you can get a large case alternator and some special mounting brackets for this truck. In any case, (no pun intended) my small case alternator seems to really work well with the small pulley and cut-off nose. I saved about $100 or more by doing it this way and learned something along the way. So you might notice a very large diameter black insulated cable going from the alternator, across the aluminum air duct that transfers air to the intercooler, and attaching to the positive terminal of the battery. This is a supplemental wire equivalent to about 1/0 AWG copper. There are a few more large gauge wires which are disconnected and taped. These were for an AC inverter that is no longer installed. The large yellow wire was for an AC extension cord. Now, let’s look at what Pete did for my Pulse Width Modulator (PWM) blue boxes. First, he cut some ¼” ABS plastic and mounted the blue boxes to it. He connected my meter shunt to the slab, too, using the bolts which hold the wire terminals. Then he created a bracket to mount it to the frame. | | The PWM Blue Boxes and wiring | As you can see in the close-up, a large gauge red wire goes from the passenger side battery positive terminal to the ammeter shunt. The other side of the shunt goes immediately to two 30-amp breakers (although the kit comes with 30 amp fuses). The output of each breaker goes to a relay (shown hiding to the left of the yellow extension cord below Pete’s left hand, above right) which in turn goes to a PWM blue box. From the output of each blue box, power goes directly to each cell, passing through a 30-amp fuse (not shown). Also hard to make out is that Pete decided to use the negative terminal of the passenger side battery for the grounds that go to each PWM blue box. These black wires are in a black wire sheath. Since this is a diesel engine, we didn’t need to hook up any oxygen sensors or MAP/MAF sensors to the master PWM. But we did need to hook up the oil pressure sensor for safety reasons. The oil pressure sensor wire for this engine was slightly unusual in that we discovered that it is an inverted signal. Since the Hydroxy Technologies Alexis Kit is prepared for either a normal or inverted signal (and the instructions cover both possibilities), we had little difficulty connecting this wire once we found it. It is located near the oil filter, which was a snap to find using a Google search. Inside the truck, we found a convenient place to get power by tapping into the radio circuit. I would probably use the cigarette lighter next time, as there is a possibility to get noise whenever you connect the radio to anything. I might recommend to Hydroxy Technologies to be sure they use an RF choke or EMI filter on the power wire to help prevent that sort of noise. We also connected my custom DC ammeter and DC voltmeter “black box” inside the truck. This will allow me to do some testing and monitoring. Pictures to follow: my “black box” panel meters, the VMU attached to my dash, and a picture of me driving the truck. 
Click for larger HHO Installation pics! More Pictures to follow!
|
