Old Sun Machine

I am re-aquiring an old Sun Machine and was wondering if is possible to build a simulator of a running engine to hook up to the machine.

This is the machine;

My dad had 3 of those on rolling stands in his shop back in the day.

I imagine you can trick it somehow. Or just hook up an old 350 to it.

I could do something like that, but I really didn't want an engine on a stand taking up more space in my small garage.

Figure out what inputs it needs, then find a way to spoof them.

In reply to Noddaz :

You could probably rin a small 4cyl, ac vw maybe and put it under the Sun unit as a stand.

Or just say berkeley it and buy another car of the proper vintage.

Different kind of old Sun machine than I was expecting. :)

In reply to codrus (Forum Supporter) :

You and me both. We are putting ourselves in a very specific age bracket. 

Run a distributor and a generator with an electric motor on a variable speed drive and hide it in the cabinet somewhere.

Hook the leads to that.

ShawnG said:

Run a distributor and a generator with an electric motor on a variable speed drive and hide it in the cabinet somewhere.

Hook the leads to that.

Came here to say that.

I too expected something from Sun Microsystems 

You could spin a points distributor with a grinder motor, but the ignition scope would not do anything useful.

You could watch the secondary pattern on the scope and it would tell you if it was rich, or lean, or other characteristics.  And you could see what cylinder was misfiring without having to play pull-a-wire.

ProDarwin said:

I too expected something from Sun Microsystems 

I was hoping for Tadpole content.

wae said:

ProDarwin said:

I too expected something from Sun Microsystems 

I was hoping for Tadpole content.

Tadpoles were SPARC, but not Sun. :)

In reply to codrus (Forum Supporter) :

Since we're already way off from the original question...

Geez, my mind went even older....

I'm not sure what inputs it needs, or up to date on small processors and the inputs they can accept, but could you use a Pi or Aduino (so) to record reading off a running engine to play back during demos?

Maybe even make recordings with different problems created?

If you just want the gauges to move and the lights to flash....

Two of those gauges look like mechanical so for those you would need a small pump, maybe a couple of solenoids with various air bleeds on them to get the gauges to move and not deadhead your pump.  

The rest I would just bypass the actual circuitry and use some sort of RPi or cheapo depot PLC to send a signal to the gauges and scope directly, either to sweep, hold steady, rev up, whatever.  If you hooked it to a working engine first you could make it mimmick a rev, idle, idle, rev or something by videoing what the gauges do and then using a timer to set it up.   

The lights you can run power to and trigger with a relay.    

Its a lot of work for a gee-whiz project.  

I must be old because I pictured exactly what the OP shared. :( 

Oapfu said:

In reply to codrus (Forum Supporter) :

Since we're already way off from the original question...

Heh.  Tadpole was also the name of the company that made the "SPARCbook" -- a mid 90s laptop using a Sun SPARC processor and running SunOS. :)

David S. Wallens said:

I must be old because I pictured exactly what the OP shared. :( 

I was picturing one of these.

We had two of them where I used to work.  I restored them, and they were also used as tools.

codrus (Forum Supporter) said:

Different kind of old Sun machine than I was expecting. :)

For some reason I think that the Honda parts catalog used to run off one of those many years ago.

You want somthing like a stim jim that is used for testing MS units.  I am betting if you searched eBay/internet hard enough there has to be some sort of calibration unit for those. That might get you what you want.