hoohaa Posted October 9, 2006 Author Share Posted October 9, 2006 As far as testing is concerned, I don't plan to actually submit the MS to EMP in any strength, but I was wondering if I might be able to make an educated guess at the protection level based on the MS's susceptibility to RFI or EMI. Maybe there is a correlation between EMP strength and RFI/EMI strength. If this is the case I should be able to see how well the system shields the MS circuitry from interference, and then decide from there which components need better or more shielding. I know this might not work, simply because there is such a large difference in the power of an EMP compared to the kinds of interference I could create and measure. It's worth considering though. If nothing else it would tell me if the shielding would not work. While I couldn't guarantee that the shielding would protect me from EMP, if the MS is found to be susceptible to lower power RFI or EFI, we could presume that a significant EMP would toast it. What do you guys think of that as a realistic testing method? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony D Posted October 9, 2006 Share Posted October 9, 2006 Well, I think the MS is the easiest thing to shield. Nice lead container around the box should suffice, and won't add that much total weight. it's the "veins and arteries" running all over the car that will prove to be the sticking point. Sensors on the engine, the Starter, the Coil, etc. Shielding THOSE will be just as important as the MS box itself. "Weak Link in the Chain" scenario. Shielding one major component will not be enough, the entire vehicle's harness and ancillary systems would have to be shielded. This would tend to make older vehicles with mechanical accessories the best canidates. A 1954 VW Beetle for instance. Mechanical Gasoline Level Gauge, Mechanical Speedo, and most of the electrical componentry on the thing concentrated in small areas easily covered with shielding boxes in the front and rear of the vehicle. Newer vehicles like a Z-Car would be a nightmare to adequately shield, but I believe on an early Bug, or earlier American Vehicle with very few power accessories it could be accomplished with some effort. The larger the vehicle, the larger the fuel it could carry onboard. Ideally, though, as stated earlier, a Diesel would probably be a better choice. Multi-fuel Capable Diesel ideally. A small hand driven pump and a 25 foot siphon hose would allow you to tap the bottoms of storage tanks at abandoned service stations, and to siphon out of "Bulk Oil" tanks at oil change businesses. But I think I am revealing toooooo much of my idle "road time brain wanderings" and will probably start making people uncomfortable if I go much further down this path... LOL Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
trwebb26 Posted October 9, 2006 Share Posted October 9, 2006 For some reason the movie "Oceans 11" keeps sticking in my head as I watch this thread. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boardkid280z Posted October 10, 2006 Share Posted October 10, 2006 Ocean's 11? I'm thinking more on the lines of Mad Max when reading this thread. As for the shielding, I like the idea of havinig 2 shields around MS, one that grounds to the MS grounds, and one that grounds somewhere else completely. I do have a question about the wire shielding though - what type of wire shielding should one use to shield individual wires, not bundles, since wires within bundles can interfere with eachother? I searched for wire shielding, but the results were limited... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hoohaa Posted October 10, 2006 Author Share Posted October 10, 2006 Some of the MS licensed dealers also sell braided shielding that is supposed to work well. You could check that out if you needed some. I would imagine there are other sources such as electronics supply sites etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DemonZ Posted October 10, 2006 Share Posted October 10, 2006 Faraday cage. Theres lots of stuff on the net on how to make em. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rztmartini Posted October 10, 2006 Share Posted October 10, 2006 isnt cable (as in TV cable) line shielded? might be kinda thick tho... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nismo280zEd Posted October 10, 2006 Share Posted October 10, 2006 I don't know about worrying about protecting from EMP. I mean... you woudln't be the only one without a running car if it did fry your MS. Not to mention surrounding industries would be down, electricity... etc. I'm not seeing how a metal box would protect it... maybe something more along the lines of an absorbtion material. I know copper is used to block signals... maybe a copper mesh around it... what about the anti static bags you get new computer components in? or... the things you used to put your camera in at the airport to protect the film from the X-ray machine? Just a plain old metal box I don't see how that protects it anymore than the AL box the MS is mounted in. I think playing with some of these other materials would be better. If you can find a way to test it... and perfect your "shield" you might even be able to sell your product to the government. Seeing as how the military is going more high tech... they will definatly need a good way to protect their high end electronics. Just a thought... good luck with it. I"m curious to see what you come up with. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mobythevan Posted October 10, 2006 Share Posted October 10, 2006 A serious person studying EMP would look on HAM radio sites. HAM radio operators want their equipment to work after any kind of devastation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony D Posted October 10, 2006 Share Posted October 10, 2006 HAM I'll second that comment. Mmmmmm, HAM....gaaarrrrgh! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
veritech-z Posted October 11, 2006 Share Posted October 11, 2006 Nismo280zed, those camera bags are just lead lined I believe. I got one to bring my film to Paris when I went there for a study abroad. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hoohaa Posted October 13, 2006 Author Share Posted October 13, 2006 Just as an update for those that were following this story, I did get an email back from Grippo. This is what he wrote: I have talked with Lance about your problem and have reviewed the Forum posts. I believe Lance was justified in what he did, This is really about where to post different subjects, and we have to have rules about it or there would be chaos. However, you are not banned from the entire forum, just from the msefi forum. You can go on the msextra forum and today or tomorrow there will be a shifting of various subforums so that they have their own forums. You can also go on one of these. We want to keep the msefi forum solely for research and education for controller theory, but the others are more open. -Al Ouch. At least now I know it wasn't an accident. I'm still not sure why this topic hit such a nerve over there. Enough of that. I wanted to comment on this post: I don't know about worrying about protecting from EMP. I mean... you woudln't be the only one without a running car if it did fry your MS. Not to mention surrounding industries would be down, electricity... etc. I'm not seeing how a metal box would protect it... maybe something more along the lines of an absorbtion material. I know copper is used to block signals... maybe a copper mesh around it... what about the anti static bags you get new computer components in? or... the things you used to put your camera in at the airport to protect the film from the X-ray machine? Just a plain old metal box I don't see how that protects it anymore than the AL box the MS is mounted in. I think playing with some of these other materials would be better. If you can find a way to test it... and perfect your "shield" you might even be able to sell your product to the government. Seeing as how the military is going more high tech... they will definatly need a good way to protect their high end electronics. Think about the way a lightning rod works. It is designed to provide the quickest path to ground so that the lightning hits the rod rather than electronics in the home. There are significant differences between EMP and lightning, but the protection is similar. The goal is to provide a shield with a very quick path to ground. A "plain old metal box" works well as a shield because it completely surrounds the electronic device, it can be isolated from the device, and it is very easy to ground. Also cheap to build. Possibly more important even than the box built around the MS is the shielding around the MS wiring harness. To me this is the biggest challenge. I am not going to come up with anything that would even remotely interest the govt. or military. They are already so far beyond what I'm trying to do it's ridiculous. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dr_hunt Posted October 13, 2006 Share Posted October 13, 2006 Since your car is riding on rubber, there just no way your going to ground your car to anything except the battery which will go "boom". This thread isn't going anywhere and I'm about ready to send this to the tool shed for lack of anything z related or of technical importance for the everyday person. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nismo280zEd Posted October 14, 2006 Share Posted October 14, 2006 its all good... just don't close the thread.. i find it kind of interesting. I still don't understand how a metal box would protect the MS.... if the EMP is powerful enough to go therough the entire car before getting to the "box" then i think it's kinda hopeless... also... as mentioned the car is riding on rubber... there is no way to transfer the energy into the ground, it would stay in the chassis unless you developed some sort of energy obsortion object... maybe you could run the ground to a capacitor? then the capacitor stores the surged energy? I don't know. -Ed Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boardkid280z Posted October 14, 2006 Share Posted October 14, 2006 Actually when I was in Europe I saw a lot of cars that were grounded through a rubber strip that had a metal mesh core. It hung from the back of the car by the exhaust down to the ground. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nismo280zEd Posted October 15, 2006 Share Posted October 15, 2006 Actually when I was in Europe I saw a lot of cars that were grounded through a rubber strip that had a metal mesh core. It hung from the back of the car by the exhaust down to the ground. wtf? do you know why they did this? I'm assuming it was on OEM cars. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pop N Wood Posted October 15, 2006 Share Posted October 15, 2006 I gave you a serious answer in your last, locked thread. Fiber optics. If you can't induce a current, you can't zap anything it is connected to. If it works for the F22 fighter, it will work in your Z car. Along the same line minaturization of all electronics. Taking out satellites is a golden way for a backward society to stike a blow against the western culture. And don't forget all the EMP weapons the military is developing. Doesn't have to be a nuke anymore, just a concentrated burst of EM energy designed to disable sensitive electronics. Do some google searches on the subject. I think you will have an impossible time quantifying exactly what a nuke based EMP will do. Half of the initial tests failed because somebody miscalculated the expected field strength or mispointed a sensor. It is a highly random function and hard to predict what will cause a failure and what won't. Alternators are highly unlikely to be fried. Can happen if the situation is just right, but low odds because it takes a large induced current and voltage spike. Small electronics like cell phones and pagers are very unlikely to be damaged. Just not much wire in them. The cell phone network will be killed, but handheld electronics should have as much chance of surviving as the person carrying it. Sheilding may or may not be the key. The Russians had an air burst that burned out buried cables. But the cables just happened to be hundreds of miles long and oriented in such a way they made an excellent low frequency antenna. The US test in 1962 had street light fuses get blown from 1400 km away. But when they analyzed which ones went, it was only 3% of the grid and was attached to the only long tranmission line on the small island of Oahu. Some of the other suggestions given in this thread ring true. Get an old car, carbed with a magneto. Put some voltage surge devices on the output of the alternator and try limit the lengths of your wire runs. On a Z, bury as much of your wiring as possible in the frame rails. Noise filters and voltage surge suppressors will keep peak induced voltages down by giving them a lower resistance path to ground. The comment about the viens and arteries leading into your sheilded boxes is absolutely dead on. If you are really good with electonics put opto-isolators at the interfaces of every box containing sensitive electronics. Isolation is the key. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony D Posted October 18, 2006 Share Posted October 18, 2006 Oh, now that is the best argument for putting your wires inside the frame rails ever! I have seen that trick on show cars, and it really cleans up the engine bay----but that is a great shield. i also second the comment about the anti-static straps from the rearend on cars on three different continents. Also, fuel tankers use a static strap (as well as other flammable liquid transport trucks), so assuming you were at home, grounding your vehicle to a proper ground rod is totally possible. Using a retracting static reel (available at trucking supply stores catering to that clientelle) and clamp on ground rod, you could drive away and it would automatically retract ! Shielding on the go would be much more difficult---I don't know how effective at dissipation those axle-straps are at transmission of currents. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dr_hunt Posted October 18, 2006 Share Posted October 18, 2006 So is the MS that sensitive to EMI/RFI? I've been reading alot of threads lately about how sensitive it is. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrators RTz Posted October 18, 2006 Administrators Share Posted October 18, 2006 So is the MS that sensitive to EMI/RFI? I've been reading alot of threads lately about how sensitive it is. Pretty much. Significantly more sensitive then OEM and, it seems, most aftermarket EMS's Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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