Yeah, gotcha. Can't wait to hear what happens when you go back with a front splitter, brake ducting, and hopefully they won't DQ you at qualifying so you can just start up front and not have to worry about traffic from the get-go!Quote:
Originally Posted by Erron Spalsbury
Exactly right. I just need a full test day really.
Hey Err, did you log the third session? What was the AIT lap to lap? My fmic core is 1 1/2" thicker than yours and posted infront of my radator and I've no overheating issues. You also have wrapped headers and your turbo isn't mounted in the engine bay. You really think that's the issue? Your terminal speed is 165+ mph. You're moving a ton of air at that speed and I wouldn't think it would be an issue. Heat shouldn't creep like that after 15 mins especially since you were holding back. That inside vid looks like you were holding back quite a bit too! Last time we were at HPR you were taking 5th. You didn't even take 5th gear on the front straightaway, which you've done in the past, and you didn't engine brake at all. It looked like you had the room for it.
You think the expansion tank filling is from the FMIC blocking the radiator? Could always try air to water, but I don't think it will last 30 minutes before it hits 200deg unless we fog it. I actually changed my setup from some Bob Raub advice. He showed me the Volvo and their custom one piece crashbar, bumper, nose cone, and intercooler front clip. They welded 1/2" spacer tabs to the radiator so that their front clip bolted to the radiator. The FMIC was built into the clip and was their new crashbar and it mounted to the frame rails and radiator. There's no airgap between the intercooler and radiator at all. What Bob and Aaron pointed out to me was I needed to take away the space between them. Even with shrouding and ducting the desgn can be improved as the intent's to minimize air stall space between the front mount and the radiator. When I was running my old Greddy FMIC, which is the same dimension as your core, I encounterd the same type of issue as you but I never purged. My water temps were really freakishly hot though.
When I let Aaron and Bob look at it they pointed out the gap between my rad and the intercooler (which was about 4 inches). Bob said get rid of the gap and move them as close together as possible so you can smash air thru. Don't give it room to slow down and stall. I took the gap away and made some adjustments so there's only a 1/2" space between the two and it fixed it.
I also noticed your fans leave a lot of open area on the radiator and have no shrouding. You're only pulling air thru 300 square inches of a 600 sqare inch radiator because you're not ramming air due to the stall gap. I can show you how I have mine setup E. I think you should try it.
A few thoughts Jer, we're making a hell of a lot more power than the kpax volvo, by a long ass way.
Fans only work at slow speeds, high speeds and the fans actually block airflow, you have it backwards. This radiator is ducted corner to corner. If your fans can come on and lower the temp for them to turn off on their own, they've done their job. The rest is ducting.
A very interesting thought on the space between the two. I have triangle gap. The top of the IC is just about touching the radiator where as the bottom is about 2 inches away. It's just how it fits. The ducting is going right around the IC. The IC really just sits inside the duct for the radiator.
I know it's the front mount from history and what I've seen. I've seen so many mitsu cars that are 99% identical but one has a front mount and the other a side mount where the front mount car overheats, it's not even funny. Seriously man, like 4-5 examples of this. There is a cure in mind that I helped a friend with way back when. We actually used a side mount IC as an additional radiator inline with the stock radiator. That may be what I try next. I'm also going to pull the thermostat out of the car as well. See if maybe just a bit more flow will help.
The first time it boiled over on Sunday was in the pits. Ran the first full session, all the way to the checkers, did a cool down lap, (well spirited cool down, they want you off quick for the next race) didn't let it idle but a minute or two, and it boiled. It gurgled in the pits and dumped maybe a cup past the full bottle limit. It wasn't horrid. When it cooled, inside the t-stat housing it was down to the neck about level with the top hose. It didn't totally empty itself or anything, it just overheated.
Air-to-water might be your best bet on the cooling issues. Alternatively, you could angle the FMIC downward and/or fully duct the FMIC and radiator to the hood vents.
What turbs, and what kind of power?
I'm well aware if the fan thing. Remember, me only has one fan. The ram air effect is why I dropped one.
I think air will always follow the path of least resistance. So if the gap between the rad and the FMIC isn't equal fron top to bottom and side to side it will migrate to either the top or the bottom of the radiator and cut your total air passthru potential down cause your not going to be flowing. A uniform air column. I think you might try to make sure that gap's as small and uniform as possible.
Lots of lessons to be learned from Kpax, E. That car is multiple occasion GT world champion and AWD TT. It's also 550hp with a couple hundred more ft/lbs of tq. 550 is a little more than you on the current tune. Everything translates. What works there, works here.
You mean this car?
World's Fastest Volvo - MSN Autos
They've apparently turned up the boost! :)
Driven by this guy?
K-Pax Racing - Driver Bio
Randy is hands down the coolest guy and in my humble opinion, one of the worlds best drivers.
http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/1...3243086191.jpg
Very good point on the column of air, I hadn't thought about that. The issue there would be the IC is obviously smaller than the Rad. It would have to neck down then back up again.
Tyler, it's a GT4094 at 21psi. We just did a tune on it, 525hp/538TQ as of 2 weeks ago.
Yep, who do you think built my subframes, uprights, and suspension :).
Listen to Randy on this vid. He's talking about the Kpax car's, Bob's cars. Look at some of their design. It's really hard to see but that intercooler to the bumper is all one piece. They are laying on eachother. Upper splitter is for intercooler, lower is for radiator.
KPAX RACING VOLVO S60 TECHNICAL REVIEW - YouTube
Test drive.
K-Pax Racing Volvo S60 Hot Lap at Mosport International Raceway - YouTube
You think car is slow...? LOL!
I know it's not slow, it's actually very similar to my car. (power and weight wise)
Ok, enough hijack....
I'm seriously considering using a stock sidemount as an additional radiator inline with the one I have now. Anyone have one laying around they want to rid themselves of? Thoughts? It worked on Keiths car way back when had the front mount and 20g's, what'cha think?
Erron, are (1) an air-to-water heat exchanger or (2) a ducted V-mount setup not viable options?
That was pretty interesting how they have the IC seperated. I just now got time to watch it. That's really cool stuff there.Quote:
Originally Posted by J. Fast
Anything is possible, right? I'm just looking for way to not have to cut/paste so many things. I really try to keep it to where if I fold it, it's a mostly stock part that is cheapish to replace. I'm really thinking another side mount. Or, I can do what Drew did and put another radiator in the back hatch area but holy hell is it a lot of piping work. I've just built a less restrictive t-stat housing insert that will remove the control valve all together. Should increase the flow rate considerably.Quote:
Originally Posted by lawdogg
Subscribing. Nothing useful to add. Loved the edited video Erron. Thanks for the volvo vids jfast. Holy hell is that thing fast in the corners!
Great stuff Erron and J. Fast. Lots of cool cars and some great info for fellow track enthusiasts. Erron, thanks for the info on the lip infront of the hood vents. I've been trying, on and off, for like two years now to get that same hood for my car. If I ever do, I'll have to bolt on some lip pieces like you did. I'm too poor to actually race onroad in competition, but I do hit NLRC for open track days, and yes my FMIC makes it run hot. I've seen coolant temps upwards of 240 deg. Haven't boiled over yet, well not until the head gasket blew (head flex). J. Fast, thanks for the information on putting the FMIC core as close and evenly spaced to the radiator as possible, I'll have to work on mine. And also for the idea to remove one radiator fan to let high speed rammed in air pass through the radiator better. I can totaly see that, especially with a (properly) vented hood.
Erron, ever considered swapping places and putting the radiator in front of the FMIC?
Would be interesting to see exactly how much of an increase there would be on IAT's. My truck is setup that way, the IC is the last thing to get air due to engine cooling being the primary concern.
Jason
I think you're chasing your tail going that route. It's full on racecar time, E. You can't mount everything where mitsu put it anymore. Lemme come by and take some measurements off your car. I will design something for you and we can fab it. Don't do the DSM thing bro, seriously.Quote:
Originally Posted by Erron Spalsbury
The other thing I will draw up for you is a structural modification to the frame rails. I want to do the same thing on yours as I dud to my racecar. I cut open the firewall forward frame rails at the crash bar mounts. The box tube that carry's the rails is hollow. I cut into the rails in the fender well and nstalled a deflection shroud and reinforced the rail. The shroud points directly towards the brake rotors. On the front end I built a plenum from the rails forward and tied it to naca ducts in the front. What I ended up with is ram air brake ducts by utilizing the frame rails as the main plenum. The frame rails are 2" X 4", plenty big enough.
Nah, no need to. I'm going to do the side mount. I've seen it work. Plus, I've had this issue before and did solve it, I just have to do it again. The fix the first time around was more capacity. I think I'm in that same boat now. This is just experience speaking from previous trial and error. I've had a few more things come to light as well that really makes me lean this way. It's not overly complicated. I don't want to change the IC setup at all, or the radiator. I think I have that setup pretty well, I just flat out need more fluid capacity. The whole system is just a smidge over 2 gallons in stock form. Let's see what 3 does.
...and it is a racecar, ya know that goes TO THE TRACK. (jab-jab-jab, get your car done, jab-jab-jab) :P
Sidemount idea sounds great. Hope it works well! Where's your oil cooler?
I definitely want to see this! not because i'm gonna copy it, but i'm curious as hell.Quote:
Originally Posted by Erron Spalsbury
Oil cooler is on the side.
I just found out something fun today, stock mitsu temp probes, ya, they only go to 186 degrees. At 190, they are zero ohm. Swapping it now to a real sender for more testing.
Interesting. Wonder how MMCD logger was giving me coolant temps upwards of 240 deg. at times. Which temp probe, the ECU sensor, the stock gauge sensor, or the A/C sensor? Already going to replace the guage sensor with an AEM water temp gauge.Quote:
Originally Posted by Erron Spalsbury
The one on the thermostat housing, if standing on the passenger side looking at the motor. The one on the far left has a white connector, that's the AC, then the one in the middle, that's the one that the ECU reads and the one to the far right is one that goes to the stock gauge cluster. I was pulling the temp from the middle one. It's all better now, just plumed in one that sweeps from -20 to 400 degrees and it's calibrated. (only took it up to running temp, actual testing will come later.
Finally people agreeing that FMIC does not work :)
so what's your plan? the local guy here who does pretty much what you do is going water to air with the radiators for it mounted elsewhere in the car (aka not infront of the radiator)
I'm trying a few things. It looks like the bypass valve in the thermostat takes far too long to fully go to radiator mode.
I still am of the opinion that you're chasing your tail on the issue. You're cavitating coolant, E. Is adding another radiator going to prevent you fom still doing it? Water doesn't have to boil to start getting air bubbles and expanding. I can also do the same from turbulance from impulsewaves in the heads no and block, casting imperfections and lastly and most importantly from not having enough pressure and being too slow. I think the second radiator would cause too dramatic of a pressure drop and you will collapse the coolant and it will also bubble.
If it were myself before I did anything I'd do some engine pressure testing before proceeding. I think I might collapse all the valves in each cylinder and pressure test each combustion chamber to 160psi and see if coolant's lifting.
Coolant is just like an other fluid such as air, fuel, or oil. You get the most efficient use out of it when it stays together and travels in a uniform column with no separation, mixing, or cavitation. My guess is you're experiencing coolant separation. In order to bring back uniformity the system will require that you install a filter. The filter will seperates and isolates any turbulance that can form in the coolant system. An entrapment filter will catch the air bubbles and keep the coolant uniform.
If you notice every fluid system on my street car has a heat sink, filter, and cavitation or separation trap. One for air, fuel, oil, and coolant. I filter them because I know what happens when you get separation of fluid.
Going back to this more capacity thing. It will absolutely work. Increasing surface area will help, as would increasing airflow. Any combination of the two will help. However, if you're still going to "eventually" get hot or your slowing the coolant way down because of two stage cooling you'll have to filter the fluid or its going to get air bubbles.
So you can add more weight and piping, another remote radiator, and build a coolant bubble filter and separation reservior. Or, you could just move what you have around and increase the airflow. You have 12" of nose left on the car to move some stuff forward. Take a look at all the cutaways at the PRM roadrace car in the front, open the bumper and put some vents in there and duct to the radiator or move the ic and the radiator and mount them somewhere else.
And quit tap dancing around the issues. Discuss them openly with 3STech's so they can be addressed and all perspectives and advice can be given and good solutions to problems can be achieved by group brainstorming.
If I wasn't there and didn't know you al I would've interpreted is, "there was a race, and it was awesome". You left out a lot of details, share. There are things that can be improved upon and issues that keep resurfacing over and over, open up the discussion and get some 2nd, 3rd, 4th opinions, and etc... that's how you fix stuff.
Negative. If I were, it would do it on the first pull on the dyno or in past years of racing. I truly do believe it's not cavitating.Quote:
Originally Posted by J. Fast
Oh hell no. If that were the case the 6 gallon Nascar systems would also have this issue. You can't over cool from my research.Quote:
Originally Posted by J. Fast
Which is like a 1/100th of actual combustion and would do nothing... Dude, the head is not flexing at this power level. The -PROPER- test is a combustion gas tester for the coolant, there is none in mine. ($29.95 at Napa)Quote:
Originally Posted by J. Fast
It's not a filter, it's a swirl pot or accumulator that removes air. Which filter are you talking about?Quote:
Originally Posted by J. Fast
What are you talking about? I know you have the heat sink on the fuel line, but there is no swirl pot or surge tank? Or on the oil, or the coolant? Huh?Quote:
Originally Posted by J. Fast
Not gonna happen.Quote:
Originally Posted by J. Fast
Uh, dude.Quote:
Originally Posted by J. Fast
Actually, things get fixed by testing, not talking about it on an internet forum. It's fun to theorize and take educated guesses though. I'll go ahead and mention what I think is happening at this point from some testing I did yesterday. The cooling system -may- be working like it is supposed to. The t-stat just isn't reacting quick enough or at a really high temperature. The bypass valve on the t-stat (return block off) doesn't fully close until just over 200. By that point the system -may- have gone into a sue-do thermal runaway and now can't cool the mixture quick enough. So, instead of having the system try to cool an already overheated fluid (which it can't do in an off/on/off scenario) I'm going to try the system in a locked down mode. T-stat always open, block off always blocked off. Will it work? I will find out.Quote:
Originally Posted by J. Fast
You're generating turbulance in you're coolant system, E. Any engineer couls tell you that by simple observation. Observe radiator hoses. Those acordians look pretty disruptive and turbulant to me. Turbulant flow right behind an air-gap, the hole to your coolant overflow tank. The coolant system is probably taking gulps of air. I'm thinking if I was in your position I might install a coolanta separator or a filtered air bubble expansion tank to separate the air gap and separation being from turbulance.Quote:
Originally Posted by J. Fast
Doesn't PRM run one on their racecar? I remember seeing a pic of one a long time ago. What's Ralliart's setup? I bet they have a coolant air trap in there. Their car's a real hour+ enduro. I would bet money they have one so their coolant stays uniform and doesn't separate and develop turbulance bubbles.
I'm trying to help you E, and a have discussion. Gotta put that ego away my friend.
Those rad hoses are smooth inside, those look like rad hose sleeves that go over the stock hoses to prevent the hose from flexing under hot conditions. I think the sidemount idea will work just fine. Putting the rad in front of the FMIC won't cool the intake charge down enough. Are you running meth injection to cool the intake charge down?
Jer, no ego man, this is just real data, not regurgitated info from someone else. You have to understand that I've been racing this platform since 1996. I feel like we keep going back to the same thing over and over again. Let's do something someone else hasn't.
The hoses aren't flowing at maximum capacity, no where near, and certainly not anywhere in the realm to cause cavitation. If we're talking turbulence, then we are talking restriction. The restriction would be t-stat. Probably 2-1 over the hoses. Flow through the hoses are not the issue. If you're talking cavitation, then it would be at the water pump under high rpm. Jack tried a fix for this years ago with an electric pump. The issue was still present, it just get too hot.
The long neck on the thermostat housing is the accumulator for our system. That's where the air goes when the system "burps" whatever is trapped. I'm not entirely sure what you're talking about with the hole to the overflow. That hole isn't in play until the cap has lost it's ability to hold back the pressure, in my case, 1.5 bar. At that point it's just a reclaiming of fluid.
I mentioned this before, the bypass doesn't kick in fast enough. Here, I'll spill the beans as it were.
T-stat in closed position as well as the bypass in open position.
http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/1795/imag0432i.jpg
This does double duty to keep the fluid from ever going to the radiator as we see depicted here...
http://img543.imageshack.us/img543/9164/coolant.gif
It does begin to open at 180, but notice at over 190 it's hardly even half open...
http://img406.imageshack.us/img406/876/imag0433b.jpg
It doesn't force the entire flow through the radiator until well over 200 degrees. When you jump 20-40 degrees in a matter of a few seconds, it can't keep up and you end up re-heating the already hot fluid. This is not good. There's another major kicker. Under high volume (RPM) the spring on the bypass is designed to open rather than force the coolant to the radiator. So what is the fix? For a race car application, that doesn't care about warm up, or cruising speed making the coolant go too cold, I'm hoping it's this..
http://img855.imageshack.us/img855/8127/imag0445b.jpg
A few notes about this. First, it was made yesterday, lol. It's been modded to push the valve further into the neck thus using more of the available spring as back pressure to force the coolant into the radiator. The valve is also bent to go further open and the sides have been shaved to open this passage even further. There are also holes drilled around the outter ring for just a bit more flow capacity. Will this work? It should -in theory-, but I won't know until I try it. Will the additional back pressure have any adverse affects on the water pump, it sure as hell could, but I will find out. That's why I didn't want to post this until it's tested.
we've been trying the honda S2000 Thermostat with good results FMIC side of things seems un-winnable, only avenue to person FMIC I suspect would be to rig air to be able to bypass the FMIC, I still don't see that helping, looking forward to the SMIC stuff, since your smic stuff will be well planned/ducted etc and be an ideal solution not the rest of us going with how massive can I make it :D
That is smart! Simple smart. The only question is if your radiator works really well will it push you into warmup enrichment on your map. The coolant feeds to the heater looks like those can be recirc'd also. You could almost put a secondary in there and just use those lines for the turbo cooling.
Great ideas going on here. Erron, are you worried about circulating coolant through the radiator too fast? The heat can only transfer out of the coolant through the radiator fins at a certain rate for a given airflow. If the coolant passes all the way through the radiator too fast, it won't have shed as much heat as it could have, at a slower rate of circulation, and that means less cooling. Guess it's a matter of find the optimum rate of circulation to maximize total cooling vs cooling rate of change. Last year, in an attempt to increase cooling on my car, I drilled two small (1/8th inch or so) in the thermostat, and hardwired the radiator fans to run at full speed all of the time, so I start getting cooling almost immediately. It sure helped, but still need more. Are you even running coolant to your turbo?
Good question Jer. Most certainly if I'm just tooling around town. On the track though, I doubt it but only trying it will tell.
Stealth_RT, I'm honestly not. I did a little reading about cooling too fast and from what I found, it may or may not be a wives tale, lol. (I saw arguements on both sides of the fence) I really don't know that answer. I am cooling the turbo with coolant. I've even considered a seperate cooler just for it. I have the cooler and the fittings, the question is where to put it. :)
you could put radiators in the SMIC spots :) then throw fans at the end of the ducting, or you could go water to air with SMIC's....seems to be getting a fair following in the road racing crowd over here, I have always been dubious of the weight payoff, but they're doing it....
the hardcore guys do rear mount radiators and the likes.
How did you install it with the plunger extended in the bypass valve closed position? Is it just spring resistance and you have to lean on it or clamp it? Did you test the before and after pressure in coolant bypass mode vs open? If it works can you just weld it closed on the assembly? How long did you say it took for the plunger to extend to open the radiator feed? Hah, well, I suppose it's instant radiator circulating forever :). Will be interesting results to see. This could be ana amazing fix.
Any downsides of having too cool engine coolant?
That was going to be my next question. Do you just run all out and then size your radiator for an ideal temperature since there's no flow controlled cooling? The set temp will be the radiator efficiency?Quote:
Originally Posted by Stealth_RT
Erron, YGPM, on a different subject, not gonna hijack this thread.
On the topic of oil coolers, are the B&M oil coolers decent to use? Or are the Setrab cores just so much superior that B&Ms are junk in comparison. Using a B&M now, but this is a good time to consider re-doing the oil cooler.
What he's elluding to is the FMIC isn't the problem at all. Its the delay time for the plunger on the stat. It takes like 5 seconds to open the radiator flow valve. It takes 2 seconds to heat the water from 180 to 220 degrees. By the time e stat move from open to closed it's 10 seconds. Delay is trapping the hotter coolant in the block because the plunger is bypassing the 220 temp fluid to the radiator and it's staying trapped in the block and re heating. Then by the time the plinger moves into radiator mode the coolant is double heated because of the temp cycles. The system works. Cooling isn't the issue its the stat blocking the use of the radiator from bypassing and it's "latency". It takes 10 second to cycle the stat and 2 second to make the heat.Quote:
Originally Posted by MR2
You can't just pull the stat either you have to have the valve in there or youhave to weld it shut.
The other thing I was thinking with overheats is you have to have the riught stat in there with the valve. If the bypass valve is missing you can't use the radiator at all.