Good luck to Blue Velocity at NASA TTU @ High Plains Raceway this weekend!

[Erron Spalsbury]

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.



This does double duty to keep the fluid from ever going to the radiator as we see depicted here...



It does begin to open at 180, but notice at over 190 it's hardly even half open...



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..



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.

[MR2]

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

[J. Fast]

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.

[Stealth_RT]

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?

[Erron Spalsbury]

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.

[MR2]

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.

[J. Fast]

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?

[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.

[J. Fast]

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.

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?

[J. Fast]

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

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.

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.