Roman

The effective width is still 100mm in any case, because the fins in the radiator still run perpendicular rather than sloped. There's still the same surface area of fins cooling the same volume of water. I'd say it's more about fitting a bigger radiator while keeping that nice low bonnet line that RX7s have. I've seen some racecars that have the radiator mounted down flat, with ductnig to push air through. I'd say any angle is fine so long as you're getting air through it, and you can bleed the coolant.

I guess it's easy to tell whether it's the friction/heat etc just from pumping the fuel around that causes a temp increase, turn the pump on while the motor is off. So I did this, with a thermometer sitting in a hole in the fuel rail. With the engine not running, it took a long friggen time for the temperature to go up by even 1 degree. (keeping in mind that the car has a full gas tank currently) However turn the engine on, and fuel rail temp increased by about 1.5 degrees per minute. It's possible that ambient air temp was increasing as well and biasing the results, but, it seems pretty clear that pumping the fuel around just on its own generates a negligable amount of heat increase. In my opinion I think it's radiant heat from the engine, and heat coming directly through the rail bolts causing the temp increases. So heat proofing the rail somehow and insulating the bolts looks as though it might make the best difference.

I think what he (spiderwebfx) is meaning is that Taupo has a shitload of harsh left hand corners, and Hampton has a shitload of harsh right hand corners. So one of your outer tires is always going to wear worse than the inner, no matter what you do.

These motors run a big oil pump because the VVTI needs lots of pressure. What grade oil? Factory uses 5w30

Interesting, thanks guys.

Also, what's the deal with AN- fittings? As best I can tell: Pros: -??? Cons: -Bulky and ugly, usually come in gross colours -Harder to take on/off than banjo bolts -Sometimes need two connections at a single end, so more things to potentially come undone -Need huge radius on hose bends -Risk of a hose slipping out? -Hard to know when they're tightened correctly / overtightened I guess they're the easiest option when you need a lot of custom lines, but ergh I hate the idea of using them. I've got them on my oil filter relocator currently. I'm pretty hesitant to use them for anything fuel related, especially on connections that need to be done up and undone a lot. However it looks like it might be the only option if I want an adjustable FPR.

Any suggestions on what to use for a fuel temp sensor? I'd assume a normal water temp sensor works fine, but ideally I'd like something a little smaller.

Just before drag day, I took off my intake manifold and used Engineers Blue a vivid to colour the inside of the runners solid black as far up as I could reach. With the idea of being able to check the spray pattern of the outer injectors, by seeing where it washes away the pen marks. Interestingly near the base of the runners it was all still completely black, which would indicate that fuel isnt really pooling and running down, so much as maybe bouncing off the runner wall and then vaporizing. (this is good!) Cant really take a photo to show it but it looks like something like this must be going on. Next thing to sort out though is try get the fuel temps down, both of my fuel rails end up too hot to touch. One thought is that although the main fuel rail is isolated from the engine block temperature by plastic riser blocks, the bolts that hold them in touch both so will conduct heat into the rail. Otherwise could be that my fuel pump is just pumping the bejeezus out of the fuel and heating it up too much. I'll try adding some insulating washers to the fuel rail first and then go from there. If no luck I might look at options for slowing the pump down or adding a cooler.

Also one thing I noticed on drag day. My outer fuel rail was getting frigging hot, like way hotter than the manifold its attached to. Then I looked at the other fuel rail, which was also super hot. I think the fuel is getting heated by the main rail, back to the tank then it's coming back really hot already. The main fuel rail is mounted on plastic riser blocks to insulate it from engine heat, but then the bolts run through the block and touch the metal rail, which is what I think is probably heating it up. So I'll try add some insulating washers or whatever under the bolt heads and see if it helps keep the rail cooler. Maybe some heat wrap or something ziptied under the rail or something like that. I'm thinking to get the most of the evaporative cooling effect you probably dont want your fuel to be 90 degrees to start with haha. Hopefully wont need a fuel cooler setup because that seems like a pain in the balls.

There are a few more physical changes I want to make before it makes sense to head to the dyno. I wanted to make sure that my intake was actually reducing the pressure drop at high rpm, datalogs from drag day etc proved that this is working well. As well as higher MPH over the line. One problem though is that my new intake setup has the IAT sensor in a dead zone for airspeed, so its really awfully slow to respond. Previously as soon as you crack the throttle it would change readings, but now it's back to being pretty slow. I might drill into the plenum just behind the TB and remount it there. I also want to change over to an adjustable FPR so I can run it at higher pressure. My main injectors are designed for 60psi, and that's what I'd want to run the staged ones at too. Once these things are sorted I'll head to dyno.

haha! Dyno time is coming up, just need to arrange a time pretty much. Will probably spend most of the time fine tuning my cruising area ignition timing and fuel for economy, ECU thug life

Yeah the car definitely feels faster, so it was nice to have it backed up with some sort of non-Dave measurements heh. Remember that when playing the NA game, you're battling for a single horsepower here and there haha. so if the margin of error is 16hp, its not much help in tuning ignition or whatever where I'd be hoping to pick up 1-2hp max. air temps would have increased through the day a bit though. I guess some other factors are that I dont actually precisely know things like Coefficient of Drag for this car. If I had a more modern car where all of this is known, perhaps I'd have a better starting point for more accurate results. I did fill up the gas tank at lunch time as well. However, my issue with it isnt really that some lines are higher and lower. It's that the shape of the lines has changed completely between runs, some show 8000rpm dropping right off, other it stays flat. Some show a midrange bump, some dont. etc. It's still a really cool idea though, and it's still within pretty damn accurate all taken into account! I would expect to have maybe 180hp atw currently.

It was raining in the morning this time, a lot of people I talked to said they were slower than the previous year at same event. Neither time was a prepped track, but I think if you've had a week of dry weather and people laying down rubber, it's a different experience to when it's been raining that morning heh. We ended up with all of the cars out on track back and forth to try dry it out: Even my car which doesnt have very much power was wheel spinning in 2nd gear as well. I think my tires were near brand new last time though, and they've been heat cycled a shitload by now. Some of the guys there with big power, just ended up doing skids down most of the length of the track hahaha. However a lot of other cars were absolutely blitzing me off the start, it's the angle of the 4 links to diff that need changing in order to get a good launch.

^^That's with smoothing cranked right up, and having picked the best runs out of about a dozen. The rest looked worse. It's gas money you could just spend hiring a dyno really The drags were heaps of fun, my trap speed was 99.7mph (about 10kph faster than last time) so pointing towards some power gained compared to last time. I just couldnt get the car off the line at all, my best quarter mile time was half a second slower than last time when I had standard ECU. Reeled lots of people in towards the end, but lots of embarassingly awful launches. I set an E-throttle map for first gear with reduced opening, tried launch control settings, and even went and topped up the gas tank completely full to try get some weight over the rear. But nothing seemed to help.

After some previous mention in this thread about Virtual Dyno. After some testing at Meremere, which is about as flat and straight surface as you're ever going to get compared to road tuning etc. Unfortunately have to report that it's not so great. Fun for interest's sake but certainly not accurate enough to do any meaningful sort of tuning on. All of these runs below were done with identical fuel, ignition timing, no wheel spin, etc etc and recorded at 100hz. Yet still showing a fair bit of variation there.

OS drag day was yesterday, and it was a friggen blast! My wideband shit itself before I finished tuning the staged injection, so bought an upgraded sensor that should last a bit longer (Bosch 4.9 instead of Bosch 4.2) Then had one or two nights to try dial in the fuel for the staged injection and make sure it's all fine. In desperation to be faster than last time, yanked out the passenger and rear seats as well as the belts, and made sure to start the day with a near empty tank of gas to be as light as possible. Unfortunately however throughout the whole day I just couldnt get a clean run off the line at all. The motor was running awesomely, I was ~10kph faster trap speeds than previous, but my best time was still half a second slower haha. (14.8 ) I tried a few tricks to remedy the situation... Turned on launch control and set it at various rpm points, didnt really help. Took a bit of fiddling to get the launch control activation working how I wanted, as sometimes it was coming on while I was trying to do a burnout haha. I was doing 3rd gear burnouts without trouble all day, tried for fourth.... baaaaddd idea haha. Ended up doing a gigantic clutch burnout which stunk out my car for the rest of the day haha. woops. I also Setup an E-throttle map that would limit the throttle body to only opening half way in first gear. Didnt help much. Also tried filling up the gask tank right to the brim, to see if more weight over the rear would help. But I just got slower and slower through the day haha. I guess it's one of those things where you cant fix a physical problem (I need traction brackets!) with electrickery. So I was a bit dissapointed with my times, but I was happy to get a trap speed that indicates its worthy of high 13s if it can get a good launch. Still had a frigging awesome day though, its so cool when you have a really close run against someone. I had a camera setup in the car but the axle tramp was so bad that it was shutting off the camera haha! But here's some footage that survived.

There already is an oil pressure sensor. Down in the sump near oil filter. So id assume you could unscrew that and replace it. What do you mean by mechanical gauges? seems easiest to me to use whats there already.

Awww gosh darn I'm out. Christmas party needs attendance

oooohhhh aahhhh

Since I was thinking about making a trailer at some stage, and there's all of the cool hydraulic stuff from the compactor... Hmmm how about a self lowering trailer or ramps or something like that. But then I thought... Imagine getting to a trackday and you cant drive, because your trailer has broken down hahaha. Dave - Yeah I'm sure we can arrange!

Well we havent done any work on it in a long while, but things are heading in the right direction. Rather than it being cramped up in a small shed completely full of car parts and stuff stacked on top etc, it's now in a workshop where we've got heaps of space. Awesome! The other Soarer has it's own garage now too, out of the elements. So hopefully that should keep the interior in a good state. Realistically thouuuggghhhh Soarer project is going to take a back seat behind getting tow vehicle version 2.0 sorted. Dad has had a dual cab truck for towing his boat around, which we use for trackday towing too. However it's been dunked in and out of the ocean a few too many times and ended up with some structural rust thats uneconomical to repair. So when looking for replacements, wanted a single cab and shorter wheel base. Found out that there's a common type of rubbish truck that an auckland company uses and always wants lots of parts for. So... bought a rubbish truck! The intent is to strip the compactor etc off the back and sell it to recoup some costs for fitting the 5th wheel and a regular tow bar etc. This will be a bit of a project in itself obviously, not quite sure what the plan is for removing the compactor just quite yet... I dont think the 2 tonne engine crane is going to be up to task! haha. At some point I'll CAD up some plans for building a trailer that fits the Soarer and Carina nicely too. I'm slowly convincing him to buy a Link for the Soarer as well, for maximum tinkering / graph drawing ability But after my last experience of "she'll be riight maatttteee" driving to Taupo trackday without a trailer and blowing up the clutch... I'll be happy to see a working tow vehicle again haha.

Went somewhere... Made it home... Great success!

Woot tire repaired, now to put dash back together and hit the road.

Looks good man! I've noticed that if you go "runtime values" it shows map sensor down to 0.1, but when you view the logs it doesnt.

Thanks! Will check it out.