Romans 2005 Toyota Echo

[Rhyscar]

Man if your professional echo modifying career ever falls over you have all the tools and know how to go into the big black dildo/fleshlight manufacturing business. Solid back up plan. 

Also, loving the bump stop spacers. Thank you. 

[Roman]

Nah you've got it all wrong. Making big black dildos is my main profession, it's where I got the idea from 

Yeah, so drags! 
Mega fun day, got heaps of runs in. 
Bit slippery on the track so no new best time. 
Quickest was a 13.6 and 100mph, 2.2 60ft. 

The rear bumpstop spacers, I think that worked well. 
However in the morning I also adjusted my front rebound to be stiff too, and this was yuck. Lots of wheel hop etc. 
Set it back to soft, and it was great. 

For the last few events with standard exhaust I was averaging mid-high 99mph runs. 
Now I was consistently crossing the line at high 100mph. 
Best of the day was 100.99mph. Stoked with that! 

I could previously launch at 7500-8000rpm, my PB was set with a 7500rpm launch. 
But this time I needed to launch around 5500rpm as the grip wasnt quite there. 

So on a good day at track with prep, there's easily a new PB once the 60ft gets in order. 

Might try get back to something in January. 

I made it to the fourth round of DYO despite some comical fuck ups, congrats to @Sungai Sungai for making Team 4AGE proud by winning DYO! Bloody good! 
 

 

[deankdx]

2 hours ago, Roman said:

Yeah, so drags! 
Mega fun day, got heaps of runs in. 
Bit slippery on the track so no new best time. 
Quickest was a 13.6 and 100mph, 2.2 60ft. 

Awesome to not hear of many issues! 

so what's the feeling with the slicks, would they be better at any different pressures or is it purely track prep or is there too much grunt now and it's blowing the tyres off?
engine still in perfect condition? just run in, good for another 200,000kms at 8500rpm ?

[Roman]

Yeah I dont think the motor is tired. The fact it ran consistently higher MPH over the line is a sign that its making more power than ever!

It was just track conditions - we were basically scrambling to get some racing in, in between showers. All of the lost time was from my 60ft.

If you get the racing crew to prep the track (spraying down VHT stuff to make it grippy) then it doubles the price of hiring meremere. 
And it doesnt benefit cars on street tyres so much, so it's not something suitable for oldschool days. 
Also I think it would be a waste of money to do that if the weather forecast is thunderstorms anyway haha. 
It was super awesome that we got to do some racing yesterday.

The slipperyness of the track and that it was unprepped really cements the fact that for @cletus to have run a high 11 on a day like this, and @kpr running a 13.2 with a so-so 60ft on shitty tyres. 
These guys will be absolutely FLYING on a prepped track in ideal conditions.
Cletus if you ever go to a comp meet or something please let me know, I'd love to come watch!
I'll come take some videos for you, to make up for my noise pollution 


Edit: Photo from Philip, cheers!

[Roman]

The next drag event is likely not until late January (either 4&rotor, or nightspeed, or a comp meet) 
So its time to get this up to scratch for another trackday in the meantime. (assuming there's anything to go to as well!) 
So I've dropped off my drag slick wheels to get the Michelin slicks put on instead.

Rather than using the tall bumpstops that I bought (which were 85mm long rubber butt plugs) 
I think I'll use a similar setup to my drag day bump stops, to shim a shorter bump stop to about the right height instead. 
(Thanks Cletus for idea)

The other major hurdle was the cooling system as the car only runs a partial width radiator, and to be fair I'd removed the side blanking panel so air didnt have any amazing incentive to flow through the radiator. 
What has been puzzling though, is that the top and bottom radiator supports have two sets of holes - It looks like its meant to fit a bigger radiator, but none of the various Toyota options with this chassis ever use a full width radiator. 
So doing some pick a part adventures. 
I found a Vitz RS that was already mostly apart, with the whole front missing. Then went window shopping for other cars radiators that might fit okay. 
First one I tried was too wide. Second one was from a 2008 Honda Jazz. 



Weeellll shit. Turns out the bottom pins/rubbers on the radiator are the exact size to fit the outer holes in the vitz/echo. If I swap over to the Vitz rubber bits, it fits perfect. Hah! 
Denso makes the toyota radiator, and also the Honda ones. So they must just have a template for sizes kinda thing. 

The hose sizes arent identical, I'll need to fit an aftermarket fan, and it's also a little shorter. So it's not exactly plug and play. 
But it also puts the top hose outlet completely out of the way of my throttles, which is handy for making an airbox etc.
Have already got it in and holding coolant, have ordered a fan and will print something for top mounts. Easy!
Happy with it! 




Also I noticed that the Vitz RS has these side ducting panels mounted to force more airflow through the radiator instead of around to wheel well area. So grabbed those too. 
Hopefully my cooling issues will be sorted. At the very least the temps should stay a bit cooler than before anyway.




Also, I bought a spare bonnet for an experiment. 
When people add bonnet vents its usually a best guess to find the best area for them.
You dont want it too far forward, but also not too close to the windscreen. 
But then it's hard to test even a handful of variations without ruining a bonnet. 
So on something like my Carina where spare bonnets are non existent, it's not something I'd really want to do. 
However in this case, there's no such anxiety about ruining a spare vitz bonnet as they're plentiful and cheap haha.
I'm going to cut an absolute shitload of holes in it, and then cover them up all of the holes with a flexible plastic sheet (or whatever) taped down on the leading edge. 

So if the pressure on the top of the bonnet is higher than the bottom, the sheet will be held flat against the bonnet to stop air from flowing down in. 
But if the pressure underneath is higher, then the flap will lift.
So rather than trying to guess where the best spot is, the airflow can tell me where it wants to naturally go.
Again its another situation where you can do all the big brained calculations in the world, and still be wrong. 
Or you can do a dumb dumb brained test and get actual results that account for all of the real life variables. 
Ultimately it doesnt matter why something works, so long as it does!
Before getting too far ahead of myself I'm also anticipating it might end up with some weird fluttering as various ones open and close but we'll see.

[Roman]

Ages ago a great guy named Rob from the UK sent me a 3d scan of an echo's radiator top cross member, when I was trying to figure out how to build an airbox without hitting stuff.
It wasnt too useful at the time, as it was hitting the bonnet that was the problem.

However! I just remembered, so dug it out as it's probably useful for new radiator. 
The radiator will be full width now, I cant run an airbox down the side. However the radiator is also shorter, so I can run an airbox inlet over the top. Which is probably actually a nicer solution. 
Hopefully all works out good, just got a prototype on the printer currently.

Some of the extra bits on it arent needed anymore, like mounting points for aircon stuff.

[Roman]

I was planning to do usual trick of print and then smoosh carbon on it, however OSGC @Stu offered to help making one from aluminium. 

So I revised the drawing to be more suitable for this method and sent him some DXF files for cutting and bending. 










It looks amazing! Cant wait to fit it up. 
Love your work Stu, thanks heaps! 

Then the next fun part will be making the top feed airbox that runs over that new gap. 
Having an extra 35mm near the throttles is an absolute life saver! 
Also I paid up for a Pukekohe trackday on the 14th January. 
So I'll need to have the radiator and 13" slicks setup all finished by then. 
Will try get an airbox finished as well. 
Cant wait to see how the slicks go, and the double whammy of a little more power from the engine (hopefully) not overheating and also having a better cold air supply. 
 

[Truenotch]

You'd better have something special planned for page 69... it's a meme car thread after all. 

[Muncie]

1 hour ago, Truenotch said:

You'd better have something special planned for page 69... it's a meme car thread after all. 

New race numbers and a fur racing strip between the windscreen squirters maybe.

[tortron]

The fur is good for seeing air pressure

 

 

And also for finding in the dark

[Roman]

Got this sorted, and it's awesome. Thanks again Stu! 
The extra room gained is incredible.



So the next thing to decide is how a filter or airbox or whatever is actually going to work. 

On the engine bay side I've been tossing up some ideas but not 100% sure yet. 
However ahead of the radiator and crossmember, I think it's going to be best to completely divide the engine air and radiator air intakes. 
Looking at the front grill area, there's a decent cross sectional area available through the holes in standard grill. More than enough to feed the motor. 






So sketching it up / cardboarding it up, hopefulling something like this works 






Printed out a test piece for one side and fitment is nearly there. Should be good! 

[Roman]

Also I fitted a radiator temp sensor. 
I lett the engine warm up with the radiator fan turned off to see what happens.
It behaves how you'd expect.
The engine gets to temp quickly, radiator stays cool, then eventually the radiator saturates with heat too.




The reason that this is interesting is that currently the engine fan comes on only based on engine temperature.
So in order for the engine fan to come on, the entire circuit has to saturate with heat past the point where engine temp is stable.

Having a radiator temperature input means that as soon as the radiator water starts on its curve upwards. You can anticipate the system saturating and turn the fan ahead of time.

The car's not mobile currently but I think it will be interesting to see what sort of temps the radiator stays at in various conditions/speeds. 
It will probably be a reasonably good indicator of how well any ducting etc is working too. Something you wouldnt be able to see from looking at just engine temp. 

I've still got a few weeks up my sleeve until trackday but feels like there's a lot to do before then. 
I should really get around to fitting the disc brake rear as well.

[shrike]

I normally run my radiator temp sensors in the top rad hose as that's generally the hottest point and run the fans off that. Are you going to also set the ecu up so that the fans turn off at a certain speed? From memory anything over 60km and the fan is useless, can't remember but do you have shrouding on the rad with the fans? Any flappers? 

Be interesting to chuck and air intake temp sensor in front if the rad as well 

Keen to read about results

 

 

[VitesseEFI]

Having the rad temperature sensor in the outgoing flow gives the rad load/cooling efficiency. This makes it easier to control the fans and maintain a steady engine temperature as it gives an earlier indication that the rad is loosing the battle 

Senarios:

- low load, low speed in traffic, so little actual airflow. Top hose temp won’t go up until the whole system is heat soaked.

-high load, high speed. Top hose temp may be quite high but you don’t the fans on as there’s plenty of natural airflow.

[tortron]

This was mildly interesting. Be good for graphs 

 

[Hyperblade]

12 hours ago, Roman said:

Got this sorted, and it's awesome. Thanks again Stu! 
The extra room gained is incredible.



So the next thing to decide is how a filter or airbox or whatever is actually going to work. 

On the engine bay side I've been tossing up some ideas but not 100% sure yet. 
However ahead of the radiator and crossmember, I think it's going to be best to completely divide the engine air and radiator air intakes. 
Looking at the front grill area, there's a decent cross sectional area available through the holes in standard grill. More than enough to feed the motor. 






So sketching it up / cardboarding it up, hopefulling something like this works 






Printed out a test piece for one side and fitment is nearly there. Should be good! 

 

For the intake if you can try and get it to expand gently over the entire length up to the stacks.

 

e.g.

And ease the radius from the bumper into it, even if you have to reduce the entry of intake down.

It should increase pressure over the the throttle plates at speed, giving you a boost in power if you do it right.

[Roman]

3 hours ago, shrike said:

I normally run my radiator temp sensors in the top rad hose as that's generally the hottest point and run the fans off that. 

If i could only have one engine temp sensor. Then what you describe is the best place. Or more specifically somewhere inside the circuit of flowing engine coolant when the thermostat is closed.

But measuring the radiator gives an indication of how much cooling capacity is in reserve.

Older cars used to have a thermo switch in the bottom of the radiator to trigger fans. Newer cars seem to skip this and just have the ecu trigger from engine temp. Likely to save costs.

[Roman]

3 hours ago, shrike said:

 Are you going to also set the ecu up so that the fans turn off at a certain speed? From memory anything over 60km and the fan is useless, can't remember but do you have shrouding on the rad with the fans? Any flappers? 

Speed based fan thing is a bodge for not knowing radiator temp.

If going 60kph keeps the radiator temp down, then theres no need to turn it on anyway. 

Im not using any shroud, ive got a single 12" fan mounted as close to the top radiator pipe as possible. 

As this has the highest temp differential of the whole circuit so cools the best.

Fan shrouds improve fan efficiency but block flow at speed so wont be using one. As its only at trackdays that cooling is an issue.

[Spencer]

That new rad looks heavy? its surprising this thing while moving at the track gets hot TBH, usually can get away with small radiators on small 4 banger track cars because you are always moving and have all that airflow.

Nice that you can get the intake over into the front area now. If you look at the old BTCC cars that have stacks of room up front they seem to duct the (massive) airbox down to the lower area and pickup from the bumper intake rather than the grill. I would guess better pressure area? Just talking shit as obviously you dont have the luxury of all that space of a slammed engine race car but its interesting.

[Roman]

It could possibly be weight neutral? or fairly minimal... As my fan assembly is a lot lighter than standard. 
Shame on me for not weighing everything already though. haha.

I remember reading something from a BTCC guy who said they looked into ram air type setups and said there was no point. 
As in ideal conditions its only a millibar or two of extra pressure, at maximum speed. Then you lose that as soon as you are following someone else. 
But then some of the bike manufacturers gloat about their ram air setups so who knows.
I've still got a 5kpa differential pressure gauge on loan from @Hyperblade so I guess I can go do some tests at some point. 
But likely limited by space anyway.

The main issue is that I would like to incorporate an air filter arrangement, which makes life a lot trickier than the cross section implies. 
Still not sure how this will work which is why I'm just working on the front bit for now instead.