Sunday 6 March 2016

First freeway drive

I spent some time last week working hard to seal the engine bay on the right hand side. This was to try and get air going into the engine to be cooler. I had intake air temps up round 60degC. A bunch of guys on STF forced induction forums all told me, those temps need to be lower. There was the extra issue of not enough coolant in the intercooler circuit.

There was a lot of fluffing around trying to get it all to fit and seal as best as possible. The dipstick was a particular pain. In the end, I found this solution.





It's a minecraft whale! Ok, maybe not. In position we ended up with this.

 



As you can see the air intake ends up much higher up in the engine bay and right near the edge of the decklid. The gap left by the prop allows more cool air into the aircleaner.



So with all that done, I was ready to drive it. I was keen to go for a drive on the weekend but work kept me away and I no chance to get the car out until this morning. I drove the car around 25min minutes to go and see someone in hospital. It's been very hot over the last three weeks. Heat is the enemy of all aircooled engines, so I wasn't super keen to take it on the freeway. However, I figured, it's all sealed in and it's not stinking hot. So it was about 28degC or there abouts when I got onto the M2 motorway just near Blacktown. That section of the M2 freeway has a hill that's 10km long. It's not especially steep, but it's constant. Good for running an engine in and charting heat temps. It's also good for medium load auto tune. So off I went.



The news I have to say is good. Here's the gauge cluster I get in Tunerstudio.


 

Intake temps didn't get above 50degC (122F). For various programming reasons, the intercooler pump and fan didn't come on much at all. Better still, cylinder head temps didn't get above 100degC (212F). For a hot day pushing a car up a hill, that's pretty awesome. Oil temp in the sump didn't exceed 60degC (140F). At 100km/h, the motor wasn't working hard and it was doing 3200rpm.

In fact the only issues I really had were to do with the engine dying when I got off the throttle coming up to the lights. I thought I'd tuned this out of the engine, but it seems when it's hot, that's what happens. If you work your way down through the gears and give the engine a little throttle, it doesn't die. That gets a little annoying.

I was hoping to datalog the car on the way home, but the battery on my laptop died and I failed to charge it properly in the hospital. But not everything was lost. I drove home along the M4 freeway first at 100km/h then 110km/h. The car is loud inside, but it doesn't worry it. Oil temps again, stayed at 55degC until I got off the freeway. Even then, it only reached 70degC whilst sitting at the lights.


I know a few of you are thinking other things though. What about boost! To be honest, I've not driven the car on boost much. What I'm trying to do is to get it driving well in light and medium driving range. I'm pretty sure I'm not gone wide open throttle yet. Certainly, I've barely got near 4000rpm yet. Sure I've heard the blowoff valve, but the motor has LOT more to go yet. The rev limiter is currently set at 4500rpm. I can hear the turbo spinning, but I'm not there yet. I've given it a little bit of a hard time and it's capable, but I'm nowhere near the 7psi it's got with the stock wastegate spring.

That is still to come.

Also scraped the muffler today. The back of the car needs to go up and so does the dump pipe/muffler. Hmm, fun.

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