Pureadrenalins Race MR2

[pureadrenalin]

Yeah, at one point this car had both mechanical, and electrical water pump installed.
I'm debating re-installing the electric water pump.

[Punknoodle]

Any reason why you now only run the mechanical pump? I'm using the Davies Craig EWP 130 with controller. Got a new Toyota water pump and removed the fins from the impeller wheel, removed the guts from the thermostat and blocked off the hose from hell port (no longer running water oil cooler) and bypass pipe. Other pipe which fed the heater and turbi is now only feeding the turbo, and I have a new neck being made which sends the return coolant to a swirl tank and the other side of the turbo returns to that neck.

Did you see my second last post regarding the sump etc? Just have a couple of questions there if you don't mind answering

[pureadrenalin]

Sorry, I must have just skim read, and didn't see your other post.

Um, going off memory when we did this (2012) I'm pretty sure I only did two holes for the windage tray and that's it.
Must have not done anything near the rear main seal.
So I must just be trusting the sealant.

Yep, I'm just using the factory triggers for the COP.

Only reason I'm now running the mechanical pump, is that we have had it realiable on just that. I haven't had to do anything else.
The gen3 water pump impeller is also a lot nicer than the gen2, which is basically just bent plate blades. Gen3 is actually a nice shaped impeller.

[pureadrenalin]

like this

[pureadrenalin]

Thought I better do a bit of a write up on the Taranaki Tarmac Rally 2016. Sorry its a bit long.

It was a pretty rushed preparation for me, as most of my focus was on organising the event, not on my car. I even had to get my crew to bring the car from the garage to the start line for me as I was at the start line on the phone with the local radio stations doing interviews!
But once in the car, all thoughts of organising were gone, time to focus on racing during the tour to stage 1.

The rally was made up of four stages repeated. Do two, repeat, do two more repeat. A service after every two stages. A total of 140km of special stages.
I was unsure of what the fuel economy would be running 30% ethanol, so along with a full tank, we had another 60L with us.
I was seeded 17 of 42, so was going to have my work cut out for me, especially on the longer stages if I was going to keep car 18 behind me, an experienced rally driver in an Evo, also freshly off the dyno.

Stage 1 was a nice 14.4km to start the day, but damp roads from overnight rain, and the occasional light rain made things pretty slippery. I was taking it pretty easy in this stage. A rally is a marathon, not a sprint. This is also only my second rally I’ve competed in, so I’m going for finishing, not winning.
The car ahead of me, an Escort, found a fence on the outside of a nasty downhill right hander, and the Evo trying to chase me down found some bush’s a couple of hundred meters past the Escort.
All in all, a pretty uneventful stage from me, just taking it easy and getting used to my co-driver reading notes to me.

Stage 2 was a longer 18,5km up over the rangers of Mt Taranaki. Always wet and slippery, even when its sunny. Richard Mason was parked on the side of the road a coupe of km into the stage after an engine fire. All dout with by the time we went past. I then caught up to an evo that had had an incident with a bank, passed that one, and into the rangers we went. Unfortunately, I caught up to a gaggle of cars that had stopped to help Richard Mason that were just touring to the end of the stage because they would be given an assessed time. This really hampered us, as we were still racing. Its very tight and hard to pass over the rangers, so as soon as we got clear of this gaggle, we got a couple of km’s of flat out before we caught another 6’ish cars touring from the same incident.







Off to service after that one, and at the end of service we the crew noticed coolant on the tarpaulin. No time to check what it was by then, off to stage 3.

Stage 3 time control, there was steam coming from the front of the car, so I got out to investigate and found a pin hole in the radiator, constantly streaming water out. Dam. I can only guess that I picked it up trying to pass all the cars in stage 2.
Raced thru the stage as fast as possible, but also as easy as possible to get to the service crew. Crossed the finish line in the red. Service crew got the kneed it onto the radiator, and stop leak into the system. Fixed the leak. A quick fill of the system, and off. Unfortunately, we didn’t bleed the system well enough and I only got a couple of km’s up the road and the car was in the red again. Popped the bonned and the lines feeding the radiator were stone cold.
We pulled the thermostat on the side of the road and drilled a couple of holes in it. Re-filled the system, and off again, but clocked in late so got a time penalty.

Stage 4, opposite problem now. Car running too cold, so had a lower boost limit.
Off to service where we had a bit of time, so pulled the thermostat and put in a new one. Spent a good amount of time bleeding the system.

Stage 5, nice and fast this one. 5 virtual chicanes in the rally safe system to slow down for. Car was running good temp wise, so we could push a bit. Caught the car in front of me (commodore with RB30) at about 2/3 the way thru the stage. Crossed the finish line with the brakes smoking big time.

Stage 6, the biggest of the day at 20.7km. Started well, nice and flowing. Caught up to and passed the car in front of me by about the half way point. But almost immediately after doing this the temperature started to rise, so I started backing off. The last bit of this stage had some big straits, so I’d get the speed up to ~170 and then turn the car off and coast while watching the rear view mirror to check if anyone was catching. No one did.
So, here we were again on the side of the road re-filling the car with water. We had some time as this was a service period.

Stage 7, repeat of stage 5. Fast. Unfortunately, again the temperature was jumping all over the place by half way thru. So we just took it easy to the end.
Tried to get to the start of stage 8, but was getting too hot. Unfortunately we didn’t have time to cool the car down to get more water into it so we had to fill in a temporary withdraw form, and given that stage 8 was the last stage, that was as far as I got.

Until next rally

[Punknoodle]

Nice write up, it was a good read. Hard luck with the radiator and temp issues, although you know what they say, a bad day racing beats a good day at work!

Thanks for letting me know re the sump, I've drilled and tapped 4 for the windage tray and I'll leave the others seen as how the sump is pretty well supported by the bellhousing etc now anyway.

I didn't realise the Gen 3 pump was that different, but anyway I'm now no longer running a thermostat and have blocked the bypass pipe and disabled the mechanical pump (by cutting off the vanes) and so the electronic controller for the pump with speed up and slow down the pump instead of the thermostat. Will let you know how it goes.

[pureadrenalin]

please do.
I know how those controllers work, or are supposed to work. I tried two different ones, and they never did what they should (slowly increasing the voltage and on/off period as temp increases).

Yeah, as many troubles as I was having, I still have a car at the end of it. Richard Mason has a hole in his block from a rod, the Evo chasing me ended up in the trees, needing a new front end.

So as upgrades go, I had ARP head studs in the car, but am now upgrading to 625's. They should be here during the week, so hopefully we can swap them out with another new head gasket this week, ready for next Sundays local hill climb.
One of my fav's in the dry, scariest in the wet.

[Benckj]

Great write-up on the rally run. Good to see someone out there doing it and competing with the best. Keep up the good work.

[pureadrenalin]

Hmm, hard to write this one.
We've done a little more development on the cooling system, and think I finally had the problems solved.
I've had another new head gasket installed, removed the ARP head studs and replaced with ARP 625's, new alloy radiator, and a few other things done.

Had a race weekend three weeks ago locally and the engine was getting hot, but the radiator was still cold. So either a thermostat or water pump issue.
So I replaced both.
During the rally we had to replace the thermostat, and on the day all we could get was a non genuine part. Just for fun, I thought I should get the non-genuine and genuine and put them in a bucket of hot water.
Non-genuine opened ~3mm less than the genuine. So not only worse open area for flow, also meant the foot valve was not fully closing off.
There's a cooling issue right there.
Constant circulation around the block, and not to the radiator.

So the weekend just been was supposed to be a nice test of the car and cooling system at Taupo, track 3.




I've recently had the bonnet re-stickered with a new sponsor, and also vinyl wrapped the sides of the car above the mid stripe blue.






Unfortunately, I didn't even make it one lap and something has gone wrong in the engine, and it decided to chuck about 1L of oily water out of the catch can all over the engine bay.
Dip stick has that lovely milky oil all over.
So back to the drawing board for this engine. What to do next......


I did get to take this beast for a few hot laps tho. The Advanced Vehicle Services GTRNZ GT2 EVO, ~360kw on slicks.



I must be too used to driving MR, as I prefer the MR2's braking. It was just too easy to pinch the rear brakes under heavy braking, but it sure did have grip on corner exit (once the slicks had warmed up).

[mickeyduck]

Bummer about the engine that really sucks. Mind you, chances are when you get done with it maybe it will finally behave?

Brakes... yeah my SW has huge brakes on the front and soooo easy to lock up even at pace. One of these days I need to fit RX8 rotors on the rear and a bias adjuster.

Sure looking forward to hearing that motor is finally behaving...

[EssDub]

What the hell is it about that car, cooling system issues and rallies?

Srsly.

Makes me wonder if the chimney is cooking the turbo's water feed...

[85AW20v]

Get hold of Paul Tulloch the owner at Wanganui Exhaust and Performance Centre 06 345 3228. A number of years ago, he supercharged an SW20 - 3SGZE I suppose you'd call it - because he could!. I seem to remember he was constantly having cooling issues and I'm sure he solved it by fitting an electric pump as the standard Toyota pump was cavitating when run at high revs for extended periods of time. Worth a try anyway.

[pureadrenalin]

Got a text from my mechanic who is pulling the engine down.
Crack in No. 2 cylinder apparently, so time for a new block.
I'll get a photo of it when I can.
Better go pull that spare I have in storage. Luck I hadn't thrown it out when moving earlier in the year.

[pureadrenalin]

obligatory 'crack' shot
No. 2 cylinder, 45ish degrees towards cylinder 3.




Went and got my spare gen3 block from the shed.
Forgot how heavy these things are when they are a full long block (with crank, pistons and rods). Heavy load to lift into the back of the car.

[Benckj]

No more gaps should cover that up nicely.

For the benefit of others can you simply list the factors which caused this failure?