My sweet ducts are sitting on a shelf. I made my own '99 ducts with fiberglass casting rolls.



eeyup.

 

Sounds like people who haven't climbed a mountain with a rotary at high altitude.



Just to get this through to peeps, You have more cooling power at 90 degrees than we do at 40 degrees at 8K feet.

In fact the difference is 21.9% from your 90 degree day and our 40 degree day in terms of mass flow rate.


Would you overheat your engine if you lost 25% of your cooling power running at 90F?

If the answer is yes, then you would overheat running the engine up a mountain in 40 degree weather. We run our engine at 8K feet in 80 degree weather up long grades. you bet we run single turbo, ducted everything, oversized oil coolers, radiator, remedy pumps, intercooler, etc.

 

ok all that science is great, but don't you guys get to *drive down the other side of the mountain after climbing it?*

and i'm not realy trying to argue for or against "climbing mountains is so much more of a strain on a rotary than a track day bro!" i'm just confused as to the point. you drive fast and accelerate on a public road at high altitude and stress your engine, then you drive down the other side of the mountain?

 

Jacob did you see my diagram? actually here it is again

 

lOOKatme, i didn't get a chance to edit above:

i'm sure it stresses the cooling system, and i can't argue that the thin air makes things difficult, but i think most of the people in this thread are more interested in race tracks, using the brakes, accelerating up and down through elevation changes, doing time trials, getting times, competing with others, etc. i would love to see some graphs of scientific data showing the stress involved in doing 20+ hot laps at Road Atlanta (maybe even including full throttle, full braking, and full Gs) then repeating that 6 times throughout the day, then doing that again a second day. we could compare that data to the mountain climbing.


manny, yes i checked it out earlier.

i don't particularly like it, but i see how it could be effective.

i have to admit, it seems like you're kind of reinventing the wheel with that setup, considering that VMICs are proven to work very well on our cars. i'm not one to attack someone for doing something different, and really i appreciate the creativity, but i wonder if it will perform as good as (or better) than a quality VMIC setup. i'm not really interested in tearing up people's setups because they're different than mine, and really i'm curious to see if it outperforms mine. it is definitely interesting, but will it perform to a level which warrants all that time and fab work?

 

Oh, I assumed it was stock mount radiator with the IC as shown. Reverse v mount.

The set up as pictured looks to pinch both the inlet an outlet of IC and the inlet of the radiator.

Its different for sure.

 

those were my thoughts as well. i am curious as to how it performs in a high heat / high demand situation.

 

Obviously, this may be overkill, but, how much does a dry sump system help cooling on the track?

I imagine that the added oil volume would have a dramatic effect on cooling, possibly much moreso in comparison to ducting/v-mounts etc. Huge tank in the trunk with tons of oil to distrubute the heat.

 

That's a great question. Sounds like a killer project. I'm thinking that the heat disbursed along it's route to and from the trunk. Extra volume being a plus as well.

Definitely sounds expensive though.

 

Extra volume might help some, but honestly, how much are you thinking you're going to add with a "huge" tank? 10 qts? I would think good heat exchangers are far more efficient at absorbing temperatures than pure fluid volume.

Five quarts of oil weighs something, as does all of the plumbing, and dry-sumping certainly costs something too. Ducting is virtually weightless and free. There's no reason you need to do a whole dry sump system on your car to keep it cool. There are other advantages to it though.

 

You really need to hone you MS paint skills, lol. That's the only way you can get a response from

"hey, so this is what I want to do, what do you guys think?"

 

I went to the 2 gallon Mazdacomp oil pan on my FC, I am sure you could squeeze a larger capacity tank in the FD as well.

Its amazing how much volume you add just squaring out the sides (and it helps prevent slosh).

The comp FC pan is a stock pan with the back cut out and squared out sides and bottom brazed on and a thick powder coat to provide more rigidity at the flange (I modified a Banzai oil pan brace to fit it anyways).

If you wanted to get nuts lowering oil temps you could add a Laminova oil cooler cooled by the lower radiator hose in before the air/oil heatexchangers. They are compact and race proven.

 

lol yea. Well It's given me good results in all 3 Dyno sessions. The first was the hardest. 4 hours on the dyno with 30+ pulls without the air tight ducting. We'll see how it performs on the dyno..hopefully this next month. If it doesn't work......well I guess I'll simply re-design it. But if I were to do that......I would honestly put together some type of Rear mount radiator configuration with an Electric Water pump.

 

if I were building an all out monster like your car, I would go with an EWP anyways, get rid of the thermostat and allow the car to flow coolant according to temperature to maintain.

I think your ducting should work really well, I've seen it in your build and it is definitely A LOT more thorough than most I've seen.

For some reason, ducting is an afterthought to most while I think it is one of the most critical things we can do to our cars.

 

Thanks man I was a bit skeptic at first as well...but after driving in the 100 degree+ dry summer heat out here and staying cool...and then putting it to the test on the black top at high idle for 45min...and staying cool. I knew things were on the right track.

I agree that ducting really is one of the most critical things we can do to our cars.

I did this last night...forgot I had purchased a power steering cooler. I left the OEM aluminum snake under the car additionally....so this won't need any further ducting.
It actually might even be too big.

Power steering cooler

 

If my basic OEM waterpump setup wtih Vmount+ ducting, 99spec bumpers, OEM dual r1 oil coolers are holding up on 100+ degree day, I dont think EWP is mandatory for proper track car builds. Personally I like the simplicity of the OEM belt driven waterpump. Note: I am not saying the EWP doesnt work better/worse. With aftermarket dual oil coolers, my setup will be suitable for any racing condition, even enduro races.

Also, I think its worth to mention that I have never had powersteering issues using a basic inline ps cooler like this.
Inline Transmission Power Steering Engine Oil Cooler | eBay

Honestly im impressed that it manages to keep temps in check on hot days. It doesnt even get hit with fresh air on my setup. My BMW has a more sophisticated PS cooler and the ps starts to overheat and puke out on basic canyon drives.

 

Ducting has been mentioned again and again in this thread. Anyone got a link to somewhere here or anywhere else to a Ducting 101 tutorial? I need some ideas as to materials (tape? aluminum sheets? foam? rubber?) and techniques for fabbing something up. Something FD specific would be best, but even just generally would help too.

My car has a Greddy SMIC and the ducting is a joke. There's a little metal bit on top and some vestiges of the stock duct that don't seal to the IC at all. Not sure if it's sold that way but that's how the car was when I bought it. It's got the Greddy/Trust Very Hot Air Intakes too. And the twins. Poor car. The thing just bakes even in some mild spring DC weather. In traffic I just see the air temp climbing on the PFC. It will need some re-thinking before it sees Summit Main.

 

Haven't seen any tutorials for this, but don't recall looking either.

The V-Mount in my FD is ducted with .25" aluminum foil backed foam insulation and aluminum tape.

The passenger side was effectively closed off by a fiberglass intake.
The foam and tape was used on the driver side.

The IC has its own customer ducting that runs from the bottom of the IC to the front of the car. The foam and tape is to prevent air from escaping from the radiator.

This all works quite well - it has been autox'd on 100f days without the temps getting out of line.

Haven't done too many track days with the V-Mount, but when I have, it can be difficult to get the car up to operating temps if the ambient is below 55f or so.

 

Where are you guys reading your temps from? I suppose the FC can be a bit different, but my ECU reads from the back of the waterpump exiting the engine, my temp gauge inside the car reads from the return side with cooler coolant, it tends to read about 20*F lower than the ECU.

 

Yesterday I spent a good hour and a half using exhaust metal repair tape to seal leaks on my Ducting. Both oil coolers are now 100% sealed. Radiator is 100% sealed and next will be Intercooler. I really don't think the I/C is AS important as the radiator/oil coolers so I put it off for last. But we'll see how this works out..I'm guessing it'll just be a bit better at idle...but while moving it should make an even greater difference.
top of radiator


inside and outside of oil coolers

 

I totally agree.


Another thing to think about, its easy to force all the air coming into the engine. Many people forget that it is just as important to somehow get the air out of the engine bay. I am trying to figure out how to get the heat out of the engine bay with a stock hood.

Any suggestions?

 

hood raisers, that's about it. Anything beyond cutting vents in the stock hood you might has well buy an aftermarket one.

I personally like the scoot vented hood. I have one on 1 of my FD and will get another one for my current build.

 

FD3S: Dual Oil Cooler Upgrade Kit - SakeBomb Garage LLC




Efficient oil coolers will take a huge load off of the cooling system in general. The stock cooler design leaves a lot to be desired as far as efficiency/size/depth. On the RX-8 Mazda finally realized how big of an issue oil cooling was and began including big dual 25 row coolers stock, even on the less powerful and non-turbo RX-8

As a side benefit increasing the total oil system volume buys you more time before overheating, and gives you overall cleaner oil. The more oil the merrier for the FD!

 

this seems more ideal:

 

hood raisers actually push air into the engine bay, not lift air out, as the cowl area is a high pressure zone.