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Old 08-06-2009 | 04:50 PM
  #226  
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^ Thanks again Ed and the team at EQ Tuning! car is doing great and I will be posting up something soon about everything that went into the great build!

Thanks again,

Matt
Old 08-06-2009 | 04:57 PM
  #227  
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Dang..another built motor!!! Baller. Lets hope this one lasts a bit longer than the one AutoHQ built for you. Did they ever find out the cause of the failure?

Looking forward to seeing it at BAM.
Old 08-08-2009 | 01:12 PM
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Originally Posted by glenspen
Dang..another built motor!!! Baller. Lets hope this one lasts a bit longer than the one AutoHQ built for you. Did they ever find out the cause of the failure?

Looking forward to seeing it at BAM.
We found several issues from Matt's original build. It seems the tolerances were not set up to handle the kind of heat the engine experienced at the very hot track day. This car did not have an oil cooler or upgraded radiator which didn't help with the heat levels. The drop-in pistons swelled enough for the skirt to contact the cylinder wall and put some significant scuffs and scratches on the pistons and cylinders. This also put a lot of load on the factory bearings, creating even more heat. Since this was a drop-in piston motor, the bearings and bearing oil clearances were all stock and certainly not meant for extreme heat conditions. Eventually the heat and subsequently thinned out oil likely caused a drop in oil pressure and finally caused severe damage to the bearings. The pistons and rings were in great shape aside from the damaged skirts. The heads also had several problems that caused excessive wear to certain components, but did not necessarily significantly contribute to the overall failure.

This time around, we fully rebuilt the engine with new, 100mm pistons, ACL race bearings, and Manly H-Beam rods. All oil clearances and tolerances were set to our specs to handle more extreme conditions. We also rebuilt the heads with new cams, buckets, and a few new valves along with a full valve job and bowl blend. Once the engine is broken in, Matt will be getting an oil cooler and some gauges before his next track outing

Thanks
-- Ed
Old 08-08-2009 | 02:24 PM
  #229  
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I'm surprised you feel that most of the damage happened from "drop in" pistons and factory tolerances/bearings. We have been installing "Drop in" pistons and factory bearings for 5+ years and have yet to have a failure as notated in Matt's vehicle (from pics and explanation). But that's just been our experience with them (and it was a different brand of course, which is known to be on the looser side) I wouldn't think cosworth would sell a product that wasn't designed properly...other small companies sure, but sure wouldn't expect that from them.

From the pics its appears the most probable cause would of been lack of cooling and thinned out oil (but that's just an opinion).

The pistons if they were drop in should of been slightly loose, not tight from the get go...this is very common with "drop ins". But I've never installed Cosworth "drop ins" on a hybrid setup b/c they are not the right compression ratio for 2.0L heads.


Good to hear Matt is back on the road and happy


-Noah

Last edited by LICmotorsports; 08-08-2009 at 02:28 PM.
Old 08-08-2009 | 05:38 PM
  #230  
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Originally Posted by LICmotorsports
I'm surprised you feel that most of the damage happened from "drop in" pistons and factory tolerances/bearings. We have been installing "Drop in" pistons and factory bearings for 5+ years and have yet to have a failure as notated in Matt's vehicle (from pics and explanation). But that's just been our experience with them (and it was a different brand of course, which is known to be on the looser side) I wouldn't think cosworth would sell a product that wasn't designed properly...other small companies sure, but sure wouldn't expect that from them.

From the pics its appears the most probable cause would of been lack of cooling and thinned out oil (but that's just an opinion).

The pistons if they were drop in should of been slightly loose, not tight from the get go...this is very common with "drop ins". But I've never installed Cosworth "drop ins" on a hybrid setup b/c they are not the right compression ratio for 2.0L heads.


Good to hear Matt is back on the road and happy


-Noah
I agree that lack of cooling and the consequently thinned out oil certainly heavily contributed to the problems, but the pistons were too tight for the bores as well. There was clearly a good deal of piston to cylinder wall contact. The problem with most drop-in piston setups is that the bore is not machined to match the exact size of that specific piston. As much as we'd like to believe that all these pistons are 100% uniform, the reality is that each batch is going to be slightly different and thus will require a slightly different bore diameter. Each factory bore will also be slightly different. Installing "drop-in" pistons without insuring the proper tolerances can certainly cause problems under extreme conditions.

That being said, 90% of these cars don't see these kinds of conditions with excessive, prolonged heat exposure and thus will never swell the piston enough for the tolerance to come into play. This is also the case for bearing oil clearances. The factory clearances are fine for most conditions, but when exposed to extreme heat, they can become too tight. I've also seen very inconsistent rod side clearances from the factory. This can cause a lack of oil flow between the side of the rod and crank journal and can cause the rod to overheat.

IMHO, factory clearances are too inconsistent to allow for prolonged extreme conditions such as on a very hot track day. Again, 90% of owners won't experience such conditions and 90% of factory motors do have decent clearances. There are, however, some that come in with a very tight clearance here and there that would cause some serious issues if exposed to extreme heat. This is why we like to set all clearances to our specs for any engine that will be used on track.

So you're correct in saying that better cooling could have helped the situation, but more appropriate tolerances for this type of condition would have helped as well. There's a reason most built engines run larger bearing oil and piston clearances and there's also a reason most track cars run oil coolers .

Thanks
-- Ed
Old 08-08-2009 | 05:50 PM
  #231  
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I agree on the 90% factor and I can't comment on your findings as you are the one(s) who physically touched/smelled the parts, not me LOL...and sounds like you guys did your due diligence for your findings/conclusions.

Food for thought:
I will say this as well. Over the weekend on track our car was running in 98 degree ambient temps with over 131 degrees on the tarmac, our cooling (oil/coolant) never became an issue, which goes to prove that having a larger capacity radiator and external oil cooler DOES WORK, and its for that exact situation (which may be very infrequent).

ok enough of me thread jacking.

-Noah
Old 08-08-2009 | 06:33 PM
  #232  
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Is it possible for an oil cooler to do any damage for a daily driver, such as not allowing the engine to properly warm up under normal driving conditions?
Old 08-08-2009 | 07:13 PM
  #233  
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Originally Posted by pwn
Is it possible for an oil cooler to do any damage for a daily driver, such as not allowing the engine to properly warm up under normal driving conditions?
That is a concern on certain applications. Another option is a heat exchanger which will actually help warm up the oil quicker but keep it at a more consistent level. We'll be doing testing with both types of setups soon.

Thanks
-- Ed
Old 08-18-2009 | 09:39 AM
  #234  
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Originally Posted by 04caliwrx
^ Thanks again Ed and the team at EQ Tuning! car is doing great and I will be posting up something soon about everything that went into the great build!

Thanks again,

Matt
How many miles do you have on that thing? When are we tuning?

-- Ed
Old 08-18-2009 | 10:55 AM
  #235  
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I was just abput to pm you I got about 350mi on it now. Can you do next Wednesday?
Old 08-18-2009 | 11:52 AM
  #236  
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Originally Posted by 04caliwrx
I was just abput to pm you I got about 350mi on it now. Can you do next Wednesday?
I'd like you to get it closer to 1k before we tune. Let me know when you think you can do that.

-- Ed
Old 08-18-2009 | 12:12 PM
  #237  
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Originally Posted by EQ Tuning
That is a concern on certain applications. Another option is a heat exchanger which will actually help warm up the oil quicker but keep it at a more consistent level. We'll be doing testing with both types of setups soon.

Thanks
-- Ed
so does such a setup comprise of a radiator that has both coolant and oil passageways? or a water jacket for the oil cooler? Who makes something like that?
Old 08-18-2009 | 05:44 PM
  #238  
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Originally Posted by verc
so does such a setup comprise of a radiator that has both coolant and oil passageways? or a water jacket for the oil cooler? Who makes something like that?
A heat exchanger is similar to an oil cooler with a water jacket. You can also think of an air-to-water intercooler. I don't think anyone makes one specifically for our application, but we're doing some testing to see if it will be appropriate.

Thanks
-- Ed
Old 08-18-2009 | 05:58 PM
  #239  
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Originally Posted by EQ Tuning
A heat exchanger is similar to an oil cooler with a water jacket. You can also think of an air-to-water intercooler. I don't think anyone makes one specifically for our application, but we're doing some testing to see if it will be appropriate.

Thanks
-- Ed
Nice. Definitely keep me updated.

You guys should put out a kit with additional taps on the sandwich adapter so people can hook up the oil cooler along with oil temp, pressure sensors without the PITA of the topside oil galley plugs
Old 08-19-2009 | 10:34 AM
  #240  
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Originally Posted by verc
Nice. Definitely keep me updated.

You guys should put out a kit with additional taps on the sandwich adapter so people can hook up the oil cooler along with oil temp, pressure sensors without the PITA of the topside oil galley plugs
Not a bad idea... we'll keep you guys updated with the progress.

Thanks
-- Ed


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