Sorry we haven't been giving much updates, it's been a busy week for us, but that's because we are getting ready for the Tokyo Auto Salon from tomorrow (Friday, Japan time). We've got our car and the white DAMD Turbo A/T to prep, along with everything else going on.
But since I'm posting... I'd like to address the heat issue at the track. We have, yes, tested the car extensively at the track, and have done up to 8 laps without overheating issues. But I'll be honest, that's not a 4 hour enduro, or even a 24 hour enduro. We are still testing for longer term effects on the heating.
Yet I think a lot of information is missing on overheating, since people still seem to think it's a turbo that is causing the overheating issues. In most cases, and especially in the case of the setup we have, heated oil from the turbo adds very little to the overall heat in the oil of the engine. One of the primary causes of heat comes from putting an FMIC in front of the radiator. It's simple logic, it cuts down on the amount of air flowing through the radiator, especially at speed.
That's one of the reasons determining the size and type of FMIC is so important, and where you making trade-offs in terms of core size vs. pressure drop vs. flow to the radiator itself. On the other hand, there's no way that you'd want to not run an FMIC - it's necessary to cool down the hot air created by the FI process. That is something else I'm seeing some confusion on, at least it seems so. Compressing air heats it up, it doesn't matter how it's compressed.
Or to quote wiki, since they typed it up better:
"
Turbochargers and
superchargers are engineered to force more air mass into an engine's
intake manifold and combustion chamber. Intercooling is a method used to compensate for heating caused by supercharging, a natural byproduct of the semi-
adiabatic compression process. Increased air pressure can result in an excessively hot intake charge, significantly reducing the performance gains of supercharging due to decreased
density. Increased intake charge temperature can also increase the cylinder combustion temperature, causing
detonation, excessive wear, or heat damage to an
engine block. Passing a compressed and heated intake charge through an intercooler reduces its temperature (due to heat rejection) and pressure (due to flow restriction of fins). If the device is properly engineered, the relative decrease in temperature is greater than the relative loss in pressure, resulting a net increase in density. This increases system performance by recovering some losses of the inefficient compression process by rejecting heat to the atmosphere."
Finally - I've done a lot, and I mean a *lot*, of circuit racing when I was younger (and still in Japan), and even held a A racing license for those odd times I was asked to participate in actual races. I spent a lot of seat time in a lot of standard cars at the track, and one thing you learn soon is that many street cars start overheating after a few laps. This is the nature of the beast, a manufacturer isn't concentrating on building a race car, they are building street cars. Track-ready is a relatively rare term for something off the dealer lot.