trackboss

The schematic is not ideal. The pump will never scavenge 100% oil. There is lots of air sucked up. For your cooler to work efficiently you need to move it to the pressure side or install a oil/air separator. There may be something wrong with your pressure pump assuming all it's lines are free of debris.

redtopz

Yes, you are both correct. I was basically being paranoid and worrying about nothing. I usually only look at the dry sump system at the track while the oil is hot and thin and I can see it flowing into the tank. This time I looked at it right at start-up while the oil was cold and thick. What confused me though was when I removed the oil discharge line from the scavenge pump and held it over the tank with the engine running to see how much oil was flowing. It looked like nothing was coming out at all. All I could think was "where the heck is the oil going?". I guess it was still gradually working it's way through the block and taking longer to fill the pan than I thought it would. As far as the oil cooler, you are correct V, most systems put the cooler on the pressure side and that probably would be best. But my system seems to work and my oil temps stay around 250-260 in races so I think I'll just leave it.

I towed my car up to Synergy yesterday for a tune. After double checking everything with my oil system, I concluded everything was working as it should. When I got Synergy, I drained my oil so I could add some Amsoil break in oil. My heart sunk when I drained the oil and saw milky white cream fill the drain pan:



I figured water had to be getting into the oil somehow, plus there were some tiny shavings of metal in the tank.

However, we decided to re-fill the tank with fresh oil and a new oil filter and see if we could figure out the problem. The engine was idling fine and had good oil pressure. Rick and Ryan pressurized the radiator reservoir to see if it was losing or gaining pressure and it seemed normal. I told them one possibility was the fact that I had mixed regular oil from Autozone with some residual Amsoil break in oil after pulling out the tank and pump to double check that everything was OK and maybe the aeration from the scavenge pumps combined with the oil mixture was making the oil a funky color. Plus I had never brought the oil up to full temp which takes at least 15 minutes of idling in my car. Sure enough, after draining and filling oil a 3rd time, we concluded there was nothing wrong with the engine or dry sump system. The small metal shavings were probably just residuals from the previous engine that I couldn't flush out of the pump or lines. What a relief!

Then Rick proceeded to tune the new engine and break it in on the dyno. We were limited with this engine build to using stock heads, stock ls6 throttle body, stock intake manifold, and a cam with lift below 0.6". Rick also decided to be conservative on the compression to keep the engine as reliable as possible while using very high quality components for rods, pistons, etc. The result is an engine that can be revved over 7000 rpm with or without restrictors all day long. Even after 2 hours of pulls on the load bearing dyno it continued to put down the same numbers or better each pull and oil pressure stayed over 50 psi at idle.

In SCCA there are many options for engines in T1 and GT2 including the ls6, ls2, ls3, ls7, plus the other makes we are competing against such as vipers, porsche cup cars, and imports with forced induction. A lot of our performance will be determined by the SCCA rules and how they attempt to equalize all these different engines and cars with restrictors and weight. Will the LS6 be the best option for these classes? Doubtful, but I asked Rick to build an LS6 because I had my stock one from last year to work with as a core. My goal is to run this engine all year long in T1, GT2, and Nasa ST2 and show what a simple cammed LS6 with a smart build can do against a variety of competition. Should be interesting!

Next race is coming up in a week at Thunderhill and I'm just happy to be back out there. Here's a link to the entry list. Scroll down to Groups 3 and 5 for GT2 and T1. Already 14 signed up in GT2 and 7 in T1. After all these years, this will actually be my first big race at Thunderhill. I've never had a race in my class there with more than 3 cars and that was only once a couple years ago with Chuck, Oli, and me in T1. Every other time was time trialing or racing out of my class in SU.

http://www.motorsportreg.com/index.c...2#.Uz7RVvldWkE

RichieRichZ06

I think I ended up witht he best of both worlds. I have my cooler on the pressure side and then a air/oil spearator on the return side. Gary at ARE started making these "Spintric" spearators and they are pretty trick little units. At Thunderhill a couple weekends ago, I was only seeing 230* oil temps during a 25 minute session running 1:57's.

flink

http://www.spintric.com/

ooh, neat. I think the Iranians are using those to refine U235.

It is more moving parts to go wrong though. A cyclonic or filter/chamber-based separator would be more reliable if it works acceptably.

flink

oop, I misunderstood. "The Spintric has NO MOVING PARTS". It looks to be a form of cyclonic separator.

redtopz

Yeah, that spintric is on my list. Thanks for the pic Rich, I was worried it might be large and hard to find a place to install but it looks pretty compact. One reason why I made my large 3 gallon tank fit rather than going with a smaller tank was to provide more retention time for the oil in the tank before going back to the engine.

So, who wants to know why my old engine failed? I figured it out last week and it's a bit embarrassing but I might as well share the info to hopefully save someone else from the same fate. Why do I keep paving the path of destruction? As we were prepping the drivetrain for the new engine my employee who helps me on the car with big projects asked me if I removed the rear trans bolts? I said no, why do you ask? I looked and sure enough there are no bolts holding the Pfadt trans mount to my diff. Then I think about where my engine failed - right at the motor mounts! So at some point at Sonoma, the trans bolts backed out and fell out which was allowing the entire driveline to move side to side putting enormous forces on the solid motor mounts which proceeded to pull the block apart from the outside. There was nothing wrong with my old engine or my oiling system. In my own defense, you cannot see the bolts connecting the Pfadt trans mount to the diff as they are tucked up inside the mount. You have to actually put a small allen wrench up there to make sure they are still there and tight. This time I took measures to make sure they won't back out ever again and inspecting them is on my daily check list.

C66 Racing

Sorry to see that as the cause, but thanks for sharing. Got to go run out to the garage...

folsomlarry

Good luck this weekend. We were having tires put on last weekend at the historic race at Sonoma and the guys at Roger Krause tires said they are expecting a very large field of cars this weekend. You should have perfect weather for the event.

redtopz

Thanks Larry . I like to think I've earned some good luck for a while. Big thanks again to Rick at Synergy for rushing my engine build and squeezing me in for a tune so we can get this car back out for these Majors races. There are 300 racers entered for this event so it will be a big turnout. Feels like a long time already since my last race at Cal Speedway. Looking forward to getting back out there!

JRL

Well, looks Bill had a helluva weekend.

Pole position in both Gt2 and T1 classes.
Track records in both classes
2 First Places in T1
1 first/1 second in GT2

Congrats Bill!! Big

2002rich

One word comes to mind, WOW!
Congrats Bill

folsomlarry

Great results: thumbs:

RichieRichZ06

Congrats Bill. You were right, you finally got to be cleared of bad luck and show what you and the car can do. Track records, first place finishes and poles in both races. Very nice.

redtopz

Thanks guys . Feels good to have a successful weekend for a change! I've never seen so many racers at T-hill. I was pitted on the skid pad and some guys had to pit outside the main gate. I'll try to get a couple vids up later of my Sat GT2 race where I took 2nd and Sunday's T1 race where I battled a turbo miata back and forth. Thanks to my friend Andrew (Flink) for crewing all weekend so I could run 2 classes . Car seemed to run well all weekend except for a clutch issue. Not sure what's going on with it yet but it's making some bad noises. 3rd and final Major race is only in 2 weeks at Buttonwillow and I need to complete at least one more race in each class to qualify for runoffs so we need to make sure the clutch is going to make it.

flaagan

You experience with the wiring had me chuckling. As part of the MogRod project listed in my sig, I had to take the wiring harness from the donor Pontiac Solstice and chop it down to just the stuff I'd need for the eventual build-up. With a Solstice shop manual on one side of the table and a splayed-open harness taking up the rest of it, I ended up trimming off a whole storage bin's worth (stuffed in) of wiring and miscellaneous stuff.

The wiring harness for the Morgan originally could fit on a napkin, I'm hoping the rebuild will result in something that only takes a couple of pages!

redtopz

I'm just amazed my car runs at all after all the wire cutting I did . Looks like you have some cool projects brewing! I'm just a hack mechanic turned weekend warrior racer trying not to muck things up which unfortunately I end up doing all too often...

redtopz

But here are some vids from a weekend where I didn't muck anything up!

Saturday's GT2 Race (2nd Place):
Sat GT2 race. I started this race on the same tires I just finished 2 qualifying sessions on so they didn't have optimal grip. The vettes and vipers have to run dot tires while the other cars get slicks so we need to get an early lead if possible before our tires lose grip. Slicks don't lose grip. I don't know why scca is requiring 2 different types of tires within 1 race class???

Once I got past the GT1 car at about 12:10 in the vid, I tried to hold off the porsche cup cars. I had the fastest lap in the race in lap 10. Nice drift through T2 at 16:00. Came close to winning, but the white cup car passed me with 2 laps to go in traffic at 26:20. Good clean race. I was a little tense this race and was actually a little worn out afterwards after fighting a chest cold all week. I was more relaxed in Sunday's races and drove better.


Sunday's GT2 Race (1st Place):
Sunday's GT2 Main Event. Same starting lineup as Saturday with the GT1 car next to me and several GT2 cup cars, vipers, and vettes right behind. This time I was able to get around the GT1 car in the first lap at T14 and I was able to get what I didn't on Saturday: open laps to build a lead while my tires still had grip. I was on sticker A6's today so I was able to pull away from the field for several laps until a full course yellow caused by a hood on the track at 12:40 bunched us all back up again :-(. The yellow lasted a lot longer than I expected due to several tows which was starting to work back in my favor if it was just a short sprint race at the end. By the time the pace car pulled off we had 5 laps to go. My main goal was to keep the GT1 car behind me so I could go back to open laps to the checkered. And that's exactly what happened. Broke the lap record in the 2nd lap after the re-start at 16:00.


Thanks to my sponsors:

TC Design, Synergy Motorsports, Abel Chevrolet, Hoosier Tires. And thanks to Andrew for crewing all weekend!

RichieRichZ06

Damn, if those videos don't get your blood pumping then you're not a car guy.

redtopz

Here is the Sunday T1 race. My car is about 7.5 lbs/hp in GT2 and 8.5 lbs/hp in T1. This weekend T1 followed GT2 so I was running tires in the T1 race that had just finished a 16 lap GT2 race. I did swap them from right to left on Sunday which helped since T-hill is hard on right side tires. The T1 miata in this race was not in the Sat race due to mechanical issues. I guess this was his first complete race with no major problems. Once he gets his car setup optimized he will be very difficult to beat since he can pull away on every straight. I was very happy with my car setup this weekend and I seem to have solved my brake issues by dialing back the rear bias and running a less aggressive pad in the back. No ice mode all weekend.

trackboss

Nice pass in 11!
Looks like they still have not done anthing to prevent going straight through 12. There has to be several tens gain blasting straight through there.