FJ Land speed racer

[Firehawk068]

Thanks for the update.
This is cool to see! 

[TexasDave]

Thanks for the excellent post. Great pics. Loved the welded ends on the engine studs and how the welding shrunk the mating surfaces. Hope you get the mixture sorted out with that crappy E85. 200 mph would be fantastic. Good luck.  Dave

[racerrad8]

So, today consisted of a bunch of time on the telephone trying to figure out how to trying to make the cylinder head combination work following yesterdays discoveries. That was followed today by even more bad news and the head combination we had hope to use had to be scrapped and that head has been handed over to the speed gods for penance.

Check out the wear in some of the titanium shim under bucket retainers, look at about 1 o'clock.


This is what they are supposed to look like


So, Chris had already sent me a different head last year when prepping for Bonneville and while it is a worked over head, there is still a lot to be done and the camshaft grind is more subdued, but that is our only option with the time left before the event.

We spend some time cleaning up and matching the intake manifolds to the already nicely done port work, but the chambers were totally stock & untouched. You can see how the head was previously installed onto a big bore engine by the carbon ring, the red pen & scribe marks.




Look how shrouded the valves are in the stock chamber at the intake valves


Here is the head that is no good, see how much more open the chamber is


Here is looking down the intake runners of the head




As you can see, the chambers are currently "roughed in". Tomorrow will consist of head assembly and cc'ing the chambers to get them all even. There goes another eight plus hours...



Chris, did I ever tell you the two things I hate to most in this world...

Fiberglass repair and porting

But hey, today was also a good day because I got to have Robert learn what porting is all about

Now tomorrow he gets to learn about "CC matching & chamber polishing"...

Randy - RPM

[racerrad8]

Well, not much more to update at this point as we have been super busy, plus I was at work so Robert was waiting on my to continue to move forward.

So, today we finally got to get the head all dialed in by CC matching and have them all sized the same. The head is off to the machine shop for a 8:00am resurface of the gasket surface tomorrow morning.

Since he was waiting on me, Chris sent over the clutch we are using in the engine. It includes a billet basket, lock-up pressure plate and clutch cover required spacer.

I noticed in the spacer that the crankcase breather "port" (for lack of a better word) was very restrictive. This caused me some concern due to the need to allow crankcase pressures to escape to prevent blowing out a seal.

You can see the five holes they drilled for the gasses to pass through the spacer. You can see the ink mark where the case & gasket are void for the passage. Hell the sixth hole at the bottom does not even hit the port.


Here it is after a little drilling & filing, it will not hold any pressure back now.


Here is all of the fancy pants clutch parts, the goal is to make sure it does not slip as the 200 mph mark is reached.




More to go tomorrow as the rings are sized to the block, the head will be back from the machine shop and the final long block assembly should be done before I go home.

Randy - RPM

[fj1289]

YEAH!!! 

Didn't realize Randy had posted the engine pics here!  Looks awesome!  I'll bet this "little" 1350 put together by Randy with mild cams and a street head will out power the "big block" 1447 I put together with the drag head and cams...finally learned to let the pro do the engine!

A little nitrous is actually a fairly easy thing...a lot of nitrous is a lot more likely to bite back as you can see.  Bad on me for not checking plugs between every run.  AFR was good and the bike pulled like crazy - even on the last pass.  Never knew something was out of sorts until tearing it down to send the head to Randy and saw the damage to the exhaust cam.  Autopsy complete and lessons learned and changes being made to (hopefully) prevent it from happening again.

The goal is 200 mph in the standing mile.... this time out the three biggest priorities are to gain experience, learn what it will take to go faster, and keep on top of the tune so we have a strong running engine at the end of the weekend too!

 

[racerrad8]

The head is finally complete, just in time for Friday night...

Here are RPM prepped & polished buckets next to unprepared buckets.


Here is the head with the intake cam installed getting all of the final valve adjustment completed.


Hard to get a good photo pf the chamber work right now, but will snap a few before the install.



Back to it early next week so it can be on the truck for Colorado by the 27th and back to Chris the following Monday.

I have had a couple people ask if they can donate to this cause to help defer some on the costs. If you would like to donate you can send any contributions directly to Chris via PayPal: cwyatt257@hotmail.com

More to come next week.

Randy - RPM

[fj1289]

Lot of progress last couple weeks - although it seems like everything always takes a lot longer than you think it will!  The three days wiring & testing was closer to two weeks. 

This is the second time I've taken this bike down to the frame and wired it from scratch.   Also the fifth time I've wired up a microsquirt (or microsquirt-based) fuel injection system.   It doesn't really go much quicker -- but the end result is a lot neater despite being more complicated than the previous installs. 

Dual LiPo batteries tucked in the tail section.  The 2nd battery is used for starts and to run the nitrous bottle heater.  Hard to see in this pic are the main relay (on right side of the seat loop) and the "fuel pump" relay - really a power distribution relay (on the left).  Main relay gets activated by both the main switch (+) and the lanyard (-).  This then provide 12 volt power to the ECU and (+) control to the fuel pump relay thru the kill switch.  The ECU provides (-) control to the activate the fuel pump relay only when the engine is running.  The fuel pump relay provides 12 volt power for the fuse panel.   This setup should meet the electrical safety requirements for all the LSR (Land Speed Racing) organizations I know of. 


Microsquirt mounted and wiring completed.  Mounted the Microsquirt middle of the bike.  Wire runs are split - most wire runs are on the right side of the bike - similar to the stock harness.  Coil wires and shifter wires are run up the left side to avoid electrical interference as much as possible. 


Dyna shift counter is used to activate nitrous automatically by gear.  It is also used to disable the auto shift function in 5th gear in case I need a bit of over-rev at the end of the mile.   


Fuse panel and 4! nitrous relays.  One relay is the typical nitrous arming relay that provides power for the nitrous solenoid and the NC2000 progressive controller.  The second relay is a 5 pin used to swap the starter button function from "start" in the NC (normally closed) position to a manual nitrous input using the NO (normally open) position whenever the nitrous arming relay is activated.   The nitrous on-off switch is wired thru the hazard switch on the right handlebar control.  (Using Hayabusa throttle and switchgear).  The other two relays are used to get the Microsquirt ECU to work together with the  Dyna shift counter and the nitrous controller.   The Microsquirt uses ground signals for inputs and outputs.  The shift counter and nitrous controllers use +12 volt signals.  So the +12 volt activation signal from the shift counter has to be swapped to a ground signal to the Microsquirt input.  Then the Microsquirt ground output has to be swapped to a +12 volt signal to activate the nitrous controller. 


Shift relays are on the left side of the bike above the air shifter.  There are two functions at play here - the "shift kill" and the "auto-shift". 
The shift button completes the circuit to the shift solenoid sending high pressure air to the ram on the shift lever.  A pressure switch on the ram grounds the Microsquirt shift input which kills the ignition for a specified period of time, unloading the transmission, and allowing the ram to complete the shift without using the clutch lever while maintaining WOT.
The Microsquirt has programmable output available.  I'm using one to activate a shift light and to auto-shift. The programmable out activates a ground signal at a specified RPM.   This ground completed the circuit for the shift solenoid.  But the shift counter requires a +12 volt signal to function, so a relay is required to swap voltage once again. The second relay is another 5 pin relay used to de-activate the auto-shift function in 5th gear if a little over-rev is needed at the end of the run.  (The rev limiter will be set a little higher than the shift RPM).  The shift signal goes thru the NC pin.  The shift counter sends a signal to the relay which opens the NC contact and interrupts the shift signal to the Microsquirt. 


Shifter ram with solenoid and pressure switch.  Operates in reverse shift pattern (all the more reason to use auto-shift!) using a solid shift lever.

[fj1289]

You've seen the pics Randy posted of the carnage inflicted on the race head.  Heat is the enemy - both short term and over the long term.  There's probably several contributing factors -- too much ignition timing for the amount of nitrous used (couple ways that happened - both "learning points" for me), lack of airflow to the head, nitrous itself, mixture too rich (?! that one surprised me), not running an oil cooler (added one after the initial testing and tuning), and others I'm sure.

For now here's a couple solutions being built into the bike. 

First is placing the oil cooler in the fairing.  Should get better airflow and not block any frontal airflow to the engine.  It may cause a bit more drag -- but we've decided better to come up a few mph short and leave the weekend with the engine in one piece  than to go for broke on the first day and end up with a BIG "offering to the gods of speed"...

Second is to get a good supply of cooling air to the head and to force that flow over the cooling fins (similar to engine cooling in a piston powered airplane).  Doing this with "snorkels" going through the fairing and ducts back to the head then through a baffle plate mounted to the head. 

This was the initial mockup of the oil cooler.  With the oil cooler mounted "upside down" at the bottom of the headlight opening I couldn't get enough room to run the hoses back to the head without chopping up the fairing stay.  Final position for the cooler is mounted "right side up" at the top of the headlight opening (after trimming the bottom of the instrument housing...



Oil cooler moved up  with the air intakes for head running underneath the oil cooler. 



Cooling ducts to head



Blue painters tape will be replaced with fiberglass.  In the future I'd like to spend some time coming up with alternatives for both the oil cooler intake and cooling air intakes, but this  is probably about as good as it gets this time around. 



Had to put all the bodywork on it for one quick motivational pic before departing on a work trip (Departed Sunday - pic taken Saturday night).  Hope like hell we can stay on the timeline and I get back on Friday!  (Well, that plan has gone to hell...looks like getting home on Sunday hopefully). If everything works out I'll get the fiberglass work completed over the weekend and be ready to receive the engine on Monday.  Get it installed and get a good "street tune" done by Tuesday, dyno on Wednesday, and sign in and tech on Thursday....that's the plan anyway!

[racerrad8]

Final assembly happened today as it is down to the wire as the truck will be here tomorrow afternoon to get the engine on the road to Colorado.

Getting the cams all dialed in for maximum horsepower.



Putting the oil pan on and buttoning up the bottom end.



Shameless plug...


This lock-up clutch is something I have never experienced before and it had me worried. We have had the cover on & off a couple of times because the arms kept hitting the cover.


So, we did some clearance cutting to the inside of the cover and everything seemed to clear but one bolt.



I wasn't able to get the arm to stop hitting the hex or standard cap screw allen head bolt. So, I picked up some button head screws and by hand it no longer hit. So, onto the run stand it went to get some hours on it before Chris starts flogging it next week.


I got a couple of hours on it this afternoon & evening, but with the temps at 100f and the clouds rolling in the humidity was up in the 30% as well. So it was 15-20 minutes of run time followed by at least an hour of fans blowing on it to cool it down.


Everything sounds good, I have a fair amount of valve train noise as I set them pretty loose to break it in. But there was a slight knock in the lower end, but more so in the clutch area. Since I have no experience with that lock up clutch, I asked Chris if the levers of the clutch were just noisy flopping around in there or not. He wasn't sure and did not recall, so I pulled the cover to check...

Well, I need more clearance...



You can see on the cover that the lever hit the screw and once the lever was bent it was then rubbing on the inside of the cover.



So, I pulled all of that stuff off and ran it for a little bit tonight with standard clutch parts in there and the knock is all gone. I have already straightened the arm and will clearance the cover more tomorrow and will be leaving that lower bolt out of the cover. Once those two things are done I do not foresee anymore clearance issues.

It will be on the truck heading for Colorado Thursday afternoon and Chris will hopefully be back to the US on Monday to get the engine picked up and installed by Tuesday. Hopefully everything goes well and some testing can happen on Wednesday. We are down to the wire to get to the mile.

Randy - RPM

[Harvy]

Hey Randy, what's the load on the other side of the run stand - looks like a hydraulic pump of some sort.


Harvy

[racerrad8]

Hey Randy, what's the load on the other side of the run stand - looks like a hydraulic pump of some sort.


Harvy

Yes it is a hydraulic pump. I restrict the pressure side of the oil flow to create resistance to mimic road load so actual customer break in time can be reduced and or bypassed depending on what the engine is used for.

If you look closely the driveshaft is spinning.

Randy - RPM

[Firehawk068]

This is awesome stuff!
Great work Randy. 

[Harvy]

If you look closely the driveshaft is spinning.

Randy - RPM

Yep. I noticed that.

Cheers mate
Harvy

[racerrad8]

Well, I was able to get another hour and a half break in on the engine today before having to run the valves, get the clutch sorted out and I pulled the pan to make sure I cleaned out any of the aluminum from the clutch cover. There was nothing in the pan as it was all still sitting below the clutch.

Here it is on the crate getting ready to head out to Colorado.



Another shameless plug...


Here it is all boxed up and ready to go...



My work here is done, the engine will be in Colorado on Monday and Chris' work will begin. He has a pretty good plan and I hope everything falls into place to make sure everything is done in plenty of time. Once again, if any of you locals guys can lend a hand Monday or Tuesday, give Chris a call and see how he is doing and see if he needs any help.

200 or bust...

Randy - RPM

[X-Ray]

Wow, incredible stuff. Love seeing photos of beasty engine rebuilds etc. Looks like it should do the job required,