Finally had my first day out in the SR3. What a great car. Been tracking/racing for 30 years in production based cars, this thing is another level of learning. At any rate, the day was cool, around 14-16C. The car came up to temp easily in pre-grid, but once on track temps went down to marginal levels. Water temp down to 158C and Oil temp down to 63-65C on track.
As it was my first day in the car I short shifted around 7500rpm (no big deal in terms of pace) but was surprised at the low temps.
I think we will make a quick to install radiator block off for conditions like this in the future.
Thoughts??
Cheers
Hi @jeff-alton, it is great to hear that you got it out on the track, congratulations! Yes, it is amazing what a step up these cars are over production based cars. 🙂
What you are experiencing with having challenges keeping enough heat in the car is normal. These cars have oversized cooling systems which makes it hard to keep enough heat in on even hot days. Believe it or not the recommended method for adjusting this is to put duct tape over the inlet screen for the oil and water radiators. For me one and a half strips of tape on each side worked well.
@charleyhradicalsportscarregistry-com Thank you for the insight. I will likely do that.
Kept the revs down as the temps were not optimal.
But still a blast to drive. Was able to take my son out (who track drives as well) for a 25 min session, he was amazed as well.
Looking forward to getting up to speed and coming to terms with the cornering speeds.
Cheers
@jeff-alton, have fun and work your way up to speed slowly. Just to warn you there is a common “heart attack moment” that almost every new SR3 owner has. Once you are out on the track for a while and the oil gets hot and thin it is common for the low oil pressure light to come on when you are slowing down while coming back into the pit. Don’t worry this is normal. The oil pressure warning switch is set to worn you when the oil is thicker and when you are at racing speed on the track. At lower RPM like coming into the pit it should be ignored. 🙂
@jeff-alton ... G'day Jeff. Just to be clear... keeping the revs down would have the opposite effect of 'helping'.... keeping the rpm lower will have the effect of limiting the heat generated in the cooling system, while you 'air speed' (that generates the air flow to cool through the radiators) was probably still reasonably high...
I started on the same journey some years ago... and followed exactly the path that Charley outlined. I personally ended up installing thermostats in both the water side (using a standard Suzuki/Hayabusa part including the necessary 'bleed line' from the cylinder head) and the oil side (external thermostat sold by Mishimoto) plumbed in between the engine side oil lines and the main oil radiator.
I think the water side thermostat worked perfectly, while I'm not 100% sure the oil side thermostat made a huge difference to be honest. (because it bypasses a minimum of around 15% of oil even when it's 'closed' and that is enough to keep the radiator working too much at low loads while warming up, etc)
I can supply some more details and photos if your interested in either....
Rod
@rjbender Rod, yes, I get that. I do like your solution. However without the engine up to operating temp I did not want to run it out to redline. I have a pretty good understanding of engines, (rebuild countless high performance Porsche engines at my shop each year) and just did not want to hurt it. The engine got cooler on track than it was in pre-grid, so I think I will tape off parts of each radiator if I see this again at a cooler temp track day.
I did the same as Rod. I got tired of trying to manually control the temps with tape. I put the Suzuki thermostat back in and added a 215 degree oil thermostat from Improved Racing. It has worked great for a couple of years now! Engine warms quicker and my data shows temps stay pretty flat throughout my runs. One of the best mods I have made.
Jim
