Hello everybody, I'm a newbie to this site. To give you my background i'm a motorsport student at Coventry university, and my current experience is building a formula student (CBR600) car with a turbo install, to appropriate racing regs. And nearing completion of my first home-build of a mid-engined, fireblade powered track car! I am looking forward to exchanging knowledge and experience with all you guys.


Right now my question for this thread refers to cooling my blade engine, I was originally planning to run 2x rads of a similar size to the standard blade one in series, but will a single rad with a fan do? I had assumed that using the engine in a car would require far higher average revs of the engine, and so therefore it would have to give out more heat. Does anyone know what the tried and tested setup is?

Thankyou

Micra/Polo Rad with external oil cooler I'd recommend for trackday use.

A Micra / Polo rad gives you a bit more of an overhead in capacity but a single blade rad and fan work fine in a car install as long as its plumbed in properly. I ran a flat (rather than the later concave) blade radiator on my blade car for 3 years / 25 trackdays and the only time the water temperature struggled slightly was on a trackday at Spa in 35c ambient temperatures, and even so it still took a 20 minute session to get it high enough to slow down. At all other times, including on the road in hot weather and 30 minute traffic queues plus lots of hard trackdays, it was absolutely fine.

Chris

Thanks for the suggestions guys, I think i'll use an old R1 rad i've got lying around,

I have also been concerned about oil pickup throughout my build, I was considering getting my sump baffled, but have since been told just to overfill the sump by 1 litre and i'll never have any problems. Is this true? Will the extra oil cause other problems?

Cheers,

Mark

[Edited on 13/8/05 by mak]

Have a hunt through this forum as there are lots of theads on oil surge, but basically I would suggest NOT to overfill a blade. When at normal oil levels the clutch does sit in a bath of oil, but when overfiilled, it does, so it is likely to cause clutch slip due to the fact that the clutch can't squeeze out all the excess oil when re-engaging

All you need on a blade is a baffle plate lke you can get from Kit Car Workshop / Westfield etc (about £20), and to fill to the maximum level on the dipstick / sightglass. Myself and several friends have run blades on track like that for several years without problem, as have many more in the RGB etc.

Chris