1993 Mx3 KLZE buildup for 24 hours of lemons

[cout]

Our little mx3 now has 5 races under its belt and we're doing number 6 in September. We're on our third motor now. The DE failed in the same way the ZE did (bearings), before the last race even started. As a result, we were worn out from spending all night swapping the motor before we got to the finish line.

I'm wondering if there's some major flaw in these motors that causes spun bearings, or if we've just got bad luck. There's some debate among our team members whether low oil pressure causes the bearings to go bad, or whether the failed bearings cause an oil pressure drop, or whether it's a little bit of both. Is there anything we can do within lemons budget to address the problem before it happens?

I don't trust the motor we have now (junkyard motor from a Probe GT), so I've got a Millennia motor ready to drop in before the next race. IMO it was much less likely to have been hooned.

[cout]

Some pictures from Charlotte last fall:







Not a great race for us. Multiple ignition problems (bad HEI module, bad spark plug wires, modded distributor cap broke) kept us from going all-out.

I was supposed to finish out the race, but someone overfilled the gas tank, and one of the screws came loose on the fuel pump. Went into a tight corner, got fuel on my back tires, rear end lost traction, and I got black flagged. The judges then chewed me out for having a fuel leak.

We failed even more spectacularly the next race.

[kulluminati777]

i hope someone finds the spun bearing question, i couldnt answer it but i just bring it up because my first K8 had the same issue and oh wow this is a crazy kind of race but very cool...except im not a fan of the trashed ZE's and DE's i could be putting in my car lol

[cout]

Think about it this way. If we didn't rescue those motors from the junkyard, they would get crushed and scrapped. It's sorta like giving a patient chemo; poison the patient, but maybe he'll live a little bit longer.

[kulluminati777]

i like that

[cout]

So we raced again back in March with our KLDE-powered mx3. We blew the motor on the track day, before the race even started, and ended up doing a motor swap Friday night before the race.

Team Turbo Schnitzel came up to us in the middle of the afternoon on Saturday and said, "hey, we heard you have a blown motor. How much does it weigh?"

"Why does he want to know how much the motor weighs?", I said to myself. "I dunno, at least 300 pounds, I guess. I never really ever looked it up."

"Oh cool. Mind if we borrow it?"

"Borrow it? For what?"

"We want to use it as a ballast in the back of our Merkur to keep it from sliding all over the track."



http://mbacars.blogspot.com/2012/03/24- ... mfort.html

[Nd4SpdSe]

There's some debate among our team members whether low oil pressure causes the bearings to go bad, or whether the failed bearings cause an oil pressure drop, or whether it's a little bit of both. Is there anything we can do within lemons budget to address the problem before it happens?

That's exactly the problem, usually happenens in #6. These motors do not deal with low oil pressure well at all. Are you guys constantly running a low pressure for some reason? One fix is to shim the oil pump for more pressure, another is to use a Corvette ZR1 oil filter; bigger and increases the pressure.

And I'm not sure how you guys are racing it, but to 7000rpms max if you want her to last.

[cout]

That's exactly the problem, usually happenens in #6. These motors do not deal with low oil pressure well at all. Are you guys constantly running a low pressure for some reason? One fix is to shim the oil pump for more pressure, another is to use a Corvette ZR1 oil filter; bigger and increases the pressure.

And I'm not sure how you guys are racing it, but to 7000rpms max if you want her to last.

Measured oil pressure usually remains normal until the moment the engine finally gives out. It is possible that oil pressure and oil flow are low in parts of the motor where pressure is not being measured.

We are running a ZR1 filter. We have considered the shim but have not done it. Does it increase pressure only or does it also increase flow?

After much discussion, we believe one of the contributing factors to the demise of the previous engine is excessive amounts of "stop leak" used in its first race. The oil was thus so thick that oil pressure remained high while oil flow was low. We changed oil the night before the second day of the race, but damage was likely already done. Nevertheless, that motor lasted two and a half races.

We're tearing down our new motor and checking clearances. Both rod and main bearings are on the tight side. We will put the motor back together properly sealed so it won't leak. And if it does leak, we will keep refilling with oil rather than use a product which will impair lubrication.

We have not yet checked cam clearances. I really want to run the KL01 cams but we will run the KL31 cams if the journals are excessively worn.

[Thefez]

There's some debate among our team members whether low oil pressure causes the bearings to go bad, or whether the failed bearings cause an oil pressure drop, or whether it's a little bit of both. Is there anything we can do within lemons budget to address the problem before it happens?

That's exactly the problem, usually happenens in #6. These motors do not deal with low oil pressure well at all. Are you guys constantly running a low pressure for some reason? One fix is to shim the oil pump for more pressure, another is to use a Corvette ZR1 oil filter; bigger and increases the pressure.

And I'm not sure how you guys are racing it, but to 7000rpms max if you want her to last.

idk my k8's taken some crazy abuse... ive actually been trying to blow it up since i bought my milly DE ive raced the motor with lower the 10psi oil pressure(i have a guage in the car) and then ran the car like that for over a week and that thing wont blow up lol...

[Nd4SpdSe]

Probetalk would probably be the best source for oil pressure research

http://forums.probetalk.com/showthread. ... m+oil+pump

http://forums.probetalk.com/showthread. ... m+oil+pump

http://forums.probetalk.com/showthread. ... m+oil+pump

http://forums.probetalk.com/showthread. ... m+oil+pump

[cout]

For this past race, we decided to go with a "Simon in the Land of Chalk Drawings" theme:





Even though our car is reasonably fast, the judges put us in class B, since we've been plagued with ignition troubles and engine failures ever since the car was first put on the track. And the judges were right; we blew up the motor even before the start of the race. Apparently the oil got pretty hot:



Before starting the engine swap, we decided to enjoy some chicken and sausage gumbo, which we reheated on our cooked motor:



So we proceeded to swap in the the motor that a Probe owner sold us. He was planning a KLZE swap. What he didn't tell us was that the motor he sold us was already a junkyard motor.

Bore the race at Charlotte motor speedway, Gabe had spent a lot of time working on the braking system, to prevent brake fade. Here you can see the brake cooling system taken apart as we prepare to pull the old motor:



One upgrade in the brake overhaul was braided steel brake lines. In theory, this prevents the brake lines from expanding as the fluid heats up. What we didn't consider was that the new brake lines were too big for the car. They worked fine on our 17" wheels, but when we put the good 15" star specs on the car (for the first time in 2 races), the lines rubbed the inside of the wheels and our driver went into the mud:




We cleaned out all the brake parts in the men's room while we were waiting for the new lines to arrive. When we finished we still had a few hours of racing left in the day.



All in all, we did okay. We would have been competitive for a class B win if not for the brake failure on Sunday and not getting the engine swap done before the start of the race on Saturday.

We will do much better in the upcoming race next month.

[Nd4SpdSe]

Even though our car is reasonably fast, the judges put us in class B, since we've been plagued with ignition troubles and engine failures ever since the car was first put on the track. And the judges were right; we blew up the motor even before the start of the race. Apparently the oil got pretty hot:

Why the heck is your oil getting that hot?! What's your water temps?

[cout]

Even though our car is reasonably fast, the judges put us in class B, since we've been plagued with ignition troubles and engine failures ever since the car was first put on the track. And the judges were right; we blew up the motor even before the start of the race. Apparently the oil got pretty hot:

Why the heck is your oil getting that hot?! What's your water temps?

Probably something to do with the rod bearing failure, which is why we did the engine swap.

[kulluminati777]

do you have anymore clean/different angles of your brake cooling setup??

[cout]

do you have anymore clean/different angles of your brake cooling setup??

I don't have much. Here's another one from the top:



Most teams just use a "ram air" type system to cool their brakes. We did the same thing, but it didn't work for us, because we were using street pads instead of racing pads. By the time we got racing pads on the car, the rotors were so torn up from the melted street pads that there was no hope.

Rather than take any chances at all with brake cooling, we took an AC fan (I think out of a Thunderbird) and attached it onto the car above the transmission. The fan is turned on and off by a driver-controlled switch. There are two shop-vac hoses running from the fan to the brakes, one to each front rotor.

The driver-side hose runs over the transmission and behind the axle; the passenger-side hose runs behind the intake manifold and behind the axle. One thing you may have noticed is that the hose is aimed at the rotor and not at the brake pads. I'm not sure whether that's advantageous or not.

We've taken the whole system apart for the most recent engine swap and may decide to put it together differently for the next race.