Ariel.Club Forum

CAG3D wrote: ↑Fri Sep 16, 2022 10:52 pm I’ve never had any issues with my 3.5R, however I’d did one Castle Combe day in my Nomad R, and had heating problems. Warning lights, couldn’t manage two consecutive flying laps. Real shame!

Your temp issue with your Nomad R is a complete other problem that the Atom 4 have.
Your Nomad R overhead because your SC will overhead the engine, also your engine oil is too hot.
The Atom4 only have a problem with too hot water temperature. Among other things, the air flow through the water cooler is far too low. But the engine oil is in range.

Yeh Steve was in his at Castle with me, when I tailed him, I had no issues with heating, but once I was pushing hard, it definitely struggles. What were you lapping at Donington? I’ve not been there in the R but did take my RS on a few months back.


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I’ve done Donnington in the Nomad R a couple of times and didn’t skip a beat. No over heating at all. Perhaps I’m not trying hard enough

Oh, it was frocking amazing when it did work, the Sadev box, and Ohlins!!! Oh my. 77 seconds in Nomad, and certainly more to come, if I can sort cooking/cooling!!


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I’ve never had any issues with my 3.5R, however I’d did one Castle Combe day in my Nomad R, and had heating problems. Warning lights, couldn’t manage two consecutive flying laps. Real shame!


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I did a track day at Keevil airfield on Friday last week and have aero. It was 21C air temperature and the car got to 101c a couple of times. Performance was no effected. I also have been speaking to the factory and again they are looking into it. [emoji106]

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yeah I'd messaged the factory about it also, and it sounds like they are trying to find a workable solution.

I dont think my Atom is doing another trackday now till Mid/late October so less likely to be an issue with the likely air temp at that time of year.

Will watch on with interest

If i'm honest i don't know yet. The factory are looking at this which i'm hoping will have positive results. Failing that i will be taking a hole saw and flappy paddle wheel to my front nose section (which could end up being costly) but we will see. I'm sure there will be a solution in the next couple of month that we know works.

Cool - is there much you can do with that? Apologies if ive missed a thread about it.

Not to a level I had hoped difficult to say what difference it made as ran on a 30 degree day and still had 106+ engine temps
Now looking at air flow to radiator as others have had results with this

Yorkshire wrote: ↑Tue Jul 19, 2022 7:19 pm I have changed all my coolant to VP Race ready coolant (the blue one not purple) but until i have finished my tune i can't really report any facts. I know my car ran up to 108 degrees at Donnington Park so waiting to see if any change before i alter anything else.

Did the uprated coolant make any difference?

Spoke to Steve at the factory Tuesday re update on cooling and he explained that they have someone working on it as before and its working progress, so hopefully more news soon [emoji106]

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FYI I saw on one of the Facebook posts that Steve at the factory has got someone assigned to look at the cooling issues now so it'll be interesting to see what they come up with.

I have changed all my coolant to VP Race ready coolant (the blue one not purple) but until i have finished my tune i can't really report any facts. I know my car ran up to 108 degrees at Donnington Park so waiting to see if any change before i alter anything else. Bob Smith came up with an idea re more air into the front which i have also made in aluminium to divert air that went under the nose (front wing fitted) into the radiator but wanted to fit that after i have some data on water temps without it (but on the same day).
My last Atom 3.5R had 2 radiators but as there are no fixing points for something similar on the Atom 4 it may take a little more work but my gut feeling is more radiator volume is needed. I do have a zircotec downpipe and link pipe and downpipe/intake blankets too.

There's no question that Atom 4 coolant temps can be a real problem on track, but it only seems to be once they reach 100degC that performance starts to be impacted. This issue has been highlighted previously, notably by Simon Hart, and he did a lot of work to try to get the temps down, but sold his car before all the work he'd done could be properly evaluated in terms of it's effectiveness.

Latterly, in conjunction with a couple Atom 4 owners and the invaluable services of Corten Miller Motorsport, I've been associated with steps to adopt some of what Simon did/suggested together with some additional measures, several of which are ongoing. Currently we feel the main issue is that the radiator simply isn't seeing sufficient airflow due to the relatively small cross-section area of the 4's nose cone opening. More on efforts to overcome this will be posted as and when further progress is made.