Project - Track Focused Atom 3

[Garmster]

COOLING INTAKE TEMPS:-
Once the new engine is in, its supposedly will be good for 800bhp. Calm down gents, I won't be going anywhere near that. The Atom as we all know is held back by the JRSC and specifically the air intake temps. The obvious expensive answer to this is the £7.5k + VAT = £9k Atom 3.5r upgrade i.e. side pods, charge cooler and oil cooler to help lower the intake temps. I'm already spending £20k on engine, Aero and uprights, so need to tighten the belt a little.

SO THE QUESTION I HAVE ..... has anyone considered Water/Methanol Injection Kit to help bring down intake temps on the JRSC. Whats the pros and cons. Remember, this is a Track Focused build, so I should be in boost most of the time. Adding a few gallons of Methanol to my trailer is not a chore given the potential return. Will a Water/Methanol kit allow for a smaller pulley? It seems to easy and not a lot of money, so I must be missing something. Answers on a postcard and thanks in advance.

[cvjoint]

I hope the engine oiling involves a lot more than just baffles. I could not sustain sufficient oil pressures with baffled pan and the K20A2 pump on slicks without aero, let alone with aero. Go dry sump or add an oil accumulator. No point in building an expensive engine with good aero just to starve it again.

[jpswift]

The Atom as we all know is held back by the JRSC and specifically the air intake temps

trust me ......we dont

but am envious that people have got the balls\knowledge to have a crack at these projects

[Garmster]

I hope the engine oiling involves a lot more than just baffles. I could not sustain sufficient oil pressures with baffled pan and the K20A2 pump on slicks without aero, let alone with aero. Go dry sump or add an oil accumulator. No point in building an expensive engine with good aero just to starve it again.

Are you saying that you had an engine failure due to oil starvation as a result of your pump and baffling? Sorry if I misunderstood your point. At this stage, I discounted a dry sump / accumulator based on the fact that I was moving away from the balance shaft oil pump and Atom Baffled sump to a 4 Piston ported pump and completely new design in terms of the Baffled sump. That said, I'm keen to know peoples experiences, I'll be stupid to ignore them. If you did have an failure due to oil starvation, did you install a dry sump kit/accumulator? Thanks in advance and I do appreciate the comments.

[Yorkshire]

The car pictured with the Aero earlier on in the post is mine. Whilst the aero helps loads the Ohlins dampers and significantly larger Pirelli corsa classic tyres (305 rear 245 front) also help. Will be interesting to see where you go with your modifications as I have been at it since 2014 on that particular car. If I can help I gladly will but I run a completely different charger as well as water meths to keep intake temps down successfully (normally circa 10 degrees when would have risen to 60 or 70 before).
This setup runs 480whp and 320ft lbs torque.
Just a few quick pointers I have looked at Dry Sump but you will never get it to fit as pump that drives system which drives off belt hits chassis so can't fit.
Oil pressure is an easy fix if have Dash 2 just replace switch that only reads 0 or 1 for a pressure sensor and input to Dash 2 via analogue input. Direct to dash if spare analogue input or via DL1 if not.
I run the different oil pump and have an Ariel baffled sump together with a clockwise motion baffle and never suffer oil starvation anymore (since I moved to Castrol Edge Supercar 10W 60 oil).
Interesting article coming up in Racecar Engineering as my car just been in MIRA wind tunnel for aero article in Jan/Feb and March editions.

Good Luck Stuart

[cvjoint]

Are you saying that you had an engine failure due to oil starvation as a result of your pump and baffling? Sorry if I misunderstood your point. At this stage, I discounted a dry sump / accumulator based on the fact that I was moving away from the balance shaft oil pump and Atom Baffled sump to a 4 Piston ported pump and completely new design in terms of the Baffled sump. That said, I'm keen to know peoples experiences, I'll be stupid to ignore them. If you did have an failure due to oil starvation, did you install a dry sump kit/accumulator? Thanks in advance and I do appreciate the comments.

Not quite. I have an HPD K24/K20 build with Real Time baffles and non-balance shaft pump, and hence have variable valve lift on both intake and exhaust valves. When the oil pressure drops below 30psi VTEC falls out to low lift cams. This is quite noticeable and saved me from grenading the motor. I started overfilling by at least 1/2 quart and pumped in much heavier 50 weight Motul oil. This was barely enough to keep the VTEC from dropping out and had to refill oil every two sessions on track. Then I bought aero so I figured I should at least add Accusump.

Accusump has worked for me, and am now running dual element 180cm wings on both front and rear.

The types of tires you run will make a huge difference on G achieved. I now regularly get 2+G. If you run hard compound or street times that turn on at 90*C it might not stress the oil system enough to have low pressure.

[cvjoint]

The car pictured with the Aero earlier on in the post is mine. Whilst the aero helps loads the Ohlins dampers and significantly larger Pirelli corsa classic tyres (305 rear 245 front) also help. Will be interesting to see where you go with your modifications as I have been at it since 2014 on that particular car. If I can help I gladly will but I run a completely different charger as well as water meths to keep intake temps down successfully (normally circa 10 degrees when would have risen to 60 or 70 before).
This setup runs 480whp and 320ft lbs torque.
Just a few quick pointers I have looked at Dry Sump but you will never get it to fit as pump that drives system which drives off belt hits chassis so can't fit.
Oil pressure is an easy fix if have Dash 2 just replace switch that only reads 0 or 1 for a pressure sensor and input to Dash 2 via analogue input. Direct to dash if spare analogue input or via DL1 if not.
I run the different oil pump and have an Ariel baffled sump together with a clockwise motion baffle and never suffer oil starvation anymore (since I moved to Castrol Edge Supercar 10W 60 oil).
Interesting article coming up in Racecar Engineering as my car just been in MIRA wind tunnel for aero article in Jan/Feb and March editions.

Good Luck Stuart

That is a very good looking Atom! I'm particularly enamored with the endplates on the front wing. Mine are plain Jane flat cut. I would love to see the article when you have it and interested in the build. Do you have a thread somewhere?

Dry sump can be added in various ways. One is to use a belt driven pump but cut the frame to fit it. The other is to get the At Power self enclosed dry sump. Are you running without an oil accumulator? You can see how hard my accumulator works by the amount of times the blue discharge light goes off in corners:

[Yorkshire]

Dry sump can be added in various ways. One is to use a belt driven pump but cut the frame to fit it. The other is to get the At Power self enclosed dry sump

I think the part where you mentioned cutting the frame sort of put me off the belt driven one. As for the AT Power one would that be the first launch which didn't work and was withdrawn from the market to then take 2 years to redesign it.
I have spoken to AT as I was trying to get one of the new redesigned ones as yes you are correct that would be a perfect fit for the Atom as long as it works. The only issue I could see was where do you put the oil tank as ideally that needs to be thin and as tall as possible and I was struggling to see where I might fit it. I have side pods but unfortunately they are already full!

[cvjoint]

Rear wing (1).jpg (96.9 KiB) Viewed 1014 times

I already had the frame upgraded to 3.5 spec and some Atom 4 spec reinforcements. So my Atom is no stranger to surgery! It's also already been done on an Atom in California and that car is fast post surgery.

Good info on the At Power unit. I don't know how well the second gen works.

I have relocated the muffler to the bottom outside the exoskeleton frame. The pipe coming out of the 4 in 1 header goes out between the A-arms on the passenger side. The space above the header is free for me.That's where my Accusump is now and could fit the dry sump tank instead of it. I suppose you could also just hang the tank outside the exoskeleton frame out the back but somehow a muffler looks more at home there.

[reg]

COOLING INTAKE TEMPS:-
Once the new engine is in, its supposedly will be good for 800bhp. Calm down gents, I won't be going anywhere near that. The Atom as we all know is held back by the JRSC and specifically the air intake temps. The obvious expensive answer to this is the £7.5k + VAT = £9k Atom 3.5r upgrade i.e. side pods, charge cooler and oil cooler to help lower the intake temps. I'm already spending £20k on engine, Aero and uprights, so need to tighten the belt a little.

SO THE QUESTION I HAVE ..... has anyone considered Water/Methanol Injection Kit to help bring down intake temps on the JRSC. Whats the pros and cons. Remember, this is a Track Focused build, so I should be in boost most of the time. Adding a few gallons of Methanol to my trailer is not a chore given the potential return. Will a Water/Methanol kit allow for a smaller pulley? It seems to easy and not a lot of money, so I must be missing something. Answers on a postcard and thanks in advance.

There’s a cheaper option, factory calls it ‘stealth’ IIRC it’s 80% as effective, no pods. The water/meth is a good shout but the packaging is difficult. It’s almost as practical to make a billet manifold with galleries which can be water cooled? There’s also not much room for a sandwich type exchanger without frame work?

[cvjoint]

My understanding of the stealth kit is that it is an intercooler mounted where the second water radiator would go horizontal behind the main one. I think that would be fine for a street car. For a boosted Atom that sees the track I'd say you want an oil cooler and a second radiator. With the stealth kit you have to choose intercooler or water radiator, can't have both.

I'd say use the air intake snorkle for an intercooler, second water radiator behind the main one horizontal (hot country radiator), and the Cup Car oil cooler. It should still be a bit cheaper than side pods, but not by much.

[Garmster]

Not long to go now. All engine components ready to be built into my new MMR Atom 2.2 Engine:

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[thomas_fr]

Hi,
last year i converted an Atom 2 220 to 350bhp with a Rotrex supercharger and no Intercooler, only water/meth injection kit with regular ron98 fuel.

If you need some data about IATs i got on track during hot summer day (35°c outside), which ignition timing i used, which boost, ..; let met know, happy to help.

Also, i recommend that you wire to your K-pro :

- EGT sensor
- Oil t°
- Oil pressure
- Fuel pressure

Then you can setup the kpro to cut-off ignition if one of those 3 sensors goes out of your defined bounds. It saved my engine a few times (fuel pump issues).

EGT sensor will tell you when your IATs are unacceptable with water/meth injection, or when your lambda sensor is failing.

I used a AIM Strada MXS 1.2 dashboard to display all those data, transmitted by CAN by the Kpro board.

[thomas_fr]

Also,

removing the water/oil exchanger under the oil filter and replacing it with a thermostatic oil plate with oil cooler (see my adverts) helped reducing engine coolant temps and engine oil temps on track.

This water/oil exchanger helps you heating the oil when the engine is cold, but it heats the water when the oil is too hot : not good.

I was able to stay at 120°c for oil and 100°c for water with only 1 water radiator (no hot country option) during really hot summer trackdays.

[cvjoint]

Hi,
last year i converted an Atom 2 220 to 350bhp with a Rotrex supercharger and no Intercooler, only water/meth injection kit with regular ron98 fuel.

If you need some data about IATs i got on track during hot summer day (35°c outside), which ignition timing i used, which boost, ..; let met know, happy to help.

Also, i recommend that you wire to your K-pro :

- EGT sensor
- Oil t°
- Oil pressure
- Fuel pressure

Then you can setup the kpro to cut-off ignition if one of those 3 sensors goes out of your defined bounds. It saved my engine a few times (fuel pump issues).

EGT sensor will tell you when your IATs are unacceptable with water/meth injection, or when your lambda sensor is failing.

I used a AIM Strada MXS 1.2 dashboard to display all those data, transmitted by CAN by the Kpro board.

This is great input. I forwarded to my tuner to see what he thinks and can be done for my Rotrex (C38R) build.