thingo

As I said, this engine has hardly run at all, we had a few issues with it last year so ran the stock block in 2017, we got it up and running on the dyno a few weeks ago with the twin turbos but it just wouldn't produce the power we needed, so they built a new manifold and we put a big single on, but that took a week or two, had it all tuned on the dyno by the end of the week but when we went to the track on Monday we had a problem withe the sleeves, it's hardly surprising to to have problems, but never enough time. My resources have been very limited this year. so Monday night Tuesday they pulled the engine out and apart, tried a few different head gasket solutions, we got to the track Thursday for the official practice day, still issues, took the head off again in the pits. Left it overnight and gave it a re torque in the morning and started the event. Not much dry track time on the Friday but we knew we were up to speed. New lap record in the morning..

We dropped a valve in the afternoon so a few things to sort out. The brakes were a bit of an ongoing issue, perhaps from the pad wear.

I expect this engine will be pulled apart again pretty soon so we can address a few things, but everything looked good last week, it does not seem to have any temperature or oil pressure problems at all.

944crazy

Well done Rod! Congrats to you and the team, what a mammoth effort, great to see it pay off in the end. Looks like you got the suspension absolutely dialed for that lap, looked incredibly smooth for such a quick lap. What sort of boost and rpm were you running in Thor?

thingo

944crazy

Wow, that seems quite conservative for a billet engine, Thor must be living the easy life at the moment haha. But I guess early days as you say...no need to test the limits when you've already got the power you need. Are you able to divulge what sort of power/torque numbers it put out at that boost and rpm?

I guess you could run it at some of the PR tech track days next year, to get some shakedowns in before WTAC 2019?

thingo

944crazy

Wow, that is an incredible amount of power for such relatively low boost and rpm, very impressive. I watched the in car footage side by side with your best lap from last year, and yeah it seems to have quite a bit more mumbo coming out of corners and down the main straight. Seems the new engine also has a much broader power curve, those 4 liters must help a lot to keep the big turbo spooled. Watching the hammerhead's in car video, you can hear that thing spooling up out of every corner. I imagine trying to squeeze so much power out of their much smaller engine results in a very peaky and narrow power band.

I'm already very excited to see what you can do next year...the rest of the field is going to have hard time catching up. I think I'll have to venture down to watch in person again, couldn't make it this year unfortunately.

thingo

The old engine was great,and it never let us down, but this is a bigger turbo with an engine big enough to spool it.
Here's a link to the youtube video

333pg333

Be cool if someone could edit a video of both inside and outside the car Rod. I'm sure there must be some external video available.
Going through T1 from the outside was hellishly impressive! I think as much as the new motor helped (even in its infancy) but to me the new suspension looked to be the main contributor to the big improvement in times.

thingo

You know the only thing that is really different is the engine, we did make a few minor aero additions, but the suspension was unchanged, we got it pretty well dialed in for the event last year. The active dampers do a great job.

333pg333

Ok. Well it certainly looked a lot more settled this year. None of that porposing that afflicts a lot of cars especially by the end of the straight and into T1. Literally looked on rails.

Paulyy

Looked like after each session it was going smoother and smoother into T1. especially after last year.