Essexmetal

At the track this weekend I had the thermostat open and hydraulic the front cooler supply line out of the thermostat housing. For those that don't know it is located just in front of the right rear tire. Having that joint fail will oil the tire
100 % and it did. Luckily I was in the slower corners when it popped, soft spin and no damage except for the 7 quarts of oil on the track.

Even though this happened to two other N/A cars in my area I never paid any attention to my turbo. The metal retention tab was bent completely back allowing the tube to move the 19mm out of the thermostat body. This happened on a hot day with a good amount of of warm up idling. But it was running at a fairly high RPM when the thermostat opened. I am sure that it has been failing progressively for a long time. The retainer clip is marginal at best and I will be building something that can handle the forces acting upon that cooler feed line.

Until that permanent fix, longer warm ups at idle.
CHECK YOURS TO MAKE SURE ALL IS IN PLACE.
Rick

Acropora

Warming up our motors before tracking so the thermostat doesn't open at 6K rpm and spill oil--good advice. Sign me up for clips if you're making extras Rick.
Loved the custom exhaust on your car btw.

Mike J

Thanks for the info, I have not heard of this! I will be checking the cars that come through the shop.

Cheers,

Mike

No HTwo O

Rick, lucky it did not cause a fire too, right? I'd think 7 quarts of hot oil dumping out, that close to the turbo and hot exhaust, is a potential disaster.

Knight

Wow great info to know!

Mike J

Also think of the Turbos - its not like you can do a cool down lap.... so some temperature spikes for sure.

Essexmetal

As much of a bummer as it was 30 seconds before was a 145mph straight. No way to have survived it had it happened in the brake zone there. That statement is obvious but thinking about it gives me the chills. I don't think this was a complete "instantaneous" failure but instead the retention tab yielding over a period of time. The Mobil 1 V-Twin 20/50 didn't help.

I have to say that oil has some surface stick. It took some serious brakekleen to wash the car down and it is still coming out of the seams.

Rick

Essexmetal

NoHTWO,

Certainly could have lit up. The turbo's were not super hot since I was not on it yet. Still warming up the car. Interestingly the tire blocks most of the oil from going rearward. The inner fender and rocker slow the spray down. The rocker filled up started to dump oil out the front edge too.

As noted previously this could have been 95% worse than what happened. One of the N/A 993's lost his in a parking lot the other one on the same track as I was on three turns earlier. No damaged except for pissed off corner workers. It is always better to be lucky than good.
Rick