Dan Jacobs

Does anyone have actual track time on a Jake Raby motor? Just looking for comments from end users

Jake Raby

Our first round of track specific engines are being assembled and tested now. To this point the main focus of the program has been directed toward longevity/ reliability enhancements for street engines and simply proving the technology.

Several purpose built track engines will be entering battle in the next couple of months, but none of their purchasers frequent the forums to my knowledge.

It takes time to prove the technology and even more time to convince the objective public that our solution is the way to go.. This is the reason why all of my time is being directed toward R&D and practical application of what we are doing. We KNOW that we HAVE to attain 100% success from every build over a period of at least a few years to gain the same type of reputation with the M96 as we have with the Air cooled Porsche engines.

Thats why everything we are doing is total overkill from parts to processes to overall testing of engines once completed... That means 100 dyno pulls on an engine are not out of the ordinary, all under the watchful eye of telemetry...

All of our test work has been done with more extreme engines than stock.. The current test car I have downstairs on the dyno now has 13:1 CR and runs pump gas. The best way to prove the technology is to ask way more of it than the end user ever will in their much lesser performance applications that are built with a margin of safety that we don't give test engines.

That said, I am taking a 3.2 Boxster engine that had the most serious failure we have seen to date and bumping it to just over 4 liters and doing so at 13:1 as well.

We expect objection from the general public due to the serious issues and bad reputation this engine family has. Luckily there has been a breed of Enthusiast that have come our way since the beginning that believe in the technology and believe in my way of development, testing and application.

Chaos

3.2 supercharged

92tsiawd

I back this one.. if it were possible

insite

i'd love to

insite

after doing a bit more research, i've narrowed it down to two options:

1. Raby motor as discussed. always loved the idea of small motors making big power & tweaking things to go above and beyond what anyone thought was possible. looking at the components, these motors will be very, very strong.

2. A bit of research seems to indicate a 3.2L from the 986 being quite a bit more reliable than the 3.4L from the 996 (cylinder wall thickness). I'd take the 3.2L, add the motorsports mod & baffles, add one of Raby's IMS bearing retrofits, change the head gaskets, & pop it in the car along with a center radiator. maybe throw in a valve job, shave the head & go a bit more aggressive on cams if i feel so inclined. i already have exhaust and a LWF; if i hook up the varioRam, a cold air intake & good ECU program, i should see a conservative 260HP at the crank. that's 30% over stock. i can probably do all of this for under $7k if i take my time & shop around.

what do i WANT? well, the $13k motor, of course! what makes the most sense for ME? well, getting married in may. weddings, honeymoons & new houses aren't cheap......we shall see. either way, it will be after the wedding before i can decide for sure.

Jake Raby

I also havbe another option for you... Its made possible due to a customer backing out on a deal on Friday.. Its not one of my engines, but it is one hell of a deal on a 3.2/986 thats still in the crate.

I'd be willing to help you with it after purchase to get more out of it as well.. Cams, heads and vario cam mods are all possibilities. If you want more CR, thats not a problem and neither is a real valve job or port work.

I have yet to see a cold air intake actually produce a cooler intake charge than stock, and thus far all of them have proven to be counter productive in my lab and in practical application on the street with data logging.

BTW- The 2.9 we talked about now has 400 miles on it and 55 Dyno pulls... Not bad considering that we just fired it up on Friday! Its up 40HP over stock and has stock cams and no port work making peak power at a very streetable 5,500 RPM! This combo is for a Female Driver's DE car thats a tip, so we didn't go crazy in the HP department, just wanted to make big torque and enhance drive ability as much as possible along with reliability while applying all our technology... One more day on the dyno and this one will be headed north to Chicago!

I consider this my "stock" engine because this one cost the same amount as a 2.5 with the same level of reliability/ longevity updates and it takes the same amount of time to assemble/test.

The dyno graph attached was taken from the same tiptronic vehicle, before and after our preparation. The bone stock engine (2.5) that came from this car was put into my '98 Boxster test car with a manual transaxle and on the first pull it made 183HP, just to give you an idea of the the losses we are seeing from the tip gearbox.

I have attached a graph of the same engine that was used for the "before" analysis in two different cars, one the tip aand the other a manual. Nothing was changed on the engine other than the wire harnass and flywheel that was required for transplant into the manual, this is easy to see by comparing the peaks and valleys in the two graphs..

Nothing like classic hotrodding being applied to an engine that has historically been nothing more than a "tuner" engine.

jakermc

Whatever you do, save some money for an LSD. If you are going after more power, you will want the LSD to actually put the power to the ground. IMO, no point bumping the hp in a tuner built track car without it.

insite

definitely on the list of things to do! probably a guard unit at some point. still, for 'educational' purposes, i want to run an open diff a little while longer since it forces you to be a lot smoother & attentive. once the wheel spin annoys the heck out of me, i'll certainly go for an upgrade here.

Geoffrey

Jake, are you able to do live remapping of the ECUs on your modified engines, or are you just doing pulls and programming them after the fact?

Jake Raby

Geoffrey,
We have partnered with Evolution Motorsports and are working with them on the re-mapping of ECUs.. We gather data from the OBDII as well as our stand alone data acquisition system then adjustments are made to the fuel map. Generally this can be done almost immediately with some file transfers.. We gather the data, shoot that to EVO, they alter the file and shoot if back to us. We have been able to make changes in less than 5 minutes in the past and be back on the throttle.

If more of our engine designs required ECU re-mapping I'd invest in the ability to do the work on site, fact is few have required it.

jakermc

That's actually a great plan. The wheel spin makes for a great training device. When the spin is only due to track conditions and not driver input, that's when to make the change.

When I was at Bondurant the cars had traction control that could not be disabled. Initially I kept triggering mine because I was over driving the car. Then I went out with the instructor and watched him put down a faster lap without TC coming on. After that the TC became a great in-car teacher, every time it triggered it was like being slapped with a ruler showing me I screwed up. Certainly helped me improve.

insite

another aspect is that i think a lot of guys w/ diffs rely on that piece of hardware to stop the car's rotation after turn-in. i think this driving style dispenses w/ some of the finesse required to hustle a car with really small polar moments & central COG around a track. there are a lot of guys who are fast with diffs. remove the diff and they spin out a LOT.

Ray S

I'd love to see the dyno on the 2.9 after you are done.

Edit, just saw the dyno. Nice gain

Ray S

Is fitting one of the new DI motors a 6th option. I'm not sure what the cost would be, but if it will fit it would be a nice power gain.