More Engine Details

In a race car, a dry sump system is ideal. By dry sumping an engine, you eliminate a number of issues, the biggest of which being deadly oil surge. Oil surge is caused by extreme forces when cornering, which pushes the oil to one side of the sump, and up into the engine. This can leave the oil pick up exposed and therefore no oil is pumped into the engine. This can lead to major engine damage, or worse, destroying an engine completely.

The problem with dry sump sytems is the initial expense, so to keep costs down we have modified the standard sump, with a baffle system. This baffle, slows any oil movement, to a point where hopefully, the oil pick up is never exposed. So far this has worked, however, a dry sump system will be on the next engine.

The large hole in the middle of the baffle is where the oil pick up sits. The pick up also has a backing plate, which stops the oil from coming up through this area also.

To fit the FJ20 into the car, it was necassary to reverse the crossmember, and use custom made engine mounts. Also needed is a custom sway bar. To get the engine into the engine bay, it is necassary to also loosen the cross member, and allow it to drop to the end of its bolts (about 10mm). Also, we have to remove the steering mechanism to make room for the engine to slide in.

The new engine is complete and has been installed in the car. The initial dyno tune, with only 3/4 throttle saw 139.8bhp with 650 pounds of torque at the rear wheels.

We then took the car out to the race track (Oran Park), and ran the engine in, slowly increasing the amount of throttle and the number of revs. By the end of the day we were using up to 7,000rpm (7,500rpm expected to be the max) and the engine felt great - much stronger than last year.

The car will be re-tuned just prior to the first round (9th March), to lean off the mixtures a little and hopefully get more power from the engine.

Back to Engine details.