Gen 3 maintenance

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PostPosted: Fri Jun 19, 2015 2:40 pm
We just completed our 2nd weekend and am preparing the car for the next race. I was wondering if anyone would comment on anything different that they are doing maintenance wise compared to the gen 2?

One thing specifically that comes to mind is the breather bottle. I couldn't find anything in the manual on it. I decided to drain it and was surprised to see as much oil was in it. It was also a murky color, which I would anticipate. My guess is that the engine over time would push out quite an amount of oil and was wondering what is normal and how often should it be drained?

Are there any other things that come to mind?

I know that the new brake rotors have been around for a while, but I would be interested in knowing how long they last and when to change them.

How many weekend have you run the engines with conventional oil?

Thanks for any tips that you might have.

Pat
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 19, 2015 3:10 pm
Gen2 guy comment, but I run the rotors until the slots are pretty much worn flat.
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 20, 2015 6:50 pm
All much the same. Change oil,filter. I ran good oil right from the start. I ordered some air filter cleaner and oil. Clean about every other race or if they have a off in the dirt. I heard the stuff that comes out of the breather bottle is M. Davies Cappuccino :-) I now carry a spare air filter in case one gets rally dirty so I can just change it since it takes time to clean and dry. I do as Denny does on brake rotors. When gas lines are gone I change them. Which can be as fast as 2 going to third set of pads. I do new pads with new rotors.
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PostPosted: Sun Jun 21, 2015 7:13 pm
Run the engine on non-synthetic oil until the leak-down numbers stop improving. That's likely going to be a season of racing for most or a lot of test days (between 10 and 24 hours.) When we ran the development engine for over 30+ hours, between test sessions, a pre-race 4 hours enduro, plus the 25 hours of NASA, Enterprises told us the engine gained 5 hp (and that was running it hard in cold weather where we could not get the engine very hot). So far, my dyno checks continue to see measurable improvements, though I switched sooner than I had planned at 16 hours.

Consider transmissions a "maintenance" item with a life expectancy of 30-40 hours between rebuilds, which is likely to be 1-2 seasons for full time racers (I've put 48 hours on my engine since January between a lot of track days and our normal NorCal racing schedule.) Having broken two transmissions that were not fresh (3rd gear being problematic) I highly recommend a fresh rebuild at the time of putting in the 3.85 gearing, and potentially an annual refresh.

The air filter does seems to get more dirty, especially if you run in the rain, so I'm cleaning and re-oiling pretty much every other weekend.

Wear and tear on brakes seems to be slightly higher so I'm pretty much replacing pads and rotors (plus rebuild kits) about every 3-4 weekends (depending on how many test days as well.)

Watch the alternator belt, especially the tension, to ensure that it remains tight.

As noted, drain the breather bottle after every few weekends. While there's a measurable amount of "cappuccino" output, it doesn't seems to translate to a lot of oil consumption, so I assume a lot of it is water mixed with a small amount of oil.

Everything else pretty much follow Gen2 maintenance (e.g. fuel filters, oil changes, transmission fluid changes, etc.) though I'm doing more frequent transmission fluid changes to seek if that helps longevity (fingers crossed.)
Bob Breton - SRF 51 - San Francisco Region

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PostPosted: Mon Jun 22, 2015 12:09 pm
Thanks everyone.

Bob, considering the loss of the alternator belt could result in big problems, have you or anyone else come up with a better way of becoming aware of the loss of the belt? That tiny light doesn't seem to be enough, as it's very is hard to see on bright days. I have to admit, I don't watch it as close as I maybe should. Perhaps with replacing it with a much larger blinking light? If so where would I find such a thing? Not sure that radio shack is still in business, as all of them around here have been closed. Seems that there should be an easy fix to something that can be much more costly.

Pat

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PostPosted: Mon Jun 22, 2015 4:41 pm
Pat,

I put a large, bright green LED light on the alternator circuit which is easily seen in bright sunlight. I also programmed my AiM system to give me a red flashing light when the voltage goes below 12.9 volts (as Enterprises recommends). Between the two, I am hoping to catch it early and get my butt off the track.

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PostPosted: Mon Jun 22, 2015 5:19 pm
+1 on the big bright Red dash warning on the Aim, and I have mine turning the whole dash red on such a situation, when traveling more than 25 mph.

I also set up a couple levels of water temp alarms as well. Since the highest water temp I've seen was this past weekend at High Plains (air temp 97 at high altitude) where water temp hit 183, I'm figuring 200 as an early alert is good. Previous high has been 172... My red dash alert triggers at 210, at which point it'll be a "shut 'er down immediately" situation.
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 22, 2015 8:48 pm
Since my alternator light has never worked reliably, I rely on my AIM dash as others have noted, with an alarm below 13 volts and temp above 220. I threw my first belt during an early race and the voltage alarm shot up almost immediately and just a bit later the temp alarm went off as well, so I immediately shut down the engine and coasted back to the pits. Did a dyno run after to see if there was damage and had gained a couple of HP since my baseline dyno so I assume it didn't do major damage, but it's important to be diligent as things can go bad very quickly.

I did discover that the lower alternator bolt had loosened up enough to slightly tilt the pulley and the belt did not align correctly on the bottom pulley, so it's a good idea to do a visual inspection each time you come off the track for any evidence of looseness in the lower bolt as well as keeping the overall belt tension high (I've been told that there's significant slippage on the water pump pulley if it's even slightly loose.)
Bob Breton - SRF 51 - San Francisco Region
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 22, 2015 9:53 pm
Pat: Those of us who have an Aim programmed alarms for voltage drop and water temp but I also have a bright red 1/2" incandescent dash light for my alternator light. Got rid of the ridiculously tiny green light that came with my car originally. Del City catalog shows also a 1" LED strobe dash light that would wake anyone up if their alt belt came off too. Page 245 in their catalog.
Greg: welcome to the "switched" side of Gen3 ;)
Mark Fick
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 23, 2015 11:41 am
Mark, I will check out the light as suggested.

One thing that I have noticed is that this engine seems to run much cooler than the 1.9L. I don't have the benefit yet of having a way of monitoring the oil temperature, but I assume the oil cooler fan is working. Has anyone actually verified that it works? I am wondering, if for some reason it fails, if the mounting of the fan, wouldn't actually restrict the cooling, thus creating a larger problem had it not been there in the first place?

I am also wondering, if there is a manual or description of the paths to the A/F, oil temp etc data from the ecu, for the minority of us who don't have a data logger that works. I tried to get this information from the vendor and they never got back to me. I believe much of this information is not password protected and should be available.

It would be nice to see a written description of how to find the data (Path to) and how to reset it.

Pat
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